City of Wilmington teams with local artists to creatively paint boarded, vacant properties

Wilmington, DE: City leaders collaborated with local artists in a community-building exercise to try to diminish blight and encourage sales of boarded-up vacant buildings.

 

Five homes in the Southbridge neighborhood were used as the testing ground for members of the community to apply artistic talents by painting the attached boards that were used to secure the windows, doorways, and other entrance areas of the properties.

 

Children and local artists were contacted to present ideas (often with bright colors), and then apply those ideas to the boarded homes, in the hope that the now beautified homes would be a deterrent for squatters or as trash dumps from people; as well as encouraging sale of the homes to would-be residents.

 

The pilot program will be evaluated for if the artistically painted homes do serve to diminish crime at the areas, as well brighten the dispositions of the residents living in the neighborhoods with the vacant homes.

 

The program will likely be expanded to other areas of the city, should the efforts prove to be well received by the rest of the community.

 

 

 

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