I notice that the last post to this site was back in 2011, so I don't know how effective or what kind of respose I will get, if any, from this.
My wife and I have owned a home in Beechview for 21 years and in the past 5 years it seems that home owners and renters are not taking care of their properties. Problems include over grown weeds, grass, junk on porches and in drivesways and back yards and abandoned houses that according to the city site are still owned by someone.
On my street alone in the past 2 weeks I have filed 3 seperate overgrowth and other problems with the Pittsburgh 311 site. People just seem to not want to take care of their properties anymore until they get sited, fined or taken to court. This has got to stop. Regardless of what the local "Merchants Organization" seems to think, Beechview has taken a dive in the past 5 years and my wife and I are seriuosly considering looking elswhere to live. But I'm going to give this one last try.
We have to start taking this neighborhood back. We don't need any more "Coffee Houses" or "high end trendy meat or produce stores", what we need is to start a grass roots organization that will take these local home owners and renters to task and have them start taking care of their properties. If that means we have to start by filing complaints with the Pittsburgh 311 website, then that's what we need to do.
All our local so-called Community and Mercahant Organizations and Associations seem to want to do is plant pretty gardens, pick up some liter on occaision and other pretty much useless projects to get their names in the paper. This is doing nothing to correct the core problem of Beechview which is properties that look like trash and it has gone on long enough.
If anyone else out there has any ideas about how to get a real and effective Beechview Communty Interest group started to see what we can do about getting local politicians, churches and other neighbors to take some action let me know. I would be more than happy to open my home for meetings on a monthly or even weekly basis.
Just to give you and idea of how seriuos I am about this, me and my digital camera will be walking the streets close to my home and near the IGA and I will be taking pictures of badly kept or abandoned properties and filling yet more complaints with the Pittsburgh 311 site. If I have to become a 1 person community clean-up association then so be it. But it would be nice to have some support and help.
Thanks for your time.
