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Homeowners to pay $20 a year to insure values

Wednesday, July 03, 2002

By Timothy McNulty, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

Pittsburgh City Council approved the city's first neighborhood improvement district yesterday, a tax-supported program in 12 West End communities that would attempt to insure local property values.

	Alice Nixon of Fairywood attended yesterday's City Council meeting to argue against a neighborhood improvement district, a tax-supported program in 12 West End communities that would attempt to insure local property values. Critics called the program undemocratic, expensive and confusing, but council members approved it in a 6-3 vote. (John Beale, Post-Gazette)

The concept is similar to business improvement districts in Downtown and Oakland, in which business owners pay extra property taxes to fund maintenance and promotion of their areas.

The new plan -- and new tax of $20 annually -- will begin Jan. 1, should Mayor Tom Murphy sign the legislation as expected.

Here is how the program works: More than 8,000 homeowners in the 12 West End neighborhoods will pay a mandatory $20 each year. They can also pay a voluntary $125 fee to have their homes appraised. The money will be pooled in an insurance fund to protect home values.

After five years, if an owner sells his home and the sales price drops below the appraisal, he will be paid the difference between the appraisal and the sales price. If the sales price is greater, the home seller gets nothing from the insurance fund. In the meantime, homeowners will be required to maintain their properties, to avoid fraud.

The program, called the West End Home Assurance Value program, or WE-HAV, attempts to give all homeowners incentive to maintain their properties. It is patterned after a similar program implemented in a Chicago neighborhood.

The neighborhoods included in the district are Chartiers City, Crafton Heights, East Carnegie, Elliott, Esplen, Fairywood, Oakwood, Ridgemont, Sheraden, West End, Westwood and Windgap.

The program will be run by a nine-member commission to be named by City Council, and administered daily by the nonprofit West Pittsburgh Partnership.

Critics have long called the program undemocratic, expensive and confusing, and legislation creating it has languished in City Council since last year.

Public comment in favor and against the plan continued yesterday, taking up nearly an hour of council's session.

Opponents like Mary Klinkner, who has lived in Fairywood for 51 years, said city government is to blame for falling home values in the area, since it owns many dilapidated properties.

"This is not my problem, it's yours. Deal with it," she told council.

But supporters like Ken Unice, a 28-year-old environmental engineer from Crafton Heights, said the plan was necessary to keep young people and their wage taxes from leaving the city.

"I don't see WE-HAV as a conspiracy. I see it as a tool," he said.

Alan Hertzberg, the Westwood councilman who has long pushed the legislation and absorbed much community criticism of it, challenged critics to find another way to guard property values.

"I have not heard one realistic alternative suggestion for dealing with this problem, a problem which around the country is a disease. ... I'm asking residents to be bold, step out, and try something new," he said.

The final vote was 6-3, with Twanda Carlisle, Jim Ferlo and Sala Udin voting "no." Ferlo and Udin said residents were not sufficiently informed about the program.

Critics vowed angrily after the vote to keep fighting the program, perhaps by challenging the taxation method in court.