Hawthorne Housing Director Gets All "311 Happy" (Part One)

Photos By Jeff Skrenes

For the last couple of days, our Hawthorne Housing Director has been doing street level property surveys to see what is up in the neighborhood, and this has involved just about wearing his dialing finger down to the bone calling 311...

3101 6th Street N. Almost All Gone

First of all, nothing is left of "The Apartment Complex of Anarchy" but some remnants of walls below ground level. It reminds me of the gaping hole left behind after a bad tooth is extracted.

It's possible a souvenir brick may have made its way to my possession...plus some used insulation for renovation purposes, bound for the landfill, anyway, really scavenging that would be doing the demo guy a favor.

I'm just saying it's POSSIBLE all that happened.

3023 4th St. N.

While Jeff and I were pausing to watch the demolition a couple days ago, we saw a group of what appeared to be ne'er-do-wells crossing the vacant lots where Phase I of the Eco Village is going to be. Jeff told me, "We better go check because the way they're crossing the lot...I bet 3023 4th St. N. is open to trespass."

And Jeff was right. You could tell, just from the path they were walking and their body language, something was up with 3023. But checking the property slipped our minds, temporarily. Yesterday Jeff went back through the area, and remembered about checking 3023, but it turns out the PPL people were already at the house, securing it. And, yes, people had been inside, just as Jeff suspected.

See, this is what happens when you have one of the few heated, vacant houses on the block...if not the ONLY one.

409 31st Ave. N.

Right about then, Jeff noticed the garage at 409 31st Ave. N. (owned by Vicki Cox-Maxwell, wife of the infamous Larry Maxwell was also OTT. (That's Jeff's little abbreviation for "Open To Trespass.")

So Jeff called 311. Again.

3024 6th St. N.

And then Jeff noticed the garage at 3024 was also "OTT." So he called that one in to 311 as well. Once you're walking around in North Minneapolis with a 311 operator on the line, it can be hard to get OFF the line, if you just keep walking. Jeff told me "calling in OTT properties (to 311) is like a drug, albeit a better drug than what gets sold out of 3020 6th St. N."

Following His Nose

Jeff said the second picture is of the garage at 409 31st Ave. N. and added "you should be thankful we haven't perfected Smell-O-Vision and my camera doesn't have a scratch-n-sniff feature for its pictures." Jeff also found an OTT garage at 3011 6th St. N. but said "the interior was not trashed and it didn't have that squatted-in smell, yet. Let's hope the 311 email keeps that from happening."

(FYI, the 311 email is minneapolis311@ci.minneapolis.mn.us)

(I find it's convenient to have in your email address book)

A Hawthorne Housing Director's Work Is Never Done

Jeff got a lot of work done in the Eco Village, but there was more to accomplish on the part of 4th St. N. close to the Kemps facility, an area we have to monitor constantly to keep up the pace of steady improvement. Lately, the problem property has been 2207 4th St. N.

More on that in my next blog post.