West Rehoboth is on the rise

I drove through West Rehoboth one evening this week to further my sense of the transition underway in that historically African-American community.  This is obviously a community where good people, who don’t want their children exposed to drug dealing and gunfire, are working to take back the streets from people working on the underside of the law.  A prominent sign outside the community center warns that drug dealing won’t be tolerated.  On at least two abandoned and dilapidated buildings condemnation notices have been posted by Sussex County.   Two others in the neighborhood are also slated for removal.

For decades, West Rehoboth was a forgotten community along the dead-end Hebron Road. Now Hebron is a through road connecting to Church Street and Holland Glade Road and as such is much more in the  public eye. Good people have come together in a variety of organizations to preserve what’s good about West Rehoboth and change what isn’t.  All of these efforts take time and effort but the accomplishments are already visible and as a result, the children of West Rehoboth are growing up in a settled and caring community that is on the rise.

In the midst of World War Two, one prominent British statesman noted that the only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for men of good will to do nothing.  In West Rehoboth, plenty of people with good will are showing that their community can overcome the dark days of the past and continue to improve.

Making our communities nicer

As a community, we continue to tolerate too many problems that bring our neighborhoods down. This burned out house in West Rehoboth has marred the streetscape of the area for far too long. In fact, in the past couple of years, the house has burned twice. At this point, the best use of the structure would be for a controlled burn to help train the dedicated volunteers of Rehoboth Beach Volunteer Fire Company. West Rehoboth is a community of real people with a variety of widely divergent neighborhoods whose residents deserve better than walking and riding by a burned-out shell every day. The days of Hebron Road being a dead-end haven for drug dealing and other outlaw activities ended when the road was connected to Holland Glade Road and Church Street. Structures such as this one are not only hard on the eyes, but also create danger zones for children. If the property owners wont remove the eyesore themselves, Sussex County should bulldoze the structure and put a lien on the property to cover those costs. The property where the structure sits is a valuable corner lot. Its sale would more than cover the cost of removing the burned out building.