It was a beautiful day to sleep in, sip lemonade, saunter through the park or roll up your sleeves and help a neighbor out.
In Vancouver’s Maplewood neighborhood, a handful of people took that last choice on Saturday.
At the corner of East 17th Street and Norris Road, Sharon Gutz and Cynthia and Steve Powers arrived early to start taping up their neighbor’s house, prepping it for a new paint job. It was the last big project that awaited the property recently cleared of weeds and brought back to life.
“And the neighborhood is covering every penny of the cost,” Gutz said, her spirits high and her smile wide as she trimmed a rose bush in the morning sun.
With his arthritis, the home’s owner is increasingly unable to tend to his property. When a few spots of graffiti had recently marked the home, including right near his door, neighbors decided to take action, voting to use proceeds from their Christmas bazaar.
“If we can do something to make the neighborhood better, we’re going to do it,” Gutz said.
The Maplewood Neighborhood Association was formed in 2012, breaking off from Harney Heights to focus on issues below the hill.
“We weren’t getting much done down here,” said Cynthia Powers, a 22-year neighborhood resident who led the new group for its first three and a half years.
About 2,500 people live in the neighborhood, which is tucked between Fourth Plain Boulevard and the hill to the south.
Problems with gangs and dilapidation are proving no match for folks like Gutz, whose determination is much larger than her stature.
“We in the neighborhood not afraid of the gangs said knock it off, and they did,” she said.
Gutz and Powers said people have told them the neighborhood is improving by their efforts, though they would still like to see more people show up to meetings.
“We’re hoping by doing this project, others will follow,” Powers said. Using a perfect, though perhaps accidental, metaphor for community involvement, she said: “We cut down weeds and found rose bushes.”
As Steve Powers peeled the trim off the house around 9 a.m., preparing the yellow domicile for a “battleship gray” chosen by the homeowner, he said they’d likely be at it all day or longer.
But by late Saturday afternoon, the gray was overtaking the yellow.
No matter how long it takes, the volunteers said, they hope their community service inspires others.
“We’re just looking for good things to do for the community. Every neighborhood can do something,” Gutz said. “We don’t just sit around like Congress and take years to make it happen.”
