MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Leaders within the Douglass community say the neighborhood has long been neglected and forgotten so they're doing something about it themselves.The Time is Now Douglas launched a blight cleanup crew this month. Three days a week, paid workers go out into the community and clean up blighted, abandoned properties. They also work on the homes of seniors who need the help.
“We organized behind just how dirty our streets are. We all know that just being in a clean area makes you feel safer," Kathy Yancey-Temple, The Time Is Now Douglass Executive Director, said.
Yancey-Temple is from Douglass, dating back five generations, she said. The Douglass she sees today is not the same one she grew up in and long knew.
"There was a grocery store across the street," she said. "We had two butchers in the neighborhood. We had a shoe cobbler. We had two dry cleaners. We had a gas station. When I grew up here, we never had to leave.”
She said that's all gone but the families are still there. The first step to get Douglass back, is to clean up the blight, she said, but it doesn't end there.She hopes this will steamroll into an effort to bring safe, affordable housing options to the community.
"Our ultimate goal is to create affordable housing for low to middle income families of color in this community because those families are already here and we all want, like anyone else, a safe and clean environment to live in," she said.
The long-term plan is to start something along the lines of a community investment fund.
“So that we can acquire these properties either through the land bank or purchase them ourselves and raise the funds as a community to flip these blighted homes that have been sitting here 30-40-50 years, into viable homes that people can live in, care for and love," Yancey-Temple said.
The Time Is Now Douglass also started a small fruit tree orchard. It currently is made up of six trees but Yancey-Temple said they expect to plant more this spring.
“Douglass has always been full of fruit trees but because of the decline of the neighborhood and because of it not being kept up and the lack of home ownership none of those trees are producing," she said. "We can bring that back. We can bring that back and not just restore ourselves but make it better.”
