May 25, 2007 2 min read

My home in Brownsville is for sale. The home has been well maintained for 52 years. One problem: The streets of Brownsville are dirty, strewn with litter, and infested with criminal juveniles. The crime spree (broken windows, cars vandalized, disorderly conduct, and of course, drugs) has senior citizens and the few taxpayers left in the town seeking refuge behind their locked doors and windows. Some of the crime is reported, but a majority goes unreported because of fear. There are 12-year-old hoodlums threatening neighbors with bricks. Calls to the mayor are not returned. The Pennsylvania state police do not respond when the 911 calls are dispatched for a response.

The citizens of Brownsville are on their own in confronting these hoodlums. They are under 18 and well aware that the streets of Brownsville belong to them.

If you are driving your vehicle on Brownsville’s Northside, and these hoodlums are walking the streets, you better turn around and roll up your windows.

If you try to drive or walk the streets, you are threatened, cursed, and challenged. The juvenile hoodlums know that the law is on their side. They are under 18 (a few are that old) and the laws protect them from the suitable punishment of incarceration. A typical response from my neighbors when asking for help is, “As long as they don’t bother me.”

I have a message for the people of Brownsville: These hoodlums are bothering you with sleepless nights, higher taxes for non-existent police protection, filthy streets, higher home and vehicle insurance costs for vandalism, vacant homes because the owners have fled the town, homes which can’t be sold at fair market value because of the crime, and poor economic conditions in the town.

However, the homes are picked up for a dime by slum landlords as rental properties, and the cycle never ends. A town consisting of 50 percent rental properties and low-income tenants. My fellow neighbors, you have lost the basic right to live in your neighborhood in peace. I have a house for sale.

Elizabeth Hedges

Brownsville