LOCAL ANGLES: SUCCESSFUL BLOCK GRANT PROGRAM REBUTS CRITICS

As a reporter I covered the Cape Girardeau City Hall beat for almost five years. One of the most tiresome aspects of the job was the repeated assertion that the city ignores the older, poorer sections of Cape Girardeau while focusing infrastructure improvements and city planning in new developing areas to the north and west.

Unquestionably, the city has devoted a great deal of staff time and energy in meeting demands exacted by the rapid development along Interstate 55 and in residential subdivisions in northern Cape Girardeau. But it can hardly be shown that the city hasn't also focused efforts in south Cape Girradeau.

Perhaps the best example of the city's commitment to betterment in Cape Girardeau's older sections is the vigor in which officials have pursued and secured government grants for housing and other improvements.

Since Missouri began its involvement in the Community Development Block Grant program in 1982, Cape Girardeau has received five block grants for housing and street and drainage improvements. This week, the city was approved for its sixth such grant.

The total amount of all six grants is more than $3.4 million. That's a lot of money spent in an area that purportedly has long been ignored. Already nearly 150 houses have been renovated, 17 streets and two alleys have been paved with curbs and gutter, and more than 3,000 feet of sewer line has been repaired. The latest grant, a two-year program, will fund the rehabilitation of another 70 homes and replacement of 1,700 feet of water main.

Anyone who has read my views on government programs will know I'm generally not fond of them. Indeed, I can't think of a single government program I like. But there is a difference between a bad program that is mismanaged and wasteful, and one that is handled on a local level by competent officials.

Even someone who disdains government can see that on the local level, at least, government is more accountable. In Cape Girardeau's block grant program, the man who spearheads the program -- surveying blighted areas of town for the greatest rehabilitation needs, drafting grant applications, and managing the program once approved -- is Steve Williams.

Steve's more than a competent bureaucrat. He's compassionate enough to see needs, but tough enough to ensure that the help goes to those who won't abuse the system. You get the feeling from Williams that if it became wasteful and easily abused, he'd advocate abandoning the block grant program.

Take a walk down Benton Street near Hackberry and Hickory Streets. Or drive by some of the rehabilitated homes on College and Jefferson, near Henderson. What once were run-down, unsafe and unsanitary housing units now are well-kept and attractive homes.

For some reason the yards in these neighborhoods are better groomed. Debris that once was strewn about residential lots is no more.

Why? Well, for one thing, Williams isn't above haranguing the property owners seeking housing rehabilitation funds into first cleaning up their lots. The other reason the entire neighborhood improves through this program is plain old pride.

I should note that this program provides up to $12,000 to property owners to upgrade their homes. It's not a matching funds program, which requires up-front money from the homeowner. The only requirement is that the property owner meet the low- to moderate-income guidelines established by the state.

In other words, the block grant enables working folks, who have scrimped and saved to buy a house, to give their home a complete face lift. Many of these property owners have trouble affording maintenance on an older home, which is why the whole neighborhood tends to degrade. But when their old houses are transformed into new homes, the old Ford on blocks in the back yard stands out as an eyesore and is removed.

In the past couple of years, Williams has expanded the city's housing rehab program to include rental units, provided either the landlord or the tenants meet the income guidelines.

The result of his hard work, with the city council and city administration's full support, is not only improved housing stock in those areas of town that need it most, but a "trickle-down" pride among residents who see their neighborhoods converted from blighted to decent.

~Jay Eastlick is night editor at the Southeast Missourian.