Here's another article featured in the Enquirer today this time discussing the upcoming plans for Washington Park. The article tries to highlight that "long time residents" are skeptical about the plans. They interview two admittedly alcoholic homeless people who say they use the park as a gathering ground to meet up with other alcoholics and drug addicts.
Doesn't this highlight the need to do something about this huge problem? Even the homeless addicts who hang out there admit that the park is simply being used as a gathering ground for criminal activity!
The fact that this city has allowed that space to be abused like this for so long is absolutely ludicrous! This park should be a safe, attractive meeting ground for people to walk through, read books in, take their kids to, etc. etc. Instead, its being used as the worst display of human filth you can possibly imagine.
The Washington Park renovation is one of two projects in Over the Rhine that I believe is going to be crucial to finally cleaning up the neighborhood and stabilizing it for years to come (the other being the streetcars of course).
Those people who use that park for exactly what the article points out have got to go. If the Drop Inn Center and other social service agencies in the neighborhood refuse demand that the people they serve do something to clean up their lives, then the city and the neighborhood's new residents should demand and enforce it themselves.
Washington Park must be cleaned up.
In my opinion, all of the progress being made in OTR is a waste if Washington Park is allowed to stay in its current state.
What do you think? Comment Below.