BY DAN HILDEBRAN
Telegraph Staff Writer
KEYSTONE HEIGHTS—Clay County Commissioners in February expressed their support for the High Ridge Initiative: a neighborhood revitalization effort spearheaded by Lake Region resident Carey Morford.
Morford, the pastor of the Mission of the Dirt Road, appeared before commissioners to ask for their help in revitalizing the neighborhood. Morford also spoke to the Keystone Heights Rotary Club about the initiative.
Empty promises
Morford said the neighborhood was developed in 1969 and was marketed as an upscale community for residents aged 55 and older.
“But it was developed on really empty promises from the developer,” she added. “The neighborhood residents have tried at various times throughout history to work together, but they’ve just been unable to access the resources they need to meet the neighborhood’s needs.”
Morford said the land mass of High Ridge Estates is 50% larger than that of the City of Keystone Heights, and the neighborhood’s population of around 1,500 is close to the city’s population.
“We know that 237 Clay County school students live in High Ridge,” she said, which is the equivalent of 20% of the high school’s student body.
Only around one-third of the subdivision’s 1,683 platted parcels have been improved, leaving plenty of room for development.
The neighborhood had a homeowners’ association that Morford said operated at varying levels of success, but the organization was dissolved in 2005.
“With an absent developer and a dissolved HOA, private citizens are left with limited pathways forward for improving the large neighborhood,” Morford said. “There are miles of unpaved and unmaintained streets, no sidewalks, and virtually no safe green space for children to play; the neighborhood needs attention.”
In 2002 the North Florida Planning council designated the area as an antiquated subdivision at risk of becoming an area of blight.
“High Ridge is an under-resourced neighborhood with a long history of having a stigma for being a place where crime and drug abuse happens in Keystone Heights,” Morford said. “(We) have learned that families sometimes live without access to water or have numerous code violations in their homes. Most roads are unmaintained and in overwhelming disrepair. We think about 40% of the neighborhood lives on $24,000 a year or less.”
However, Morford said the neighborhood also has positive attributes.
“It is an intergenerational neighborhood,” she said. “There’s an elderly population, there are obviously a number of children there, there are working people, and there is some form of community. People are talking to each other; people are working together to solve problems.”
Morford said she thinks around 60% of the homes in High Ridge are owner-occupied.
“We do have some landlords that I don’t love,” she said, “but it’s more complicated than just (bad) landlords. I think we also have people that have owned their homes and, for whatever reason, cannot afford to maintain them.”
“In mobile homes,” she added, “one of the things we’re seeing over and over again is they had a plumbing issue, but they couldn’t afford to call a plumber, or they tried to fix it multiple times, it didn’t work, and now they have a ruined floor which greatly reduces the integrity of the home.”
A new initiative
Morford said she founded the church: Mission of The Dirt Road with the Florida District of the Wesleyan Church.
“We are making disciples through community development,” she said. “In 2017, we started meeting on a vacant lot in High Ridge that was donated to a nonprofit that we have always worked closely with. In 2019, we purchased our building on State Road 100, directly across from the neighborhood entrance. We average one person through our doors every hour that we’re open for coffee and Wi-Fi.”
In addition to helping people connect to the resources they need, the church offers community classes, Alcoholics Anonymous and other support groups. The congregation also engages in more traditional church activities.
“We’ve just opened a public shower and a tool lending library for our neighbors,” she said, “and we serve two to three hot meals every week for free. We have a youth development program.”
Morford said her family moved to the neighborhood in 2019, so she knows firsthand what it is like to live there. “
“As most of my neighbors would tell you, there’s a lot that’s really wonderful about our neighborhood, and there’s a lot of potential,” she said. “However, it’s also a place that’s been under-resourced for a long time, and so there are overwhelming barriers to strength and safety.”
Morford said that the seeds of the High Ridge Initiative were sown in 2021 when she oversaw a survey to gauge neighborhood interest in a revitalization program.
“I decided to put out an informal survey to ask, what do you like about living here and what do you not like?” Morford recalled. “And there was enough response to that survey that it was like, oh, there is interest in doing something here.”
Morford said the first project she organized was a cleanup day, picking up trash along neighborhood roads.
