No matter which direction Arthur Joe looks from his home, he sees abandoned properties and the blight they attract.
Next door is an empty house where “drugheads” – as Joe calls them – often set up camp. Behind is a duplex with trash visible through every broken window, and an alley clogged with refuse spilling from several abandoned lots.
Across the street is a vacant house owned by Joe’s landlord. Joe mows the grass there, vowing “we’re going to put it back together.”
For decades, Gary has been ravaged by economic decline and a long, deep housing bust, and putting it back together won’t be easy. Mayor Karen Freeman-Wilson thinks letting vast swaths of her once-prosperous city, the birthplace of Michael Jackson, return to nature might be a solution.
“I’d like to see 100,000 folks in Gary. That’d be great,” the mayor said recently, walking through a neighborhood where empty lots and structures outnumber occupied homes. “We could probably do it in 35 square miles.” That’s 25 percent more residents on nearly 40 percent less land.
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