19th Ward Community Association
Housing Committee
Day Meeting Notes for Posting
June 6, 2012
Final

The Meeting convened at 11:00am.

Present: John B, Peter E, Lee K, Toni O, June R, Donna S

Issues with Tote and NSC were discussed. Need to keep main arteries clean. Need to have block clubs take care of residential areas in between our yearly concentrated 3 week tote violation checks.

Have not connected with David Hawkes yet to have meeting at NSC office between Housing Committee representatives and Carlos Carballada, Commissioner of Department of Neighborhood & Business Development, and Gary Kirkmier, Director of Inspection and Compliance.

Joan Roby-Davison is looking into a grant to deal with code violations.

For cars on lawn always call 911. If it is on tree lawn it is the police responsibility. If it on house lawn it is a housing code violation. Call 911 in either case.

96 Chili – Discuss at next meeting on 20th of June. Look for grants to save and convert the front porch to a gazebo or a stage for community use. June's friend Joyce who will do sketches of re-purposed porch but is out of town at present.

Toni : It will be hard to get city to get more code inspectors. Reported on email from David which responded to house code violations.

Consider using the letter/house picture the Housing Committee has been sending to addresses with identified code violations as a flier we can canvass an area with. Need to redo letter into a shortened upbeat flier. June and Toni will work with friend Joyce to do this.

Phone canvassing: Investigate if City can to agree to use its automatic calling system to do small areas at a time once a year in cooperation with Neighborhood Associations.

• Neighborhood Associations' Housing Committees identifies a group of blocks they want to canvass with fliers and supplies list to city.
• City makes automatic calls to residents on those blocks that are on their call list.
• Housing group canvasses the selected blocks with fliers, city code information, help resource list, etc.
• A month or so later the standard Letter/House Picture with identified violations is sent to the most egregious violation addresses.

Peter needs answers to questions:

• What is enforceable
• Is problem lack of inspectors or the code
• Can we contract for inspectors
• Why does the city let properties get behind in taxes so many years.

June: On 20th can we focus on preparation for meeting David

Meeting adjourn at 12:20 pm

Submitted by John B

(Meeting on the 20th was cancelled)