Harrisburg residents march against deadbeat landlords; drug activity

In a neighborhood where people can be afraid to go outside, 20 residents and property owners marched through the streets this morning in a demonstration against deadbeat landlords and drug-peddling tenants, who they say are dragging the Harrisburg community into the proverbial gutter.

• Comments (18)
• E-mail
• 

• Photos

Back | Next

John Curry/staff

A group of Harrisburg residents and property owners and concerned citizens march along Eve Street in the Harrisburg neighborhood Saturday, July 4, 2009 to protest irresponsible landlords and drug activity

Back | Next

John Curry/staff

A Richmond County Sheriff's deputy pulls up a marijuana plant along side a house on Watkins Street that was pointed out to him by a group of Harrisburg residents, property owners and concerned citizens marching in the Harrisburg neighborhood Saturday, July 4, 2009 to protest irresponsible landlords and drug activity.

Advertisement

“It’s just wrong,” demonstrator and longtime resident Donna Dumas shouted. “Wrong to rent to prostitutes and pimps and drug dealers.”

With Richmond County Sheriff’s deputies keeping a watchful eye from patrol cars, the marchers carried signs reading, “Dope Kills Kids,” “Lazy Land Lords = Drugs, Crime,” and “Eve St., Corridor of Shame.”

They shouted, “Stop the neglect,” “Hugs Not Drugs,” and “Save our children,” and at one point broke into a chant of, “We want 'em out!” They filled garbage bags with trash they picked up along the way.

Their accomplishments: they found a marijuana plant growing in one yard, they got loud music turned down outside another property and they convinced at least one landlord to change his ways.

“I think the best part is that the neighborhood knows that the neighborhood cares,” Harrisburg-West End Neighborhood Association president Denise Traina said. “We’re all here, and it’s all that important to us.”

No particular group was behind the march, according to organizer Lori Davis, but it was made up of several members of the neighborhood association, for which Ms. Davis serves as vice president. Another leader was Butch Palmer, a board of directors member and the founder of HONGKONG – Harrisburg Organization Networking for Gentrification to Keep Our Neighborhood from becoming a Ghetto.

Mr. Palmer had scrapped an idea to carry arms loaded with blanks during the march after the sheriff’s office dissuaded him. Instead, he wielded a bullhorn.

“Stop being afraid,” he blasted at houses whose doors and windows were closed. “Come out and join us.”

The protestors targeted three specific properties which Ms. Davis said have been generating the most complaints – 223 Eve St., 609 Eve St. and 1841 Watkins St. In front of each, she hammered a handmade sign reading, “Nuisance Property,” into the dirt between the curb and the sidewalk.

When they reached 609 Eve, about a half dozen men and women were sitting on the front porch with bass-heavy music blaring from a car parked in the driveway.

“Violation of sound ordinance!” Mr. Palmer yelled.

“Mind your business,” a man sitting in a chair snapped.

“We are minding our business,” Mr. Palmer retorted through the bullhorn. “We’ve got our eye on you and we’re so disgusted.”

Deputies told the group on the porch to turn down the music. They shut it off.

Another verbal skirmish broke out at the intersection of Crawford Avenue and Hicks Street, where a group gathered outside an apartment building accused the marchers of racism, even though several of them were black.

“We’re not in the slave days,” someone shouted from the building.

“We are slaves now,” Mr. Palmer blasted back. “We’re slaves to crime. We’re afraid to come out of our homes and we’re tired of it.”

At 223 Eve, a woman sitting on the front porch, Willie Bell, said her sister lives there and is raising five grandchildren, ages 13 to 19. She denied there’s any drug activity, but said she agrees with the protestors that the house needs to be cleaned up. In fact, her brother, Walter Tankersley, took part in the march.

“It’s not so much that it’s a nuisance,” Ms. Bell said, “it’s that we need the funds to clean it up.”

Efforts to reach the owner of the house, John B. Weigle Jr., resulted in missed phone calls .

The owner of 609 Eve St., Roy Searles, admitted in a telephone interview that he hasn’t managed the property well and said he’s determined to do better. He bought the house in October for $14,000.

“It’s a big, big headache,” he said. “I didn’t know it was going to be like this getting into real estate. This is my first investment property, and it’s a bad one.”

He’s been running it as a boardinghouse, renting rooms to two men and two women who pay $80 per week a piece. He’s gotten a call from the sheriff’s office about “activity in and out,” Mr. Searles said, and Saturday’s protest was the last straw.

All four renters will be out by Friday, he said, and he’s going to close the house up, make some repairs and look to rent it to a family . He’ll do background checks of his next tenants; with the current ones, he only asked for their driver’s licenses and Social Security cards to confirm their identities.

“I totally, totally agree,” he said of the protestors. “But it’s kind of hard. Show me a neighborhood that doesn’t have drug activity.”

No one was home when the marchers reached 1841 Watkins, though they found a marijuana plant growing beside the front porch of another house on the street. A deputy pulled it out of the ground, tossed it into his car and radioed for a narcotics investigator.

The owners of 1841 Watkins, Emory and Rachel Rabitsch, said as far as they’re concerned, the people living there are good tenants. It’s a duplex, with a woman and her husband in one part and the woman’s son in the other. They’ve lived there about four or five years, they pay their rent on time totaling $1,000 per month, and they don’t tear anything up, Mr. and Mrs. Rabitsch said. Both the husband and the son have jobs.

Mr. Rabitsch said he’s gotten on to them before about beer cans left in the yard, and the tenants cleaned them up. He said he knows they get rowdy sometimes, and neighbors have complained to him about drinking and partying.

He’s talked to them about that, too, Mr. Rabitsch said.

“These people are not bad people. I have seen worse,” he said. “We’re still in the business to make money. It’s hard to get rid of a good tenant that pays on time.”

Mrs. Rabitsch said she’s not going to evict them just because “they’re not upper-class people.”

“They can demonstrate all they want,” she said. “But I’m not going to discriminate against these people.”

Ms. Davis said today's protest wasn’t about poverty or sociology.

“That’s not what we’re fighting today,” she said. “We’re fighting the landlords that are allowing the bad people to live in these properties.

“They don’t screen,” she said. “They just want the money.”