Lawncrest has gone through a drastic change in the eyes of the people who have lived there all their lives. A community that once was solely described as a close-knit, working class residency is now suffering from a spate of robberies, violence and an overabundance of trash, unkept houses and fear.
Kathy Wersinger of Councilwoman Marian Tasco’s office is a 55-year-resident of the area and believes the problem to be renters.
“People that rent houses for a profit and don’t worry about the condition of them as long as they are receiving their monthly check.”
George Roach, a photojournalist at Fox29, was a resident of the community for over 36 years. He started realizing something had changed when he started finding himself being a news journalist in his own neighborhood and on his own street. He attributes the change to renters also, but goes further to pinpoint Section 8, a federal government program, as the problem.
“Section 8 is people who rent and the government pays for the rent; it’s a federally subsidized rent,” Roach says. “If I had my rent paid, I wouldn’t have pride of ownership because I wouldn’t be tied to the property.”
The Massive Cleanup of Rising Sun Avenue served to combat the neighborhood looking bad, and hopefully lift morale and pride in the community. The need for a massive cleanup speaks for the neighborhood at large. Most participants could not understand or put
into words why trash could not be picked up daily.
Wersinger acknowledges she wouldn’t be a participant if she knew why people couldn’t pick up their own trash.
“People are people, people throw trash so how we have to educate everyone to clean up, I don’t know,” Wersinger says. “If you start at home, it should spread out into the community as well. But obviously it doesn’t always work that way.”
Matt Taubenberger of the Burholme Civic Association says its people who unfortunately don’t care about the community, and don’t care about the neighborhood.
“They’ll buy something and they’ll just throw it on the street when they are done with it,” Taubenberger says. “And we have a lot of local businesses that sweep up in front of their shops every day, but eventually it just gets to be too much.”
Roach admits he would never litter in the neighborhood because he grew up there. He has a sense of respect for the community that he believes is what is currently missing from residents.
“When I lived in the neighborhood, businesses didn’t have to self-defend themselves,” Roach says. “I never saw the spike in crime when I lived there that you see now.”
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