The housing progress on a block formerly known as Wilmington’s McCaulley Street represents a sense of satisfaction for Missouri Molock, who remembers what was once a waste-ridden street more than 50 years ago with run-down homes and weeds growing along vacant lots.
Molock, a 100-year-old East Side resident, first moved into the neighborhood in 1964. Around the 1970s, the area was filled with trash, she said, and many female sex workers partied inside vacant homes.
“Section 8 took some of those houses I heard — and somebody started renting them to some young girls who were noisy and left a mess,” Molock said.
According to Molock, the long-suffering neighborhood on the East Side bordering 11th, 12th, Lombard and Pine Streets endured roughly 20 years of disinvestment and neglect, leaving it up to residents to make changes they wanted to see in their own community.