Inshirah lives on Dunstan Avenue, a few blocks north of N. Central University, where he works as a public affairs producer and an announcer for WNCU, the school's jazz station. He's been in the neighborhood for about twelve years, having previously lived on Price Avenue, which runs east-west two blocks north of NCCU.
Walking the streets, Inshirah pointed out overgrown, weedy lots, houses with broken windows, abandoned homes, and porches with trash spilling onto the lawnall within a block or two of the historically black university.
While not on the NCCU campus, these blighted propertiesand, in some cases, public rights of wayare located on streets where two-hour parking zones are enforced, an acknowledgment by the city that NCCU students and visitors park there.
On his walk to work in the past year, Inshirah says, he's spotted several hypodermic needles on the street: one on the block of Fayetteville and two at the corner of Fayetteville and Dupree, near a school bus stop. If you head north from the NCCU sign on the lawn of Farrison-Newton, down Fayetteville, three of the first five residencesall within about fifty yards of the schoolare boarded up.
One has a collapsing awning. Several have cracked windows. A block east, beneath a sloped white wall built into a hill at Merrick and Dunbar, a dusting of assorted litter, including condoms and condom wrappers, mixes in with weeds sprouting out of the sidewalk. And this is where people park for school! Paul Hamerka, a contractor who has rehabbed and rented out homes on Price Avenue and Dupree Street, tells the INDY he endured four break-ins at one of his houses while remodeling it.
