Communities First

This is my neighborhood. I moved here two years ago, purchasing an abandoned HUD home and significantly renovating it. Ownership vs rental is probably now around 24 to 4 respectively. This is a working class neighborhood and most adults are working or looking for work. There are 2 or 3 households headed by a single adult. Children here play together and their parents quite often chat back and forth as they watch their children at play. There is positive interaction among neighbors and helpful gift giving back and forth in care of their children and support for one another.

Art work and music is evident with a smorgasbord of cultural flavors, historic and contemporary genres being evident.

In this neighborhood, neighbors deposit a house key with their neighbor so that they can help each other if one is absent for a short while. Neighbors share goods and services; My neighbor uses my snow blower, she puts gas in it. I use another neighbors tiller and on occasion a power tool. Gift giving is common and frequent.

Harriet Tubman:
This is Jerry’s neighborhood. He’s been there over a year. His neighborhood is 100% rental and all low income (all below the poverty line).  This is a second, third and fourth generation welfare community. Hardly anyone goes to work on a daily basis. Every apartment here is headed by a single head of household – few, if any exceptions. Children here are almost always outside, playing together, and often unsupervised. Parents seem to mistrust or disrespect each other in their parenting practices and finger pointing, blaming, and gossip are common with escalating problems among neighbors.

In this neighborhood a city employee comes to cut the lawns (if you can call them that), and the landscape is largely barren of color and plant life.

Having the latest, or the loudest art or music seems more important than the enjoyment of the artist.

In this neighborhood if a neighbor is gone, she better have big and solid locks, because the house will be broken into and goods stolen if they are not locked up tightly. Chances are a resident will be robbed even if there is a lock if no  additional security is added.

In this neighborhood you are on likely to be “on your own” in the event you need something or someone. Being “on your own” is actually an invitation to being abused or taken advantage of in some way. Vulnerabilities are exploited not protected.

Jerry is an AmeriCorps volunteer working with CFA. He voluntarily moved into his neighborhood to increase gift giving among residents, to encourage residents to act on what they care about, to bring shalom. It is slow going, very slow; After more than a year,  Jerry is still trying to discover if they care about anything! Maybe it is not reasonable for one person to act alone as a change agent among so many “entitled” residents who have checked out on personal responsibility?  Maybe solutions lie more in renegotiating occupancy in the neighborhood with a healthy mix of low, middle and upper income folks, a healthy ratio of renters and owners?