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posted by Bob at Wednesday, May 30, 2007
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21 Comments:
Hi All & Eric,
I brought this comment up from another thread because it was worth discussion.
Eric M said...
We've got 60 years of evidence that shows by concentrating poverty, it did not work but to start generation after generation of dependency on poverty programs.
While I don't know much about St Paul, I do know in cities like Chicago, Saint Louis, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Tulsa, Los Angeles, Seattle, Portland and Milwaukee it did not work and deconcentrating that has helped a hell of a lot. The evidence is in the graduation rates, employment rates, ownership, and lower number of out of wedlock births.
The thing about the crime is that is was always there, as any of us who grew up in that atmosphere can tell you. Its an issue now because its not just in the poor or minority areas. You get some white people who want to blame deconcentrating poverty, instead of the service we pay for and deserve from our government officials. In reality, some want the answer to be to put everyone who is poor in one area (away from the complainers) and let's once again forget about it.
Because you are poor does not mean you want any less for your children. You shouldn't have to settle for lesser schools, shitty service from government reps (cops, fire, librarians, elected officials), below quality housing, etc. If, those things were on par with other areas then, concentrating poverty wouldn't be an issue because the same opportunities to improve one's lot in life would be available. We know that that is not case and schools, housing and services are almost always better than what you see in poverty stricken areas.
11:13 AM
Bob said...
Hi Eric,
Here is the facts!
The Reality of Deconcentration
By Edward G. Goetz
A “moral panic” over crime in central cities, combined with a demand for reform of the most troubled public housing developments, led to a profound shift in the late 1980s in how this country housed poor people. After decades of encouraging cities to locate public housing in the poorest areas and setting aside most units for very low-income people, the federal government changed direction and began a policy to deconcentrate the poor from their neighborhoods.
The government did this in response to three factors. First, recent social science research showed that poverty had become highly concentrated in America’s urban areas. The 1990 census revealed that eight million people lived in neighborhoods where more than 40 percent of the population lived below the poverty level. Between 1970 and 1990, the number of these high-poverty neighborhoods more than doubled. Research also showed that the level of social pathologies such as violent crime in these neighborhoods was extremely high.
A second factor was that the nation was in the middle of an uproar over drugs and violent crime in the cities, directed primarily at the urban poor. Each session of Congress from the mid-1980s through the 1990s tried to outdo the previous one in getting tough on crime, increasing sentences and expanding criminal justice activities in poor neighborhoods. City governments and police departments initiated various forms of “community-based policing” and multi-agency task forces to combat the problem of violent crime in the poorest sections of our cities. National community development policy reflected the preoccupation with criminal justice in the federal “Weed and Seed” program, where the “weeding” referred to the removal of criminal elements. Congress’ 1994 “Three Strikes and You’re Out” sentencing law became “One Strike and You’re Out” for poor residents of public housing.
Third, the National Commission on Severely Distressed Public Housing was created in 1989 to plot a strategy for improving conditions in the nation’s worst public housing developments. These large developments concentrated very poor households in small geographic areas, typically in already disadvantaged central city neighborhoods, and the deteriorating physical and social conditions in those developments produced ready havens for gang and drug activity and their related violent crime.
In the early 1990s, two innovations in federal housing policy were introduced, both aimed at spatially deconcentrating (or dispersing) public housing families. The Moving To Opportunity (MTO) program, authorized in 1992, was a pilot program that provided Section 8 vouchers to residents of public housing so that they could move out of public housing and into lower-poverty neighborhoods. The program was modeled on the Gautreaux program in Chicago, which provided vouchers to black public housing residents so that they could move into more integrated neighborhoods. MTO, Gautreaux and smaller efforts like them were called “mobility programs,” because they enabled poor families in high-poverty neighborhoods to move into better, more integrated or more middle-class communities.
The second policy innovation, also introduced in 1992, was the HOPE VI program. HOPE VI was designed to rehabilitate or redevelop the nation’s worst public housing developments. Rather than rehabilitation, the program’s focus became demolition and redevelopment, and it expanded beyond the 6 percent of public housing (or 86,000 out of more than a million units) that had been initially identified as the most severely distressed. The program typically removes old buildings and redevelops sites into lower-density, mixed-income developments with only a fraction of the original number reserved as public housing units. Because of the reduced number of units, many of the original residents are unable to move back on site. Thus, like MTO, HOPE VI results in the dispersal of public housing residents into other neighborhoods.
