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Next we'll go to the city of Benton Harbor, where the Berrien County Land Bank is working
to restore and transform the city of Benton Harbor.
When you lose half your population over a forty or fifty year period, there's a lot
of empty structures that need to be dealt with, and they have not been dealt with under
the old foreclosure process. And it left a lot of abandoned properties within the city's
hands, and they didn't have the money to tear them down.
The beauty of the foreclosure process, the beauty of the NSP money is that it's a revolving
door of money coming in that's going back out not to make profit for local units because
that has never been our goal here, but to do it in the right way, and that is removing
blight.
I love the neighborhood. It's quiet, it's real quiet. But lately there's been a lot
of abandoned houses. There's still a lot of empty houses over here in this area, and I
was most concerned about this one over here because... especially with the kids. I'm a
day care provider so. And I was mostly concerned about the abandoned houses on this street
with the broken glass and everything. So I was concerned about the kids playing in this
area. There's a lot of kids in this area.
Any time you can take an empty lot that has been next to a person's homestead for a long
time and make it part of their homestead and they're willing to pay the taxes and they're
current on their current taxes, I mean, it's a win-win for everybody. And that's... I think
the main thing that I can take from what we're doing as a land bank is we want people to
stay in their neighborhoods because they want to. Not because they have to.
So when they started doing that, when the land bank started doing that, I was so glad
when they came out to demolish that place. It was just a blessing. I said, "Lord I thank
you." But I really want to do, I want to get it and put a fence around it. Because we have
a tendency of people to walk across your property and throw bottles and everything. And we want
to try to keep it real nice. The back part of it, my husband, he loves to garden. He
loves to garden. So this would give him a nice garden back there.
The property that we got from the land bank was property that has been needed for parking
because, like, when we have fellowships and stuff, yeah our parking lot gets filled and
you got parking on both sides of the street and it can cause accidents and stuff, especially
in the evening time.
The land bank has really helped beautify Benton Harbor again because we... You know, if you
ride through a city, any city, whether it's Benton Harbor or St. Joe, I don't care where
it is, you see houses that are empty. You see them. They're eyesores. They become eyesores
because nobody's doing no work on them. You see windows, broken glass and stuff and everything.
When that's gone, that helps beautify the city. That's bringing the city back so when
people that don't know nothing about Benton Harbor, they come through and see, "Oh, what,
you know, Benton Harbor's not that bad. It don't look that bad. Maybe I might want to
stay here." You know? And some people will. Everybody won't, but some people will.
Water Street Glassworks is a public studio and school for the glass and metal arts. We
are a nonprofit organization here in the Benton Harbor arts district. We are sort of the foundation
of this arts district.
I've only been here in the district for about two years, and in that short amount of period
of time, I've seen huge leaps and bounds here. There's more and more people coming into the
district.
Of course, we've got Harbor Shores, which is literally in our back yard. And then the
Whirlpool new building is being built just down the street. So we're kind of in the crossroads
of both of those. Next summer we have the Senior PGA coming here, which literally is
in our back yard.
So we're looking forward to being able to share our story of what the real Benton Harbor
is to all of those people who have maybe only heard what's on the national news and never
really been here, so.
There's part of Benton Harbor coming back. Because Benton Harbor is coming back and people
do care about Benton Harbor, and they care about how it looks. And we want Benton Harbor
to be all that it can be.