A New Milpas Street Business Association Is Forming
The Business Group Hopes to Shrink Homeless Presence
A new alliance of Milpas Street business owners is forming to try to beat back what they see as a deterioration of their neighborhood due to the presence of homeless people. Alan Bleecker, owner of Capital Hardware and the group’s leader, said he would be filing papers soon to create an organization called The Milpas Community Association. The alliance will ostensibly replace the now disbanded Milpas Association, which dissolved reportedly because its president moved to Oregon.
Mr. Bleecker said his new group would launch a crusade to take their neighborhood back using tools like an “adopt a block” program, Neighborhood Watch and the city-championed anti-panhandling campaign “Real Change, Not Spare Change”. They would also be petitioning the City for help solving problems that are “obvious” according to Bleecker; things like drug use, prostitution, defecation and urination.
“We’re assembling an organization of businesses who are disenchanted with the fact that there are so many people coming to the lower Milpas area and getting services but not respecting the community and neighborhoods,” Mr. Bleecker said. To read more, see homelessinsb.org.
