Posts at this website are one of two things: exploring new places, or revisiting somewhere to see how it has changed for better or worse. I decided to explore Hodiamont Avenue in Wells-Goodfellow, which I had first examined closely back in March of 2017. Foliage is doing well, as can be seen above.
I’ve always remarked that seeing abandoned in-fill, as seen above, is particularly depressing because it means an attempt at addressing blight has also now failed. Below, a house has been swallowed by undergrowth.
But what is even more depressing are these two abandoned houses below, which are all that are left of what had been four. When I first looked at them in March of 2017, three of them were almost certainly occupied. What happened? Things are getting worse, not better.
It does have to do with age, as these two ranch houses are still ok, but is it fun living next to abandoned houses and overgrown forests?
Turning the corner onto Kennerly, which I also looked at in March of 2017 and February of 2018, there is still one house holding on but it will almost certainly be demolished.
It is not easy to find clear causation to abandonment but one key all agree on is CRIME which is harder to address after the Police Board many generations ago reduced neighborhood Police Stations and the corner call boxes which encouraged walking patrols. You can say this repeatedly but get nowhere. Violent youth, poorly parented , feeling abandonment by their social fabric and inadequate schools are now the patrols in stolen cars.This was the route of the Narrow Gauge RR to Florissant.
Poor parenting? You mean no parenting( welfare) equals crime, truancy unwed Mothers leading to uneducated populace and no jobs, no local commerce due to shoplifting being the norm and dangerous streets. What industry would want to relocate to this chaos. The elephant in the room “!let’s get the n……s on welfare and we’ll have them for the next 200 years” attributed to US president Lyndon Baines Johnson (LBJ) This is every Major and medium size city in the us east of the Rockies. At least in the days before desegregation ( not saying we should go back to this, just pointing the facts) we had thriving AA communities in all cities. “ The truth may set you free but first it may make you miserable” James Garfield U s president