Drexel University

The Center for Hunger-Free Communities

Solutions Based on Science and the Human Experience

Neighborhood safety

A drug bag that Tangela found in front of her house while Asiya was playing

Those are abandoned houses behind my yard. Those  two houses were set on fire--that got my daughter sick for a week with her asthma. I hate it. I hate this neighborhood.

My neighbor’s son:
The drugs are the root of all of it.  My neighbor’s son was killed there, and this neighbor still gets high, too.  Her son got killed for drugs right down the street from my house, and they’re still selling crack.  It’s sick.  When she gets all zapped out of her mind, she goes down there and lights a candle, around one, two o’clock in the morning.

An idea of where I am living.  They sit out there and smoke crack late at night, because the guy that sells crack is a few houses down.  So they might grab the crack and sit right there.

"When people see Samantha and Netta I want them to see children that are well taken care of, well-mannered, despite the poverty and stuff that they are living in and around. I want them to see educated children. That is one of the reasons why I don't let them play outside, out front, because I want people to see that I don't just let them run up and down the street with all that is going on, the drug activity and the folks sitting on their front porches drinking. I want people to see them for more than that."

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