ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, April 8, 1996 TAG: 9604080081
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A6 EDITION: METRO
President of Old Southwest, Inc. and head of the Leftwich-Tate Certificate of Compliance Coalition.
The pro-inspection coalition of Roanoke neighborhood leaders is named for four Leftwich children who died with their grandmother in a January fire in a Southeast Roanoke rental house and for Madeline Tate, an elderly woman who froze to death in a rented house 11 years ago. Long outraged by slumlords and unsafe housing, Cavendish and Old Southwest board member Joel Richert started research two years ago on Roanoke's housing stock and what other cities had done to help declining neighborhoods. Advocacy of rental inspections became Cavendish's No. 1 priority when she became Old Southwest president early this year. She is moving with her husband back to her home state of Tennessee soon and wants to see the inspection program in place before she goes. She and most of the players below serve on the city's task force on rental inspections. TED EDLICH
Executive director of Total Action Against Poverty, Southwest Virginia's biggest community action agency, and the leading advocate of rental inspections.
He began pushing the issue of slumlords and substandard housing many years ago as a board member of the Roanoke Regional Housing Network. His December 1994 Roanoke Times Commentary Page piece on the city's dilapidated housing drew tenant advocates to his side and sparked the movement toward rental inspections. In the piece, he urged Roanoke to join Lynchburg, Salem and Tidewater cities in requiring regular inspections and the issuance of certificates of compliance with building codes before landlords can rent their housing. He complained of Roanoke's slowness in taking advantage of 1994 state legislation that gave localities increased authority to police substandard rental properties. Now he's hopeful that rental inspections are finally going to happen here. DAN POLLOCK
Roanoke's housing development coordinator, who joined the city as a planner in 1980.
The city's been thinking about starting rental inspections since
1979. By the city's estimate, there are 1,500 substandard homes in Roanoke. Pollock and other city administrators have been criticized by tenant advocates and neighborhood leaders for taking so long to get rental inspections rolling. Pollock says the General Assembly's 1994 legislation spelling out cities' authority in regulating rental housing cleared the way for an inspection program. About a year ago, he and Old Southwest visited Lynchburg's rental inspectors and began gathering information on other cities' programs. Pollock has been point man as Roanoke's inspection plan began picking up speed this winter after a fire in a Southeast Roanoke rental home killed a woman and four of her grandchildren. JOHN KEPLEY
Owner of about 60 Roanoke rental units and member of a family that has been landlords here since the 1930s.
Kepley, an interdenominational minister who travels to Africa and Russia to teach Christians how to become pastors, became alarmed when the city held a workshop on rental inspections last fall. Kepley said most landlords were being shut out of development of the inspection program and organized the 86-member Roanoke Property Investors Association to monitor the situation. The city administration added him to the rental inspections task force last month. Kepley had called an early inspection concept ``government intrusion at its worst'' last fall and threatened to fight it all the way to the Supreme Court. But as the task force listened to Kepley and amended the plan in ways he found more amenable to landlords, his fellow task force members said Kepley was easy to work with. NANCY BROCK
Lawyer with the Legal Aid Society and the Roanoke Valley's leading lawyer on housing issues for the poor.
She's been networking with city staff and community leaders for a couple of years about how Roanoke could halt deterioration of its housing stock. Though a strong advocate of tenants rights, she's cautioned against coming down so hard on landlords that they might drive up rents or shut down the city's dwindling market of low-income housing. She's pressing for a long-term plan for how to boost neighborhoods, rehabilitate old housing and keep both landlords and tenants happy.
LENGTH: Medium: 90 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: headshots of Cavendish, Edlich, Pollock, Kepley andby CNBBrock color