Armenia RPCVs John and Janice Hahn are determined to monitor the condition of Richard Avenue and complain to supervisors and township code enforcement officer Angela Hock on a daily basis if necessary
Time for a Change
By Dale Heberlig October 6, 2004
Caption: Bags of garbage and overflowing trash containers block Richard Avenue sidewalks Monday morning. (Pam Roy/Special to The Sentinel)
Janice Hahn says living conditions on Richard Avenue are "shameful."
She insists members of a new neighborhood watch group will not rest until Shippensburg Township and Shippensburg University officials take action.
Hahn and her husband, John, brought their argument to Shippensburg Township supervisors Saturday, outlining their group's strategy and urging supervisors to press landlords, rogue students and SU administrators for change.
Janice told supervisors that "Richard Avenue has a reputation throughout the community and you should be ashamed."
The block-long Richard Avenue is home to a large number of SU students and is at the center of a stepped-up police effort to curb underage drinking and alcohol-related problems.
Three properties on the street and several on nearby streets were posted with violation notices in response to the conditions.
The Hahns live just around the corner on North Prince Street, where a number of student rental units share space in stately homes with well-manicured lawns. Janice says the difference in the two streets is like night and day.
"We love to see students on the street, walking to class with their backpacks. We just love it," Janice says.
Along Richard Avenue Monday, overflowing garbage cans and heaps of loose rubbish blocked sidewalks. Discarded cans and bottles laid in gutters as township crews picked up sagging furniture that had been left outdoors.
"Someone has failed Richard Avenue," Janice says. "It needs to be turned around, and it can be."
The Hahns contend the seven or eight members of their neighborhood watch group are determined to monitor the condition of Richard Avenue and complain to supervisors and township code enforcement officer Angela Hock on a daily basis if necessary.
"We're not going to go away," Janice says. "I'll be darned if a few students who will be worrying about their own property values in a few years are going to destroy my property values now."
Transplanted from Connecticut and New York, the Hahns served together for 27 months as Peace Corps volunteers in Armenia after the collapse of the USSR.
They discovered Shippensburg after their return from Armenia.
"We drove here and thought, 'what a quaint little town,'" Janice says.
In an effort to preserve that image, she has several suggestions for returning control to Richard Avenue:
# Modify township ordinances to close loopholes, making it easier to impose penalties on landlords who exercise no control over their tenants.
"Let's see if we can make it easier to issue citations and quicker to get these people to court, if necessary," Janice says.
# Lobby SU administrators to force sophomores to live in on-campus residences. She says university officials have told her they get calls from parents who say their kids who live off-campus don't know how to run a dishwasher or lower screens in the windows of their apartments.
"That tells me these kids are too immature to live on their own without supervision," Hahn says.
# Modify the township zoning ordinance to reduce the number of unrelated people living in a residence from four to three. She says even if that has no immediate effect, it can pay dividends in the future.
# Launch a persistent and consistent campaign to "hit landlords in the pocketbook," making it more expensive to ignore tenant problems than take corrective measures.
"We're the new kids on the block, so we're not complacent," Janice says.
She's prepared for a protracted effort, if necessary, and knows cooperation is the key to reversing what has happened on Richard Avenue.
"I have a favorite saying that Wyatt Earp has the reputation of cleaning up Dodge City, but he didn't do it alone," she says. "Our neighborhood watch group can't do this alone and neither can the supervisors or the police or the university or the landlords, but together we can."
John says Richard Avenue is their latest venture in volunteerism and community service.
"This feels right," he says of the Richard Avenue quest.
