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At last, joy in Riverless City this week at what — knock on wood — looks like a turnaround by Arco Realty, for 55 years a key player in Greensboro’s low-rent housing market.

With the clock ticking down to a Dec. 31 deadline for all rental units in the city to obtain a certificate of occupancy or face fines for landlords, readers were surprised to learn that the long-neglected apartments at Summit Avenue and East Cone Boulevard are under repair. The complex, owned by Arco’s Bill Agapion, has housed many refugees resettled here from Vietnam.

“I hope that this will bring about the change (residents) are looking for,” wrote Sister Gretchen Reintjes, a Catholic nun who has worked with Montagnard arrivals at the complex since the early ’90s.

“It seems that the young Agapion is going to do it. Marvelous.”

Irene Agapion-Palamaris, daughter of the Arco founder, pledged to move ahead with repairs and get all the units in compliance, as she already has with some of Arco’s single-family rentals. But given the drawn-out battle over the Heritage House apartments in particular, some were skeptical about whether the improvements would last.

“Give it a year, and they’ll be right back the way they were. Either that or they’ll raise the rent,” predicted Nancy Cavanaugh, an officer in the Brightwood Neighborhood Association who has lived on Summit for 37 years.

“This is a realty company that preys on a segment of the population with little voice and no funds. We say, tear (the complex) down and let someone else start over there.”

For the Summit Avenue corridor, a working-poor neighborhood that lacks sidewalks and only last week was approved for an extension of city bus service to Brightwood School Road, Heritage House has for decades been like a forbidding front doorstep.

It’s just that kind of ripple effect — what inspections supervisor Lori Loosemore calls “the bigger picture” — that code enforcers seek to reverse with the current campaign to get every unit inspected citywide.

“It can impact a lot of things, not just the house and the tenant,” Loosemore wrote. “It impacts tax values — which impact income for the city and county, sometimes crime in neighborhoods, the GPD and fire, and so much more.”

Live in the city and want to know if the place you rent is up to code? Call 373-2111 and make an appointment for an inspector to come out, whether or not you need repairs.

Loosemore said residents can expect a call back within a day, and an appointment within two days. If there is a language barrier, inspectors can help arrange an interpreter, or use the Language Line phone service.

Contact Lorraine Ahearn at 373-7334 or lorraine.ahearn@news-record.com