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Upper Manhattan Cleans Up Graffiti and Litter

By Carla Zanoni | August 12, 2011 6:39pm
Community members complain that graffiti has marred the beauty of Upper Manhattan.
Community members complain that graffiti has marred the beauty of Upper Manhattan.
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NYC Community Cleanup

UPPER MANHATTAN — Uptown is getting serious about cleaning up its streets with three recently launched initiatives seeking to remove graffiti and litter from Harlem to Inwood, where resident complaints have reached a fevered pitch.

“It’s like people stop caring at 125th Street,” said Maria Villanova, 27, who moved to Washington Heights from the East Village 13 years ago. “Even there the storekeepers would sweep the sidewalks and paint over graffiti more often.”

"It can't just be that we wait for the city to clean everything up," she added.

With that in mind, several groups and politicians are taking a step toward making such cleanups regular and more of a community effort.

City Councilman Robert Jackson announced his allocation of $25,000 toward the cleanup of graffiti in his district Friday, which his office said will seek to “keep all storefronts, roll-down gates, sidewalls and street furniture graffiti-free.”

Jackson’s office is working with Community Boards 9 and 12 along with local nonprofits Washington Heights-Inwood Coalition, Hamilton Heights Business Association, the Bodega Association of the United States, the Community League of the Heights, Broadway United Businesses and DONAR Inc. to clean streets from Harlem through Inwood.

On Thursday, NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital teamed up with anti-litter and graffiti initiative NYC Community Cleanup Thursday to remove graffiti from a stretch of their building along the West Side Highway, near the on-ramp for the George Washington Bridge.

And last month, City Councilman Ydanis Rodriguez launched a street clean up initiative where residents and community leaders volunteered time to pick up trash in the vicinity of Dyckman Street and Broadway, where Washington Heights and Inwood meet.

"Northern Manhattan is filled with people who love their neighborhoods, and who worked to preserve them through the years when it seemed like no one really cared about the area,” Rodriguez said last month.

“Unfortunately, many of us here have noticed an increase in garbage on our streets and sidewalks, and we are coming together as a community to clean it up.”