October 2019 – The Victoria Foundation awarded a one year grant for $50,000 to support the Spruce it Up Campaign led by Clinton Hill Community Action (CHCA). With residents and community partners, Spruce it Up will engage a team of (10) community leaders as housing advocates and clean up and secure (30) abandoned properties in the Upper Clinton Hill neighborhood. The project also included conducting a property conditions survey, detailing the types of properties throughout the neighborhood and whether they are occupied and being maintained. The data will detail the number of abandoned properties and vacant lots and whether they are properly secured or trash-ridden.
CHCA hired and trained two teams of community residents to help lead the project. The first team included (5) community surveyors, all living in the Clinton Hill neighborhood. The team received training from New Jersey Community Capital on basic concepts for Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and how to use the LoveLand parcel survey tool. The other team included (6) residents with basic carpentry skills who worked alongside the Neighborhood Foundation, a national organization that works with communities to address blight through their model of resident engagement and decorative board ups. The project is being modeled after the success of the Neighborhood Foundation’s work in northern Camden.
To date, the community surveyors have completed 1,600 parcel surveys with roughly 1,000 more to go to cover the Upper Clinton Hill neighborhood. The decorative board up team have completed (18) properties that included mural installations by local artists from Yendor Productions.
The Spruce it Up Campaign is a part of Beautify the Block, a collaborative of several
community-based organizations working on neighborhood revitalization projects in the Clinton Hill neighborhood. The partners include: Greater Newark LISC, South Ward Children’s Alliance, the city’s Office of Sustainability, New Jersey Community Capital, and Community Asset Preservation Corporation.
