March 26, 2024
Thom Carroll/PhillyVoice
Research suggests cleaning city blocks can reduce gun violence. An initiative championed by state Sen. Art Haywood now has a $818,000 grant to collect trash in Mount Airy and Germantown areas affected by crime.
Cleaning crews will visit hundreds of blocks in Northwest Philadelphia this summer and fall as part of a state-funded project to reduce gun violence.
Safe Steps Northwest will bring weekly cleaning services to 335 blocks across Mount Airy and Germantown starting in June. The initiative, spearheaded by community development corporations and state Sen. Art Haywood (D-District 4), will target areas with recent gun violence.
The project will build on a pilot program that swept the same city neighborhoods in 2022, albeit on a much smaller scale. Safe Steps Northwest is now $818,000 richer thanks to a grant from the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency, which will allow it to continue through at least October. (The funding will also create subsidies, which could help neighborhoods extend the services.) The initiative will once again tap Glitter, the subscription trash collection service, to execute the cleaning.
According to Glitter, the 2022 pilot targeted eight blocks in Mount Airy and East Germantown over three months. The company said it removed about 12 bags of litter every week, which cut down on reports of chronic illegal dumping. Each block was chosen using city-produced maps of gun violence and litter across neighborhoods; Mount Airy CDC recommended areas with high scores on both criteria for the project.
The initiative is based on evidence that beautifying city blocks can help reduce gun violence. Previous research from the University of Pennsylvania shows that cleaning up vacant lots can reduce residents' depression by 41.5% and area gun violence by as much as 29%. The same is true for other signs of blight. Another Penn study of the city's Basic Systems Repair Program found that total crime dropped by 21.9% on a block when just one home received necessary repairs.
Haywood has long been a proponent of interventions such as these, but he now has a powerful ally in the city's new mayor. Since the mayoral primaries, Cherelle Parker has promised to make Philadelphia "safe, clean and green" by prioritizing policing and anti-litter initiatives. In her first budget proposal, Parker earmarked more than $246 million over five years for cleaning and sanitation, including $18 million for a residential cleaning program and $11 million for a twice-weekly collection pilot in neighborhoods with persistent trash problems.
Thought the city has not updated its litter index since 2019, the last report found a slight increase in littering. Only about half of the blocks surveyed were classified as "minimally littered," while the rest were considered "moderately" or "heavily littered." Short dumping has become an area of focus for the Streets Department in recent years, with new laws that impose stiffer fees on offenders. In 2022, the city mounted its first civil prosecution of an illegal dumper, which resulted in over $10,700 in penalties. Parker has proposed additional illegal dumping crews to tackle the problem.
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