The Lawton’s Kids First Initiative, intended to make neighborhoods safe and clean for the town’s children, was sparked by break-ins and a f ire at an abandoned house.
Ward 1 Councilwoman Mary Ann Hankins said one of her constituents, who was concerned about her neighborhood, “contacted me” about an unoccupied house next door to her. The house had been illegally entered several times and a fire was set, the woman reported. The house is near B.C. Swinney Elementary School, which has been closed since 2015.
The vacant house was “junked up,” trash was strewn in the yard, and the structure was unsecured, Hankins told Southwest Ledger.
She said she called the Neighborhood Services Division at City Hall about securing the house “but I didn’t get much help.” After the f irst fire “the house should have been secured, but it wasn’t, and so a second fire occurred” and a vagrant was arrested at the scene, the councilwoman said.
“The case was frustrating,” Hankins said, so she contacted Mayor Stan Booker “and I asked him if he could expedite this problem.”
Booker and Deputy City Manager Dewayne Burk joined Hankins one day soon afterward and they “walked through the neighborhood.”
During their trek they found several other houses that were not compliant with the City Code. Several yards were “pretty bad,” Hankins said.
Also while strolling through the threeblock area, “I saw a back yard where children lived,” Booker said. “And I learned that 32 sex offenders reported their addresses in Lawton as ‘homeless.’” Thus, “We were allowing homeless people to occupy abandoned homes near where children play.”
The City of Lawton “must prioritize children first,” the mayor asserted. “We must focus our efforts to ensure that children grow and thrive in clean, safe neighborhoods.”
The Kids First Initiative focuses on “creating safe environments” for children to “learn, grow, and play,” Booker said. “The presence of litter, dilapidated or vacant properties, and vagrants in some areas, pose safety concerns, detract from property values, and diminish the overall quality of life.”
Those issues have “a particularly adverse impact on children, who deserve space spaces to live and play without being exposed to hazardous or unsanitary conditions – an essential tenet of the Kids First Initiative.”
Accordingly, Booker challenged the city’s Neighborhood Services Division to bring before the City Council every month, starting in February, a list of 40 structures identified as dangerous and dilapidated that will be added to the condemnation list. The owners of D&D properties have 30 business days, six weeks, to secure a permit to repair the structures and make them habitable or they will be demolished.
More than 350 dilapidated and dangerous properties, many of which provided a haven for squatters and drug addicts and contributed to urban blight in Lawton, have been demolished in the past six years, city records reflect. Thirteen D&D houses were dismantled and removed between Nov. 24 and Jan. 2, city records indicate.