Looking through other people’s blogs it seems as if so many people are out having fun with their organization and are involved with many different activities with them which is great!!! Me?? I’m stuck in the office 9 hours of the day… haha! Don’t get me wrong I absolutely love GRDC and everyone here because everyone is so helpful and welcoming! This week I was able to finally get out of the office. A fellow member of the vacant property task force and I went out to survey the vacant houses in one of the many neighborhoods associated with Grandmont Rosedale: Minock Park (No he did not stand me up this time!). I enjoyed it because for one, I was out of the office! And two, I was able to see first hand how bad these houses looked. But not all the vacant houses were bad; some of them looked as if there were people living in them. The neighbors mowed the grass, placed flower pots on the porch, picked up any trash that may have been lying around… it was nice work! I did get a little nervous at times because we crept through the neighborhood as if we were up to something sneaky. Sometimes residents were outside staring us down!! Luckily minock park is very small and only consists of 4 not so long blocks. Next up: North Rosedale Park! NRP is muuuuch bigger and has many many more vacant houses so I look forward to it.
Monday, as we all know, were the day of the fireworks presentation. It sucks that everyone in the program who are not from Detroit had to experience such drama at a time that everyone should have been simply having fun. I hope this does not cloud anyone’s judgment about Detroit because although Detroit can be dangerous it can also be a great experience and a nice place to have fun. If anyone has a car and is interested in seeing other firework displays throughout Michigan here is the link to a list of firework displays by date and city: http://michiganfireworks.com/by-date/
Enjoy your weekend!!
I think our orgs are similar in their vision of surveying vacant properties. So I had a similar experience this week and went to look at some of the vacant homes that we own except I didn’t want to go out as much as you did because the weather was scorching haha. But I agree not all of the homes were that bad…
Don’t worry, I am stuck at a computer all day too (in a windowless basement). I am glad that you were able to get out and into the community. It seems like the experience really helped you connect more with your work at GDRC!
How did you guys survey vacant property? Were you looking for specific things, or just kind of checking it out? And yeah, the fireworks were, uh, dramatic..
Well we have this sheet that asks about the condition of the home (good, needs a little attention, needs a lot of attention, or needs to be demolished).We also added notes for example if there was an overgrown lawn, abandoned vehicle in the back and etc. We wanted to get a count and basically the condition of each so that was pretty much all we needed.