Can $4 million help restore this Fort Worth neighborhood as a clean, kind, safe place?
Regina Davis moved to the Fairhaven neighborhood in southeast Fort Worth in the 1960s when she was a young girl.
Her family had lived in the Butler Place public housing complex just east of downtown, but her parents wanted to own a home, just like her grandmother did. Davis grew up on Wilhelm Street and has joyful memories of riding her bicycle around the neighborhood with friends, running barefoot, eating ice cream and candy apples and feeling safe walking to the park.
There were rodeos and parades in the neighborhood and people who would ride their horses everywhere. Davis’ neighbor had cows and horses, which Davis fed. She tried to ride the horses but would get scared and jump off.
Davis, 68, left the neighborhood to live in Crowley for about 20 years, but moved back in the 1990s. She said things changed while she was away: more homeless people slept in Village Creek Park and crime — such as break-ins and shootings — was more common. Residents established a nightly patrol to work with police, and a curfew for children was started.
Davis is the secretary for the Fairhaven Neighborhood Association, which works to improve the area.
“We’re trying to build it back up to let people know that we want to keep this like it was back in the day, a place to live and be safe and show love,” Davis said
The Fairhaven neighborhood was chosen in February by the Fort Worth Neighborhood Services Department as the latest participant in the city’s Neighborhood Improvement Program. The city will inject $4 million into the neighborhood for improvements through September 2027.
The program’s mission is to provide capital investment to improve the quality of life and safety for residents and to revitalize neighborhoods. Residents will have a say in how the money is spent, but the program typically includes an increased police presence, installation of security cameras, new sidewalks, new streetlights and more.
The Neighborhood Improvement Program has been in use since 2017 and has targeted neighborhoods such as Como, Historic Marine, and Stop 6.
Fairhaven was a quiet working class neighborhood
Fairhaven is south of Stop 6 and East Berry Street, and just north of U.S. Highway 287 and west of the Interstate 820 loop. Many of the neighborhood’s first homes were built in the 1950s and were occupied by working class Black families who were looking for a quiet neighborhood.
Today, the neighborhood has 1,096 households; 57 percent of the people are Hispanic and 43 percent are Black. The median household income is $46,136, compared to $76,602 across the city of Fort Worth, according to the Census. The median home value is $110,500, which is less than half of Fort Worth’s median home value of $277,300, as reported by the Census.
Gwen Diggs’ family has been in the area since the 1950s, when the neighborhood was surrounded by farmland with chicken, cows, and horses. Everyone went to the same church or school and would watch out for each other’s children.
Diggs remembered that a nurse lived in the area and worked at the nearby A.M. Pate Elementary School, the school Diggs and many of her friends attended growing up. The nurse would also take care of people in the neighborhood.
Diggs left Fairhaven when she was younger and has been back in the neighborhood since 2012 taking care of her mother, who owns a home there. She hopes the Neighborhood Improvement Program will help repair streets, fix the roofs and plumbing in homes, and renovate local stores.
She says people in Fairhaven are like family. They look out for each other and cut each other’s grass, she said.
“I think that’s why a lot of people are coming back, buying their parents’ homes, or even moving back in the homes where they have been renting,” Diggs said.
Neighborhood association formed
Regina Davis drove through Fairhaven on a recent Tuesday afternoon pointing out certain homes and things that have changed over the years.
On South Edgewood Terrace, a rooster and some hens grazed on the front lawn. The next home had two cars with no tires on them in the driveway, each with a yellow ticket from Code Compliance.
As she turned onto Wilhelm Street, Davis pointed out new homes being built, along with neighboring homes that are boarded up and have peeling paint and uncut grass because the owners have died.
“Yeah, they have died off, and they are trying to sell them. This [is] original. This lady just passed away, so we don’t know what they’re gonna do with her house,” Davis says as she points to homes on the street.
Davis moved to Crowley after graduating from Polytechnic Senior High School in 1974. She was shocked by the changes she saw when she came back to Fairhaven in the 1990s. The newer generations of residents don’t take care of their homes and lawns like people did before, she said.
People such as Inez Mitchell and Nola Brennan, the president of Village Creek neighborhood association, and others came together to form the Fairhaven Neighborhood Association in 2005 in an attempt to save the neighborhood.
The association has helped connect people and provided a platform for sharing their concerns, while working with organizations such as Medicare Matters to guide them in applying for health insurance. The group advocated for a noise ordinance in 2007 to quiet loud parties that were occurring at Village Creek Park. The association helped spread the word about a Veterans Workforce Investment Program that provides veterans with jobs, training and other support.
Davis hopes the resources from the Neighborhood Improvement Program will bring further improvements to the area. According to her, this would include beautifying Village Creek Park, more police officers to patrol the area, repairs to road markers, better animal control and more speed bumps to make the area safer for children.
She wants to see the safe and loving neighborhood she once knew restored.
“It was so exciting just to be able to come outside and not be afraid to just enjoy life,” Davis said.
Improvement Program
The Neighborhood Improvement Program selection process is based on categories such as the financial hardship of residents, the number of families that are cost burdened for housing, educational attainment, and the condition of the neighborhood, which takes in safety, infrastructure, environmental issues and the condition of housing.
The program was introduced in 2017 in the Stop 6 neighborhood, which had $2.56 million allocated for improvements. More than 300 streetlights were improved or added, 40 police cameras were installed, 180 tons of litter and dumping were cleaned up, and 17,688 linear feet of sidewalks were added, among other improvements.
Councilwoman Jeannette Martinez, who represents Fairhaven, says the city wants to hear from all residents about improvements that are needed. She noted that the program also offers programming that can help people stay in their neighborhoods for the rest of their lives.
“We make sure that people are proud of their neighborhoods,” Martinez said. “That they can see that we care about everybody, not just certain folks in certain areas.”
Last year, the program provided $8 million to two neighborhoods, Worth Heights and Seminary, but the funding and resources were reduced this year to provide for just one neighborhood.
The entire process takes a few years to complete, and there are still neighborhoods included in the program that have money left to be spent.
The planning phase involves community events — such as block parties and pop-up events to conduct surveys — to identify areas of concern. The next phase includes the city implementing the projects chosen by residents such as improving parks, community centers, libraries and beautifying the neighborhood. Remaining funding will be put toward projects such as roads, sidewalks and streetlights.
Fairhaven is currently in the planning phase. According to the city, the review and approval phases will be complete and projects will begin in October
A block party will be held on May 3 from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Edgewood Park, 4501 E. Berry St., to gather community input in the program.
