Today's editorial commends the Fresno City Council for adding its leadership to the effort to revitalize a long-neglected neighborhood near California State University, Fresno, called El Dorado Park. The area, a conglomeration of way too many low-income apartment complexes, originally was nicknamed Sin City because it was populated mostly by college students prone to rowdy behavior.
The students long ago moved into tonier, newer digs and an influx of low-income renters took their place. The property owners have neglected the units; and it has become a magnet for graffiti, blight and crime. A lot of children are growing up in this unhealthy environment, and they deserve better.
The city has commissioned a plan to revitalize the area, and that is a welcome contribution to the community efforts that are already at work.
While I'll gleefully take progress in any form, it continues to frustrate me that problems in Fresno are allowed to get huge before they are addressed in a significant way. As we said in the editorial, this area could have been maintained when the problem was small -- just one nasty complex ignored by an absentee landlord. Now it's a monstrous problem that people expect will take decades to correct.
Look at your neighborhood. Is there one hot spot that's been ignored; one bad situation that isn't getting better?
I agree with you on not being able to understand how the city can let things get so far out of control especially when it always creates more money for the city to have to spend. I think slumlords should be fined real big if they don't keep their properties in good shape for the people living there and the surrounding areas. I am a property owner and even though I have a management company taking care of things, I still drive by my property and the area every other week.