Photo Header Credit: Kirk Montgomery, Muskegon Mystery (Muskegon, MI)

This year Scenic Michigan is launching a comprehensive campaign called the Battle Against Blight to help educate our communities and members on different types of blight in Michigan and provide strategies for fighting it!

Blight at its core is the marked by deteriorating and abandoned homes and buildings, as well as vacant lots with trash, tall weeds and grass, and/or abandoned and vandalized cars. But that’s not all! Visual blight is something important to consider in our communities as well. This can show up as the proliferation of billboards in our cities or marring our views along our scenic byways, or as wires and utility lines that cut through our natural areas. Blight is a multifaceted and complicated issue to discuss, and a tricky problem to solve!

Throughout this year, Scenic Michigan will add new ordinances related to screening, blight control, and junk clean-up/maintenance to the ordinance library on our website to help communities find regulatory guidance in combating blight. Additionally, we will be launching several statewide events to help spread the awareness of our mission!

  • In April we will host a series of community clean-ups in parks to help showcase ways to clean refuse in our public spaces.
  • We are keeping un-Scenic Blight as a photo contest category to help showcase examples of blight in our community through the proliferation of signs, utilities, and more.
  • A Day of Giving focused on the creation of blight elimination materials.
  • And more!

At the end of the year we will create a comprehensive Battle Against Blight guide that outlines our efforts made throughout the year and the successes of this campaign.

You can help support our mission and donate at one of our new sponsorship levels!

  • $10- Supporter
  • $25- Neighborhood Hero
  • $50 (and up)- Scenic Blight Fighter

All your support goes directly to creating educational materials, funding community events, and advertising our campaign.

Donate to Scenic Michigan

2022 Photo Contest Runner-Up for Un-Scenic Blight
Mark Dobias, Sault Ste. Marie Waterfront (Sault Ste. Marie, MI)