Rebuilding A Neighborhood

Tuesday, August 14th 2007, 9:00 pm

By: News On 6

Crews are tearing down houses to rebuild a Tulsa neighborhood. Tulsa is on a mission to eliminate substandard housing, one neighborhood at a time. The News On 6â€™s Ashli Sims reports the destruction of dilapidated houses began in one north Tulsa neighborhood Tuesday.

Broken concrete slabs are all that's left of a 1,200 square foot Tulsa home. It was abandoned and rundown, so the city is tearing it down to give the neighborhood, located in the 6300 block of North Boulder Avenue, a new life.

â€œThey're tearing down a lot of dilapidated homes that's just not livable anymore,â€ Northgate resident Leon Jackson said. â€œWe're contacting the landlords that have homes around here to try to fix up the ones that are livable. Get something done about it."
Leon Jackson says this is not the Northgate he moved into more than 30 years ago.

â€œAll of the houses were in great shape. The yards were kept up, ya'know everything. It was very nice out here," he said. â€œIt don't look like the same neighborhood no more."

Driving through the neighborhood, public works employee Kevin Cox says two years of work is starting to make a difference.

"Tulsa Housing Authority has done a great job in reinvesting money into homes that they currently own, and they have houses up for sale that are affordable," Neighborhood Inspections Manager Kevin Cox said.

Some homeowners say they can't see past obvious signs of neighborhood blight, like grass that's several feet high, to see the possible positive effects of what the city is doing.

â€œSlow, too slow," Jackson said.

Cox counters that one home in the neighborhood was built and sold very quickly, the first brand-new home in the Northgate neighborhood in three decades. Leon Jackson says it underlines his point.

â€œWhen you're a homeowner it's very frustrating to live in an area for 30 years and only have one house built," he said.

The city promises as the blighted homes come down, new ones will rise, and so will Northgate.

â€œWe're hoping that everything starts to gel together here in the near future, and we'll start to see a lot of these boards come off these houses and good families will be in these houses," said Cox.

Kevin Cox estimates it will take about a year to turn the Northgate neighborhood around. Meanwhile, Leon Jackson says it took 30 years for the neighborhood to go downhill, and it will take that long for it to come back.

Watch the video: City Working To Turnaround Rundown Neighborhood