For the purpose of deconcentrating the poor, there are two important differences between MTO and HOPE VI. The first is that, under MTO and other mobility programs, participation is voluntary. Families sign up to participate, just as they did for the Gautreaux program before it. With HOPE VI, families have no choice but to move, because their housing is torn down. The second important difference between these two approaches is that participants in mobility programs typically are limited to moving to low-poverty or low-minority neighborhoods, while those who are involuntarily displaced through HOPE VI have no limits on where they can relocate. These two program characteristics – voluntary vs. involuntary dispersal, and limited vs. unlimited relocation choice – are very important for considering the likely success of these approaches in deconcentrating poverty.
Neither program is likely to have the desired effect in high-poverty neighborhoods. Voluntary programs, though justifiable on other grounds, will not make a dent in concentrated poverty for two reasons: a) these programs cream, that is, they take only those families most likely to succeed in their new environments; and b) they will never reach sufficient scale to noticeably affect overall settlement patterns. MTO, Gautreaux and other voluntary mobility programs apply to only a subset of the poor.
In addition, as Sudhir Venkatesh and Isil Celimli point out, dispersal programs incorrectly assume the poor can relocate as easily as the middle class does. In fact, very real resource constraints limit the ability of public housing families to abandon existing support networks, and these constraints limit the attractiveness of dispersal strategies to poor families.
Due to the self-selection inherent in voluntary dispersal programs, and to the screening that these programs apply to applicants, participants are likely to be more motivated and possess more human capital than the families that do not participate. Program operatives choose the families they think will succeed, based on these families’ being organized enough to pass home inspections and other steps in the application process. Still, mobility programs typically have a low success rate, because fewer than half the applicants who are accepted are able to lease an apartment.
Even if mobility programs expand and serve more families, there is an upper limit to their growth. This is defined by the political realities of the destination communities. Low-poverty areas are not anxious to receive large numbers of poor, public housing families, and there will typically be political backlash if current residents feel that these families are being forced into their neighborhoods. In fact, this very type of resistance ended the expansion of the MTO program in 1995. Mobility programs face a paradox – they must remain small to remain politically viable, but smallness ensures they will never address concentrated poverty adequately.
Another problem with mobility programs is that they are not really about improving the conditions in high-poverty neighborhoods. MTO is not designed to improve the areas where public housing residents currently live. In fact, when these programs cream the most motivated families, those neighborhoods are left with even greater concentrations of the disadvantaged.
Displacement and dispersal approaches like HOPE VI have different limitations. Large-scale redevelopment will reduce concentrations of poverty at the redevelopment site. The HOPE VI track record across the country has shown this to be the case. But the public housing families who are displaced and relocated typically reconcentrate in other poor neighborhoods nearby. Very rarely do these families relocate to low-poverty suburbs. Well over half of HOPE VI relocatees either move into other public housing or use vouchers to rent units on the private market. Public housing units are, of course, likely to be in low-income neighborhoods. Families using vouchers are also likely to move into low-income areas, because it is there that they will find units with rents that are eligible for the program and landlords who are willing to rent to them.
Other aspects of HOPE VI show that, as it has been carried out in many cities, the program is not so much about improving the conditions for previous residents as it is about reclaiming urban neighborhoods for middle- income families. The Chicago example described in this issue illustrates the higher criteria used to screen tenants, effectively keeping a large number of original residents from moving back into HOPE VI sites. The Earle Village HOPE VI project in Charlotte, NC, was cited as “a significant blighting influence, holding back an otherwise promising market environment in the surrounding area,” according to a 2003 report by The Urban Institute. Similar outcomes of rapid neighborhood turnover from low-income to middle-income populations have been documented near Cabrini-Green in Chicago, Techwood Homes in Atlanta, St. Thomas in New Orleans and other HOPE VI sites.
The greatly reduced number of units and the much stricter tenant screening standards employed after redevelopment make it difficult, if not impossible, for most families to move back and enjoy the benefits. Families that do not return to a public housing site do the best they can in other neighborhoods of the city.
