BY Courtney DuChene
Aug. 09, 2024
Manayunk resident Darik Washington sees a clear correlation between clean streets and crime.
Having grown up in Allegheny, the 26-year-old is aware of a stark contrast between his former and current neighborhoods. Manayunk’s tree-lined hills are tidy. Allegheny’s blocks are full of litter. Manyunk’s violent crime rate is 0.06 percent; Allegheny’s is 1.64 percent.
“Cleaning helps the most,” he says. “Sometimes a person will do things because they may feel as though they live in filth.”
This isn’t just something Washington believes anecdotally. Studies by Penn’s Dr. Eugenia C. South have found that cleaning blocks directly correlates with reducing gun violence. When researchers maintained hundreds of randomly sampled vacant lots, neighbors saw a 29 percent drop in gun violence, a more than 13 percent reduction in overall crime and a more than 39 percent reduction in vandalism.
In 2021, when Morgan Berman founded Glitter, a for-profit subscription service where neighbors pay to have their block cleaned weekly, she wasn’t expecting to help solve gun violence. But today, as Glitter has grown to serve hundreds of Philadelphia blocks, Berman, too, has grown her company’s mission, which now includes collaborating with community groups and nonprofits, looking to larger issues, and hiring workers like Washington.
Berman is the tech entrepreneur behind the volunteer mobilization app MilkCrate. She founded Glitter — which The Citizen has called “Lyft for litter” — simply because she wanted a cleaner space for her young daughter to play outside. Berman thought she could make that happen by becoming a block captain and, later, president of her neighborhood association (Dickinson Square West). Once she realized the task required more than residents’ elbow grease, she approached the City with the idea for an app, then named PhilaSweep, and they agreed to fund it — before backing out.
So she started it on her own, with her own block.
About a year later, Berman met Brandon Pousley at a protest at the Municipal Services building that she’d organized to fight for cleaner streets. Pousley had been tidying streets in his free time, walking through the city with a garbage bag and a litter picker and talking to neighbors and wanted to do more. He is now Glitter’s CEO.
Here’s how Glitter works: An individual or a group of neighbors sign up for a subscription to have both sides of their block — and street — cleaned. Monthly cleaning costs $50 per month; Weekly cleaning costs $200 per month. The system is set up so neighbors can pay what they can — they don’t have to split it equally.
Glitter workers operate on a somewhat flexible schedule — like Lyft — and earn their pay by the block instead of by the hour. Today, the company employs about 30 workers, who earn $25 per block, which averages to $30 per hour.
The service has caught on. In a 2019 resident survey, nearly 30 percent of citizens said litter, vacant lots and dilapidated buildings were a major problem in Philly.
“What started as one neighbor on one block is now about 350 blocks [across Philadelphia] that we’re cleaning every week,” Berman says. (Glitter regularly cleans about 700 blocks in all.)
Many of those blocks are located in Northwest Philadelphia, the domain of state Senator Art Haywood, who, along with the Mt. Airy CDC, created a partnership with Glitter called Safe Steps Northwest. The initiative brings regular cleaning to 335 blocks in Germantown, Mount Airy, and the rest, with the aim of preventing gun violence in the neighborhood.
The effort is part of a six-part campaign aimed at reducing gun violence in Northwest Philadelphia. The other parts include: regularly convening gun violence prevention organizations, street outreach, jobs programs, mental health interventions and encouraging neighbors to contact police if they know of or suspect violence might occur. “We’re focusing on trying to bring peace to the Northwest,” Haywood says.
Safe Steps Northwest got its start when Haywood cold-called Pousley with a question: Would Glitter be interested in cleaning blocks as part of his gun violence intervention initiative? “He heard about what we were doing in terms of cleaning up and engaging with neighbors and reached out and said, Could this model work here?” Pousley remembers. “My answer was, Absolutely, let’s talk.”
In the summer of 2022, the senator and Glitter created an eight-block pilot using about $5,000 Haywood collected from neighbors. It worked. The streets were cleaner. Neighbors felt more comfortable going outside, which can help reduce crime. “It was very successful. People felt really good,” Haywood says. “And so seeing the success of that pilot program, I decided to ask the state to support the program.”
In March, the partners won a $818,000 grant from the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency’s Violence Intervention and Prevention program. Mt. Airy CDC came on board; the full program launched this summer. They’ve reached their goal to bring regular cleaning to 335 blocks. Now they’re in the early stages of planning to increase the number to 700.
One of their cleaners is Darik Washington.
Washington is one of four Glitter workers who graduated from Pushing Progress Philly (P3), a Mayor Kenney-era violence intervention program that helps at-risk young men by providing mental health services and connecting them with jobs. A 2012 study out of Chicago found that violent crime decreased 43 percent when young people were given part-time jobs.
On a typical weekday, Washington wakes up at 4:30am and begins cleaning his blocks between 6 and 6:30. He works on about 30 blocks each week across Mt. Airy and Germantown — and appreciates the flexibility of the gig work. Since he’s paid by block rather than by the hour, he can pick up more work or less. Recently, he’s taken on additional blocks in Brewerytown.
He started at the beginning of July; now his blocks are fairly litter-free, so he focuses on weeding, picking up leaves and generally beautifying the neighborhood. Washington takes pride in the work. His grandmother worked as an apartment cleaner; his aunt had her own cleaning business.
“People really show you some grace and gratitude,” he says. “It feels good to get noticed for something positive … You can have a clean house, but if you step outside your home and … [it] is unclean, you can still feel like things are a frenzy.”
