Abandoned Housing Blight on City Neighborhoods

Abandoned Housing Blight on City Neighborhoods

In a February assessment, residents of the Bates Hendricks neighborhood on the near south side discovered that 170 of the 1500 homes in their neighborhood were either abandoned or vacant. This survey was the first step in a grassroots initiative – No House Left Behind - to aggressively address the worst of these properties and galvanize city and non-profit efforts.

On Monday, March 2nd, from 6:30 – 8:00 p.m., the Bates Hendricks Neighborhood Association, through a generous grant from IMAGINE, is sponsoring an Abandoned Housing Forum at the Immanuel United Church of Christ at the corner of East and Prospect. The forum will introduce the initiative and gather resident input.

"No House Left Behind" involves identifying every vacant or abandoned house in the Bates Hendricks neighborhood, highlighting the thirty worst properties, developing strategies to address them, and establishing a crime and safety program to monitor the remaining properties.

At the forum:

• The Resident Assessment Team will list the addresses of every vacant and abandoned house in our neighborhood, report on how many violations for each property, reveal the status of these properties, and show pictures of the thirty worst properties.

• Sherron Franklin, from the Mayor's Office, and Duane Ingram from the Land Bank will discuss the strategies the City is using to address abandoned housing.

• Julie Beaubien, Vice President of Southeast Neighborhood Development, will discuss strategies to rehabilitate housing.

• A crime and safety initiative which allows neighbors to monitor abandoned housing with motion sensors will be introduced and the first thirty participants will be recruited.

• There will be an opportunity to ask questions and suggest solutions.

For more information, please contact BHNA President, Jim Mulholland, at 636-5096 or jimangie80@juno.com.