August 03, 2020

Lower Commons Combined BRCS & City of Traverse City Trash Pick Up Report

After 7 cleanups in 4 years at the Commons not much had changed.

The City of Traverse City agreed to try one last measure that I dreamed up.

The City would provide a garbage truck once a week for 30 minutes and allow
homeless residents of the Commons to bring out trash and to pay them 2.00 per
FULL bag delivered to the truck. The BRCS handles the money and the City does
the trash disposal.

As a helper I have Karl, who was formerly homeless himself, taking care of logistics.

This has worked very well in the past but not on a sustainable basis.

Today was our first attempt and even though there were some problems like rain,
construction in the area where the people live and lack of contact with several people we
could not find in time, we still managed to get 12 bags of trash, 2 bikes and some camping
hardware trash out of the woods in 30 minutes for 28.00. A fair return on our money.

We will try again next week.

All the photos are here:

All the photos from this day's project

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Final Report Of This Project

This project ran for 4 weeks and we learned quite a bit during that time.

We learned that even with minimal participation by the residents of the
Commons, we were able to get 87 bags of trash, several bikes and abandoned
camping gear delivered to our truck for a total of $178.00.

We had a budget of $900.00 and we were well under that amount.

Soon, we hope to have a similar project at the property behind the Goodwill Inn.
That property is owned by Garfield Township and will present a new set of problems
to solve but we will help Garfield Township as much as we can.

We wish to thanks the City of Traverse City for their cooperation with this project.