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Although the Fairhill School is easily visible and just two blocks away, no child on this block is thinking about school — they’re thinking of their next target.
It’s a snow day on West Cambria Street in Fairhill, and the kids on this block are bragging about the numbness of their hands in between relentless throws of the most compact snow balls they can pound together.
But the sun is setting soon, and for 10-year-old Israel Lozada, his time outdoors for this day will be coming to an end.
Tamara Jackson, Lozada’s mother, doesn’t let her children outside at night.
“They get mad at me, but I tell them, ‘You’ll appreciate it when you’re older,'” Jackson said.
Their house is positioned almost directly in the middle of this Cambria Street block in between Seventh and North Marshall streets. Men linger at both intersections. Others approach and wordlessly shake hands and exchange a few bills in the process.
“You can pick up drugs here, you can pick up alcohol here,” said Jackson’s sister, Celeste Colón, who is currently renovating the house next door to Jackson’s so that her mother can move back in. The house, where Colón grew up as a child, suffered an electrical fire in 2003, and the house has been vacant ever since.
“After dark, all your — what we call ‘zombies’ — people that are on drugs, are scattering, looking to make money,” Colón said.
Marshall Street lies between West Cambria and West Somerset streets, a row of houses on one side, and the Fairhill School parking lot on the other. The entrance to the school is just around the corner on West Somerset Street. Fairhill School serves around 600 students, grades kindergarten through eighth. Jackson said that drug dealing and other crime used to occur in the parking lot before lights were installed.
An abandoned building rests on the corner of Cambria and Seventh streets, and graffiti are spray-painted over a large painting of the Puerto Rican flag on the side of that building.
Most residents agree that while the abandoned building isn’t good for the block, it is a better alternative to the bar that used to occupy that property.
Colón said the bar was closed within the past decade, but that crime still exists on the street corner without it.
“I think the crime was there, I just think it had music with it,” she said. “The bar had its jukebox and people would go there to get their drinks…By its closing, I don’t think the crime has decreased at any level.”
Area sales of alcohol, Colón said, have moved inside private homes with residents selling what the bar once sold. Residents of the neighborhood refer to these home-based illegal bars as “speakeasies.”
Abandoned buildings are not a recent development in Fairhill. The castle-like Julia de Burgos Magnet School has been abandoned for years. The entrance is on West Lehigh Avenue, and the building extends the entire block until West Somerset Street, between Seventh and Eighth streets.
Tania Texeira, who lives on Seventh Street, said she once punished one of her two sons after discovering him playing in the building. Neighborhood children sometimes play in the building and throw things from the windows, many of which are not boarded. She said the building is dangerous, and would like to see it put to good use.
Texeira has lived in Fairhill all her life.
“I can’t complain,” she said. “I got my family, I know everyone around here.”
But she doesn’t plan on staying forever.
“I would like to get out of here,” she said. “I’m working on it now.”
Jamal Regans, who lives on North Reese Street a few blocks from Fairhill School, had already moved from the area, but he returned three months ago. He said he originally left because area “was getting bad,” but he returned for more affordable housing for his wife and five children.
“It’s getting quiet because the cops are around a lot,” Regans said. “But they don’t stop and get out. They just ride past.”
Regans said that many residents grow up, get good jobs and move away because they’re afraid of the neighborhood. He has plans to become an electrician and start his own business, and would like to set a positive example for children.
“I’m not moving because then [I can] give kids something to see,” he said. “Like, ‘Cool, look at that guy.’ He grew up here, didn’t finish high school, but went back and did what he was supposed to do, and he stayed around to show us that we can do it, too.”
Daisy Escalera, who lives on Sixth Street almost directly across from Fairhill School, has plans to move away from Fairhill completely. She described Fairhill as her home, though, and is still eager to see change in the community.
In February, First Lady Michelle Obama visited Fairhill School as part of her “Let’s Move” initiative, and Escalera said it brought much-needed attention to Fairhill. Escalera’s daughter, Destiny, was present at Obama’s appearance.
“The First Lady made it to North Philly,” Escalera said. “This is a place where there’s drugs and all kinds of stuff. They came to a school where this [help] was really needed.
Regans said the police department needs to start cracking down on drug dealing in the neighborhood if change is to happen.
“They need to investigate,” he said. “The drug dealers here on the corner, they make, like, $100 a day. What they need to do is arrest the guys who are bringing it in here and stop arresting these peons, because tomorrow there will just be another peon out there.”
In spite of the neighborhood’s reputation for drugs, Regans said he is going to help his own children make good decisions. He said he wants his kids to have a better childhood than he did.
“There wasn’t nobody around, so I just ran wild,” he said. “Trouble’s easy to get into, but it’s very, very hard to get out of it.”
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