Dyna, if I'm not mistaken the average city block contains twenty-six houses. You mentioned that you have two problem houses on your block. What about the neighbors living in the other twenty-three houses?
Actually there are about 20 housing structures on the block with several unoccupied. Several are owned by landlords who seem to have no qualms with renting to drug dealers, pimps, etc..
What have you done to change your immediate situation?
I have tried virtually everything you and the other respondents have suggested. Been there, done that, and we still have daily drug dealing on my block.
Have you called on the trespassers at the foreclosed property?
Repeatedly.
Do you actively watch and call on the other drug house?
Repeatedly, and MPD is quite aware of it. It is one of a network in the neighborhood. If the NIMBY's had been able to shut down the dairy the drug trade would be Hawthrorn's largest business.
First, I've found that when I actually take the time and effort to find-out how best to deal with a problem that immediately impacts me, the officials (servants), whether they be city, county, or state employees have all met, or exceeded my expectations.
MPD has done an excellent job of taking the felons off our streets, only to have them released by our bleeding heart judges and underfunded jails and prisons.
Second, I want the city to come down hard on housing violations. I and many of my neighbors have invested heavily of ourselves in the form of both our money and our time in this neighborhood. We are trying dilligently to rid ourselves of uncaring slumlords, renters AND homeowners. As you're well aware Dyna, being a homeowner saddles an individual with home maintenance costs, regardless of where you live. I would be very sympathetic to your "peeling paint issue" if I felt that the City were singling you out unfairly. It seems to me however that your complaint is more tied to the fact that you don't think it matters (whether or not you paint your trim) because of the other problems facing your immediate neighborhood. Have you ever stopped to consider that maybe a crimminal-type feels more comfortable causing trouble in a neighborhood where all the houses have peeling paint? Usually, if something looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's probably a duck. The City, County, or State can't solve these problems for you Dyna. You have to play an active part.
Here is where you join the chorus in blaming the victim. First, painting the trim will do nothing to chase criminals away. Second, any investment in this dying neighborhood is likely to be lost- if my home will be worthless in a few years anyway, it makes no economic sense to spend thousands to paint it to city specification. BTW, the city owns the land on two sides of me and has yet to offer any assistance in forming a block club, etc.. Yet the same city is quite willing to imprison disabled citizens because they cannot paint trim twenty feet up. The city of Minneapolis has thusly become the problem rather than the solution.
I greatly take exception to this stereo-typing. In a prison yard, with the exception of the very few that have been wrongly accused, tried, convicted and sentenced, you're dealing w/ crimminals. In north Minneapolis, the OVERWHELMING majority of the citizens are both law-abiding and pose no threat to other individuals.
And the OVERWHELMING majority of us law abiding citizens are held prisoner in our homes while criminals control the streets.
You more so than most Dyna should understand and be senstive to the fact that North Minneapolis is dealing with an extremely dynamic cultural change. We need to afford different cultures AND different lifestyles the right to exist. We are no longer an Ozzie & Harriet society.
The immigrants are leaving Hawthorn for the better deals in the suburbs and rural areas. The "cultures" moving into Hawthorne tend to be criminal rather than ethnic,
doin' time in Hawthorn,
Dyna Sluyter
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