Neighborhood futility

The neighborhood organizing meeting tonight was focused on code enforcement and issues of properties that are rentals v owner-occupied. 

It started with some interaction with an employee of the Blue Zones Project which just came to GF (the 74th US community!) They are funded by the State Health Department and Altru. They are focusing on 4 neighborhoods north of Demers: downtown, the Near North Side, Riverside, and us. We gave some feedback to the consultant, who is a transportation expert from Boise, Idaho. He spent all day interviewing leaders in the community, including the mayor, Parks & Rec, and some business owners. What irritated me was that I read the report that was generated by the University Corridor group a couple years ago and they addressed the same issues with mostly the same people (see below). Instead of paying this consultant to create a report, why don't the Blue Zone people just read that report??? They are going to come to the same conclusions and, especially maddening, the exact same **nothing** will happen as a result (the consultant said the residents will get to decide what gets done, lol).

I partly have this cynical attitude because of the second part of the meeting. The intern presented some information about city code enforcement procedures and the many city offices that exist to ensure that any complaints are defused and never addressed (obviously, they didn't present it this way but that is the basic result). Then the residents talked about their many many many personal experiences of neglectful neighboring landlords, mostly involving unmowed grass and overgrown weeds and trash not taken to the curb. Not exactly the stuff of "neglect" or a "public nuisance" - which are the only complaints that the city has the staff to address, according to the city rep at the meeting (he flat out said that the various city offices have no way to coordinate, so they can't track how many complaints have been received about a particular address, which I'm sure is a feature not a bug of the system). So what is the point of all this? I would much rather talk about some things we can do to make the neighborhood nicer. Instead, the city rep spent an hour egging on the people at the meeting to talk about their grievences, which serves no real purpose (except I suppose to make the citizens feel heard, which is useful I guess, but it changes nothing).

There was also a fair amount of bemoaning the demographic changes in the area - one guy said his neighbors used to be Norwegians! Seriously? Immigrant groups assimilate, they move as they become upwardly mobile - that's the American Dream! It's why people come here. And it's been happening for 2 centuries, it's not going to change. It would help if these people knew anything about US history. And recognized the reality of supply and demand - the housing market is the same all over the country, not just on their square block of Grand Forks (the consultant said that 1 in 5 homes in the US is bought by an investment firm and this has been happening since **2012**!).

I just can't with this delusional, wishful thinking. I want to help people who need to be empowered and I'm not the only one. Maybe we can focus on that in the future.

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University Corridor report from March 2021 (data collected in 2019):

A study, funded by the Knight Foundation to the tune of $100,000, was conducted by JLG Architects in conjunction with the Community Foundation of Grand Forks, East Grand Forks and Region. In 2019, residents along the corridor were asked to weigh in on what improvements they would like to see. Results from the study were released in March 2021 and found that residents believe the University Avenue corridor is worthy of public investment, and that a number of safety and aesthetic improvements should be undertaken...The JLG study highlighted several ideas, including:

• Connecting bike paths to existing infrastructure.
• Removing center-of-street boundaries.
• Enhancing corridor safety through lighting projects.
• Maintaining established trees.
• Prioritizing pedestrian enhancements for neighborhood schools.
• Keeping University Park as a community hub.
• Improving bus shelters along the corridor.