Win-win

Today's NY Times real estate section features "Apartment Living, Home Schooling"

"By day, Baldwin Village is a pleasant Los Angeles neighborhood of two-story apartment buildings, most of them with metal gates and lushly planted courtyards. By night, residents say, the neighborhood is anything but lovely. When George Pino and Joe Killinger, a pair of real estate investors, began buying buildings in the neighbrohood, eight miles southwest of downtown L.A., in 2003, the police asked them to trim their shribery so that drug deaklers would have fewer places to hide. ... Now, in two of their buildings, the partners operate resource centers where the children play educational games. The centers are operated by teachers who arrive at 3:30 p.m. and stay until 6 p.m. each weekday.

"In an neighborhood where vacancy rates average about 5 percent, the partners said, the vacancy rate in their five buildings, which have a total of 104 units, is about 1 percent."

I have heard of experiments like this before and they make great sense. Renters and landlords (and buyers and sellers) have a common interest. It is old hat -- if the zoners and the educators will just let it be.