MACON, Ga. — Macon-Bibb County Mayor Lester Miller and Code Enforcement Director JT Ricketson say the county plans to demolish at least nine blighted structures, beginning as early as next week.
One of the houses that is set to be demolished sits on Pinson Street, next to to several other blighted homes.
"There's barely no signs of life," Miller said, describing how this used to be a vibrant part of town.
The street is nearly empty, minus the stranded tires, litter scattered across yards, and bags of trash piled around and inside the forgotten homes.
Miller and Ricketson say the neighborhood is an example of what blight attracts.
"I’ve seen some evidence of drugs. I’ve seen some evidence of prostitution. I’ve seen some evidence of neglect, and one thing leads to another," Miller said.
Ricketson says this is called the "Broken Window theory."
"When you see broken windows in a community, the criminal element looks at that, and when you aren’t repairing those windows, what you have is more things happen," Ricketson said.
Ricketson says that’s when more crime and even more blight move in, but the two say the county is trying to reverse this ripple effect.
The county started with a list of 57 blighted houses. Of those, they’re working to demolish 37 of them after their owners did not respond to the notice. The county is waiting on asbestos tests to come back on some of those, but nine have been cleared for demolition.
Ricketson says 14 of the 57 owners responded and said they would fix the blighted property on their own rather than have the county put a lien on the property and demolish it.
"Make no mistake about it, these houses cannot be rehabbed. They're going to have to be torn down to the ground. We're going to offer incentives to build these neighborhoods up," Miller said.
Ricketson and Miller both say this is just the beginning of their effort to tear down and build up some of these areas. Just this Friday, the Code Enforcement Department handed over their second list of blighted structure in town over to the county attorney's office for review, but this list is nearly triple the size of the first. Ricketson says this second list has 156 properties on it.
"We're trying to take little bites out of a time, we're working our way through. We're trying to do it very systematic. We're looking at specific streets, specific neighborhoods, so we can have this impact immediately," Ricketson said.