PA loses houses like its people lose teeth.

The city blocks in Harrisburg, PA’s 7th ward have one or two very vertical houses with a little lean to them—the last teeth in a mouth whose gums can’t really hold them.

My dad only had a few teeth left in his mouth when I was a kid. When the school bus carried me by the strip of city next to the train yards on 7th street in Harrisburg, I recognized those trios of anterior incisors:

Houses designed to lean on each other, and give each other walls. Those make some sense, like an abbreviated row of lower teeth—still serving their purpose. And then, there is the occasional strong solo front tooth-like ”row” home.

Not designed to be solo, I don’t think. But looking solid and stable and well-rooted in that spot.

But, if you were to ask me to call Harrisburg, PA’s 7th ward to mind, I would think of the blocks with just one slim building with no windows in the sides because there used to be identical incisors all lined up supporting each other:

Those ones all had a little lean like my dad’s last incisor. Looking a little long and tall because the gums had receded and they were not meant to be seen alone like that.

This voting precinct is slim. In the last presidential election, it voted exactly like my current voting precinct in East Cambridge, MA, 81% for Vice President Harris. Only 400 people voted in that election from this neighborhood. That is a very low count, but it made sense given this part of the city’s blighted blocks. My East Cambridge 20 blocks occupy the same square footage as the Harrisburg precinct, but we counted 1,400 votes in that election.

Why so sparse?

…while you make some Massachusetts-over-educated guesses…I want to reassure you that the following little story is a very very hopeful one that has me giddy. It starts like our current news cycle…despair-inducing…but poking around these swing districts that will balance our congress this fall has given me so much hope and very meaningful action. PLease! Read on, and email me if you want to be pointed in the direction of action asap.

All of you scholars of urban planning likely mouthed what the rest of us guessed by scrolling down to the map below. Redlining.

Literal red lines. That second grade skill level coloring is denoting the “desirability” of those neighborhoods. The stripes on the 7th are on the train yards, the fully red city blocks are the ones we were looking at above. Red=“hazardous”. This map is from 1935ish; the Harrisburg Historical Society (that sits just west of the 7th) says that this is the map is typical of maps used to determine the dispersal of New Deal housing loans. This is report that accompanied that map:

Being the capitol city, though, the characterization of that neighborhood as “hazardous” has a second consequence: it was used to justify razing the blocks next to the capitol. The neighborhood described above looked like this before it was leveled,

That half of the 7th ward looks like this now:

The final demolition of those blocks happened in the 1950’s. A newspaper article from then corroborates that assessor’s red pencil marks on the map above; using it to feel great about razing a whole neighborhood for capitol complex “elbow room”:

“These changes are so little disputed…” except by the folks that live there! A letter from a state worker that lived on the other side of this block asks them to reconsider …the need for “elbow room”. Her characterization of her neighborhood is decidedly different from a neighborhood “slipping” into blight.

Her appeal to the governor did not succeed. PA’s Labor and Industry Department sits where her and her neighbor’s houses used to. The blight that the newspaper seemed to think was imminent did stretch out to all of the 7th Ward. So, by the 1980’s my school bus rode by empty lots unable to hold their teeth.

That neighborhood had 8,834 people in 1,900 homes in the 1930’s. 100 years later I’m not even seeing where those 400 votes are coming from…huh.

This is not a rust belt sob story! The answer to this mystery of those 400 votes has so much hope in it…and demands a little effort and attention to right some wrongs. I have been relearning the central Pennsylvania swing district that I grew up in, in order to better understand our country…and I found all the hope and easy action that us bluish New Englanders so need!

This 81% Kamala voting precinct is represented in congress by a very far right Republican. These folks have been gerrymandered out of a rep that reps them. We in this MA sister-district can help those Harrisburgers get the representation that suits them better. Tomorrow and the next day, the most wonderful hopeful story about this specific voting precinct!