Beyond being ineffective in dealing with the problems of concentrated poverty, strategies to deconcentrate may, in fact, be counterproductive. The greater the acceptance of deconcentration in any given area, the less support there will be for affordable subsidized housing. This is because the way deconcentration is being carried out through federal housing policy equates concentrated poverty with subsidized housing. People perceive that subsidized housing “anchors” poor people in neighborhoods, and the concentration of subsidized units then directly contributes to a concentration of poor people. Central city neighborhood groups and city officials convinced of the need to deconcentrate poverty conclude that they must at least not add subsidized housing in core neighborhoods, and, in fact, might benefit from reducing the number of units (through demolition or conversion). This has been a central dynamic in the Minneapolis – St. Paul region, where public policy shifted in the 1990s away from supporting rental housing improvements and toward subsidizing more homeownership opportunities. Deconcentration justifies the stance of some low-income neighborhoods that they have produced their “fair share” of affordable housing – in fact, more than their share. At the same time, the deconcentration argument provides the basis for low-poverty neighborhoods to continue to oppose subsidized housing, by linking social pathologies to concentrated poverty, and concentrated poverty to subsidized housing. In the end, there is something perversely uniting about the deconcentration argument – it leads to almost universal resistance to subsidized housing.
Adapting federal housing policy to serve the cause of deconcentrating poverty was in many respects an easy decision. Our preoccupation with the criminal threat of low-income inner-city residents reinforced the impulse to disperse the poor. The physical decay of public housing suggested an urban renewal approach that would remake central city neighborhoods, simultaneously forcing the removal of the existing population. Because this population was politically weak, it was unlikely to mount an effective defense against such measures. So it was that deconcentration manifested itself as the demolition of poor people’s homes and their forced removal from the communities they lived in.
Efforts to address the problems of concentrated poverty did not have to turn out this way. Any number of different approaches might have been tried. For example, research in Columbus, OH, conducted in the 1980s showed that concentrated poverty has more to do with the exodus of the middle class out of central cities than with the movement of the poor into those areas. We might have addressed those factors that were pushing or pulling working- and middle-class families out of core neighborhoods. Instead, community development approaches were neglected (at best) and even blamed for the problem (at worst). If we were bent on forcing a portion of the population to alter their living environments or mobility choices, we might have done something to curtail the ability of the affluent to sequester themselves behind walls and gates and to use exclusionary zoning to deny housing and neighborhood alternatives to low-income families. Such an approach would have meant, of course, manipulating the mobility decisions of a much more powerful constituency.
There are examples we can look to for inspiration. In some cases, communities outside the central cities have developed inclusionary zoning, requiring developers to keep a percentage of new units affordable so that low-income families can rent apartments. In Montgomery County, MD, one of the wealthiest suburban counties in the nation, more than 12,000 units of low- and moderate-income housing have been built through inclusionary zoning since 1974. Cities such as Boston are offering financial assistance to lure middle-class families into buying homes in struggling neighborhoods and renting part of them out. These approaches give poor people options for staying close to their old homes, but also open up possible routes for those who want to leave.
As the Chicago and Pittsburgh examples in this issue illustrate, the poor often recognize community where others do not. Demolition and dispersal approaches assume that public housing families want to move out. In the Pittsburgh case, as Mindy Fullilove points out, urban redevelopment can bring about emotional and social losses; and Venkatesh and Celimli show that many Chicago residents have returned to their old neighborhoods to patronize local institutions well before “neighborhood improvements” are put in place.
Even if we insisted on tearing down our old public housing and building anew, we might have done it differently than what has occurred in many HOPE VI projects. We might have done it as they are doing it in the Hill District of Pittsburgh, making sure that the new public housing is built before the dilapidated units are removed. Or by making sure that all families who want to can stay on site and continue to live in the redeveloped community, taking advantage of the improvements made through the program. If we had done even that, then Pat Murphy’s article would have been the story of a commonplace outcome, and not the remarkable exception that we know it to be.
Copyright 2004
Edward G. Goetz is director of the Urban and Regional Planning Program at the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs. This article is based on excerpts from his book Clearing the Way: Deconcentrating the Poor in Urban America, published by The Urban Institute Press in 2003.
One only has to look at the rental property investors who have lost numerous properties to these renegade City officials because they rented to a protected class. Criminal like behavior in using code enforcement to lie about conditions of homes just to rid the neighborhood of a protected class.
Get rid of the nest get rid of the critter, so they thought!
The squeeze on affordable housing in the inner City has a lot to do with domestic violence and crime.
