College Confidential gets Code Violated
Cara of College Confidential apparently read the posts and comments on this blog about Code Enforcement. She commented about the issue in her own blog.
"I recently had a citation put against me because of my garage roof. Admittedly, yes, it is ugly and I would love love love to fix it but I have many more pressing issues to take care of inside my actual house. I CANNOT AFFORD TO MAKE COSMETIC REPAIRS IN ORDER TO PLEASE THE CITY OF TAMPA AND IT'S PETTY BOURGEOIS POPULATION. Moreover, the commenters on this particular post made it seem like people like me just don't care. I do care. I want to live in a beautiful, trendy neighborhood like Seminole Heights but I don't. I live in a place where prostitutes and drug addicts stumble through the streets at 3 am. Yet, the city still finds it more important to put a financial burden on law-abiding citizens like myself. "
She goes on to say
"Do she have any idea how many burdens she is causing just because she doesn't want to look at something "ugly"? I would love to help improve this city, but let me tell you, improvement starts with issues bigger than cosmetic interests. It's like saying you can change a nasty personality by giving someone plastic surgery. IT DOESN'T WORK THAT WAY."
Cara lives in VM Ybor Neighborhood Association which is i-275 to 15th Street, 26th Avenue to I-4. It's a neighborhood that is way behind Seminole Heights in revitalizations. This stretch of Nebraska it is a really poor area. VM Ybor as an association/neighborhood does not have the strength or power that Seminole Heights has. There is no website. There is very little visibility in the press. They can't scrsma and yell and get the msaem results we can. Not enough gays have discovered that neighborhood yet. Part of the problem is that the neighborhood association just north of that, Ybor Heights (26th to MLK) died a few years back, so there is no organization to the north.
Unfortunately, this lack of power is partly why those drug delaers and prostitutes are still there, whereas they has disappeared to a certain degree from Seminole Heights.
I disagree with Cara. Because her neighborhood looks crappy, people treat it crappy and feel okay to commit criminal acts. I see stuff dumped in empty lots all over the place. This is the neighborhood that Deeper Life Church was cited by Code Enforcement a bit ago for having bad houses that thieir parishioners lived in.
The irony is that the chronic hard core code violators keep violating code and keeping the place crappy, whereas people like Cara who care will fix up what they need to. People like Cara need more time and lattitide from Code. The hard core group needs less time and lattitude because they don't care.
5 comments:
If Cara is having financial problems that can be verified, code has a diversion program that will help her and take the case out of the violation mode so she won't be fined unti it can be fixed.
They don't remodel houses but can do some small cosmetic things.
There is a loan program from the housing department that can help with the cosmetic issues and the money can be repaid when the house is sold if she qualifies.
She needs to look into this.
WOW!
If she thinks she's having problems now over "cosmetic interests" just wait till "enough gays have discovered that neighborhood". As David Bowie once said, "What do girls know about makup".
I am a volunteer hearing master with code enforcement once a month at city hall. I serve as a type of mediator between code and residents.
I understand Cara's complaint and sympathize. I see many cases like hers. I also see cases where people are living in homes with bare electrical wiring, roofs that leak, and a general state of disrepair that is nothing more than a home for rats. In every case, there are two views: the resident's and the neighbors'. In the middle is code. For every complaint about code being overzealous, there are 5 from neighbors complaining that code won't do enough. More and more, I see neighborhood associations there to plead their side of the case against a home owner. I rarely see anyone try to understand the difficulty of the job of the inspector.
The problem becomes in how do you set the standards so that you're maintaining a normal standard without nitpicking. These standards are not only there for aesthetic reasons. You mow to keep rats and other pests out. You remove mildew so the paint does peel and start dry rot. Eaves have to be in good shape in Florida to keep animals from building homes in your attic and chewing wiring. The idea is that removing mildew is cheap and easy. Replacing dry rot isn't.
On top of this, inspectors have to be consistent. The majority of people they cite are clearly not maintaining the standard. However, some unfortunate cases happen but code has a method here. If you can't afford it, there are diversion programs. Many inspectors volunteer to fix up homes (the majority of these inspectors are very good people). If you are temporarily unable to fix it and it isn't life threatening, the code board can give you a lot of extra time. A lot of times, the necessary repair is a lot worse than it sounds. Most of the time, minor violations are given a year before they get fixed up.
In the end, my goal as a hearing master is to have the person feel that justice is done. I look at it as we're all living in one big house called Tampa and we each have our little room. It's a thankless job being the monitor but it has to be done. I hope I get a chance to work with Cara. She has more leeway than she might feel. The letters that Code sends out are a little too threatening (again, done for the really bad offenders but they have to send out the same letter).
Thanks for the comment Jeff - sometimes we need to look at all side of the equation for a new perspective.
I can't speak for other neighborhoods but I know that SESH works with their new code officer. They would have loved to work "with" the old one. That never happened. Absolutely not for lack of trying!
I also know that if the Cara's of the world communicate, there is help and some of it would might even come from the neighbors.
Every case is different and generally neighbors act entirely differently towards those that simply live like pigs and don't care and others who genuinely care and are just having healty or financial issues.
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