THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, September 24, 1995 TAG: 9509220183
SECTION: PORTSMOUTH CURRENTS PAGE: 02 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: Ida Kay's Portsmouth
SOURCE: Ida Kay Jordan
LENGTH: Medium: 62 lines
Unfortunately, not all home repairs are perfect.
When home buyers in Prentis Place complained to City Council recently, their litany of problems sounded all too familiar to me and everybody else who has done any remodeling or repairing in recent years.
Whether a house cost $30,000 or $300,000, chances are there'll be a list of things that need fixing - in both new and remodeled old houses.
The complaints came from people who have moved into houses remodeled by Portsmouth Community Development Corp. and other groups working with that non-profit agency to provide affordable housing and to simultaneously rebuild communities - in this case, Prentis Place.
Spokesmen for the residents, many of them first-time home buyers, asked for an investigation of Portsmouth Community Development, a project spearheaded by Maury Cooke Jr.
PCD has taken houses acquired by the Portsmouth Redevelopment and Housing Authority and totally remodeled them, saving rather than razing the structures. The people who have bought them generally are paying no more in loan payments than they had been paying in rent and, in most cases, have larger and better residences.
The complaints could jeopardize the program, which involves both public and private grants that keep down the costs of the homes, enabling residents of moderate income to qualify for loans.
In addition, it could jeopardize the contracting businesses and jobs of people who live in Prentis Place or Prentis Park.
The complaints may be justified in some cases. Maury Cooke told me that some of them - such as a non-working electrical outlet or a ceiling tile falling or no indoor water cutoff - should have been addressed weeks ago. He said Portsmouth Community Development had been slow in dealing with the problems and that the group would move faster to solve them.
Justified or not, the complaints are not unique to the Portsmouth Community Development houses. They are the same faults everybody has experienced with home construction and remodeling. They are not problems visited only on people who are poor or black, as one person claimed at the council meeting.
I and a lot of people I know live in old, remodeled buildings. After spending a lot more than Prentis Place residents are paying for their homes, most of us have very long lists of problems. Some of us have complaints that have been addressed not only once but twice by people paid to do the work. Some never have been addressed.
I'm not defending Portsmouth Community Development so much as simply pointing out the similarity of the Prentis Place complaints to those of most homeowners.
Portsmouth Community Development Corp. doesn't need me to make its case. In fact, I may not always agree with some of its projects. But I don't think the criticism thrown at the organization through the City Council really was cause to ``call for an investigation.''
Residents should think twice before they malign a program that even offers to buy back, at full price, any house it sells. Most home buyers don't have that option. by CNB