THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, March 4, 1995 TAG: 9503040418
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MIKE KNEPLER, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Medium: 53 lines
The city has targeted parts of Ocean View and Bayview for a high-visibility enforcement sweep against blight.
It will be the second and largest such sweep of Norfolk neighborhoods. The City Council recently decided to conduct massive and coordinated inspections as a way of bringing communities up to code.
Inspectors will check for violations in the 979 buildings in the areas.
The city's first sweep covered 262 properties in part of East Ocean View last fall.
The second sweep, with at least six inspectors and several police, will begin at 9 a.m. Monday and continue through March 15.
The sweep will cover streets generally bounded by the Chesapeake Bay on the north, Capeview Avenue on the east, Parkview Avenue on the south and Chesapeake Boulevard on the west.
Working in teams, the inspectors and police will fan out, looking for violations such as housing decay, overgrown and trashy yards and junk cars.
The inspectors will check only exterior conditions, problems that can be seen from the streets and sidewalks, said Sherman Edmondson, Norfolk's housing and building codes administrator.
The success of the East Ocean View sweep last fall convinced the City Council to order the second sweep.
The fall sweep produced 149 violation notices, but the publicity and visibility prodded many owners to improve their properties before the inspectors arrived. Most problems were corrected before inspectors had to take violators to court, Edmondson said.
``If you go house by house, it makes a difference, but it takes a long time and the overall effect on a neighborhood is not really visible,'' Edmondson said. ``But in a sweep, you try to get everybody to bring their properties up to standard all at the same time, and that's a very dramatic picture.
``You drive up and down the street and say, `Man, that looks great.' ''
Sweeps, she said, also give owners more incentive to improve their properties because they feel they are not being singled out but are participating in a communitywide effort.
``It promotes awareness,'' she said. ``It says, `It's not acceptable to keep stuff all over the yard . . . to keep putting off things.' When everybody notices how much nicer everything is, then it becomes a simple matter of maintaining it that way.
``But if you see that the guy next door isn't doing anything, then you feel it's no big deal not to maintain your property.'' by CNB