THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, October 21, 1996 TAG: 9610210064
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Q&A
LENGTH: 199 lines
On Nov. 5, Virginia Beach voters will be asked whether they want to create a redevelopment and housing authority.
Their vote is the final word. Neither the City Council nor the General Assembly needs to approve the authority if voters sign off on it. Every other city in Hampton Roads and most large cities and counties in the country already have active redevelopment and housing authorities, but Virginia Beach has never seen the need.
An authority would give the city government additional powers to condemn land. The city can already take property that is in the way of road projects, new schools and other public infrastructure, but it does not have the power to take homes and businesses that are rundown or have title problems, as the redevelopment authority would allow it to do.
Here are some questions and answers about redevelopment and housing authorities and how one might affect Virginia Beach.
BALLOT QUESTION: Is there a need for the redevelopment and housing authority to be activated in the city of Virginia Beach?
1) What is a redevelopment and housing authority? How big would it be? Who appoints it? Whom does it report to? Who funds it? Who staffs it?
The authority is a semi-independent body that recommends redevelopment projects to the council, which would have to approve and fund any programs. The authority would have between five and nine members, all appointed by the City Council.
In Norfolk, the redevelopment and housing authority has 369 full-time and 114 part-time employees, most of whom support the city's public housing. The Beach council has said it does not want to hire a new bureaucracy to support anauthority and plans to staff it primarily with current employees who would continue to report to the city manager.
2. What control does the City Council have over a redevelopment authority?
The council appoints all the authority members, authorizes funding for the authority and approves any redevelopment plans. By keeping the staffing to a minimum, the city hopes to retain power over the authority's actions. The council could also ask the General Assembly for permission to declare its own members as the authority.
3. What powers are new?
The city already has the power to condemn land that will be used for public purposes, such as roads, schools and sewers. What it can't do now - but could if voters approve a redevelopment authority - is take run-down private houses and businesses, clear out the blight and sell the land to another private owner.
That could allow the city to do what it hopes to do with the Burton Station community: trade a neighborhood that doesn't provide much in property taxes for a job-producing industrial park that would add millions to the tax rolls.
A redevelopment authority can also create ``conservation'' and ``rehabilitation'' districts to improve a neighborhood's condition without flattening it and starting over. In conservation districts, condemnation can be used selectively to eliminate buildings that are pulling down surrounding neighborhoods.
In all districts, the redevelopment authority can issue bonds and spend public money to promote renewal.
The authority also has the power to build and operate public housing, although the City Council has said it has neither the ``desire nor intent'' to do so.
4. Why isn't the city interested in the housing component of the authority?
Virginia Beach officials have long taken the position that building public housing would only invite poor people into the city and that there are not enough of them here to justify such projects. Because of problems with public housing in other cities, little federal money is available today to build such projects.
There are protections in the state law intended to ensure that the city does not use a redevelopment authority to eliminate all housing for those of modest means.
According to the 1990 Census, 5.9 percent of the Virginia Beach population was below the poverty level.
5. What are the criteria for condemnation? How are neighborhoods picked?
Only neighborhoods that fit the state's definition of ``blight'' or that have severe title problems can be targeted for wholesale redevelopment. The state law defines blight as those areas ``which impair economic values and tax revenues, cause an increase in and spread of disease and crime, and constitute a menace to the health, safety, morals and welfare of the residents of the Commonwealth.''
The state Code does not place any kind of size limit on a redevelopment project.
Before redeveloping an area, an authority must receive the permission of the City Council and must have a plan for future land uses, public utilities, public transportation, recreational and community facilities and traffic patterns.
6. Who determines a fair compensation for land the redevelopment authority wants to condemn? Can a landowner fight condemnation?
When it condemns land, regardless of its purpose, the city must compensate the landowner at the ``fair market value'' of that land as determined by an independent appraiser hired by the city. The landowner can appeal the city's offer to the courts, and often gets more money by fighting the offer.
According to the state law and legal precedent, however, it is extremely difficult to overturn an authority's finding that a neighborhood is blighted.
7. How will the city ensure that the authority is not used to force poor people from Virginia Beach by tearing down all housing in their price range?
As part of the law authorizing the creation of a redevelopment project, a city has to have a plan to show where those who are displaced can live elsewhere in the city at rents they can afford.
If a federal grant pays for the redevelopment project, displaced people must receive money to relocate to a comparably sized home with adequate city services.
8. What neighborhoods are being considered for redevelopment if voters approve an authority?
Burton Station, sandwiched between Norfolk International Airport and Northampton Boulevard, is likely to be the first neighborhood targeted for redevelopment by an authority. The city has already spent $2 million in the community, buying up property and relocating homeowners.
