H'COLA, health experts tackle abandoned homes

Abandoned houses north of US 98 pose a public health threat.

As part of an ongoing initiative, Julianne Price, statewide coordinator for the Protocol for Assessing Community Excellence in Environmental Health (PACE EH) visited Apalachicola on Feb. 23.

Price toured a section of the residential area north of US 98 accompanied by Jason Flowers, county environmental health director, and David Walker, health education program manager.

Six months ago, Flowers applied to participate in PACE EH and was accepted.  The environmental health division of the county health department, working with PACE, surveyed the Hillside Coalition for Laborers of Apalachicola (H’COLA) to find out what its members felt were the biggest public health issues in their neighborhood, the area between Market and 14th streets bordered on the south by US 98 and on the north by Avenue M.

Participants identified deserted houses and a lack of safety as the top two concerns. The lack of adequate lighting was a secondary concern related to safety. The partnership generated lists of abandoned structures and burned out lights.

On the list of lights were four lights on Seventh Street, two on Avenue M, three on 14th Street, and two on 11th Street.

Many of the lights had been purposely shot out creating an atmosphere friendly to crime.

Flowers said he contacted Bobby Pickels, Progress Energy’s Northwest Florida community relations director, and was referred to a Progress Energy employee who has not yet answered his email.

Nine houses targeted by H’COLA included structures located at 12th Street and Avenue L, Dr. Martin Luther King Boulevard and 11th Street, Avenue K and 11th Street, Avenue M and 11th Street, a burned-out house located mid-block on 11th Street, houses at the corners of Seventh Street and Avenues G and M, and The Sid Hawkins house and Sara Nelson house, both located on Seventh Street.

Price said Gene Osborne, the city building inspector, is determining owners of the abandoned homes. Owners will receive a letter from the health department asking them to seal the structures or have them demolished.

During their tour of the H’COLA neighborhood, Price and Flowers saw many more abandoned houses than were named on the list. At one site, mattresses lying on a partially collapsed floor had been gnawed by rats.

At the corner of Eighth Street and Avenue K not a single house was inhabited and three were open.

Flowers said the houses need to be sealed to exclude rodents and other stray animals and to prevent children from playing in the often unstable structures.

In the course of the tour, Price, Flowers and Walker came across a large pile of garbage in an alley behind the public housing development near 11th Street. Illegal dumping also rated high on the list of complaints from the survey.

The pile contained numerous health hazards including paints, stains and potentially toxic building materials, hypodermic needles, prescription medicines, and a refrigerator with the door still attached.

Flowers pointed out that street-side dumping of trash is a problem throughout the county. There was also a notebook of confidential health records in the pile. He said the county policy of sending a truck to collect uncontained garbage has trained people to dispose of trash by simply piling it in the right-of-way rather than carrying it to the landfill.

Flowers said the trash had been removed on Friday when he returned to post “no dumping” signs.

Over lunch at AJs’s Sports Bar, Flowers, Walker and Price met with Mayor Van Johnson, Commissioner Brenda Ash and other community leaders to discuss PACE. One solution offered for safety concerns was a neighborhood watch program.

“We don’t want to scare people,” Flowers said. “It’s a cooperative effort at this point. We are just trying to respond to what people in the neighborhood say they need.”

Price said PACE seeks to bring government, business, the health department and residents together to discuss health issues unique to the community and, hopefully, to resolve those problems. She said Apalachicola is at the halfway point in a 12-month assessment process.

Once the assessment is complete, Price and her staff may help the city to locate grants to use for refurbishment projects. Price guided PACE through a similar assessment and mitigation program in West Wabasso, a community near Indian River.

According to a summary of the project published in the Journal of Environmental Health, “Over two and a half years, (PACE) worked with the community and various governmental agencies to bring much-needed improvements to the area. A survey was conducted to discover if the residents' (believed) quality of life had increased due to the improvements. The results yielded high satisfaction rates among residents. The general response was that their feelings of safety and overall well-being increased significantly. An unforeseen benefit was a renewed trust in government. “

Flowers and Price both said they hope to implement PACE programs in other Franklin County communities. Eastpoint and Lanark Village are both possible sites for future PACE initiatives.