Willow Glen, California Since 1992
Opinion
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Blighters, I'm unwholesome and at risk, too By Deborah Taylor-Hollis I am blighted, slighted and apparently due to have my house sold out from under me. That is the consensus that any sane person must reach once they read the city of San Jose's blight ordinance. I have a side fence that is not complete, with chicken wire closing off the open space. We have weeds near our home on the railroad tracks, and there is some uneven concrete sidewalk. I have not enough pavement on my property, and my recycle bins are used for all kinds of toys and junk, which is plainly visible from the street, right next to my RV. The blight ordinance is part of the San Jose Redevelopment Agency's "next wave" - it has done such a good job with the industrial areas and our perfectly perfect downtown, they are now going out into the neighborhoods. Why would the city want to declare a neighborhood - your neighborhood - blighted, you ask? Well, therein lies the tale. The city lives to generate income. To generate income, the city needs to have things bringing in money. Income property generates more revenue than homes do. So time to get rid of some of those pesky homes. Neighborhoods that don't generate enough tax income are prime victims in the new development wars. Of course, in America, the only way you can deprive a person of his or her legal property is by the old "eminent domain" clause that states if a public works project is being held up by private property owners in the way, the feds or the state can buy the property out from under the owner at fair market value. This property clause has been used for dam projects, freeways and other public projects. San Jose, however, just used it to acquire the Tropicana Shopping Center from the owners. Yes, the center is a pigsty of design and care. But taking a man's property to give to a developer that will make money off it is just so wrong it squeaks. This is one of the first uses of eminent domain for a private company's profits I have been aware of, but I bet it won't be the last. All of this is being done under the auspices of the "Strong Neighborhoods Initiative," another smoke screen for fast times at the redevelopment agency. Using state health and safety code section 33030-33039 as its guidelines, the city has made a strong case against blight everywhere. To paraphrase the legalese, a blighted area can be an urban property that is not being properly utilized. It can also be property of depreciating or stagnating value. It can be a property with inadequate public parking. In short, blight can be anything that anyone wants it to be, since every line item in the code must be subjectively determined. The law, as it is written now, lets eminent domain run free, cleaning up "blight." San Jose code enforcement officials drove around and found Naglee Park to be a prime blight area, with properties that had overgrown vegetation, no landscaping, improper garbage can/recycling container storage, various fence heights, window bars, vehicles parked on unpaved surface, deteriorated driveways, broken or missing sidewalks, and no occupants. Same for the Rose Garden, Willow Glen, Almaden Valley. My house has almost all of these characteristics. City staff - in an effort to generate more income and give their development buddies redevelopment funds and gratuitous work - has found that neighborhoods are prime places for construction and have hired an outside "consultant" to assist them. Keyser Marston's web page claims it is "providing comprehensive advisory services to nearly 100 clients who are utilizing the redevelopment process as a tool to improve their communities. "KMA has expert knowledge of this process and guides clients to comply with the legal requirements it triggers. Services include: feasibility studies and blight analysis, full service plan adoptions, mergers and amendments, financial compliance and tax increment analysis, bond fiscal consultant reports, agency cash flow management consultation, SB 211 amendments, community services & PAC formation," among other things. The city just drives around making tick marks on a piece of paper showing that it has found blight, and the expensive consultants massage that data into whatever the redevelopment agency wants. Nice work, if you can get it. The folks that created sjblight.org, an informational website on the doings of the redevelopment agency, make a very good case for scrapping this entire program and starting over with a new board focused less on developers and more on owners' rights. I have to agree with them. My house could be sold out from under me. So could yours. Deborah Taylor Hollis can be contacted at DTHollis@svcn.com. |
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