10-09-18 Community Relations - Laserfiche WebLink

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CITY OF SOUTH BEND I OFFICE O F T H E CLERK the issue of racial wealth income disparities, we'll be constantly fighting an uphill battle. If you have an aggressive Code Enforcement in areas of the City where these racial wealth and income disparities are present,it will be counter-productive,because you won't get the money. What's the point of having aggressive Code Enforcement for people who can't afford to pay the fines? They just lose their homes and the City won't get any money anyway, and if I remember correctly, the City Task Force report on vacant and abandoned housing said that aggressive Code Enforcement should be focused on areas of relative affluence,compared to areas where people are poor,because of that very reason. If you cite people and they can afford to make the repairs, then you'll have accomplished something. If you simply cite people for aggressive Code Enforcement and they can't do the repairs, what is the point? I think Nate's suggestion of a survey of where we are doing Code Enforcement is a useful one (1), and those would be useful results to know. I think another point that Judy Fox made is very important, that we don't want to just say, let's just forget about substandard conditions in poor neighborhoods. We want people to live in neighborhoods that are safe, so we should inspect houses in those neighborhoods. I don't know how feasible this is within the current political parameters that we face, but we should inspect those houses for reference to the kinds of agencies that were mentioned to help people. We should inspect them and address the issues that Dr. Fox mentioned about the banks and their refusal to lend to people to fix up their houses. We should also inspect those houses so that the City can develop innovative proposals to finance programs that would help people to make those repairs. My final point has to do with racial wealth and income disparities. As Regina mentioned, people are renting because they don't have the wealth, and they can't rely upon their parents to get the money for a down payment, so they are renting. But, those people care about their neighborhood as much as people who own their homes. There also are landlords who care about the neighborhoods. There are people like Regina who bought homes to try to rent them to people in their neighborhood and to fix them up, and some of those landlords could use some financial assistance as well. We shouldn't just look at them as evil people, as many of them are also struggling and trying to do the best they can. Sylvester Williams, 702 Lincolnway West, stated, I've got four (4) questions that were called in on WUBS radio station. First(Pt), I'd like to appreciate Councilmember Williams-Preston for this testimony and confession service this evening. Secondly, amnesty is trending across America. How can amnesty be applied to those who owe the City money and those who bought houses and left the City? How can amnesty be applied if they return and do the right thing? Thirdly, since winter is coming fast, a senior citizen called in and asked what could be done to help when snow is shoveled from the sidewalk and the snow plow comes down the street? It pushes the snow back on the sidewalk that I had just paid to get off. They asked, Is there any help for me? The other question is stated an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. I don't know if anybody's seen the cat woman's house yet. On the south east corner of Carlisle Street and Warren Street, there is a troubled cat lady house. She has so many cats, she don't know what to do. They counted over twenty-five (25) cats in her house. Is there anything that we can do in our neighborhood to help the cat lady? Committee Chair Williams-Preston thanked him for his questions and asked if anyone from the City wanted to give answers to those questions immediately, and asked if anyone else would like to speak. Jose Arevalo, 3809 Fellows Street, stated, I'm a recovering landlord, and I'm also a realtor and an investor. There are a lot of issues here involving national policies because Judy Fox can't take on mega corp bank policies that were blessed by Congress in our little situation we have here in South EXCELLENCE ACCOUNTABILITY INNOVATION INCLUSION EMPOWERMENT 455 County-City Building 227 W.Jefferson Bvld South Bend,Indiana 46601 p 574.235.9221 f574.235.9173 TTD574.235.5567 www.southbendin.gov 13