Approving progress report under the Workable Program for Community Improvement

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could help in the education of the tenants or owners. g. Programs could be developed at the suggestion and sponsorship of the Bureau on home financing, home building, remodeling, etc. h. Suggested Names: Aid to Better Living (ABL) , Central Clearance Committee (CCC) or Tri-C, Bureau for Better Living. The Chairman, Mr. Geib, then called upon Sam Winston to report on his subcommittee's research into attitudes which may be expected by an active and dedicated systematic Code Compliance Program. Mr. Winston reported that it was rather impossible to predict or interpret what the attitude in the test area would be toward a Code Compliance Program. It was felt by this committee, however, that a fixed educational program should be undertaken to inform the residents and owners of a code compliance area before entering into such detailed enforcement. The committee then discussed various aspects of the housing code enforcement with the following paraphrased: I think we all agreed that one major purpose of a new housing code would be to prevent certain areas of the city from falling into further decay and deterioration. Most of our discussion seemed to focus on how best this might be done. We all agreed that the building code groups, that is, the people in authority in city government, must sell the code to each neighborhood separately within the city. And its rationale must be directed to the vital things that must be done to bring houses up to standard. It is clear that most people know little or nothing about the housing codes of their city. In general, whether they live in fairly good homes or not, they want to avoid the confrontation with housing code authorities if they can. At best, the rules in the code seem to citizens to be ways of costing them more money, so if they can avoid paying what may appear to them unnecessary outlays for home improvements, they will. Obviously, the real problems of an updated housing code are not how to handle new housing so much as they are not to deal effectively with old housing. (The code would be important regarding new housing if it permitted some special types of pre-fab housing that are not now permitted.) The following suggestions were made at this point: provide special exemption of taxes to older housing that is kept up or repaired; provide different codes for owner-occupied homes versus landlord-owned homes; have taxation tied to the degree of ability to pay of citizens as well as to the degree to which they maintain older homes if their income is low. In other words, perhaps the housing code and the local taxing policies should be so rewritten as to reward people who maintain their homes and who have low incomes, that is, incomes under certain minimal limits. The most notable way of rewarding these people is to lower their taxes, or to provide them with special mortgage exemptions. We do this now for People with certain kinds of high mortgages; why should we not exempt other classes of people? For example, perhaps a $500 tax exemption would be given for a number of years to a home owner for every $1,000 of improvement that he puts into the property. Or he could be protected against any tax increases for a period of three to five years if he invest $3,000 or $4,000 in home improvement. Or even if no such increases are likely to be forthcoming on the property, perhaps special exemptions or lowering of taxes could be arranged. -3-