With rake and seed

I took part in a Blight Busters event in Detroit this morning. The Brightmoor neighborhood is close to the poorest in the city. Lots of houses have been abandoned. This is definitely a blighted area.

I'm not sure if it is the son or grandson in the Pulte family, the ones who founded the Pulte Homes, builders of fine residences. This young man did not follow into the family business, instead he founded Blight Busters. By the time we got there, the agency had already demolished a huge number of vacant homes in a 14-block area. As part of the effort they were able to hire (at least temporarily) some of the remaining residents of the area.

Our job was to go into a block and do a few simple things. Some of us shoveled trash and debris out of the gutters. Others raked the bulldozer tracks and other bare areas, then scattered grass seed. A few more planted wildflower seeds. I did the raking and seed scattering. I had a trash bag with me to hold the junk my rake revealed. I also spent some time raking and shoveling a pile of broken shingles. The weather was wonderful 70F with not too much sun.

With all the money and effort that went into demolition wouldn't it make sense to also hire people to do what we did? Perhaps. But this was a way to draw out the community and do something together. About 90% of the volunteers were not from the neighborhood. My guess is about 450-500 showed up.

While the work was worthwhile, I thought we didn't spend much time at it. Registration started at 9:00 (including handing out the ever-present t-shirt). Speechifying started at 9:35. Getting us into teams, getting our rakes, shovels, and grass seed, and walking to our block also took time. We didn't start work until about 10:15 and quit before noon. I didn't stick around for the pizza. So, yeah, it could have been organized a bit better. I could have stayed for part of the afternoon if there was an afternoon session. There would have been enough for me to do.

I was in the northeast block. I could look across to the park where we gathered four blocks away without any houses in between. This is a sizable chunk of land now vacant but for grass and trees.