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There are three easy things you can do to help make Old North Knoxville (ONK) a better place to live: report abandoned or empty houses, overgrown lots, and burned out street lights. All you need is a telephone or a computer with Internet connection. If you should see an abandoned house in ONK, please let Old North Knoxville, Inc. know by either calling 673-8995 or sending an e-mail to cdpalmer@bellsouth.net or to webmaster@oldnorthknoxville.org. An abandoned or empty house includes one in which all the tenants have moved out and there appears to be nobody living inside. You should also tell us if you see a person or people living in a building with a condemned sign on it. Nobody should be living in such a house until it is brought back up to code and inspected again by the codes department. If you see something like that happening, please let us know or call the city codes department at 215-2118. You can also call the codes department to report an overgrown lot. There is an ordinance against this. You can also report this to ONK at the number or e-mail addresses listed above. A streetlight that is not working does not do any of us any good. If you should see one, even a burned out one in an alley, call KUB at 524-2911. Why should you report these things? Because a condemned house with somebody living in it is a potential hazard to the other houses near it: maybe even yours. After all, it was condemned and deemed unsuitable for habitation for a reason. Also, a list of vacant houses is turned over to the police, who can then help keep an eye on them so vagrants don’t start to live in them. This helps to keep the crime down in the neighborhood. An overgrown lot is a place for mice and rats to breed, which may in turn come and eat their way into your home. It is also a place where trash accumulates and that attracts unwanted pests. A burned out streetlight does nothing to help guide you home at night or provide a little extra security as you walk from your car to your home. These three things can help us keep Old North Knoxville a safer and prettier place to live.
An example of a once-abandoned house that now has a much brighter future (thanks to Charles Richmond)! |
