Jobless community, environment benefiting from new Upstate project

WYFF // GREENVILLE, S.C. —

It’s a fresh start for an Upstate neighborhood and its jobless community.  A program that hires [formerly incarcerated individuals] to deconstruct condemned homes kicked off Tuesday.

GreenStart Decon has several goals – to create jobs, save energy and rebuild communities.

The first task started today on Moore St. in Greenville.  Crews started its deconstruction to make way for a new home. “It’s a positive change,” Neighborhood Association President Charlene Black said her community needs. “It gives our neighbors something to look forward to.  It cleans up the community,” said Black.

GreenStart Decon founder Jerry Blassingame said up to 70 percent of the materials from the home can be reused or recycled.

“We're trying to teach these guys about keeping the environment safe and keeping it green and also giving them a new start, so there is the play on words ‘Greenstart,’” said Blassingame. Blassingame said the project will employ men for up to a year, men like Brian Sturdivant who has struggled to find work after an 8-year prison sentence. “I made a mistake.  I did my time for it and now I am a productive member of society,” said Sturdivant.

Organizers said the best thing about this project is that everything it creates stays in the community.

“We are employing a guy from one block over there, we are taking a building down on this block, and we are selling it to someone on a block over there so it all happens in the inner city neighborhoods,” said Re-Use consultant Dave Bennink.

The crew will start deconstructing a second home next week, and Blassingame said he anticipates several more projects in the future.

*Note: Soteria supports positive language to describe those with criminal backgrounds so that we are not indefinitely defined by our past. We use “previously incarcerated” instead of “ex-felons” or “ex-offenders” to clarify that the crime is not who we are.