When the City Council first decided in 1992 to turn Burton Station into an industrial park, it hoped property owners would voluntarily sell their land. After more than three years of negotiations, however, the city's real estate agent concluded that most of the several-dozen landowners remaining won't accept the city's offers, or are unable to because of title problems.
Council members have said they do not have any immediate plans to use the redevelopment authority outside of Burton Station.
9. What happens to Burton Station if voters say ``yes'' to an authority?
If a redevelopment authority is established, the city would pursue condemnation proceedings against the remaining property owners, eventually purchasing the 130-acre neighborhood. Then, the city would install public water and sewerage.
Once the neighborhood has been modernized, the city could resell the land to private developers for an industrial park.
10. What if voters say ``no''?
It is possible that Norfolk's airport authority could condemn parts of Burton Station. The authority has already said it would like to buy about 65 acres along the ``runway protection zone'' for runway 32, which cuts through the neighborhood. The authority could not condemn land for an industrial park, only for ``property essential for airport use,'' according to Wayne Shank, deputy executive director of the airport authority.
11. Who wants a redevelopment authority? Who doesn't?
There hasn't been much of a campaign for or against the redevelopment authority, in part because the City Council decided to put it on the November ballot on the last possible day. Several business groups favor it; the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People opposes the measure and has threatened legal action if it is approved.
The City Council is split, with Mayor Meyera E. Oberndorf, Vice Mayor W.D. Sessoms Jr., and council members John A. Baum, Linwood O. Branch III, William W. Harrison Jr., Harold Heischober and Louis R. Jones supporting an authority and Barbara M. Henley, Reba S. McClanan, Nancy K. Parker and Louisa M. Strayhorn opposing it.
12. Why is it on the ballot now?
The council has tried for several years to persuade the General Assembly to give it the power to condemn land for economic development without creating a redevelopment authority. The council has never been unanimous, however, and the legislature has cited that division, and some community opposition, to reject the request.
The council discussed postponing the ballot question for one year, but decided they wanted a quick answer so they could proceed with or abandon work on Burton Station.
13. Why is the ballot question worded the way it is - asking voters if they want to ``activate'' a redevelopment and housing authority?
Under state law, every city and county in Virginia already has a redevelopment and housing authority, but the authority is not ``activated'' until voters approve it. There is no provision under state law to deactivate an authority.
14. How many other cities have authorities?
Twenty eight other cities and counties in Virginia, including all the cities of Hampton Roads, have active redevelopment and housing authorities. All but two other U.S. cities with 300,000 or more residents also have similar powers, and those cities lie within counties that have them.
15. Why doesn't Virginia Beach have one yet?
Virginia Beach has always resisted the creation of a redevelopment authority because it did not want to provide public housing and argued that there wasn't enough blight to warrant one.
16. Why do opponents dislike it?
Redevelopment authorities have often been used to displace the poorest members of a community, particularly African Americans.
Civic leader Alice Green, and many other black leaders in Virginia Beach, say they are afraid the condemnation powers will be used to run blacks out of the city.
``They just want to push us out,'' said Green, a former president of the Newlight Civic League, who was displaced from Norfolk in 1969 by the Norfolk Redevelopment and Housing Authority. ``I think Virginia Beach would love to become what they call `lily-white,' anyway. If they get the housing authority, that's one way of doing it.''
Other opponents say they don't like anything that expands government's powers.
``My philosophy of government: Keep government out of my face,'' Del. Leo C. Wardrup Jr., R-Virginia Beach, said recently. ``I have an opposition to any growth in government that has potential of creating mischief.''
Wardrup said he thinks Burton Station poses a ``special problem'' that could be resolved some other way than with the creation of a redevelopment authority.
17. Why do supporters say it's needed?
Most supporters think a redevelopment authority is essential to the city's continued economic health. As neighborhoods age, all but the best-built houses tend to deteriorate. Many homeowners, whether because of age or financial position, are unable to do the work required of aging houses, and so their house and then their community declines.
The city tries hard to prevent this decline - with code enforcement, aggressive policing and grant programs, among other things - but inevitably, some neighborhoods need more, supporters say.
Theodore Koebel, director of the Center for Housing Research at Virginia Tech, said on balance, he thinks redevelopment authorities are helpful.
``If I was in a position of a mayor or civic leader in any city in America today, I'd want as many tools in my tool kit to face the future as possible,'' said Koebel, also a professor of housing and urban planning at Virginia Tech. ``Forsaking one (tool), just because of what happened some 30 years ago does not strike me as a good way to approach the future.''
KEYWORDS: REDEVELOPMENT AND HOUSING AUTHORITY by CNB