Gary Residents Want Vacant Colonial Gardens Demolished, Say Fencing Off And Cleaning Is Not Enough
CHICAGO (CBS) -- People in Gary, Indiana, are fed up with an eyesore -- a cluster of vacant homes and debris that has haunted a neighborhood for years. Now the city says there may be some progress, but locals say it's not enough.
Mattresses and debris in the street and boarded up windows is not what Val McCully wants to see down the street from his home.
"I think it should have been gone," he said of Colonial Gardens, where are the homes are owned by the Gary Housing Authority. "We wish they would tear all these down and all the others, too. It's really depressing. It's a hard battle, trying to keep pride in your house and you home, and you drive down the block and you see this."
According to the city, the area has been vacant for about three years.
Contractors are now putting up fencing around the homes, and according to the mayor's office, the debris will be removed.
But McCully wants the homes to be torn down.
"Initially the demolition has been halted," Mayor Karen Freeman-Wilson said.
She said the housing authority does not have the federal funds to demolish the homes and is considering a proposal to redevelop the property.
"We anticipate, just as we have seen in other housing authority properties, that we will have viable proposals, or they will have viable proposals that they can then entertain," she said.
Freeman-Wilson said the police will be checking the area to make sure no one is still there.
Jose Campos, a worker for a contractor hired by the housing authority said he saw homeless people walk out of one of the homes.
"Just put on their jacket and just walked out like they're walking out their normal houses like, 'It's my house. I'm coming out my property.' Just like that," said Campos.
Jeremiah King, a Gary local, started to plan a cleanup in Colonial Gardens after seeing pictures of debris online. Now that he has learned of the work already being done, he said he is instead planning a cleanup of another area of Gary near the history Junedale Little League baseball Field.
He also plans to follow up to make sure the cleanup is going as planned at Colonial Gardens.
We are going to stay on top of that," King said. "Just to hold them accountable and make sure they are doing it."
McCully and other locals are calling on the city to clean up not just Colonial Gardens but other local eyesores.
"The citizens of Gary have to care as much as the officials of Gary do," McCully said. "But it's upon the officials of Gary to make the citizens care. Hit them in their pockets. Fine them for littering. Fine them for not cutting their grass."
Freeman-Wilson said she expects the Colonial Gardens cleanup to be done in May. CBS 2 reached out to the Gary Housing Authority but did not hear back.