Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, November 26, 1995 TAG: 9511270067
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARY BISHOP STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LYNCHBURG LENGTH: Long
But Lynchburg, unlike Roanoke, found a way to deal with it. Since the Hill City kicked off its rental inspection program 15 months ago, landlords in its poorest neighborhoods have started making long-needed repairs.
So far, the city's two inspectors have checked 258 rental houses and apartments of the 5,000 in the targeted area, which covers about a quarter of the city.
It's slow going, but it's beginning to make a difference, inspections director Karen Johnson said.
Taking one or two landlords at a time, Lynchburg inspectors are making appointments to see all their properties within a crescent-shaped area along Lynchburg's eastern and southeastern border. The low-income area receives federal Community Development Block Grant money, which pays the salaries of the inspectors.
Quietly, before the appointments take place, landlords are making repairs to avoid getting backed into a corner by the city.
Inspectors make a date with the landlord well in advance of the inspection - usually two to three months ahead. By inspection time, the property owner often has fixed the furnace, the stove, the toilet or whatever else that might not have been working properly, and the building has been brought up to code.
Therefore, Johnson and her inspectors find few violations and see a decline in complaints from tenants about leaking roofs, broken plumbing, malfunctioning furnaces and other serious problems.
The most extensive upgradings have been in the area's approximately 60 rooming houses, which required months of inspections this year. Although the owners were rumored to have been some of the city's most notorious landlords, Johnson found them surprisingly cooperative.
The areas around the rooming houses had been fraught with crime and violence, but those neighborhoods have settled down since owners fixed up the buildings, Johnson said. ``This summer was probably the quietest it's been.''
Before the new rental inspection program, Lynchburg, like Roanoke, could inspect properties only when a tenant or someone else complained. Tenants in the most dilapidated housing often were too scared of eviction to lodge a complaint.
Johnson's inspectors still respond to tenant complaints and still conduct spot investigations of particularly hazardous properties. Those types of inspections often lead to comprehensive checks of a landlord's properties under the new inspections program.
Lynchburg's property owners, like many of Roanoke's, initially rose up against systematic inspections. ``There was a perception there would be nitpicky, detailed inspections that would have no benefit but would be burdensome. We had some very heated discussions,'' Johnson said.
In the end, property owners helped the city design the program.
Lynchburg agreed not to impose fees on rental properties, and the landlords breathed a sigh of relief. There was so much opposition to it, Johnson said, that ``it was well worth not even going down that road.''
The property owners still aren't crazy about inspections, but Johnson said city/landlord relations are far better than when they were limited to the long, adversarial process of investigating tenant grievances at individual locations.
Building inspectors traditionally have operated like detectives on the prowl, trying to catch a slumlord in the act of violating housing codes. ``It was a cat-and-mouse game," Johnson said.
She said Lynchburg's method of letting the landlord in on the process from the front end gets better results. ``Why do we want to surprise them?'' she said. ``We wantthem to abate their property.''
Jennifer Lucado, president of the Lynchburg Property Managers Association, had no complaints about Johnson's program. ``It does seem to have done some good in the inner city,'' she said.
The inspectors have put some of the worst landlords on notice that they'll be up for inspection soon, and some are selling off their properties - all for the good, Johnson said, because if they don't want to obey the law and provide safe housing, they shouldn't be in the rental business anyway.
Inspections are not without benefit for responsible landlords, according to Johnson. Inspection reports often can document the date on which a rental unit was in good shape and can help prove subsequent damage by a tenant.
Landlord John Kepley, coordinator of the Roanoke Property Investors Association - newly formed to fight rental inspections here - has warned that regularly scheduled inspections would increase both rental charges and homelessness.
Johnson said she knows of no Lynchburg landlords who raised their rent because of her inspection program - or of any tenants being displaced because of either a condemnation or a recalcitrant landlord shutting down properties rather than allowing them to be inspected.
Lynchburg landlords warned, too, that it would happen, she said, ``but I haven't seen that yet.''
What's going on in Roanoke, with landlords scared to death and organizing to fight, is ``deja vu all over again'' to Johnson.
Lynchburg City Council's mandate to set up an inspection program was on her desk when she arrived four years ago. She spent three years developing it, a year huddling with the landlords, and now she frequently welcomes municipal workers - as she has Roanoke's - to Lynchburg to show them how her inspections work.
``It seems like everyone's looking into it at this point,'' she said. ``I think the moratorium on annexation by cities has made them look inward to save what they have.''
Johnson, 36, began her career in public service as a firefighter in her hometown of St. Mary's City, Md. She became a fire inspector, then a fire investigator in Washington, D.C., then a deputy state fire marshal in Northern Virginia. She helped set up the Virginia Code Academy, which trains building officials and inspectors, and was a training supervisor for the state Department of Housing and Community Development.
Lynchburg's rental inspections director is a tenant herself. She rents a carriage house behind an old mansion downtown.
Despite Lynchburg's Old South traditions and nationally chronicled conservatism as headquarters for the Rev. Jerry Falwell, Johnson said Lynchburg leaders are more progressive than those in many Virginia municipalities. ``They're willing to take risks and try new things.''
Roanoke's been talking about setting up rental inspections for 16 years. Recently, the City Council voted rental inspections a ``low priority'' on a list of city concerns.
While a category of ``older neighborhoods, infrastructure and rental inspection'' got a low rating, council gave high priority to transportation access, tourism, business assistance and upscale housing.
Ted Edlich, executive director of Roanoke's Total Action Against Poverty, called council's attitude wrongheaded. The lack of control on deteriorating rental property is one reason why so little upscale housing is being built in the city, said Edlich, an advocate of rental inspections.
For Roanoke not to have such a program - which Virginia Beach, Alexandria and some other communities have - ``is the equivalent of giving up on the neighborhoods.''
Dan Pollock, Roanoke's housing development coordinator, said a task force representing homebuilders, the real estate industry, tenant advocates and government will draft an outline for a rental inspection program and present it at a public workshop early next year. Such a program would require City Council's approval.
Like Lynchburg, rental inspections would be confined to run-down sections of the city.
Pollock said Roanoke's best landlords may fear inspections will bring nitpicking government demands but, he said, ``I don't want to hassle them.''
He indicated that he may want Roanoke's program to be tougher than Lynchburg's against uncooperative landlords. Pollock favors ``fairly strong'' penalties against them.
``They,'' he said, ``probably will be hassled.''
by CNB