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Friday, December 14, 2012

What's the purpose!?

I ask myself this every day. I stood for so much then. I still do. It was about the history, honoring those who first lived there, the architecture, the city, the homeowners, community... All the times I was humiliated, and anyone else who stood with me, into thinking I, we, were the one(s) in the wrong!! Made me fight even more! For those who did care, the handful of us, we would join in neighborhood meetings and events eventually forming our own neighborhood association. I heard a lot of complaints from people who thought we were the complaint department but did not want to join our efforts. Perhaps it was because they knew we wouldn't really win anything. The police finally became involved in our meetings encouraging us to become a neighborhood watch. We could call them anytime we saw suspicious activity. The only problem with that was there were people who thought all we had to do was continuously watch suspicious activity ALL the time without EVER taking a stand. Those who thought it was ok to always report but never take a stand were the ones who were born and bred there for many generations. The ones who wanted change were the ones who moved in from other parts of the US who really wanted to live in a nice neighborhood.

Neighborhood Watch was no doubt encouraged through the good ol' boy system so nothing in that particular neighborhood would really ever have to change. It was a way to appease us.

After looking into local city codes, our group found out that our neighborhood was zoned R2. Which meant that any house at any given time could be turned into another duplex. We did accomplish changing that code to R1, single dwellings only, which also meant that if a house sat vacant for two years and was apartments, it would have to be converted to single family. However, there were houses that had three apartments that should have been turned into single family homes, but once again, the city failed to follow there own codes. We carryed on feeling like we were making some sort of head way...