CINCINNATI — As Nathan Hess walked us through the CUF neighborhood this weekend, it was apparent the city had cleaned up a lot of graffiti that was on homes and businesses.
We first spoke to Hess in August, when he came to us with concerns over graffiti issues in his neighborhood.
At the time, he said he had tried to get the city to come out to fix things, but his requests fell on deaf ears.
However, after our story aired last month, Hess said crews with the city began to come out and clean things up.
“It was kind of disbelief at first, like, something’s actually being done?" Hess said. "I had been asking the city to do something since February.”
See the fixes the city made following our initial story last month in the video below:
He said he's not sure what sparked the change, but he said he feels our reporting helped jump-start the city's solution.
“Shortly after the Channel 9 story ran, that’s when we saw the houses, the graffiti started to get painted over," Hess said.
Hess said he feels roughly 75% of the graffiti in the neighborhood was cleaned up.
Some of the graffiti was even covered with murals.
"It was just a huge improvement," Hess said.
When we reached out to the city last month, a spokesperson told us that the city passed an ordinance last year to improve its ability to address graffiti on private property.
She said people can submit customer service requests, or CSRs, by calling 311 or using the 311 app.
"It seems like they’ve got a plan to address it now," Hess said.
Hess said he reached back out to us after the city fixed the graffiti because he said the good work should be recognized.
“We cover the bad stuff, but we need to cover the good stuff too," Hess said.
Hess said he's relieved to see his neighborhood get the attention he felt was initially lacking.
“The neighbors I talked to are all talking about how much better it looks," Hess said.
