I love family, and there's a real sense of community here. Right now six high school girls are working at the bakery part-time, continuing the tradition. That increase in college-bound youngsters has been a side effect of Braddock schools' merger with other communities to form the Woodland Hills School District. A 1970s federal lawsuit to ensure racial desegregation led to the merger of five districts into Woodland Hills in 1984, about a dozen years after the Braddock and North Braddock districts had merged. And, in the last few years, additional improvements have been made in education, recreation, transportation, medical care.
Work continues on improving affordable housing.
A public housing project that had fallen into disrepair and disrepute, Talbot Towers was one of several public housing apartment complexes in the area to fall to the wrecking ball as a result of the 1987 lawsuit filed by tenants and named after resident Cheryl Sanders. Today, the Sanders Task Force is trying to make the best use of block grants to aid economic development and improve living conditions in seven distressed communities. Change seems painfully slow. But if housing stock was changed now, business would come. It seems to me it has to start with housing.