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6. NEW BUSINESS (Cont'd The Chair again referred the comments to Mr. Crighton, who stated this furnace, at this structure, was working at the time the house was inspected and since then, during the construction in the performance of the contract, the furnace is no longer oper- ating. In situations like this, Mr. Crighton stated, we request a change order. The furnace that the homeowner had was in- stalled in 1947 and it had been converted. Mr. Wiggins moved for the approval of the above Change Order No. 1 to Rehabilitation Contract No. SECD /PR /CS -1/08, for an increase in contract amount of $1,072.00, or an 'amended contract total of: $4,259.00. Motion was seconded by Mr. Donaldson and carried. Ms. Jeanne Derbeck, South Bend Tribune Reporter, stated that over and over again, we get these change orders and "I can see why they arrive, but my question is, with some of these really old houses that are in bad shape like this, if there is not a point at which there is a cut -off point of how much money ought to be put into them. When you don't know before you start how much money is going into it, you can - -with these thousands of dollars- - be trapped into spending more money than the house is worth." President Nimtz said there is another side of the picture, and that he, as President of Southhold Restorations, and as an owner of a house in which he was born in some 60 years ago, and an entrepreneur owning some places around here, that once you tear a house down, it is hard to get somebody to put money into it to build a new structure there. If part of the plan here is to keep neighborhoods in existence and not just to have vacant spaces, this is one of the prices you have to pay to keep neighbor- hoods in existence without a lot of vacant space in them. Ms. Derbeck said the historical old houses are different and some old houses may be reconditioned, but some of these old houses in the southeast neighborhood, if we are not just throwing away money just for a year or two. Commissioner Wiggins said this work is sup- posed to bring the house up to standard that is established by the City for safe and standard housing which would put it on some kind of an equivalent basis with new construction in part. The price for any kind of new housing today, I would guess would be in the neighborhood of $29,000. To buy or build an equivalent space at current market prices is absolutely prohibitive. This is the best bargain in the world to repair a lot of these older homes rather than have them demolished and gone, and the necessity exists then to create new equivalent space for people to live in. One of the problems we have discovered is that it was even difficult to get contractors to do this type of repairs. You are not sure what you will get into, until the work is started; no one can tell what is behind that surface until they get into it. There are people who can't afford to even keep up the structures that they have; they ought to have that kind of an alternative. There's no incentive here really for people to maintain them, and there - 11 -