Safe Steps Northwest and Pushing Progress Philly are two of a handful of Glitter’s partnerships with nonprofits, municipal entities and corporate sponsors. Nonprofits with grant funds or businesses with deep pockets pay Glitter to undertake either short- or long-term block-cleaning projects. Partnering with businesses and nonprofits isn’t just a feel-good effort for the company. Such partnerships allow Glitter to expand its services and build its subscriber base.
One of Glitter’s first and largest partnerships was with a real estate company. PhillyLiving used $20,000 to fund an 80-block one-time clean up across Graduate Hospital, Point Breeze, Bella Vista, Passyunk Square and Dickinson Square West.
This summer, Glitter worked with JEVS Human Services, which hired 21 workers who face barriers to employment to clean around 2,000 blocks. That helped clear broken glass and other trash, which is common after trash-day pickups.
Glitter’s cleaners are trained to make connections with neighbors and, as a program works toward its end, company reps go door-to-door with subscription information.
“One of the things we’ve seen so many countless times in this world is a grant providing funding for something initially and having good outcomes, but then when the grant period ends, the project ends and it’s either you get it refunded or it goes away, and that’s a really risky proposition for the community,” Pousley says. “We always wanted to make sure that we were building in a mechanism where even if there was no future grant funding, that could still be supported in a grassroots way.”
Pousley and Berman did not share revenue figures, but said the company is operating in a way that is financially sustainable and plans to grow without external investments. Employees have been able to share in the company’s profits — Glitter has done three different profit-sharing distributions to workers over its lifetime. Berman is exploring an employee ownership model. She wants to expand the company throughout Philly and possibly to other cities.
“We’re trying to figure out how we can continue to build an equitable business and do it in a way that really supports our cleaners as much as possible,” Berman says.
About half of Glitter subscriptions are part of Safe Steps; the other half are neighbors-funded. Most of the neighborhood-supported subscriptions come from blocks with higher-than-average incomes. To help make their service affordable for everyone, Glitter has an impact fund that subscribers can donate to, so that the company can offer a 25 percent discount to underserved communities. About 50 percent of the company’s subscribers contribute to the fund, Pousley says.
East Kensington resident Marcella Frankil has been a Glitter subscriber for two years. She joined with her neighbors after learning about the company from Julius Rivera, then-president of the East Kensington Neighborhood Association. She’d long been frustrated with litter and illegal dumping on her block. While Glitter hasn’t fully stopped the issues, it has helped the block feel cleaner on a daily basis and helped the community feel more connected, Frankil says. They use the once per week subscription.
“Before Glitter, the trash seemed to have no end. Now we can look forward to a clean block at the end of the week,” she says. “If you are very bothered by litter, it is well worth the money to pay for the service. Finding neighbors to sign up also makes you feel more connected to your community and gives you a sense that you are making a difference on your block. … I’ve gained respect from my neighbors by signing our block up for this service.”
Glitter’s online application asks a few basic questions about a candidate’s neighborhood, availability, and why they care about cleaning up Philly. There are also equity-oriented questions, so that the company can prioritize hiring returning citizens or people who may struggle to find work.
“We have prioritized, but not exclusively hired, folks with barriers to work, which can include being formerly incarcerated, a single parent, student, or retiree, or any other constraint that’s keeping them from full-time employment,” Berman says.
Pousley says he’s constantly telling friends to apply — and thousands of others are clearly interested, too. Because Glitter gets more applicants than they can hire, they save applications and contact applicants when more streets become available.
“We would love to at some point say we’re also hiring thousands of people, but we’re getting there,” Pousley says. “As soon as we get blocks available in an area where we have a great candidate, we reach out and try to get them started as soon as possible.”
One way to get Glitter to grow — and grow jobs: Get Philadelphia to contract with them to clean up. After all, Berman started the project as a City pilot. Then, in 2023, they partnered with the Streets Department to do special pickups of trash collected by Glitter cleaners. The program was abruptly halted after issues with the sanitation department union. Would Glitter be open to working with the City in the future?
“On paper, many of our objectives are in perfect alignment,” Pousley says. “I think there are ways in which working together could have an even greater impact than working separately. We have had some renewed very early indications that some folks in the new administration are open to a conversation.”
On May 31, Mayor Parker announced the City would embark on an ambitious 13-week program to clean up every block in Philadelphia — not just collecting litter, but tackling illegal dumping, abandoned vehicles and other blight. In its first month, it tidied 5,000 blocks, The Inquirer reported, cleared more than 1,500 vacant lots, washed away graffiti on 850 walls, towed around 600 dumped vehicles and filled 1,800 potholes. On the other hand, less than a month later, the same outlet reported that 311 calls to report litter had only increased since the City cleanups — and neighbors were feeling discouraged.
It seems like a Glitter + Philly could be a perfect marriage, if the City would just make it happen.
Haywood is a proponent. He feels Glitter’s impact is greater than just cleaner and safer streets and sidewalks. When people clean, neighbors come and sit out on the porch to chat with them — and then they stay outside and get to know their other neighbors. Justice-impacted cleaners have told Haywood that working for Glitter has helped people see them as a positive presence in their community rather than a negative one.
“It was emotional … to see people come outside,” Haywood says. “From a safety perspective, if there’s people outside, you’re not going to start shooting because everybody’s around. So that creates a greater community connection and safety.”
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