Are you proud of your neighborhood? Do you feel safe on the streets at night? Are the schools good? Local businesses booming?
If you can't answer "yes" to all of these questions, Love Your Neighborhood can help. This book details a still-unfolding success story--a working model for citizens wondering how to love their neighborhood enough to actively improve it. It gives the principles and practical applications to help change an undesirable neighborhood into a thriving community.
Make a difference…and Love Your Neighborhood!
Simple Beginnings
In the early 1980s, members of my neighborhood started asking for the City’s help. Growth around an abandoned house was so thick that the house wasn’t visible from the street. Locals referred to it as the jungle house.
The city was not responsive; they weren’t prepared to enforce grass cutting around houses. This was creating problems in our community.
Some of us worked to encourage community members to keep their grass cut and homes neat, but it felt like the city was working against us. Numerous complaints to the city and health department also went unnoticed after the neighbors complained of rats breeding in the underbrush around the house.
At the time, I was a retired US Postal Service employee and founder of our local community association. I found it frustrating to have the jungle house in my neighborhood.
Finally, a manager of the city health department acknowledged that the house was a special problem, one his department could not ignore. He indicated that he had a request for court action on his desk. He said the health department tried to take action 9 months earlier but had been unable to locate the owner.
An attorney representing the owners of the house said that the family was scattered and that he would have someone out there to clean it up and pay for it out of his own pocket.
The house, however, was just one of many problems we, the residents of the neighborhood, were facing. Another was crime. Burglary.
Back then I knew that crime is everyone’s problem, and I believed that the neighborhood could rid itself of a lot of crime if the people were organized and looked out for each other.
As part of its looking out, our association made plans to institute a 24-hour volunteer patrol. Another plan included a neighborhood watch.
At that time, I agreed with Police Director E. Winslow Chapman that crime is a people problem—not a police problem. If a criminal knows somebody is watching, he isn’t as liable to commit a crime.
For me, who moved to Bethel Grove in 1969, the efforts to keep Bethel Grove from becoming a slum neighborhood were two-fold: a constant fight with the city’s bureaucracy; and an influx of first-time homeowners.
What a lot of people didn’t understand was that most of the people moving into our neighborhood didn’t know how to maintain their property. They wanted to maintain their yards, but simply didn’t know how. A lot of homes were more than 50 years old, and many of these first time homeowners didn’t realize they’d have so many home repairs to pay for, assuming, of course, they had the money to pay for them. There were also a lot of rental properties in Bethel Grove.
By 1978, I was tired of watching Bethel Grove deteriorate.
Synopsis
Are you proud of your neighborhood? Do you feel safe on the streets at night? Are the schools good? Local businesses booming?
If you can't answer "yes" to all of these questions, Love Your Neighborhood can help. This book details a still-unfolding success story--a working model for citizens wondering how to love their neighborhood enough to actively improve it. It gives the principles and practical applications to help change an undesirable neighborhood into a thriving community.
Make a difference…and Love Your Neighborhood!
About the Author
Albert Crawford
President, CEO and Organizer Airways/Lamar Business Association Accomplishments: brought together (organized) a diverse group of businesses, civic, community, church, and government entities, creating an infrastructure for meaningful industrial development in an urban setting.
President and Organizer: Bethel Grove Community Organization
The median household income nearly doubled, the home ownership increased, the dilapidation rate of homes decreased. Between the 1980 and 1990 census it was projected that the neighborhood would be in the decline during that period of my leadership - that forecast did not come true.
John West
John R. West is principal, Q S West, an international management consulting company.
John has many years experience in management and consulting in customer service and quality with emphasis on leadership, measurement, planning, human resource management, process management, customer satisfaction, and getting results. This includes working with large and small business, government agencies, and education. He has also worked as a community development volunteer for several years, helping to put quality principles into practice.
John's experience includes full time consulting in the United States, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. He has developed and conducted community leadership and planning workshops.
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Love Your Neighborhood
by John West and Albert Crawford
