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Quick story-

I live in grad hospital. The southwest corner of Christian and broad is a vacant derelict lot in maintained by Kenny Gamble - with poverty trees growing at breakneck speed. It became a den for derelicts. Not only did they live there, one must have been a carpenter in a past life because he constructed a lean-to hit where he and another derelict resided. Then there was the cat lady who constructed a cat condo out of milk cartons; residence to a dozen feral cats. I tried to rally the neighbors to take action.... nothing, peppered with laziness. Then the Upenn professor living 4 houses down had one of the lean-to residents, friends, or local drug addicts climb the fence bordering the mess into his yard, steal a ladder from the caddy corner construction, and climb into his bedroom and shoot him in the head. Thankfully, he was grazed as survived it.

I wrote a letter to Kenny gamble, contacted the city requesting clean up..... And of course nothing happened. So I took my chinsaw and enlisted the help of a friend. Two 12 hour days or work later, I massacred every tree sprouting and concealing the drug den, turned the lean to to splinters, thwarted off the two resident derelicts, and created a 30x30 foot mass ad debris in the center of the lot for the city to see. For months, no action. I petitioned for its removal, and futilely attempted to contact Kenny gamble. Nothing. Then...as this story usually goes, the pile of garbage began growing like an aggressive tumor with every contractors garbage. FINALLY, Kenny must have realized the situation and ponied up to clean it. The trees are now back just over a year later.

The moral? Kenny Gamble is a connected man and gets away with this deleliction of property. It's reminiscent of how the city manages their land. To add, the neighboring property on Christian st just constricted a beautiful new townhouse, and Kenny charged them, like a petty teenager, to use this gross lot to put up a temporary scaffold to stucco the side of their house - all while allowing it to become a perennial drug den. Sounds like par for the course right?

Kudos to you for standing up for yourself and beautifying the city.