People are disparate, and desparate people do desparate things! The crime rate is an indicator of that. And believe me the crime rate would be a lot higher if the police were filing the reports they should.
This is another topic we have discussed here. The police even have a terminology for not filing these reports I forget off hand what the terminology is, maybe someone can refresh my memory so I don't have to search my archives for the information.
I personally brought to the public's attention all the crimes I have first hand knowledge of that were reported to the police and the police never filed a report. Let's see, 2 burglaries, an aggravated assault.
Then we have the businesses up and down west 7th street who had there windows broken all within a short period of time. No reports to the media. I made this information public at Saint Paul Issues and Forums.
This administration has done a lot to hide and blame others for our social ills.
Bob, Bob, Bob, Bob...
No matter how hard Eric and I try you just don't get it. The Goetz study talked about the impact of attempting to down size the public housing complexes in the poorer central cities without addiquately building new subsidized housing units in the less poor neighborhoods. The Goetz report talks about the resistance that you will find in the suburbs to building low income housing and the lack of services available in those communities.
The frustrating thing in the report is the notion that since most of the best relocation programs are self selecting (the poor person chooses to leave PHA in the city for PHA in the burbs) that the data of how successful those people are becomes useless. Goetz concludes that because of self selection those who are most likely to not commit a crime and rise out of poverty are most likely to opt into the program that moves them out of high poverty - high crime neighborhoods.
There is nothing in the Goetz report that forcing the poor to live in substandard housing in the central cities with no basic health or safety standards was a good thing for the poor. Nor was he suggesting that there was some basic right for the wealthy suburban land lord to keep the poor in the central cities and out of their gated communities.
Though I know that is your vision of what is in the poor's best interest.
JMONTOMEPPOF
Chuck Repke
Bob,
This article backs up what I stated and the point I was making about services and resources. I grew up in Chicago and worked in Pittsburgh in 2004 for the Kerry campaign. As a matter of fact, our office with that was most technologically advanced was located in the Hill District.
This article talks about something I was not, and that's demolition instead rehabilitation or rebuilding. The main point of the article is gentrification.
While support networks are important- very important, it still does not address education and employment opportunities which are key to getting out of the poverty cycle. I did not speak about the support network, I do recognize that it as important as the other two.
Here's a group of articles from some oter Humphrey fellows and instructors like Goetz. You'll see that our points are not mutually exclusive.
http://www.extension.umn.edu/distribution/familydevelopment/DE7565.html
Chuck and Eric,
Goetz may believe in the principles of deconcentrating poverty but from what I read he doesn't agree with the strategy.
Bob, you are trying to win a very unpopular fight. Citizens of this country are tired of crime and if it means chasing the criminal element out of neighborhoods so be it.
http://jpe.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/25/3/338.pdf
Chuck said- There is nothing in the Goetz report that forcing the poor to live in substandard housing in the central cities with no basic health or safety standards was a good thing for the poor. Nor was he suggesting that there was some basic right for the wealthy suburban land lord to keep the poor in the central cities and out of their gated communities.
Bob's response- in almost 2 years of debating you Chuck over this issue you can not show me one statement I have made that suggest anything close to what you insinuate my position is.
Your assumption is these families in Saint Paul were removed from sub standard housing when in fact there is substantial proof the homes were not a safety hazard and the intent was more along the lines of removing certain individuals from a community and depriving the home owner of the home so a protected class would never rent there again.
You know the Gladys Kravitz types the City used to do it's bidding.
I will refer you to my archives title "GLADYS KRAVITZ".
Look guy's my problem is the City violated citizens civil rights when they removed masses of an innocent protected class of people from housing, using code enforcement as a tool to meet these objectives.
The City violated the rights of property owners in a malicious attempt to deconcentrate poverty by reducing the numbers of privately owned rental properties that was home to a protected class of people.
The policy of this City has decreased affordable housing within the City and it is my belief this is directly related to the CRIME STATISTICS.
Chuck or Eric, nether of you can deny the homeless rate is rising. The studies by Wilder and other organizations confirm this.
The studies say the homeless numbers are for the most part related to a shortage of affordable housing.
Tell me do you think for one minute the homes that sit vacant in the Red Zones will ever be a home for a low income family ever again? I don't think so.
Eric, we do not have the support networks here.
At the Bruce vento neighborhood meeting I asked the Fire inspector what would become of the people made homeless through condemnations?
