September 08, 2025
Courtenay Harris-Bond/for PhillyVoice
Safe Steps West Philly, a cleaning program that will tidy up 275 blocks through January, aims to reduce gun violence. Glitter saw success with a similar program in Mount Airy and Germantown.
After tidying up 335 blocks in Northwest Philadelphia for over a year, a collaborative cleaning program is heading across the Schuylkill.
Glitter is launching its Safe Steps initiative in West Philly, the cleaning service announced Monday. The program identifies neighborhoods where gun violence has occurred and sends out crews to clear litter each week, with the aim of deterring future incidents. It'll clean 275 blocks in Cobbs Creek, Carroll Park, Haddington, Overbrook Park, Overbrook Farms and Morris Park through January. Per a company representative, a "ramp-up phase" has been underway since July.
The expansion follows a recent 15-month stint in Mount Airy and Germantown, which wrapped in June. The Safe Steps Northwest program included 335 blocks and produced promising data. According to Glitter, the area it cleaned saw a 63% drop in gun violence incidents compared with a 38% decline in an area of similar size during the same time period. (The comparative area included parts of Ogontz, Nicetown-Tioa, Hunting Park and Olney.) The efforts were seen in the wider neighborhood, not just the targeted blocks, "suggesting network effect due to our efforts," Glitter Program Manager Tim LaRosee said in an email.
Glitter teams with community groups to manage the project. For Safe Steps West Philly, its partner will be the ECS St. Barnabas Community Resource Center, located in the heart of the service area. Funding comes from the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency, which also provides subsidies to encourage resident investment in Glitter's pay-what-you-can services after the initial six-month cleaning.
Residents can look up blocks in the service area via an interactive map.
"We believe that community transformation takes many forms," Rhena McClain, senior director of the ECS St. Barnabas Community Resource Center, said in a statement. "Our partnership with Glitter’s 275-block cleanup is about more than tidying up; it’s about creating safer, stronger, and more hopeful spaces for families."
Glitter is concurrently operating a Safe Steps Northeast program. Every block in state Rep. Jared Solomon's district — which spans parts of Oxford Circle, Mayfair, Tacony and Bustleton — will be cleaned once a month through April 2026.
This story was updated with additional findings from the Safe Steps Northwest program.
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