Photo and blog post by John HoffA couple days ago I was lucky to run into City Council Member Don Samuels walking around at Hawthorn (sic) Crossings strip mall, a location which has been notorious for loitering and drug activity in the parking lot. But Samuels was just ambulating around in the middle of this tough location in his three-piece suit, talking to various individuals such as store owners and a group of youth picking up litter as part of a summer program.
I had an opportunity to speak to Don Samuels and tell him about an issue I had with a house only a short distance from my own residence. The house at 915 22nd Ave. N. had been torched in an arson and, recently, there has been drug activity as reported by Hawthorne Housing Director Jeff Skrenes on the Hawthorne Voices blog, click here.
There is the possibility this particular house could be saved by the agency which has somehow come into possession, but I have to wonder if saving the house is even feasible, given the extensive fire damage. And it has been sitting vacant like that for a long, long time since the night of the fire, click here for one of my previous blog reports on the house.
I don't know what Don Samuels did, exactly, but days after he made some phone calls the overflowing dumpster went away (after it sat there a long time) and a workman in a white truck showed up, poking through the charred timbers on the second story.
My attitude about the house is: whatever is going to happen, let's move it forward while there is nice weather. The house has been sitting with a hole in its roof since the night of the arson. And while I've been known to put a nail in a board now and then to secure something which desperately needs to be secured, my particular brand of volunteerism has not yet extended to getting on top of the roof of a vacant house and patching the hole.
But, hey, you never know...
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