She then learned about the College Drive Initiative, an organized effort in Orange Park to upgrade the area around St. Johns River State College. Morford decided to duplicate the College Road effort in High Ridge Estates.
“We formed our steering committee in May of 2022,” she recalled. “And in October, we hosted Healthy Harvest. We had 150 people in attendance and 20 health organizations attended. We used this event to catalyze the Emanuel Project, which now offers free healthcare services once a month in our area.”
In another idea borrowed from the College Drive Initiative, Morford and her group hosted 10 hotdog dialogues, in which over 100 High Ridge residents told the group what they thought the neighborhood needed.
“We offered childcare, we offered hotdogs as a meal, and then we made sure that we scheduled them at different times throughout the week so that people who don’t work a traditional work schedule could make it,” she said. “From those, we had over a hundred people fill out a survey or participate in a discussion, and in December, we started writing the final report.”
As a result of the dialogs, the group identified eight key concerns: -1- lack of water, -2-lack of road maintenance, -3- drug abuse, -4- reducing the neighborhood’s stigma, -5- beautification and property maintenance, -6- access to transportation, -7- access to healthcare, and -8- access to healthy foods.
High Ridge Initiative leaders added three additional cleanup days to the original roadside pickup event and removed 4.8 tons of trash and 3.5 tons of tires.
Clay County funded dumpsters for the three cleanups with Community Development Block Grant funds.
“They also sent a truck and a driver so that we could put the tires in the truck,” she said.
What’s next
Morford told county commissioners her steering committee identified several requests in which the county could support the neighborhood.
Those requests include developing a master plan that considers road improvements and maintenance, branding, and aesthetics for the neighborhood, water and sewage infrastructure, and developing quality, affordable housing.
The group is also asking for help from the Clay County Sheriff’s Office to address drug prevention measures in High Ridge Estates.
Morford cautioned that the steering committee wants to improve the neighborhood with the current residents in mind.
“We will need to work together and think creatively to develop a plan that doesn’t price out our current residents but allows for growth and development,” she said. “This neighborhood is a 50-year-old problem, and these problems weren’t created overnight. The solution will take time, planning, and collaboration, and we are very aware.”
The steering committee is also seeking help from the University of Florida’s extension 4-H program and help from the county’s library and parks departments to develop youth programs.
To help with transportation issues, the group is talking to the Jacksonville Transportation Agency, which already operates a bus service in the Lake Region.
“Transportation was a huge issue during our discussions for people who live in High Ridge,” she said. “The unmaintained roads complicate the transportation issue. If people have a personal vehicle, it requires more maintenance because the roads are so bad. The poorly maintained roads also mean that students have to walk to the school bus longer than usual, and there are no sidewalks. So, walking in inclement weather becomes a barrier to school attendance if families don’t have a personal vehicle.”
The pastor added that the group is talking to the Clay County Utility Authority about water and sewer services.
“We almost always know four or five families who don’t have access to water because their wells have gone bad, and they can’t afford to replace them,” she said. “The (CCUA) water line runs directly in front of the neighborhood, and they already have the capacity to process the water, so we’re talking to them about, okay, is there a way to make this work? We’re also talking to the county about grant possibilities and that kind of thing.”
Morford said the committee also hopes to improve the neighborhood’s image by upgrading its entrance on State Road 100.
“We’ve already had benches donated by Humana for that little project,” she said.
Morford said she also wants to build on the successes the steering committee has seen so far, like the county’s animal services department helping with animal care education and resources to pet owners in the neighborhood.
She added that High Ridge residents listed stray animals among their top concerns.
Morford also pointed to advances in healthcare for High Ridge residents.
“Because of the advocacy efforts with the Way Free Medical Clinic, the Emmanuel Project is now offering free healthcare within walking distance of our neighborhood every month,” she said. We hope to build and grow those efforts.”
A 25-year project
Morford said that breaking the cycle of generational poverty and changing family habits passed down from generation to generation is a long-term project.
“When I went to a Christian Community Development Association conference when I was just getting started in this work,” Morford recalled, “they said it takes 25 years before you start to see that real change in the cycles we’re talking about.”
Moreford added that she has been involved with High Ridge Estates in one form or another for 10 years.
That prompted this response from a Rotary Club member: “You’re halfway there.”
