Vera Watson

“One thing is getting people more involved with block clubs, and teaching them how to clean and take care of their property.”

Willie Macon

“Share your knowledge. For instance, if someone comes and compliments you on your yard, use this opportunity to share your flowers, your gardening techniques and things like that. Have communication with your neighbors. Get to know them so that you can help them. Also, as far as getting together with your community, one house on the block looking good is not going to help at all. You need to be spreading neighborhood friendship around.”

Cora Williams

“One concern that I have is that people drive up, eat in the car and they throw the debris right on your lawn. They drink and throw their beer bottles on your lawn. If that could just stop it would help a lot. One way I try to stop it is by going outside to say, ‘Oh honey, could you pick that up. Don’t leave that here.’ We all can go out when we see it happening and tell them not to do it. And we can tell the children not to throw the popcorn or candy paper on the ground. I think that would help us.”

Willie Ferber

“One thing I think every homeowner should do is sweep the curb in front of their homes, as well as the sidewalk. Most people just sweep the sidewalk and sweep it onto the curb. They don’t know that a person driving their cars; the first thing they see is the curb, and from the curb it looks like your house. And that is the same for businesses-they should do the same thing too, because if you see a business with a lot of trash in front of it, I don’t think you want to stop there.”

Juline McClinton

“I think what can make our neighborhoods more presentable is if everyone on a particular block could just spend five to 10 minutes picking up all the debris. If you have elderly neighbors who can’t do this, go two or three doors down and help them. Our streets would look a lot better.

Maxine McCreightney

“In addition to picking up on your own property, I would say to get kids involved, particularly during the summer when they may not have many things to do. Get the children that are on your block involved in cleaning up and picking up after themselves.”

Editor’s note: This Streetbeat was originally published July 26, 2007.