Home Makeover, West Allis Style

By Joe Grundle

The east side of West Allis looks spiffier since the city increased building exterior inspections five years ago.

While inspectors began their second lap of first and second district properties in February, they are expecting to find much less wrong this time around. That’s due to the success of the Property Maintenance Inspection Program, which West Allis established in 2001 using federal community development block grant money.

The goal was to enforce the city’s exterior building codes proactively through scheduled inspections rather than wait for individual complaints. This meant that all building facades on the east side, from single-family houses and duplexes to multifamily complexes, had to be brought up to a level of respectability, both structurally and in appearance.

In the program’s first year, city inspectors found 370 properties with abandoned vehicles and required 60 new garage facades. After five years, the city has completed inspections on more than 7,600 properties in the two participating districts.

“There were some garages where you didn’t know what was holding them up,” said First District Alderman Michael J. Czaplewski. “Truthfully, duplexes are more of a problem than multifamily.”

In 2000, Czaplewski and Building Inspection and Zoning Director Ted Atkinson attended a conference in Minneapolis to learn what mechanisms other communities were using to spruce up their neighborhoods. What they found was that while West Allis’ problems were not as serious as other locales around the country, there was plenty of room for improvement and a way to make it happen.

So the city hired two inspectors whose job is to walk around and assess the exterior of properties, including houses, porches and garages, and inform owners of required maintenance when violations are discovered.

“The first thing Ted and I had to decide was how far we wanted to go with this, and we settled on inspectors simply checking to see how properties look,” Czaplewski said. “There were so many little things – people parking in their back yards and leaving mud ruts, peeling paint on trim, dangerous porches. It wasn’t all total neglect, but a lot of ‘I’m going to get to it’ attitudes.”

Informed property owners

Basically, the inspectors cracked the whip on property owners, making them do today what they were putting off until tomorrow.

“Before this, we were using the typical method of reacting to complaints, and that does not get you out there,” said Atkinson, who noted residents were warned about visiting inspectors. “We did a really good job of letting owners know we were coming.”

Czaplewski was surprised at the program’s overwhelmingly positive response, which he chalked up to most owners caring about their houses and neighborhoods but not wanting to rat out neighbors to see improvements made.

“I’ve been hearing from people, ‘We’ve got to keep this going,’” he said. “The majority of people take pride in their neighborhoods. Some don’t care, which is sad, but if there was no program, things would get too bad, and then you’re taking the bulldozer to it.

“This helps the whole area.”

According to Czaplewski, unlike some cities that demand violations be fixed in a few days or they will do it and charge the property owner, the West Allis program is flexible with deadlines so owners can do the work themselves. There is also an appeals board where owners can dispute violations filed by inspectors.

Atkinson said one of the program’s successes has been narrowing the gap in property value increases between the city’s west and east sides, which had grown to around 8 percent by 2000, thereby stabilizing the West Allis tax base.

The program was so effective in improving Czaplewski’s district that the city added the second district to the program in 2004 upon request. It now covers most of West Allis’s northeast side — east of South 84th Street and north of West Arthur Avenue. Atkinson said aldermen in the city’s other three districts inquired about further expanding the program; however, an additional funding source for more inspectors is needed to do so.

“The east side has smaller lots and more houses so it needs it more, although it probably should be done citywide,” Czaplewski said.

The city is wrapping up its first sweep of the two districts and is already undergoing a follow-up effort to keep properties up to code. Atkinson said he was surprised at how quickly structures can fall out of compliance.

“We discovered that property maintenance is a continual problem, and it takes an investment from the city to stay ahead of it,” said Atkinson.

(c) 2007 Daily Reporter (Milwaukee). Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.