Fr. Shafique Masih, associate pastor at St. Jude Parish, Detroit, boards up an abandoned house in the neighborhood.Tim Johnson | Special to The Michigan Catholic
Detroit — With an estimated 80,000 vacant and dilapidated homes within the city’s boundaries, it seems fixing blight in Detroit is often a daunting and impossible task.
While groups such as the Detroit Blight Authority, ARISE Detroit, the Motor City Blight Busters and others are making many improvements to the city’s landscape, volunteers at St. Jude Parish on the city’s northeast side are joining the cause to eliminate blight in their Seven Mile and Kelly Road neighborhood.
Last summer, Lynn McEachin, St. Jude’s business manager, organized a weekly cleanup effort in the neighborhood that includes mowing the grass at vacant homes, trimming the brush, boarding vacant homes and picking up trash and litter.
Fr. Duane Novelly, St. Jude’s administrator, and Fr. Shafique Masih, associate pastor, both embraced the idea.
“We were deeply concerned about the dangers that waist-high grass, broken glass and other hazards presented to neighborhood children, especially on their way to school,” Fr. Masih said. A charter elementary school bought St. Jude’s former parish school, and a Detroit Public School facility is also nearby.
Fr. Shafique Masih, St. Jude business manager Lynn McEachin and Jimmy Hayes, a local resident, take a quick break from their recent neighborhood cleanup effort.“Some weeks we have 10 volunteers, other weeks we have only one or two,” McEachin said. “But it doesn’t matter, since our approach is to tackle the blight one house at a time.”
The cleanup crew’s efforts have been met with skepticism, some questioning how the volunteers expect to make a difference when the challenge is so huge.
McEachin’s retort is to share the parable about the little boy who tried to rescue thousands of starfish that had washed ashore. When an old man asked the little boy how he could possibly make a difference when there was a beach full of starfish to save, the boy just picked up another one, tossed it into the ocean and replied, “It made a difference to that one.”
The group does have some big wins under its belt. An abandoned home St. Jude volunteers cleaned up last fall and again this spring was purchased and renovated by a local woman for her son, who now lives there.
“The woman was so impressed by our efforts that she gave us $100 to purchase materials to board up a couple of abandoned homes on the block,” McEachin said.
People are definitely taking notice.
“We get a bunch of ‘likes’ on our Facebook page when we post before-and-after pictures each week, mainly from former parishioners who no longer live in the area,” Fr. Masih said. “And the neighbors express their gratefulness, especially the seniors.”