I was more or less told. The numbers of people made homeless through code condemnations will be small and insignificant. They can go to family or friends, but wait, just before this the Fire Inspector said they were after over crowding situations too.
Simply put who gave's a Damn as far as the City is concerned.
Chuck, Eric, I want both of you to think about something.
My personal belief is you only bother with me because you have concerns over my ability to inform the public of information they won't get any place else. And you are concerned about up coming elections.
Shut me up! Stop the sneaky policy that has riled me and so many others up!
Provide real fix's for our social ills. What many people don't know is it is people like you Chuck and Eric that are the "movers and shakers" of this City. You 2 can make a differance.
Eric, imagine you have a son who likes the Urban dress. Now imagine his pals all dress this way too!And they like hanging out in your front yard in the suburbs. You live in the suburbs and now you are the center of attention in your suburban home.
This is the picture of racism when your cloths and the color of your skin dictates an impression on others. Oh yeah Gladys lives in the birbs too.
Our social ills run deeper than a nice home and schooling.
Bob, take a deep breath. No one is trying to shut you up or down. Read closely and you'll see I'm not disagreeing with you. I'm just adding to it.
As far as being a mover and shaker, you are really using that term liberally. I am just a guy who does what I can with what I have for my neighbors on the East Side and have always been pro-active in bringing in more minorities in whatever I'm involved in.
With the people I've pissed off downtown in the last year, I can assure you that I won't be getting as many Christmas cards as I have in the past.
Bob, you don't have to explain racism to me. What happened to your son is typical. I don't dress urban anymore and am still viewed with suspicion in some circles. It's a pain in the ass and makes me angry but, it does not stop me from doing what I have to do. We have community leaders that are exposing some of the racism out here, my contribution aside from being inclusive is to talk and try to demostrate how we deal with it and not let it stop us. When it does, there are steps that can be taken. I also beleive that by involved politically can expedite things.
Your issue with me is that I don't do things your way or what you beleive should be priorities. But, that's just a testament to the diverse ways to approach a broad issue or acknowledgement that maybe there are people or politicians who are handling these issues and you may not be aware.
I'm more concerned with employment and eduation opportunities.
Eric, Employment and education opportunities are good. And I am happy to hear there is black leadership addressing very important issues that concern all of us.
I have never said you weren't a good man Eric. The same goes for Chuck. I have learned to respect you and Chuck for the display of character you bring to this forum.
I also believe all of us who post here want what we feel is best for our City and it's citizens. The sad thing is we can not come to terms with the policies that have brought us to this point.
Almost 2 years into this fight for me and almost 10 for some property rights advocates.
And just what is your definition of "basic health and saftey standards?" That's what we need to know before we can give you any credibility.
Basic health and safety standards are such things as running water, so that things like the toilet work; trash service that regularly picks up the garbage; a consistant flow of electricity into a building that has proper wiring and the absence of rats.
I spent the first four years I worked for Thune (when the City Council was full time and they held hearings on all of the garbage houses) listening to property owners claim that the city had improperly abated their property. When Thune chaired the committee he was the first one to require the crews to come with cameras and film the garbage inside the houses that was being removed. We would have owners stand there and claim that the City must have brought the garbage there and dumped it inside their houses!
My point to you Bob has always been that I do believe that when people are displaced because of the failure of the land owners to maintain their property that the City should assist those tenants and then fine the land lord for those relocation costs. I think that if protected class citizens are being displaced because of these property owners negligence then the City has an obligation to either fine those landlords or assist those tenants in getting relocation costs from those property owners.
And I only comment here Bob because I think that you are well intentioned and truly are concerned about the poor, but have your cannons pointed in the wrong direction. Look at who profits by exploiting the poor. Who has artificially increased the value of "starter homes" in lower income neighborhoods by turning them into "investment properties?"
The jerks you support are often the guys who watched those infomercials late at night and decided they were going to become millionaires by buying houses with nothing down and trying to make the rents pay the mortgages. They have gobbled up all sorts of starter houses, duplexes and fourplexes and jacked their prices up by buying and selling them at inflated prices. This has raised the rent on these places to ungodly levels and the maintence on the properties to nill.
They have screwed the poor Bob and when the City requires them to at least maintain their buildings with some level of basic health and safety you defend them.
