Investing in Our Neighborhoods Combating
Crime and Grime

February 9, 2006

On the last Thursday of each month you will find Evelyn Johnson huddled in a van with several other people scanning the properties outside. She notices a house with paint pealing down the side, a yard filled with piles of old construction material, a rusted truck that hasn't run for years sitting in a driveway. These neighborhood eyesores need to change, and thanks to the hard work of people like Johnson, residents are beginning to see some results.

"The differences we see are really remarkable," said Johnson. "There's a general activity of people cleaning up their properties, their yards, and making repairs to their homes."

Johnson is a member of one of the Greater Wythe District Area Resource Teams. Once a month she joins with other Hampton residents and city staff to ride through Wythe neighborhoods looking for blighted properties.

In May 2004, the neighborhood associations in Greater Wythe came together to discuss their community and agreed that codes violations were contributing to the downward spiral of the residents' quality of life and were fostering crime and loss of property values.

In August 2004, the teams began their rides through the neighborhoods of Greater Wythe identifying and reporting codes violations and using a newly developed automated data tracking program to track those violations and measure performance.

This tracking system allows citizens to check the progress of code violation reports - whether any action has been taken on the report, if action is in progress, completed, or overdue. It also allows code inspectors to view statistics concerning certain areas, informing them of common infractions.

The extensive efforts have begun to show results. The number of overdue code violation inspections dropped from 35 percent in August 2004 to 5.5 percent in August 2005. Completed inspections rose from 15 percent in August 2004 to 48 percent the following August.

Residents are beginning, more and more, to take a stand against blighted properties in their neighborhoods, and to invest a greater involvement in the preservation of the community. The total amount of reported codes violations in the Wythe area has risen significantly from 35 in August 2004 to 274 the following August. In addition, Hampton's 311 Customer Call Center received 73 more calls regarding codes violations in August 2005 than in August 2004.

"We know neither the citizens nor the staff can do this alone," said Hampton Councilmember Rhet Tignor. "But, citizens and the city together can make it happen. I am very glad that we have some success already."

However, there is still more to be done. Greater Wythe participants have proposed several recommendations to further address the issue of blight within the community, including providing inspectors with handheld computers to reduce administrative lag time, establishing fines for inoperable vehicles and possibly other violations, reducing lengthy timeframes afforded to offenders, and promoting the use of 311 to citizens for reporting codes violations.

Soon Hampton will be rolling out a city-wide crime and grime effort and citizens are encouraged to participate. For additional information contact the Neighborhood Office at 727-6460.