Some good could come of Lemon Wood site
It’s time for the Fayette County Housing Authority to do something that will benefit the community in regards to Lemon Wood Acres. A long-time debt should be paid back to the taxpayers of the Laurel Highlands School District along with the city of Uniontown. It’s simple; give the now demolished Lemon Wood Acres and its land to North Union Township or Uniontown.
Donate the land to the community at zero cost. Create a beautiful park in the place where there was pain, suffering, and almost daily tragedies and make it a place where happy memories and dreams can be built.
Lemon Wood Acres had a devastating affect on adjacent property owners whose values plummeted due to a rampant crime wave that destroyed their dreams, the American Dream, of owning one’s home and living in a nice neighborhood and not living in the Hood. Fayette County Housing Authority board members have an opportunity to turn a major league mistake into the Phoenix rising out of the rubble and ashes and create something that the community can be proud of.
The authority’s previous leadership and self-serving board members did not just let the taxpayers down; they let humanity down. Isn’t it finally time for the FCHA to finally love its neighbor and do the right thing for our community, our home and our people?
Where there was tremendous pain and suffering, shootings, corruption of children, babies having babies, fights, countless drug deals, and murders, the board and Executive Director Tom Harkless can give the taxpayers hope, more importantly give humanity hope. Lemon Wood was a tragedy caused by a small group of arrogant influence peddlers who gained financially at the expense of poor people and their third world existence. The greed and corruption of a few hurt the many in Fayette County.
Lemon Wood Acres was a government program that went wrong. When you put a bunch of poor people, who are down on their luck, in one consolidated area, you have Lemon Wood Acres, AKA the OK Corral and killing fields of Fayette County and the infamous Crack (cocaine) Alley.
Lemon Wood Acres will be known as a key inflection point in our modern local history with the start of cleaning up the widespread political corruption that has existed in our county for decades, along with the voter fraud, and the rampant drug dealing that has infiltrated Fayette County. There is much to be done.
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Sean M. Cavanagh is a former Fayette County commissioner.