JJMONTOMEPPOF
Chuck Repke
And most of those people who "gobbled up" properties at too high a price bought them from other people who had the equity and staying power so those rents would have been lower, but the city forced them out of business with their criminal code enforcement, but that's another issue.
Now that we know what you consider a "hazard," I think most of us agree with you Chuck. No one should be forced to live without those services. We also believe that landlords should be accountable for their actions, so we're really not that far apart it seems.
We even agree Chuck that sometimes landlords should be fined or punished when people are displaced because of the landlord not maintaining the place.
But tell me Check....what do you think should happen when people are dispalced if code enforcement officials would knowingly lie about violations to condemn the house thus causing a displacement of the same people?
Just exactly what is wrong with buying with nothing down and expecting the rent to make the payments? Isn't that the business model most businesses go by? Who would want to put in more cash than they had to?....it would lower the return on your investment. Private people don't have a "public pocket" to pick every time they want something Chuck, they have to do it the common sense way. You government types ought to try it sometime and maybe you wouldn't have a 15 million dollar problem to solve.
How is it the property owners fault when a tenant fails to take their garbage out? In many single home rentals the tenant is responsible for trash service, water bill, electric, gas bill, above paying rent, so how would that be the property owners fault if the tenant fails to pay those much needed services which in return then get disconnected, maybe these companies should be fined as well then for not providing their services. In many of these cases the property owner wouldn't know until after the fact and then we have the process for an unlawful detainer that on a family with children can take up to 30 days. I would find it hard to beleive that property investors really want their properties to be taken care of in that manner and to say they don't care isn't even a realistic picture of the situation in most cases.
They don't want thier properties taken care of that way, it's just the way people like Chuck and his Government buddies want you to think they take care of it. I'd like someone to show me a slumlord, Iv'e neevr seen one. What we have is slum renters, but everyone is too politicaly correct to call them that. Stop and think about it.....when have you ever heard anything anywhere about anything being the tenants fault. A lot of these tenants destroy the place fatser than the landlord can get it fixed. Kathy Lantry's response to that is that the landlord should screen better, but it does not address the problem, all it does is take the cowards way out and find a scapegoat to blame something on. Doesn't anyone find it just a little bit odd that all the bad people that the neighbors are supposedly copmplaing about being such bad people are all of a sudden the pillars of the community when it comes to a alleged code violation? Are the people that live in St Paul really that damn stupid that they can't see that they are being sold a "bill of goods" by people like Lantry that always want to blame the landlord? I'm sick and tired of al the lies and stories and scapegoating innocent people so people like Lantry and her gang can build a political career. Wake up people....the more of this crap they do, the more empty houses and homeless people you are going to have. And when those two things increase, the taxpayers are going to take up the slack with the property tax payments and the increased welfare costs.
Bob, you can't have it both ways - read the two posts above. The land owners and their supporters are the ones who argue for targetting problem tenants as the solution and at the same time your new tactic in court is to claim that if the City would do what those land owners want them to do the City would be violating those tenants civil rights.
You can't have it both ways Bob. That is why the City just enforces the code.
JMONTOMEPPOF
Chuck Repke
Answer the question Chuck.....what should happen if a city inspector were to lie about code vioaltions to get the house condemned, thus causing the displacement of people?
To the above question, two things; one the employee should be fired if he "lied" about a violation (if by that you mean he knowingly said something was wrong that wasn't) but the other thing is the inspector can't just condemn some place usually without the owner having an appeals process through the City and if they want, their day in court.
So... its a little hard for one person to have made that judgement.
JMONTOMEPPOF
Chuck Repke
I have to give you credit Chuck....I didn't think you would answer. From your answer, I can see that you are half way human.
Now just humor me a little Chuck and let me ask you one more question as bizzare as it is going to you. What would you say if you knew that evidence existed that not only the appeals hearings were rigged against the property owner, but also the Ramsey County Court system as well?
To 2:29 then you would be one of the people who buy tin foil by the case to stop the government from listening in on your thoughts.
The problem I have is that I know the elected and appointed officials who hear these cases. I know most of them would give the shirt off of their back to help someone in trouble. I also know that they know that every problem property have eight houses that are either next door or across the street from the problem.
So when you don't fix something for eight years like some of the cases here. Those neighbors are going crazy with why should they have to put up with all of the crap.
JMONTOMEPPOF
Chuck Repke
Thank you for the answer Chuck. I think you are going to a little suprised in the months to come.
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