For years, a vacant lot surrounded by abandoned houses in Philly’s historically crime-plagued Kensington neighborhood attracted a thriving drug trade. But in a matter of months, neighbors and community activists banded together, armed with ideas from a LISC SmartGrowth training, and transformed the crime hotspot into a community greenspace.
The excerpt below is from:
One block at a time: Building hope and creating safe passage in Kensington
By Erin Kane
The vacant lot across from Christy Hoffmann’s Kensington row home was recently transformed into a green oasis. Raised garden beds and saplings punctuate the cut grass. And open space, rare on dense city blocks like Clearfield Street, invites local neighbors to meet, play, and recreate.
It was barely six months ago, Hoffmann remembers, when the lot was filled with drug users, trash, and disposed syringes. Visible from her front window on Clearfield Street, the blight was a daily reminder that her family lived near one of the largest open-air drug markets in the eastern United States.
At the time, Hoffmann and her neighbors wanted to make changes, but they lacked support and organization; no one knew where to begin. The problems seemed intractable. “We wanted to do so much, but we didn’t have the resources or equipment to do it,” she said.
For as long as anyone can remember, drugs and crime have plagued Clearfield Street. Even before the problem of the blighted lot, boarded-up homes on the block attracted a steady stream of unwanted activity that frequently spilled into the street.
“It was a place where people used and dealt,” said Hoffmann, who moved to the block to work as a missionary with her husband and four children. “Seeing all the trash in there and the needles and the drugs – it was discouraging.”
In fact, the lot was so problematic that neighbors would avoid walking along Clearfield Street altogether, choosing longer routes to the shops on Kensington Avenue or to the elevated train station (“the El”) at Kensington and Allegheny Avenues.
But with help from partners Philadelphia LISC, New Kensington CDC (NKCDC) and Impact Services (Impact) Hoffmann and her neighbors turned the once-blighted lot into a community green space – a yard for neighbors and their children. Armed with resolve, determination and support, neighbors were able to reclaim their block, in spite of the deep-seated issues in Kensington that make headlines. In turn, they learned that gradual, community-led changes are central to the revitalization process.
“It’s been like a beacon,” said Hoffmann, describing the transformed lot. “It’s hope.”