Pastors’ group forms to target blight in Bethlehem (Jackson, Martin: houses, neighborhood)

[Airforceguy]

I hope this group is able to make some positive changes for the area. I think if they are able to get a handle on the illegal dumping and the city's effort with the Laney Walker-Bethlehem redevelopment bear more fruit, this area will have a bright future.

The area suffers from persistent illegal dumping that continues even after a lot is cleaned, so much that residents sometimes look the other way, he said.
"As soon as we clean it up we've got a truck backing up with a truckload of shingles from a house, it's become a dumping site," Sutton said. "We ride by it and we don't say a word."
Sutton was part of a small group of pastors brought together by Commissioner Marion Williams, himself a pastor, and a handful of city staff.
"We allow certain people to say, well, that's the way they want to live," Williams said. "This government ought to hold everybody to the same standard."
The group has a specific area in mind, roughly bounded by Wrightsboro Road, Mill Street, Twelfth Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, that's home to the United House of Prayer, Liberty Baptist Church and Mt. Calvary Baptist Church.
With a former historic designation banning demolition, many homes in historically black neighborhood have been left to crumble.
City Administrator Janice Allen Jackson suggested dividing the cleanup effort into phases, starting with the blocks between Wrightsboro Road and Conklin Avenue, and moving west.
Since 1999, some 105 homes in the area have been demolished, while another 50 or so remain open cases or under a court order, according to a map from Codes Enforcement.
Jackson asked the pastors to recruit resident members to form a neighborhood association for the area, which doesn't have an active one. She said she'd challenged staff to develop a holistic approach for the companion issues of littering, illegal dumping, vacant lots, abandoned houses and polluting storm drains.
"Eventually the answer to vacant lots and abandoned houses and all those things is economic and community development to eliminate the problems by occupying those properties with responsible owners," she said.
The meeting concluded with plans for a Friday van tour by the pastors and staff of the area. In the meantime, staff were asked to gather information about the properties and their owners, examine public alleys and rights of way for violations and cite violators on private property.

Pastors