THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, September 29, 1996 TAG: 9609290054
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY KAREN WEINTRAUB, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: 172 lines
Jeanine Nosay doesn't think much about crime prevention and neighborhood decay as she wades through 2-foot-high weeds. She's more concerned about avoiding bees, growling dogs and mud puddles.
But most mornings, as Nosay walks down streets and along back easements that allow for government and utility right-of-way, the 39-year-old city employee is helping maintain property values, public safety, neighborhood appearance and civic pride.
Nosay and 20 other city code inspectors spend several hours a day wandering through neighborhoods, writing citations to owners and tenants who are not keeping up their property as they should.
Junk cars are a no-no, as are 12-inch-high lawns, rotting roofs, rickety fences, and trash strewn across yards or brought to the curb on the wrong day of the week.
None of these things is a serious crime, but sociologists and criminologists have long spoken of a connection between such seemingly minor problems and the decline of communities.
As the city's housing stock ages, Beach officials hope to avoid the downfall of other aging cities by addressing these problems before they can fester and spread. The city hired five more inspectors this summer to enable more regular inspections.
``If people take care of the neighborhood, then housing prices stay stable, you don't have suburban decline, you don't have outward movement,'' Lt. James A. Cervera, the city's community policing project coordinator, said Friday. ``In neighborhoods we've seen with high crime, there's not a lot of stability.''
Now that the police department has helped reduce violent crime in the Lake Edward section of Bayside, for example, Cervera said, inspectors have stepped up their code enforcement there to keep the crime rate down and increase neighborhood stability.
``If you have crime problems, you're going to have housing problems,'' city Code Administrator Alexander Davis Jr. said. ``I think a lot of people think it's vice versa, but it seems like crime becomes the problem first and then you have less people in the area who care. They stop caring about the property; their main concern is their safety.
``Usually they don't just give up right away, but if they feel threatened, after a while they're going to move if they can afford it.''
Virginia Beach has a particularly hard time encouraging housing maintenance, several city officials said, because so many people move in and out so fast. The city can't take out-of-state owners to court locally, and tenants usually don't feel responsible for peeling paint and leaky roofs.
With the new inspectors, the city has been able to get ahead of the problems, to do a ``sweep'' of a neighborhood, rather than waiting to respond to complaints, Davis said.
The sweep neighborhoods, like the Rosemont Forest section of Kempsville that Nosay is inspecting this fall, are chosen because they have a high number of rented houses - which usually have more maintenance problems than owner-occupied homes - or because a recent survey of city housing revealed trouble in the area, Davis said.
``We're really hoping that by having more inspectors and smaller areas, that even though the housing stock is getting older, that by being proactive .
Neighborhood decline can start with one trash-strewn yard or abandoned house, according to the ``broken window'' theory developed by two Harvard University government professors.
Once one window is broken, people don't feel as bad breaking others.
Residents see other residents stop caring, and they give up too. When the wind overturns a trash barrel, people no longer rush outside to clean it up. When a junk car appears on the street, no one calls the city to have it removed.
In a 1982 article, the Harvard professors, James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling, wrote that ``at this point it is not inevitable that serious crime will flourish or violent attacks on strangers will occur.'' But residents will begin to fear crime more, stay off the streets, stop talking to neighbors and stop taking responsibility for the community.
That, according to Wilson and Kelling, makes the neighborhood much more vulnerable to crime and further deterioration.
In Norfolk, one neighborhood has been able to reverse these indications of decline by encouraging the city to beef up code enforcement and by supplementing the city's inspectors with their own patrols.
``It's really made a difference in this community,'' said Bay View Civic League President John E. Roger. His civic league patrols the neighborhood four times a year looking for serious violations to report to the city.
Roger said he thinks the extra effort to board up abandoned buildings, remove junk cars and encourage proper maintenance has helped sustain property values, deter crime, and foster pride.
In a true community, Roger said, residents realize their responsibility to others down the street.
``We're responsible for everybody else's property values, and they're responsible for ours,'' he said.
``When we get rid of deterioration and what have you, that's changing the environment that's so attractive to criminals,'' Roger said. ``If people show respect for their properties and the law, they'll get respect and the criminals will go elsewhere, hopefully.''
Virginia Beach civic leader Leslie K. Fenlon said he agrees that proper maintenance is a factor of civic pride. Neighborhoods that have started to decline are losing their pride, he said. Neighborhoods with patrols like Bay View's are regaining the sense that their communities are good places to live.
Nosay doesn't worry much about such broad visions when she heads out at 7 a.m. four days a week to walk the streets of her zone, looking for code violations. By 9 a.m., she usually has enough paperwork to keep her busy the rest of the day, tracking down homeowners and writing out citations.
Nosay starts at the top of a house, backing across the street so she can get a good glimpse of the roof. If there are shingles pulling up or missing, she makes a note. Then she moves down to the siding, gutters, windows, fences and back yard sheds, again looking for things that are askew, molded or just not there. Most of what she writes down are pretty obvious to the casual observer - junk in the back yard, easements overgrown with weeds, roofs badly in need of repair.
Some seem pretty picky: a missing board just below the roof line that the homeowner might not have noticed; house numbers that aren't quite big enough or visible enough to meet code; a trash can without a lid; a fence that's lost some pickets.
But all of these are against the rules, and enough of them together can create real problems in a neighborhood.
Nosay keeps boots in the back of her car to help cope with muddy easements and carries pepper gas to defend against dogs.
A ``beware of the dog'' sign elicits a quick comment: ``I will, I definitely will.''
She must also face down the occasional angry homeowner. ``People threaten to call the city manager and have my job all the time.''
Although inspectors are legally allowed on private property, Nosay and her colleagues usually stick to the public streets and easements to avoid aggravating testy homeowners. Owners of single-family homes can get away with more code violations than townhouse owners, Nosay said, because inspectors can't walk around back as easily.
Nosay said three years of code inspections have made her a lot more careful at her own home.
``I put vinyl siding on my house a few years ago, so I wouldn't have to paint,'' she said. She wouldn't ever let junk pile up, even in her back yard. And, she makes her 15-year-old son mow the lawn long before he thinks it needs to be cut. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo by MOTOYA NAKAMURA, The Virginian-Pilot
Jeanine Nosay is one of 21 code inspectors for Virginia Beach who
spend several hours a day in neighborhoods, writing citations to
owners and tenants who are not keeping up their property.
Graphic
HOME-REPAIR PROGRAMS
The Virginia Beach Department of Housing and Neighborhood
Preservation offers several programs to help people who can't afford
to properly maintain their homes, or in case of emergency:
Limited grants to owners of single-family homes cited for exterior
code violations. Owners must earn no more than 50 percent of the
area's median income, adjusted for size of family, to qualify for
the grants.
Owners of single-family homes who earn less than 80 percent of the
average in the region are also eligible for a low-interest loan
program to rehabilitate their homes, fix code violations, improve
energy efficiency and make exterior improvements. Rental properties
do not qualify for either program.
Emergency repair grants totaling no more than $3,000 are also
available to provide heating and air conditioning, replace water
heaters, fix septic systems, repair roofs that pose life-threatening
hazards and resolve dangerous electrical hazards.
For more information, contact Cheryl Smith at 426-5742. by CNB