A drive into many areas of the city will reveal houses that should have been torn down many years ago. That situation contributes to a problem identified recently by members of the public who attended another of Mayor Vivian Flowers’ listening sessions.
The first problem identified was a lack of affordable housing; the second was the existence of dilapidated housing and/or those structures that are surrounded by clutter to the point that it’s hard to know where the debris ends and the house begins.
Those houses that should have been torn down — well, had they been kept up, there’s half of the problem. To take all of those structures out of the mix in Pine Bluff severely reduces the number of homes that were once inhabitable. And the fact that they are now uninhabitable begs the question of why they are still standing.
The answer to the dilapidated property problem may just be the amount of money the city is able to throw at it. We recall that during the Go Forward days, they, through Urban Renewal, had tons of money — much of it from your tax dollars — that it used to tear down abandoned structures.
That work was also a duplication of effort in that the city already has a department that handles such matters. The difference was that the city department was fairly starved for money and could only get around to a small number of such structures. More money means more crews and trucks and the tearing down process goes faster. Where does that money come from? Well, that’s a headache for the mayor and City Council.
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
As one person at the meeting said: “We need to clean up those areas of those abandoned houses. The people that own these places, half the time they don’t live here. …” Well, there’s nothing wrong with living somewhere and owning property somewhere else. But there is something wrong with the city if it allows property owners to abandon what they own to the extent that their lack of action affects the homes around those properties.
The answer to the lack of affordable housing is likely more complex. It doesn’t take much money, in the scheme of things, to tear down an old home. But repairing and renovating a house that can be fixed can be expensive, and building one from scratch, well, that can be extraordinarily expensive, even if the final result is a house for a low-income person.
One person at the meeting who said he knew a thing or two about affordable housing may have said it best — even if what he said wasn’t a path forward.
“I doubt if anyone disagrees with me by characterizing the housing situation here a crisis in terms of affordable housing and affordability. We are in great need of affordable housing. The issue to me is how do we get more affordable housing in the community?”
The answer may be somewhere along the lines of little by little.
The problems, like many of the ills in a city, overlap. Neighborhoods that used to be nice and that still have their nice-ish parts are infected by dilapidated properties. Someone who might take a chance on building something new in town would run from an area like that where two or three or four out of every 10 houses shouldn’t be there.
And to make matters worse, because those run-down properties are allowed to stand, crime becomes more prevalent — leading residents to look for safer environs and making it hard for even landlords to keep houses rented. It’s a vicious cycle with the end result being, well, see above.
Good that the new mayor is taking such difficult matters head on. Past city leaders have averted their eyes when faced with these far-reaching problems. No one suggests that Flowers will conquer all the bad stuff in town as mayor, but asking how bad it is and taking notes is an honest and open start.