Lassiez-Faire Code Enforcement?

Is this lassiez-faire code enforcement attitude? Live and let live?

From an article in the Tribune on October 19, 1990

The tour took council members, housing and code enforcement officials, civic association members, and the press to several blighted neighborhoods to view substandard housing and discuss various code enforcement issues.

"The purpose of this trip is not to showcase our renovation projects but to show you parts of Tampa some people don't see or see through blinders," said Bob Harrell, director of the city's Housing and Development Coordination Office.

The air-conditioned charter bus had barely pulled onto Nebraska Avenue before council member Perry Harvey Jr. stood up and took over the aisle from code enforcement supervisor Wanda Thompson, who had guided the passengers through the first sight, the Red Top Bar, which was closed and seized by the city for code violations.

But Harvey wanted them to see houses where people lived on First and Second avenues, part of City Council District 5, which he represents.

"Look at this. Can you believe people live like this just five minutes from City Council?" Harvey asked emphatically. The bus drove slowly through narrow streets. Old tin roofing was rusted and barely hanging onto some of the houses.

Like a scene out of the Deep South, black men and women sat on their lopsided wooden porches waving at the bus. Garbage, old tires and overgrown trees and weeds cluttered what was left of the yards.

One empty lot had overtaken the sidewalk, which was no longer visible. "And this is an improvement," Harvey said. "It was worse than this last week."

Another Trib article from November 20, 1990

TAMPA HEIGHTS -- Shortly after midnight last Tuesday, a dozen men wandered back and forth along four blocks of Central Avenue, amid the shadows and along the wood steps of old, empty houses in Tampa Heights.

Though it's not zoned for business, this stretch is known as a crack-cocaine flea market. Haggard men and women come here to mingle, sit out on dusty milk crates and swig quarts of malt liquor. Others come to sell, buy and smoke "rocks."

Before its indulgent decline, Tampa Heights was the pride of the city. "It was the ideal place; very homey, neat and clean," said 80-year-old Matilda Larkin, who has been living in the neighborhood for 47 years. "Then it just deteriorated."

Crime, garbage-littered lots, boarded-up and dilapidated houses visibly proclaim that the area just north of downtown -- bounded by Palm Avenue, North Boulevard, Martin Luther King Jr. Drive and Interstate 275 -- has changed.