Group beautifies Warren neighborhood

By ED RUNYAN

runyan@vindy.com

WARREN

Folks came out Friday from a variety of places to help clean up and board up vacant homes on Atlantic Street Northeast and surrounding streets in the near north end of the city.

For Judy Milks of Niles, the cleanup is a way to help the children who walk through that neighborhood, especially on Sunday mornings when they come to her church, First United Methodist on North Park Avenue, for a free breakfast and church service.

“I’m always concerned about them walking to and from the church with the crime here,” she said. “We [church members] have been praying for a revival in the city of Warren, and we’ve been seeing little spots of revival. We want to be a part of the solution.”

About 10 of the church members, all wearing distinctive neon-green T-shirts, participated.

For Sharon and Sam Cook of Belmont Street, who formed the North End Neighborhood Association after they moved into the neighborhood four years ago, the cleanup is the continuation of a success story that began about six months ago.

That’s when the Cooks and other neighbors increased their efforts to kick prostitutes and drug dealers out.

“We put the word out on the street that we won’t put up with it,” Sam Cook said.

“We’re on our porches, videotaping, telling them to keep moving,” said John Davis, who moved into his home on Belmont Street around Thanksgiving. “Somebody’s always out there harassing them.”

Washington Street Northeast was the scene of one of Warren’s two homicides this year, when a Detroit man was gunned down in the rear parking lot of a rental home. The crime is unsolved.

The Warren Police Department, using funding provided through a federal Weed and Seed grant, conducted an undercover sting operation early Easter, arresting three “johns” in about 30 minutes on Belmont Street.

Sharon Cook says there’s a Web site that contains a forum on which people rate the prostitutes that work throughout the neighborhood. Most of the johns are from the Cleveland area, she said.

“We’re just starting,” Sharon Cook said Friday as she and about 10 others from the neighborhood helped with the cleanup.

“As Sgt. Joe O’Grady [of the Warren Police Department] says, we’re putting the neighbor back in neighborhood,” she said.

Warren police officers accompanied the volunteers at the start of the cleanup, checking the structures being cleaned and boarded to make sure they were empty. The health department provided cleanup organizers with a list of condemned homes that are not due for demolition.

Among the organizers of the event were the Mahoning Valley Organizing Collaborative, the North End Neighborhood Association and the church. The city provided a 30-yard roll-off receptacle for the trash.

YouthBuild Trumbull County brought 15 of its building-trades students, who provided most of the labor to board up eight homes.

The project began with a free breakfast at First United Methodist Church, where Tina Milner, newly appointed coordinator for Warren’s Weed and Seed program, said the grant will fund law-enforcement and economic- development efforts in the northeast area, downtown and southeast area.

The federal government selected those areas for the grant using crime statistics from 2005 to 2007.