The House Issue

Been having a lot of meetings lately about the vacant and abandoned housing issue.  It could be that it's just me, but it seems as if there is an agenda for the city its task force.  It bothers me that the task force meetings that are "open to the public" aren't advertised and they aren't being completely forthcoming with their data.

I think this is a great opportunity for Transforming Action through Power  to step up and make this an issue.  To that end I have attended a couple meetings of the city and Wendy is helping with that.  We are lacking information regarding the location of the abandoned houses and what the city's ultimate agenda is, but we are moving forward.

To appropriately address this issue we are going to have to build community and neighborhood resources.  Each house or group of houses is specific to the location and there are different needs for each locale.  The only way a response can be formulated is on a case-by-case basis, which is in direct opposition to what Wendy calls the city's data driven model.

Spoke with Ryan Yazel today who told me about the down sides of simply tearing the house down.  The lot across from his house has become a dumping ground for the community.  Because of the location there is little to be done to remedy the situation.  Clearly, response to the abandoned houses needs to be on an individual basis based on neighborhood input.

Community Garden Party

 The garden gang

 Saturday was the organizational meeting of the community garden initiative.  Pat wasn't optimistic, but he was proven wrong.  We had a good turnout and there is hope to add even more to this venture.

This is the group!  I was really excited by our meeting on Saturday.  We have a good group of highly invested people from the neighborhood.  Even more than that, these folks want to meet again next month because they know of several more people who would like to be involved in the garden effort.  Many of those present have experience with gardening and LaRena, the woman behind the big book, is a master gardener.  This is gonna be great.

We surveyed the site and talked about next steps, of which there are many.  We hope to get some roto-tilling done before the freeze and even talked about building some beds so we're ready for summer.  Valerie stepped up to be the secretary and Sydney is willing to be one of the storytellers.  Gene had said that he would be another story teller, but he couldn't be at this meeting.

We discussed the future plans for this group and talked about creating a neighborhood association.  I thought there would be a lot of resistance to that idea, but people were on-board.  I believe God has blessed this group and our purpose.  There's a lot to do and we pray for ongoing good weather in which we can complete those activities.