
DATE: Wednesday, April 23, 1997             TAG: 9704230641

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B3   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: PUBLIC LIFE 

SOURCE: BY JON GLASS, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: NORFOLK                           LENGTH:  103 lines

FIGHTING URBAN BLIGHT ONE HOME AT A TIME

Four years have passed since Robin Jones and her two children arrived in the street-tough Berkley neighborhood, moving into a run-down turn-of-the-century house that once was a haven for drug dealers and crackheads.

No more. Jones' three-story cedar-shake house - a rival of homes found in Ghent and other fashionable Norfolk neighborhoods - sparkles with new paint, a new porch and a picket fence and flower garden.

The transformation of Jones' home is one of the success stories of Norfolk's neighborhood conservation program. The program, spanning nearly three- decades, is credited with helping to salvage several prime neighborhoods. It has touched more than a dozen communities in virtually every section of the city.

The program, run by the Norfolk Redevelopment and Housing Authority, has not been free of criticism, however, focused mainly on where rehabilitation money is spent, the slow progress in some of the neediest neighborhoods and shoddy work by some contractors.

But it has won widespread praise for helping to stabilize and restore neighborhoods and protect the city's tax base.

``Without those conservation projects, Norfolk would be a total slum,'' said Councilman Paul R. Riddick, a frequent critic of the housing authority. ``I think we can point to most of them with pride and be glad we've got the residents living in them, because they could just as easily be living in Virginia Beach or Chesapeake.''

Since its launch in 1969, the program has helped revive the now-thriving Ghent, Colonial Place and Lafayette-Winona neighborhoods.

The program has linked more than 2,400 property owners with more than $60 million in low-interest loans and, since 1989, has provided more than $27 million to buy and tear down dilapidated houses and to make street and landscape improvements.

Unlike the city's redevelopment efforts, which critics claim have indiscriminately bulldozed large sections of Norfolk's past, the conservation program helps restore and conserve existing neighborhoods.

To be designated a conservation district, residents from a neighborhood must win approval of the City Council. It amounts to a call for government help, usually sparked by the unchecked spread of blighted housing, declines in real estate values or other social and economic ills that residents feel have grown beyond their control.

Residents in eight neighborhoods, most of them settled by low- to moderate-income home owners looking to better their lot, are participating in the voluntary program. Besides Berkley, they are Central Brambleton, Ballentine Place, Park Place, Lamberts Point, East Ocean View, West Ocean View and Cottage Line.

Three other communities - Willoughby, Campostella and North Huntersville - want to join. The major obstacle is finding money in an era when big government is supposed to be over.

``The question is, do you take on more or try to finish what you've got on the table before you move on?'' said Stephen W. Cooper of the housing authority. ``If you want new neighborhoods, they need to be funded, otherwise you're creating false expectations.''

Federal money, which flowed freely in the 1970s, is much tighter, and the neighborhoods being served are poorer. In the 1970s and early 1980s, the city received up to $17 million annually in federal community development funds and drew money from other now-defunct federal programs.

This year, the city received about $6.5 million in ``CD'' funds.

Accounting for inflation, the city would need up to about $40 million annually to keep pace with the level of federal funding of the mid-1970s, housing authority officials calculated several years ago.

On the street in Berkley that Jones calls home, three of her neighbors have received loans or grants on generous terms for new porches, roofs, painting and interior remodeling.

Jones, whose income was low enough to qualify, received a $30,000 grant and a $30,000 loan she won't have to repay if she remains in the house for four years.

Now, with money so tight, most homeowners have to repay at least a portion of the loan plus interest.

Several participating neighborhoods are nearing recovery, officials say, a point at which private investors muster up the courage to step in and take over the role government has played in stimulating activity.

``You can't just look at what it is, you've got look past and see what it can become.''

But the pace of progress can be discouraging.

One street over from Hardy, on Poplar Avenue, seven houses, some with shattered windows, sit vacant and boarded up, a reminder of the blight that once gripped the entire neighborhood. ILLUSTRATION: Robin Jones' cedar-shake home in Norfolk's Berkley

neighborhood reflects the success of the city's conservation

program. The program has linked more than 2,400 property owners with

more than $60 million in low-interest loans since 1969.

NORFOLK'S CONSERVATION NEIGHBORHOODS

GRAPHIC

[For a copy of the graphic, see microfilm for this date.]

KEN WRIGHT

The Virginian-Pilot

What the conservancy program does: Stabilizes and restores blighted

neighborhoods

How it works: Eligible residents can apply for loans, grants.

Norfolk improves streets, infrastructure.