Page 6 - Kiya's Press Kit

THE GENESIS: FIGHT BLIGHT BMORE

On Mother’s Day 2016, I witnessed what could have been an awful
tragedy. A few children were riding their bikes down the sidewalk of
Fremont Avenue, crossing Lafayette Street, where four brownstones were
being demolished. The site was filled with debris, gaping holes about six
feet deep, and had no gate to prevent site access. I witnessed the
potential danger of these unsafe conditions such as a child falling into
unsecured debris.

Since that day, I began researching, documenting, reporting, and
tracking environmental hazards created by demolition sites around the
city and the structures that preceded them. The hazards observed at that
demolition site represented an instance of blight. Due to resident flight
from American cities like Baltimore, fueled in part by racism, beginning
in the 1960s to surrounding counties, neighborhoods lost population as
well as businesses, community institutions, and places of employment.
These factors, in concert with the post-industrial economic downturn of
the 1970s and the epidemic abuse of illicit drugs in the 1980s, resulted in
numerous abandoned, improperly used, unkempt and/or underutilized
properties commonly referred to as blight.

People living in neighborhoods with blight are not only losing access to
home equity, community history, and public sector improvements, they
are also being exposed to community-based trauma resulting in long-
term stress from fear of unsafe property implosion, toxic exposure, and
crime. In terms of economic impact, “each abandoned property costs its
neighbors $70,000 in a loss as it sits vacant,” according to Aaron Klein’s
research. It is estimated that ..”more than 30 million housing units in the
United States have significant physical or health hazards, such as
dilapidated structures, poor heating, damaged plumbing, gas leaks, or
lead.”(Urban Blight and Public Health, 2017).

W W W . F I G H T B L I G H T B M O R E . C O M