[Continued from yesterday’s Part 3 and the preceding Part 1 and Part 2.]
By: David A. Smith
Maybe the dark is from your eyes, maybe the dark is from your eyes,
You know you got such dark eyes!
– Grateful Dead, Shakedown Street
Yesterday’s Part 3 of this post demolished any claim that the Bainbridge Apartments, which the Kansas City’s City Plan Commission was invited to consider as blighted, could be suffering from any material physical defects, and focused on whether the Bainbridge was in fact a crime magnet – and in fact, over the last 2 ½ years, there have been two killings where the property was part of the crime scene, one a gunshot fight between two young women in a Bainbridge Apartment where one killed the other, and the earlier encounter, a robbery gone wrong, in which one of the perpetrators fled into the Bainbridge to take refuge in his (unmarried) girlfriend’s apartment.
Sources used in this post
Tax Credit Advisor (April, 2014); brown font
Kansas City Star, March 31, 2014: black font
KCTV, March 18, 2014; aquamarine font
HUD’s statement to the City Plan Commission, February 4, 2014; gray font
The blight study by Sterrett Urban LLC, June 2, 2013; green font
KC Confidential, December 13, 2012: red font
The Pitch, May 26, 2005; violet font
Understandably, these two incidents – fatal, violent, and highly visible – have left lingering fears among at least some neighbors.
“There’s been a continuing large amount of crime from trespassing to armed robbery, rape, homicide and assault,” said Gene Morgan, president of the Hyde Park Neighborhood Association. “That’s what we’re striving to reduce.”
Gene Morgan, being interviewed on the local news
Mr. Morgan is the personification of concerned citizenship, and I believe him to be an honest person and a fair reporter of what he sees. But even if we accept Mr. Morgan’s testimony, we need not accept his diagnosis.
“It’s been difficult for Eagle Point to admit there’s a problem.”
As HUD summarized the sentiment:
The Blight study addresses interviews with [people] who suggest that criminal activity is tied to the fact that AB Apartments is a Project Based Section 8 property and that the best way to rid the crime problem is to ‘shut down the property.’
The ‘heat map’ doesn’t show Bainbridge as the epicenter of crime:
The hot spots appear west and northwest of Bainbridge
As the photo above shows, Bainbridge is in a red cluster, though it’s not the main problem. The shopping center west and north of Armour and the Gillham Street corridor both look like they are much more the trouble spots. So is the property the problem, are the community residents the problem, or are transient non-residents the problem? Or is the problem one of perception?
Even if the positive z-scores can be substantiated, the Blight Study focuses solely on AB Apartments and fails to address the specific z-scores of the other properties in the Planning Area that are not Project Based Section 8, while fully acknowledging that properties with positive z-scores in 2012 covered more than 59% of the 54-acre planning area
Look at this heat map from 2006:
Armour/ Gillham Corridor PIEA, total crime statistics
Crime was low in the Bainbridge’s immediate vicinity, probably because the Bainbridge was closed or under renovation. The shopping center and west Armour crime zones are hot, and most significantly, the GIllham Street corridor shows much less crime and crime concentration than it does in 2010-2012.
“The reopening of the Bainbridge Apartments had a tremendous impact on crime, both with respect to total crimes and violent crimes, as the z-scores made a dramatic jump beginning in 2008,” the study said.
That’s certainly true, as shown by the next heat map:
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Armour/ Gillham Corridor PIEA, total crime statistics
Bainbridge crime jumped; the shopping center’s crime rate cooled off; and the Gillham corridor, more than a mile from the Bainbridge, also showed a big jump in crime. But then Eagle Point improved its management:
Eagle Point Companies CEO Laura Burns said the company and its security contractor have been aggressive in controlling and reducing crime at the properties by checking IDs of all visitors and alerting police to those with outstanding arrest warrants; by having police officers accompany management staff on routine housekeeping inspections of apartments; and by working in other cooperative ways with local police.
Those hardly are the actions of a slumlord – especially as they have been working:
The study analysis indicated by 2012, however, the total crimes, which combines violent, property and ‘society’ crimes reported in the three buildings, had declined to where they were no longer hot spots. The Bainbridge itself, however, continued to be a hot spot for violent crime in 2012.
The HUD report slammed the blight study, saying it ignored its own analysis that there had been an overall drop in crime since Eagle Point began managing the three properties.
“An analysis of the z-scores used in the blight study shows an overall significant decrease in crime that is seemingly ignored, given that the sole basis for the recommendation of blight is crime,” HUD said.
As the HUD letter stated:
Bainbridge Apartments, corner of Armour and Campbell
Photograph taken from the Blight Study
The Blight Study does not address nor decipher police calls made outside the properties (e.g. on or near the street) for which Eagle Point has no control. Nor does the Blight Study adequately consider crime related to the bus stop, local convenience store, or similar locations, all of which presumably could contribute.
Is the problem then simply one of housing too many poor people all living together? And if so, what should and can be done about it?
Otto, I blame society. Society made me what I am.
5. The property is 100% low income and will stay that way … by Federal law
[In 2006] the neighborhood argued that it was unfair to them and the poor people living in the buildings to be concentrated, and that federal low-income housing should be scattered throughout the city.
That is an understandable position to take, and assuming that NIMBYism could somehow be neutralized it is absolutely the approach I would personally prefer to see taken. For better or worse, though, federal law generally requires that if an affordable property is foreclosed, any future resale or use must maintain the same number and income levels of poor people. HUD’s letter to the City Plan Commission made exactly that point, saying:
While HUD disagrees with the premise that criminal activity is tied to the HAP contact, if the City pursued eminent domain against Eagle Point, any subsequent owner would be required to maintain the property as affordable housing for low- and very low-income persons pursuant to various land use restrictions. [These restrictions] are binding on all successors and assigns until December 31, 2021.
Not only is there a binding legal requirement to maintain affordability, the requirement is rounded in a Federal statute, so almost no HUD official has the power to waive it.
“This has been going on for quite some time,” said Councilman Jim Glover, who represents the area. “The concentrations in those buildings and the accompanying problems happened before Eagle Point and have continued.”
Councilman Glover wants lower crime
HUD pointed out that 95% of the residents living in the apartments were African-American.
“A finding of blight based solely on a crime rate that has significantly decreased in recent years, and any subsequent action by the city based on the blight study, raises potential fair housing concerns given the demographics of the property,” the HUD statement said.
I really wish HUD wasn’t dragging race into the discussion, because to me it’s unhelpful either as evidence or as diagnostic. But this is exactly the Fair Housing Act expansion of ‘discrimination’ that HUD strove so mightily, one might even say desperately, to protect in Mount Holly.
“HUD is the villain here,” said Dave Scott, a Hyde Park resident. “HUD needs to be proactive about solving the problems they’ve created. Nobody believes the answer is to reduce the number of Section 8 housing, but most people working on this know 100% Section 8 is a bad idea.”
No argument – but where should they go? And are ‘those people’ the problem?
Does the neighborhood’s health depend on who moves in here?
[Continued tomorrow in Part 5.]