Can a cleanup plan from Philadelphia work in South Dallas? What $300,000 has done so

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The Mill City Public Safety Initiative received $300K from city of Dallas and Communities Foundations of Texas.

More than 21 discarded car tires, seven dead dogs, one stolen tractor and unidentifiable animal bones were found on a vacant lot on Brashear Street, just a small part of what had to be cleaned up in the Mill City neighborhood of South Dallas.

“That was all hid in the brush,” said Alendra Lyons, Mill City Community Association president. “This just shows you how thick it was in there that you can commit a crime and hide it and nobody sees it for a long time. And a lot of tires that were being dumped off. I mean, it was a lot of tires”

And this is just a fraction of the 471 vacant lots in Mill City.

The Mill City Public Safety Initiative, which is three months in, has received $300,000 from the city of Dallas and Communities Foundations of Texas, for blight remediation to decrease crime in the neighborhood. The initiative is based on work done in Philadelphia.

The initiative is a partnership that includes Builders of Hope, an affordable housing nonprofit; Child Poverty Action Lab; Zeal Development Services and Analytics, a South Dallas based data organization; and the Mill City Community Association. The team completed its first urban decay remediation on 11 contiguous lots in Brashear Street late January.