Redevelopment Underway in Low-Income Neighborhoods
Most Sunflower members live in districts that have been long neglected. Residents in Wichita's north central and near northeast neighborhoods have seen their tax dollars spent on infrastructure to support sprawl at the edges of the city while their decaying older neighborhoods have been ignored.
In 2004 Sunflower's Northeast Wichita Chapter decided their district had waited long enough for others to act! Meeting every week, a group of dedicated leaders started the Fight Blight Project. Its first objective was to clear blighted, dangerous properties to make way for new construction. Wichita's Central Inspection Department responded when Sunflower presented a list of 200 ugly and dangerous properties with a picture of each one. Now dilapidated, vacant properties that owners cannot or will not make liveable are being condemned and demolished. Negligent owners are being taken to neighborhood courts. City Council has implemented new policies that give owners more incentive to fix run-down properties or sell them to someone who will make needed repairs.
Now that there is grassroots momentum for change, city officials are following, exerting more leadership, and calling their program Stop Blight. A partnership is being built, including Sunflower, other nonprofit groups, city government, and financial institutions to finally see some results in northeast Wichita!
The most recent result is the removal of an urban dump site at 10th and Volutsia. Katherine Perry Fisher had been calling city offices for 15 years searching for someone who would clean up the health hazard next door, a duplex filled with trash and surrounded with debris piled high as the eves outside. As a result of Sunflower’s organizing, the city sent four loaders and a crew of 20 in January that spent a day filling and hauling away 15 super size trailers full of trash. Ms. Perry sang and danced for joy! Six months later workers in hazmat suits demolished the trash-stuffed duplex to rid the neighborhood of a long-standing hazard.
Now Sunflower has identified the Dirty 20, additional hazardous properties in NE Wichita to be cleaned up on an expedited basis. The public is invited to call Sunflower to add neglected properties to the list.
A Northeast Redevelopment Plan was created by city planners in the mid-1990s but not implemented. In 2005 Sunflower got the plan off the shelf, worked with other stakeholders to revise it, and saw it through to adoption by City Council. The City of Wichita also applied for a $2 million federal grant to clear blighted properties and improve infrastructure in the district. All of this has happened because Sunflower's neighborhood leadership insisted on action! Now the task is to sustain that momentum and create partnerships among city government, nonprofit groups, and banks to build new homes that will draw businesses back to the city’s core area.
Redevelopment is in the beginning stages as an issue in Sunflower's Hispanos Unidos chapter. For information about northeast Wichita redevelopment contact:
J.J. Selmon
Northeast Chapter Organizer
316-264-9972, ext. 12
jason@sunfloweract.org
Louis Goseland
Northeast Chapter Organizer
Phone: 316-264-9972, ext. 11
Email: louis@sunfloweract.org
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