The Watchdog DAVE LIEBER
Lawmaker says area's new homes 'substandard'
State Rep. Marc Veasey is unhappy with 29 newly built shotgun-style homes in part of his district. He is considering filing a bill related to minimum housing standards... The homes look exactly alike. The front exteriors are brick, but olive-green siding covers the backs and sides. One long side of each home has no windows... The yards are mostly dirt and weeds...The builder, Don Livingston, tells The Watchdog that the homes meet the city's minimum standards...He says the lawns are not complete, so it is too early to judge, but he has no plans to lay sod. Livingston says he didn't install windows along one side of the houses "because when you are building the houses, people will steal the windows."

Lawmaker says area's new homes 'substandard'
DAVE LIEBER
The Watchdog

   

STAR-TELEGRAM/RON T. ENNIS

State Rep. Marc Veasey is unhappy with 29 newly built shotgun-style homes in part of his district. He is considering filing a bill related to minimum housing standards.

You might think that state Rep. Marc Veasey, D-Fort Worth, would have an easier time than most getting answers from Fort Worth City Hall.

Not so.

The state legislator says he has tried since February to learn if 29 new houses built in the Stop Six neighborhood, which he represents, conform to city housing standards.

Veasey calls the homes substandard and an eyesore. The shotgun-style houses, situated on three neighboring streets, look more like long barracks on an old army base than new housing in a neighborhood trying to come back from decades of neglect.

The homes look exactly alike. The front exteriors are brick, but olive-green siding covers the backs and sides. One long side of each home has no windows. There's no garage or carport. The yards are mostly dirt and weeds.

Veasey said he is frustrated with how long it is taking him to get answers from the city on "whether or not these can even be built."

He's not the only one complaining. Regina Blair, president of the Stop Six Sunrise Edition Neighborhood Association, says she is irate about the homes, calling them "poor development" and adding, "Nobody wants to look at that."

And the Rev. Elvis Edwards, whose New Harvest Community Church is across the street from 13 of the homes, says the structures are symptomatic of a dysfunctional system in which few people seem to care about lifting the social dynamics of a troubled neighborhood. He says he fears the homes will attract renters who could bring more crime to the area.

The builder, Don Livingston, tells The Watchdog that the homes meet the city's minimum standards. Fort Worth housing officials agree. They also say they have recently made changes that will prevent similar home construction from occurring in most cases.

Complaints about eyesore homes constructed in older neighborhoods are nothing new. What makes this different is that the chief complainant is a state lawmaker who now threatens to use these homes as an example to show what is wrong with the home-building industry in Texas.

Veasey has met with state and area leaders of the home-builders lobby. He says he is anxious to introduce legislation that would tighten regulations on their industry.

"I want to try to pass some sort of legislation that would make people who don't know how to build your basic, standard-quality homes unable to build in the state of Texas," Veasey says.

Four-bedroom rentals

Livingston, a 37-year-old independent builder who lives in northeast Fort Worth, says the homes he built along Carol Avenue and Anderson and Dillard streets fulfill a need in that community. More-expensive homes could not get sold, he maintains.

The homes, he says, are 1,200 square feet with four bedrooms, a kitchen, a living area, a laundry area and two full baths. Renters face background checks, he says.

Livingston is selling the homes to out-of-town investors. "I've never met them face to face," he says.

Land records show that the houses have been sold to investors who live in Allen, Dallas, Carrollton and Lewisville.

A management company rents the homes to families for $850 a month, he says. He estimates the homes are valued at $90,000 to $100,000. The first of the homes have appraised values around $78,000, county tax records show.

"That development was not built with aesthetics in mind," Livingston says. "These houses are functional."

He says the lawns are not complete, so it is too early to judge, but he has no plans to lay sod. The city doesn't require that he do so.

Each driveway contains space for two cars. Fort Worth zoning does not require a garage or carport, city officials say. Fort Worth also does not require that houses be a minimum size. Arlington, in contrast, requires new homes to be at least 1,500 square feet and built with brick, stone or other masonry. Two-car garages are also required.

In Fort Worth, the rules were recently changed so that the exterior of new homes must contain at least 50 percent brick, stone or other acceptable masonry.

Livingston says he didn't install windows along one side of the houses "because when you are building the houses, people will steal the windows."

He says he built the houses alike because "the more you can streamline everything, the more affordable the house is." Streamlining allows him to "buy in bulk."

Fort Worth has also changed the rules so that no two adjacent homes in larger developments such as this can look the same, city development director Bob Riley said.

When I told Livingston that the state lawmaker had called his homes "substandard," the builder angrily replied that it was unfair for anybody to "refer to this development as substandard, since it meets the minimum building code requirements for the city of Fort Worth. ... They can call it ugly, aesthetically offensive, et cetera. That is simply their opinion, and they are free to express it."

Building up expectations

When Blair, president of the neighborhood association, heard that the builder said he felt he had to build low-cost housing because he didn't believe he could sell higher-quality homes, she responded that the poor "already have enough poor development that they can reside in now." She says she takes seriously President Bush's goal to bring affordable owner-occupied housing to all.

"You don't build for people in Stop Six," she says. "You build for people to move to Stop Six."

Edwards of New Harvest church says there is enough blame to be shared by all: "The Fort Worth housing officials dropped the ball. The neighborhood association is just now organizing. And, definitely, the churches and the pastors in the neighborhood should have had some kind of co-op that would prevent this.

"If you want to get your neighborhood back to make it a neighborhood and not a hood, churches and pastors must work together to help the city."

Riley says he is sorry that the legislator feels his questions were not properly answered. E-mails and letters sent by Veasey and his staff received short answers by city staffers, but some were not answered, according to a review by The Watchdog.

"I can understand his point," Riley says. "I guess we need to work on communicating with his office in a more clear and direct manner."

When Veasey looks at the 29 homes, he says he sees all that is wrong with the lawmaking process in Austin.

"In almost any issue in the Legislature," he says, "it always seems that the businesses, the corporations and the money crowd come before the people. This is a perfect example where the people need to come first."

News researcher Marcia Melton contributed to this report.