Untapped “Gold Mine” — Merit of Rehabilitating Old House Unrecognizable to Most Blacks

Historical reprint: Joe Roberts, Business/Real Estate Editor, The Kansas City Star, Sunday, December 3, 1978; reproduced in The Paper, March 1979. Racial generalizations, housing opinions and survey interpretations are attributed period statements, not independently established findings about Hamilton or its pupils. A repeated printed passage is presented once, preserving its full substance.

Most big cities have hundreds of old homes that can be rehabilitated into “dream houses.” but such dwellings are not dream houses for most blacks.

“There is no doubt about it. a great number of blacks want to leave the city,” Joe Louis Mattox, owner and operator of Addis Professional Management, said recently. He emphasized that most blacks do not view old houses as “dream houses.”

Mattox prefaced his comment by observing that “the ‘dream house’ of most Americans. both black and white, is a single-family home. The average cost of a single-family home in a nice neighborhood is about $40,000, with a down payment of $2,000 (Kansas City inner-city resale area). This being the case, can people (especially young couples) who are tired of renting afford to buy a single-family home?”

The answer, he continued, is in the November issue of Apartment Life magazine, which says: “Yes, you can own your own dream house and not:

• “Leave the city.

• “Go broke

• “Take big risks.

• “Settle for a cracker box.

• “Be the lone pioneer on the block.”

The answer is rehabbing (rehabilitation).

“We’ve come a long way . . .

“As recently as the late 1960s, rehabbing had no place in the nation’s vocabulary. Urban renewal. a euphemism for bulldozing the old and building from scratch, was the conventional wisdom for making our cities livable again. And even by the early 1970s. you were a loner, a frontiersman, if you said: ‘Restore, don’t replace.’

“Today the trailbreaker has become a settler, not the odd man out. but part of a community of strong-spirited, determined people who have taken the old houses in the city and made them homes.

“Is there a market for older homes, and do urban residents like living in the city?” Mattox asked. In older white neighborhoods such as Hyde Park and Westport in Kansas City, there is a strong market for older homes.” he continued. “However in the older black neighborhoods such as the 12th-18th and Vine district. and the Santa Fe area, there is little demand for older homes.

Old homes are not ‘dream houses’ for most blacks. Some of my friends comment:

• ” ‘I don’t want to buy and fix up an old house, because I lived in one all of my life.’

• ” ‘An old house means high utility bills—water pipes are rusty and corroded, the wiring is bad, and the old-time furnaces are gas guzzlers.’

• ” ‘A lot of older homes have easement driveways and this causes problems with neighbors.’

• ” ‘Only rich whites can afford to buy and live in a landmark.’

• ‘My furniture and things won’t go with an old house.

“If you exclude the black side of town, the ‘back-to-the-city’ movement would seem to indicate that the ‘age of nostalgia’ is causing a lot of people to fall in love with the city and stay put. Not necessarily so.”

Mattox referred to a published survey taken by the Gallup Organization Inc. in the last quarter of 1977 which indicated 36 percent of the total urban population would ‘like to leave the city, and 49 percent of those between the ages of 18 and 34 and 40 percent of those with a college education want to leave.

Why did they want to leave? Lack of amenities, a perceived deterioration in the quality of urban life, high crime rates, overcrowding, uncleanliness, poor housing and pollution. The sampling was of 3,242 adult women and men in cities with more than 50,000 population.

The ideal neighborhood and the ideal city emerging differed in characteristics. The ideal city had low crime, little congestion and cleanliness, while the ideal neighborhood included friendly people, good housing, a quiet atmosphere, as well as low crime and cleanliness.

Because the survey did not state specifically that urban blacks were polled. Mattox sought to determine if blacks want to leave the city and, if so. why. He took the findings of the survey—a collaborative project of the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation of Flint, Mich.. and the Kettering Foundation—and presented them to black realtors here. Was the 36 percent figure higher or lower for the large number of blacks who want to leave the city? A cross section of the replies noted:

• The findings in the survey speak for a lot of blacks.

• About 50 percent of the urban black population, especially those between the ages of 25 to 50 and with family incomes exceeding $16,000, want to leave the city. It’s hard to sell these blacks older homes in the inner city. Middle-income blacks are looking for ‘dream homes’ in the suburbs.

Some of the reasons Mattox found “upward mobility” blacks want to leave the city:

• Black-on-black crime. People are afraid to leave home to go to church. the store or even work. Houses. get robbed. women get raped and nobody sees anything. Most of the homes in the inner city look like jail houses— they have bars on every window and door.

• Too many unemployed youths— they steal for a living.

• Inferior schools—children can’t learn anything.

• Prices for consumer goods and services are cheaper in the suburbs.

• Limited selection of consumer goods and services. Most of the shopping centers. first-run movies and bowling alleys and neighborhood shops have fled the inner city.

• Poor municipal services. Weeds on vacant lots don’t get cut. Trash people do half a job picking up trash. Streets don’t get repaired.

