Editor’s Note: This story appeared in East Ridge News Online on April 21. It was coverage of a meeting that the East Ridge Housing Authority had to prepare for the May 3 Community Open House. That meeting is tonight at the Community Center on Tombras Avenue beginning at 5:30 p.m. Officials said the Community Open House will allow citizens to inspect the ERHRA boundary map and redevelopment plan and ask one-on-one questions to ERHRA commissioners and city staff. Within this story are links to both the boundary map and the redevelopment plan.
The East Ridge Housing and Redevelopment Authority met Friday afternoon in a special called meeting at City Hall to plan for its upcoming “Community Open House” meeting.
About 50 residents, some alarmed that the East Ridge Housing and Redevelopment (ERHRA) may take their homes in the future, listened as Chairman Darwin Branam explained that the purpose of the meeting was for the five commissioners to discuss how to “set up” for the open house scheduled for 5:30 p.m. on Thursday May 3 at the Community Center’s gym. Branam said the board would not take questions at this meeting.
During the 45-minute meeting, the overarching message from all ERHRA board members, City Manager Scott Miller, City Attorney/ERHRA Attorney Mark Litchford and Director of Community Services Kenny Custer was that the city is not going to kick people out of their houses.
“People are scared,” said Custer, who told the board that he has returned more than 100 voice mails from concerned city residents in recent days. “They don’t know what’s going on.”
During the first week of April, 5,300 letters were mailed by ERHRA to individuals that either own, reside or do business within an area where the ERHRA may “carry out its functions in an effort to protect and enhance existing neighborhoods, increase strength for existing and prospective commercial areas, and to provide creative approaches for renovation and redevelopment of properties.” The letter also announced its May 3 open house meeting and urged everyone who received the letter to attend and their questions and concerns would be addressed.
Branam explained how the May 3 meeting would work. A series of tables would be set up in the gym with maps of the redevelopment boundary and the ERHRA redevelopment plan at each table. ERHRA commissioners, council members and city staff will be at the tables to address, one-on-one, questions from concerned residents.
City Manager Miller gave a detailed overview of why the ERHRA was necessary to effectively rid the city of derelict properties.
He said that for many years, codes enforcement would write citations to owners of dilapidated properties. Many of these houses were vacant with no utility connections. City workers would board up the windows and mow the high grass. A lien would be placed on the property if it ever sold in an attempt for the city to recoup costs of boarding up the house and mowing the grass.
He explained that when these houses sold on the steps of the county courthouse the lien placed on the property by East Ridge was seldom paid, as priority was given to mortgage companies and back taxes.
“If we want to do something positive in our neighborhoods this (ERHRA) gives us a vehicle to do it,” Miller said.
Attorney Litchford explained that the ERHRA was following state law to the letter. He explained that the board was duly formed, adopted a boundary area in which it could act and a 30-page redevelopment plan to address blighted properties within the boundary. The plan was the product of exhaustive research conducted by Hamilton County GIS, the regional planning agency, East Ridge police and East Ridge codes enforcement. Statistics on calls for police service and action by codes enforcement were used, in part, to identify problem areas.
Litchford used the redevelopment of Chattanooga’s Southside as an example of what the ERHRA could do for East Ridge’s commercial district.
In earlier meetings of the ERHRA Chairman Branam made it clear that the ERHRA would at first focus on commercial properties.
ERHRA Commissioner Eddie Phillips, who is also Chairman of the East Ridge Housing Commission, said that the board is following state law.
“There is no hidden agenda,” Phillips said. “There is nothing going on. It’s all going to be in the open. It’s not a secret deal.”
ERHRA Commissioner Earl Wilson urged the board to look at accessing grant money to help residents address issues with their property. The grants could be used to “clean up” commercial and residential areas.
“We are not here to take anybody’s home,” Wilson said. “We are here to clean up this city.”
He encouraged residents to come forward with issues they may have in their neighborhoods.
Commissioner Ruth Braly, who is also the Chairperson of the city’s Industrial Development Board, said the ERHRA is “all about making East Ridge better.”
She alluded to the progress being made with commercial development near Camp Jordan.
“It takes all of us to get the city the way they want it,” Braly said.
After the meeting was over, Donna Slater said her fears about the city taking residential properties were not allayed. Slater, a real estate agent whose son owns a house in East Ridge, said that residential properties inside of the ERHRA boundary map will now be worth less money. She said that if her son decided to sell his house it must be disclosed that the property is subject to seizure by local government, therefore reducing the value of the property.
“I feel no better,” she said following the meeting. “The problem is that (the plan) is so vague.”
Officials said the boundary map and the ERHRA redevelopment plan is available for inspection at City Hall on Tombras Avenue during normal business hours.
