US Army Lieutenant Peter Teachout, Founder Of Northside "Shoe Patrol" And Hero Of The Hawthorne EcoVillage "Miracle," RECEIVES ORDERS SENDING HIM TO AFGHANISTAN!!!

Photo, blog post by John Hoff


In 2008 and 2009, a great deal of the stories on this blog involved the struggle of this blogger, AND Hawthorne Board Chair Peter Teachout, AND Hawthorne Housing Director Jeff Skrenes to revitalize a gritty four square block area called the EcoVillage and take that area back from drug dealers, prostitution and every manner of street crime. 

The area was, statistically, the worst four square blocks in North Minneapolis and, therefore, in the entire State of Minnesota. Yes, these statistics shift and are subject to interpretation but, well, AT THAT TIME and BY SOME MEASURES. Ask Jeff Skrenes, that geek knows the numbers by heart and probably has them on a SPREADSHEET. 

In any case.

The turning point in the EcoVillage arguably came when Peter Teachout's truck was torched in front of his house and...

Metlife Award For Neighborhood Revitalization Case Study Becomes Available, Oh My Word, That's Like The Kind Of Headline Mortgage Geek Jeff Skrenes Would Write...

Photo (EcoVillage In 2008) and blog post by John Hoff

I guess it had passed between my ears a while ago that Hawthorne EcoVillage won an award from Metlife for the incredible crime reduction that took place, what some policy wonks referred to as the "18 month EcoVillage Miracle."

The award was in 2010, or heck maybe it was early 2011 for the 2010 time period. In any case, it was a couple years ago. But the case study, authored by one Chandra Conway, was published in January of this year and didn't really hit my radar until somebody studying the "EcoVillage miracle" sent me a link today. I would have thought ubergeek "Hawthorne Hawkman" would have written about a report of this nature, but searching his blog and the rest of the internet leads me to conclude our North Minneapolis grassroots blogger media has not obtained the actual case study, though Jeff did write about the award itself, click here.

This case study is an incredibly frank document and makes mention of the colorful tactics used to turn the EcoVillage around. It names myself, Jeff Skrenes and Peter Teachout and discusses some of the tactics we used. Jeff gets the lion's share of the credit but this is, after all, a geeky document written by geeks, for geeks, and mostly about geeks. So I forgive Jeff for speaking to the author of the study about his, oh my god, SPREAD SHEET. (Finger down throat gesture)

It's a fantastic case study and my name is spelled right. Bring on the movie version, I say.