Jackson doesn't regret her choice for a home, and residents say that Poly is showing signs of recovery. And although boarded-up businesses and abandoned houses sit like scars on the landscape, progress is visible in various redevelopment efforts. The grant also funded home improvements for some longtime residents and flashing school zone warning lights at D. McRae Elementary School on Avenue N and T.A. Sims Elementary on Crenshaw Avenue. Neighborhood Housing Services, a nonprofit organization, has built two houses and purchased four others to rehabilitate and sell. Stop Six neighborhoods in three decades.
Pace attributes the good times to the economy.
Because of the employment rate being up, people are working. Today, Polytechnic Heights is an integrated, working-class neighborhood of blacks, Hispanics and a few Anglos. Residents are most likely to work on an assembly line or work as machine operators, maintenance workers or construction workers. Neighbors have begun turning the soil and carving out plots for the community's organic garden on North Littlejohn Street. Residents will grow fresh vegetables as well as lush flowers on what was once a dumping ground.