Oak Ridge Today

Oak Ridge officials reconsider residential rental inspections

Posted at
By Leave a Comment

Rental Property in Manhattan District Overlay

Rental properties in the Manhattan District Overlay could be registered and regularly inspected under a proposal being considered by Oak Ridge officials. The rental properties are pictured in red above. (Image courtesy of Oak Ridge city staff)

Oak Ridge officials are reconsidering a proposal that would allow them to inspect rental homes as part of a program to combat property blight and substandard housing.

It’s been considered before and the Oak Ridge City Council has approved an ordinance establishing the program, but it’s never been implemented, Oak Ridge Community Development Director Kathryn Baldwin said Monday.

Now, the city staff has proposed expanding the program from the Highland View neighborhood to the larger Manhattan District Overlay, which includes Highland View and a swath of properties north of Oak Ridge Turnpike from East Drive in east Oak Ridge to Bryn Mawr Circle in west Oak Ridge. The MDO also includes properties in the Woodland, Scarboro, and Burnham Woods neighborhoods. [Read more…]

Guest column: Concept paper concerning a housing policy for Oak Ridge

Posted at
By 4 Comments

By Pat Fain and Leslie Agron

Today Oak Ridge has a default housing policy that begins and ends with two modest grants from Housing and Urban Development consisting of objectives decided internally by city staff. Input from the public has been minimal at best, despite HUD requirements to hold public input meetings. These were held, minimally advertised and sparsely attended. In the past, these objectives were then approved by Oak Ridge City Council without holding Council work sessions to discuss real needs or creative solutions for those needs.

This year and this month, Council will begin an open and (hopefully) far-reaching discussion for a well-thought-out response to community concerns and the need to protect the tax base of the city from further erosion resulting from the deterioration of a significant portion of the housing built before 1945. This paper is to offer ideas and alternate thinking as the City Council proceeds to contemplate the path ahead. [Read more…]

Guest column: Woolly housing adelgids invade Oak Ridge

Posted at
By 35 Comments

By Pat Fain and Leslie Agron

In Nimes, France, there is a 2,000-year-old Roman coliseum. For 500 years in the Middle Ages, thousands of people lived their lives within the walls of the coliseum, and in modern times it has hosted rock concerts and safely seated nearly 15,000 people.

Yet at less than 75 years of age, Oak Ridge has the blight. Woolly housing adelgids, no doubt. [Read more…]

Guest column: A tale of two cities

Posted at
By 10 Comments

By Leslie Agron and Pat Fain

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…” Oak Ridge is on the cusp of a renaissance; Oak Ridge is in its worst-ever financial shape. Despite the looming risk of the guillotine for questioning the conventional wisdom here, we want to examine where Oak Ridgers are coming from when they speak of our future. To do this we, conveniently, will compare these possible futures for Oak Ridge with two present day Tennessee cities: Farragut and Chattanooga.

Farragut is a place most Oak Ridgers are fairly familiar with. It is mostly new and upscale. It tends toward sprawl and toward heavily developed strips, but has no real heart. It has low taxes, but is not a full-service city. Chattanooga is an older city with a downtown and outlying neighborhoods of varying ages. It is a full-service city with commensurate taxes. Chattanooga has done an outstanding job of revitalizing some of its older neighborhoods. The neighborhood in the vicinity of its Aquarium is particularly noteworthy in this regard.

[Read more…]