ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, April 8, 1996 TAG: 9604080096
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARY BISHOP STAFF WRITER
note: lede
LANDLORDS and tenant advocates are praising the city's latest plan for cleaning up unsafe rental property. Roanoke unveils it tonight; then it's up to the city administration and City Council whether and when it goes into action.
A month ago, veteran Roanoke landlord John Kepley and tenant defender Ted Edlich were miles apart on rental inspections.
Five meetings and many hours of talk later, they and other members of Roanoke's rental inspection task force seem in agreement on how the city can clean up its ramshackle rentals.
"I think the inspection program will help everybody," said an enthusiastic Kepley, who represents 86 landlords in the Roanoke Property Investors Association.
"It will be widely embraced by the neighborhoods and by the landlords," agreed Edlich, director of Total Action Against Poverty. "It's going to reduce the amount of substandard housing in Roanoke. It's going to reduce the number of housing units that are being diminished every year."
If their proposal works its way through a governmental gantlet and is written into an ordinance, the city will have its first regular inspections of rental property. At least six Virginia cities, including Salem, already make such inspections, but Roanoke inspects only on complaints from a tenant, neighbors or others.
All rental units will be required to win a certificate of compliance verifying that they meet the city's Building Maintenance Code.
The program will be limited to the approximately 5,000 rental houses and apartments in Roanoke's conservation and rehabilitation districts - neighborhoods such as Old Southwest, Gainsboro, West End, Hurt Park and parts of Southeast that encircle downtown and have most of the city's substandard rental housing.
Talk about rental inspections crawled along for months until Jan. 20, when a fire in a Southeast Roanoke rental house killed Goldie Duncan and her four grandchildren. Fire investigators traced the fire to an extension cord attached to a heater that the family used to keep pipes from freezing. Fire officials found no smoke detectors or fire walls between apartments, even though both are requirements of the city's building code. No criminal charges have been filed.
The task force increased pressure after the deaths of Duncan and her grandchildren, Mark Leftwich, 6, and his younger brothers and sister, Clyde, Patrick and Nancy. "It all jelled with the fire," said Joel Richert, a board member of Old Southwest Inc., the neighborhood group that has pushed hardest and longest for inspections.
Tonight at 7, the latest version of a rental inspection plan will be presented at a public workshop in the Roanoke Civic Center's exhibit hall. A final public hearing is set for 7 p.m. April 23, also at the civic center.
The task force and the Roanoke Regional Housing Network will add final touches after hearing public comments. City Manager Bob Herbert and members of his cabinet will then pass judgment on the plan.
If they like what they read, Herbert is expected to ship the plan to City Council in May.
Edlich is optimistic that Herbert, council members, and candidates in next month's council elections want the plan to fly. "This is an issue whose time has come," Edlich said. "I think it is absolutely going to make a difference."
"I can't see why they would shoot it down," said real estate agent Jim Pappas, who is on the task force and lives in and owns apartments in Raleigh Court. "If they do, they've got problems, because we're all for it."
Rental inspections are being welcomed by some of Roanoke's more affluent neighborhoods as well as its poorest. The Raleigh Court Civic League recently confirmed that rentals there are increasing. Pappas and others support inspections as a way of controlling property depreciation around owner-occupied homes and hope rental inspections eventually go citywide.
The latest inspection plan has changed significantly since residents gave their feedback at a March 7 workshop. Copies of the new draft were mailed late last week to more than 300 people who attended that meeting.
There are wins for landlords in the latest version, and some for tenant and neighborhood advocates:
* Gone is the idea of beginning inspections in a pilot area. Neighborhood leaders feared they would need to lobby for inspections all over again when the city was ready to expand to all of the inner city. Though inspections will begin on a limited scale so procedures can be tested, no pilot neighborhood is now mentioned in the plan.
* Both landlords and tenant advocates are relieved that housing will be inspected more regularly than between occupancies only. Landlords feared losing tenants and rent money if they had to wait for inspections before they could re-rent their property; tenant and neighborhood representatives feared bad housing inhabited by uncomplaining, long-term tenants might never be inspected.
As it stands now, rentals would be inspected regularly every two years. Owners would be notified at least 30 days in advance so they can notify the tenant and prepare for the inspection.
"That's not just for the convenience of the owners, but for the convenience of everybody," said Dan Pollock, Roanoke's coordinator of housing development and director of the inspections project.
After Lynchburg began rental inspections in 1994, inspectors found that many properties were repaired voluntarily by landlords before inspections, preventing much of the need for citing building code violations and imposing fines.
* New housing and most houses and apartments undergoing significant rehabilitation will receive certificates of compliance and be exempt from inspections for three years. The building commissioner must determine if rehabilitation projects are the equivalent of new construction.
* Landlords may ask the building commissioner for an appeal within 21 days of flunking an inspection. The commissioner, along with people representing tenant advocates, neighborhoods and rental owners, may meet with the owner. If the commissioner refuses to overrule the violation, the owner may appeal to the city's Board of Building Code Appeals.
* Landlords would get two chances to pass an inspection before being charged $35 for a third inspection. Under the first plan, the fee would have been charged on the second inspection. The re-inspection fee would not go into effect until after the program goes into operation.
* Tenants would be charged with housing violations for accumulations of garbage or hazardous materials inside rental units.
* Both landlords and tenants will have handbooks on inspection procedures and checklists of what will be examined.
* Landlords renting properties without meeting the building code and receiving a certificate of compliance may be prosecuted and face fines of up to $2,500.
Task force member Nancy Brock, a Legal Aid lawyer who specializes in housing law, is satisfied with the plan. She has studied the inspection programs of other cities and considers this one "as comprehensive as any program I've heard of." WHAT DO YOU THINK?
About Roanoke's proposed rental inspection program?
Let us know so we can follow up:
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Press category 7823.
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The Roanoke Times, P.O. Box 2491,
Roanoke 24010
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