• The good jobs have moved to the suburbs. Commuting long distances back and forth to work costs money and makes getting to work on time “a pain.”

• Redlining. It’s difficult to get a loan to buy, build or fix up a house in the inner city.

• Not enough people take pride in their neighborhood. A lot of streets look like hell and nobody cares.

• Many low-income people, especially the elderly, can’t afford to keep up their property: because of this well-maintained homes are devalued.

• No hope for many areas. The city or the federal government doesn’t have enough money to save some neighborhoods.

• Abandoned buildings. Nothing is done about junk cars, run-down houses and dangerous vacant buildings.

“A great number of blacks don’t ‘love’ their neighborhoods,” Mattox said. “Why? Here are

some of the reasons people I know have said:

• ” ‘I have no roots to the area. I wasn’t born and raised around here— my church is across town. All of my friends have moved out and I don’t trust my neighbor’s children or any of their friends.’

• ” ‘My neighborhood is a bad place—everybody says so. The police say it’s a high crime area. City Hall labels it a poverty-program district— all the people living around here are on welfare, low-income, poor, and down and out. Insurance companies have written off the area. Taxis won’t come or go here. Delivery men and their repair people rush in and rush out.’

• ‘You can’t love something that looks like hell. I am ashamed of my neighborhood. Unkempt lawns, stoves and refrigerators out on the porches, broken-down cars and rugs in the front yards, window screens and storm doors hanging off the houses and dirty streets (attributed in part to oil slicks and untied trash bags) make my block look bad.’

• ” ‘You can’t love and be afraid of a place at the same time. Crime in my part of town is out of hand—the streets aren’t safe. People around here will come right up in your yard and steal your mail and newspapers. You have to nail down everything and can’t leave anything in your car. I want to take a vacation—no way. They’d steal me blind if I went around the block.’

• ” ‘Continuous problems with bad kids. Welfare mothers won’t control kids. They let them play In the street, sit on your car, break windshields and steal hubcaps. You try to talk sense to a 10-year-old in this neighborhood, and you get cursed out. People on my block don’t raise their kids, they just let them grow up.’

• ” ‘Can’t get along with inconsiderate neighbors.’

• ” ‘All my friends, all the decent people, have moved.’

• ” ‘It was never a place I really wanted to live in.’

• ” ‘Public agencies don’t care about the area. Their buildings look as bad and are as poorly maintained as those of people on welfare.’

• ” ‘Nobody loves the area, why should I?’ ”

Mattox suggests that the way to get blacks to like old houses is for black preservationists to double efforts to get inner-city residents to realize that old houses are “gold mines” and that they should participate in the preservation of sites. buildings and objects significant in history and culture.

“In order to get inner-city residents to love their old houses, black preservationists will need a lot of help from white preservationists,” Mattox said. “Very few blacks know preservation’s three R’s—restore, rehabilitate or recycle. And there are additional words in the vocabulary of rehabilitation which have obscure implications to many blacks, he said. They include refinish, refurbish, repair, reuse, rebuild, re-create,. redesign, reconstruct. remodel, renovate, revitalize. reproduce. replace. reclaim, rejuvenate, retrieve, renew, revive, rework, refit, retrofit, rehouse, redevelop, relocate, remember, revamp, remake, reinvest, reopen, replicate and rezone. How does one get blacks to want to stay in the city and love their neighborhoods?

The answer, Mattox said, is a comprehensive, save-the-cities urban policy and program that will improve both the quality of the environment and the nation’s communities and the lives of their residents.

“If cities are to remain our major centers of commerce and culture and nice places to live, and not become poor peoples’ reservations on the plains, we will need realistic urban policies and adequately funded programs which will deal with unemployment and crime—there is a connection. Such programs also would deal with the strengthening of neighborhoods to stimulate pride for the place where one lives. They would help schools provide quality education. curb redlining, improve municipal services, revitalize downtowns as well as the corner and strip shopping areas in the inner city. and give tax breaks to big businesses, encouraging them to stay and relocate in the inner city,” Mattox said.

“The programs also should make inner-city housing available for moderate-income blacks—$1 houses for upper-income blacks would be a good program. (The $1 house for low-income people program is failing.)

Mattox suggested: “Blacks may want to stay in the city if black leaders, and especially black real estate people, echo the words of Mayor Tom Bradley of Los Angeles, who said: ‘Land and property in the inner city and ghetto are the richest turfs in this nation. Many individuals and interests outside of the area are seeking that land and property. Don’t abandon it.’

Mattox is a certified property manager. so designated by the Institute of Real Estate Management, an affiliate of the National Association of Realtors. He is a former director of relocation and property management for the Land Clearance for Redevelopment Authority of Kansas City. a former director of the housing allowance program and property management for the Housing Development Corp., and has served two terms as a member of the Landmarks Commission.

Originally published in The Paper, March 1979.

Read this article in the original newspaper issue.

Original source: SD_Times1979_03.pdf, printed page(s) 6; PDF page(s) 6.