SM 12-17-75 - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

6. NEW BUSINESS (Cont'd are people who have really let these things go down, and seem to learn nothing from their experiences. Seems kind of sad, really! Mr. Crighton said, "As far as the City's overall neighborhood re- habilitation task for old neighborhoods is: when is the cutoff point; when do you decide whether it is worth it to rehabilitate this house, or to leave it as it'is, because that is exactly what we have to do. If we don't put the money into it we have to leave the house as it stands. If we rehabilitate all the houses surrounding it, and this one house stands as an eye sore, then it's a health and safety problem. We have no available reloca- tion money; we have no capacity to relocate people from houses that take over our limitation, let's say. So, it's our point of view that rehabilitation is far more feasible than going through - -if we did have relocation money and did massive relo- cation, or just leaving the person in the home. As far as these change orders are concerned, at the time of inspection when we look at a house, our inspectors write up everything as it exists. If we have to cut it because we feel that the item isn't serious enough, then we do. If the item may get serious over a two -month period from the time we advertise for it and from the time the actual work starts, so the reason we have these continuous change orders presented to you (the Commission) is the fact we want to keep all the money involved in this project completely above board. We don't want to add an item to an inspection that may not be a bona fide code violation at the time, because then we would be criticized for adding unnecessary things to the contracts. Commissioner Wiggins added, "I think you have to recognize that this is all a part of the piece- -that there are sociological factors; there are economic factors involved in the whole thing. In short, you can find neighborhoods comprised of old structures far older in many cases in other sections of the country than we have here. Where the houses have been maintained for over a period of 100 -200 years or more, but this is a question of both the understanding of the people who live in them and their economic capacity to maintain and keep up the buildings; the desire to do it is part of it; the knowledge of it is part of it. All of these enter into the picture. Jess Dickinson went through a lot of that with some of his experiences in terms of public housing in'their lease program. Putting families in one house after another and the family just tore up the house. Now, this wasn't a question of the building falling down because of the elements. There is a question of people not only not maintain- ing the building, but in some cases being destructive." Mr. John Kagel, Executive Director, Downtown South Bend Council, added: "Being a proponent of in -City living, as a tax base and all the other things that go along with the amenities of living in a community, we have discussed the point of who lives in these houses, and I think one of the very serious problems, and I am involved with a neighborhood group myself, in the ownership of that property -- - 12 -