THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, October 28, 1994 TAG: 9410280650
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MIKE KNEPLER, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Medium: 82 lines
Gov. George Allen doesn't want cops just patrolling inner-city neighborhoods; he wants them living there.
And he's willing to lure them with state-backed, low-cost housing loans.
``I could think of few better deterrents to crime than having a police officer live next door to you or just on the same block,'' Allen said Thursday as he announced his ``Police in Residence'' program.
Allen's program would make 30-year mortgage loans available at 4 percent interest rates to officers who buy homes in crime-prone, poor neighborhoods.
In addition to municipal police, the program will also be open to state troopers, college campus police and sheriff's deputies. They need not be employed in the city where they buy the home.
It was one of seven initiatives that Allen announced at the 7th annual Governor's Housing Conference, which ended here on Thursday.
Police in Hampton Roads interviewed after the announcement had mixed reactions about moving into inner-city neighborhoods. Residents of those communities also were skeptical about attracting officers.
``Their wives wouldn't let them,'' said Bill Thomas, a member of the nonprofit Park Place Community Development Corp. Thomas is an Allen appointee to the Governor's Commission on Citizen Empowerment, which is preparing a welfare-reform program for Virginia.
Allen's Police in Residence program would be available to officers moving into low-income neighborhoods in 17 localities across the state.
All seven Hampton Roads cities are eligible.
For a neighborhood to qualify, at least 70 percent of its households must earn less than a cut-off figure that varies by city.
The limits would be about $27,000 in Virginia Beach; $23,000 in Norfolk; $25,000 in Portsmouth; $26,000 in Suffolk, and $31,000 in Chesapeake, according to household income figures compiled in 1994 by this newspaper in an annual study of the region.
Using 1990 census figures, approximately 19 areas in South Hampton Roads appear to be eligible. They include one census tract in Virginia Beach, around the Oceana Naval Air Station; 10 in Norfolk; and four each in Portsmouth and Chesapeake. No tract appears to qualify in Suffolk, but the cities will have some say in defining neighborhood boundaries.
In Norfolk, where census tracts generally correspond with defined neighborhoods, areas that may qualify are: Young Terrace; Calvart Square; Tidewater Gardens; Roberts Village; Bowling Green; Huntersville East; Diggs Town; Oakleaf Forest; South Brambleton; North Brambleton; Chesterfield Heights, and North Colley.
The program, which will be run on a first-come, first-served basis, also has salary and housing-price limitations on who can participate.
For instance, a police household of three people could neither earn more than $57,900 in Hampton Roads, buy a new house that costs more than $133,300, or purchase an existing residence for more than $111,700.
The Virginia Housing Development Authority, which is funding the program, is in the process of working out the details with localities, said John Ritchie, its executive director.
He said the goal is for regulations to be flexible for city governments. His agency would have a $5 million fund for issuing the fixed-rate loans. ``We're going to leave a lot of room for localities to develop the programs, design them in a way that will best work for them,'' he said.
Norfolk City Councilman W. Randy Wright was enthusiastic.
``I like that,'' Wright said, when informed. ``Boy, that's terrific. I had not heard about that.''
Shortly after he took office in 1992, Wright sponsored a plan to require police officers and possibly other employees to live in Norfolk. City figures showed that nearly 70 percent of its police force lived out of town. His plan was blocked by a 1993 state law preventing city residency requirements, but Wright hopes to get Norfolk exempted from the ban during the next session of the legislature.
David Caprara, director of the state Department of Housing and Community Development, downplayed the mixed early reaction among police. He said they will find the program attractive if they consider it as part of the governor's package of initiatives to help inner-city neighborhoods. MEMO: Staff writers Tony Wharton and Lise Olsen contributed to this report.
KEYWORDS: PROPOSAL POLICE IN RESIDENCE PROGRAM CRIME GOVERNOR GEORGE
ALLEN POLICE OFFICERS HOMES by CNB