Love Your Block: The Sustainable Beauty of Restoration
Written by Gabe Hart
Photographed by Mirza Babic
Beauty is contextual; the definition is malleable to the point of elasticity.
Is something beautiful because of its aesthetic quality? Is beauty found in spaces deeper than surface impressions? Can something be beautiful without a contextual, emotional connection to an object, person, or space? Yes and no. Beauty is subjective enough to be seen in each and none simultaneously.
Light spills down East Baltimore, scattering itself across lawns and roofs, towards Dr. F. E. Wright Drive. The houses on this block are roughly a century old. 100 years of history, transition, and light refracting east daily, forming shadows under trees, over empty lots, on repeat.
Time has pressed itself, subtly, on many of the homes in this neighborhood — paint chipping, wood rotting, ichnites of condensation on window panes. The surface blemishes symptomatic of deeper structural flaws.
Elvia Trejo, Neighborhood Specialist for the City of Jackson, carefully maneuvers a passenger van full of tools between parallel-parked cars on a narrow street in East Jackson. Slowing, then turning around in a driveway, the van's shocks well past their prime. She points to her left, focusing on three new windows with white trim beaming from the sunlight.
“If these windows stayed in the shape they were in, there would’ve been much bigger problems for the house. With the water and all the elements coming in, mold was just spreading. It was spreading through the wall, so we were able to replace those windows, fix all of that, and now their house is just fine. Now, the owners can also age in place,” she explained.
Along with Abby Palmer, Elvia works in the Neighborhood Services Department of the City of Jackson. Under the umbrella of this department, city residents can apply for grants for home improvement, borrow tools from a mobile tool shed, or complete a home repair needs survey.
The cornerstone of this department is the Love Your Block (LYB) program — a high-impact volunteering initiative committed to reducing blight and inspiring neighborhood-driven change. LYB provides resources and funding for resident-led improvement projects, focusing on minor exterior home repairs, litter clean-ups, and neighborhood improvement.
Like beauty, love is also a subjective word. Love can be shown in a variety of ways — investment of time, intricate care, service to another person, to name a few. But what does it mean to love your block? To help meet the needs of your neighbors? Conversely, how much vulnerability and trust is required to ask for help when needed.
“We’ve had to be very intentional in building trust throughout the community with this program,” Elvia said. “People were skeptical at first. They didn’t understand how they could receive free repairs; they thought it was a scam.”
Initially, the LYB program was relegated to East Jackson and provided only front-facing aesthetic work, but it has since expanded to every part of the city and now includes repair options for windows, siding, and partial roof repair. Along with minor home repairs, LYB commissioned multiple murals featuring past and present Jacksonians in downtown and East Jackson. Accompanying the mural next to JACOA, a free community refrigerator is accessible year-round for anyone needing something from it.
“I feel like in this day and age, we don’t see a lot of neighbors that know each other, and I think that has
been one of the greatest things that I’ve seen. Just people kind of slowing down, talking to us, asking,‘What is this?’”
The genesis of LYB traces back to 2021 when Jackson was selected as one of eight U.S. cities to be funded by a grant program that brings city leaders and residents together to build stronger neighborhoods, one block at a time.
The first two years of the program focused on the physical aesthetics of homes that had aged precipitously overtime. A fresh coat of paint on a front porch or a pressure-washed driveway can seem small on the surface, but each improvement restored a sense of pride in the homeowner and even inspired other homeowners on the street to make minor improvements to their properties. The surface beautification of these early projects helped establish LYB within the community and opened space for conversations between neighbors and neighborhoods people kind of slowing down, talking to us, asking, ‘What is this?’” Elvia said.
Today, the LYB program has evolved to include a mobile tool shed, a free lawn care service for qualifying residents, and mini-grants of $2,000 each to 20 homeowners for beautification and minor repairs. This program's importance reaches beyond cosmetic improvements; the deepest benefit LYB provides is the sustainability of property for longer periods, preventing irreversible damage. Most importantly, the program has allowed residents to stay in their homes.
One resident knows firsthand how vital LYB can be to a community.
“One of my windows was rotting around the trim. In the winter, I could feel the air coming through the windows. It was just terrible. I was worried the pane itself would fall out. I absolutely needed that window replaced, and I’m so happy I could get the help to do it.”
As LYB has grown, so has the need for volunteers. LYB contracts with Alpha Lawn Service for the yard maintenance program and a few contractors for minor repairs but still heavily relies on community members for work like painting, trash pickup, and pressure washing. Each provides opportunities for connection within the community, a soul-level beautification process of service and support.
Light will continue to scatter east from the west each evening, the sun setting on another day, the day to a week, the week to a month, and so on and so forth. Time will march, wood will rot, and paint will chip. Most of what LYB provides may easily go unnoticed by a passerby, but the beauty will always be found in the restoration, in the small details of sustainability and community.