Boarded-up homes, shuttered stores, overgrown yards and crumbling roads…
By themselves, these are eyesores and sometimes safety hazards. Taken together, they’re known as blight, a daily reality across Macon and Bibb County.
For three and a half years, the McIntosh family has been living next to a rat trap in south Macon’s Lynmore Estates neighborhood. But now the blighted property is gone, along with another around the corner on Shi Place. Crews demolished both Thursday morning in the opening salvo of Macon Area Habitat for Humanity’s “Blight Out of Sight” program.
GPB Macon, The Telegraph, and Mercer University's Center for Collaborative Journalism are embarking on a months-long reporting project on blight. That word means different things to different people, but any definition would include a house like 1261 Hartley Street in South Macon.
The City of Macon began the second year of its 5x5 neighborhood beautification program Monday, in which various departments concentrate their efforts on one five-block area at a time, rather than spreading their efforts across the city.