At the beginning of the month, the St. Landry Parish government set the goal to demolish abandoned and adjudicated homes each week, beginning with homes on Raymond Street and Blanchard Street in Opelousas.

ST. LANDRY PARISH, La. (KLFY) -- It's Demolition Friday in St. Landry Parish, as officials work to clean up the parish one adjudicated property at a time.

"What we're trying to do is just make the parish safer and cleaner at the same time," Cynthia Fontenot with the St. Landry Parish code enforcement said.

At the beginning of the month, the St. Landry Parish government set the goal to demolish abandoned and adjudicated homes each week, beginning with homes on Raymond Street and Blanchard Street in Opelousas.

This week the team moved to Eunice to demolish a house on Gaspard Street.

By beginning this weekly process, Fontenot said they are finally making a dent in the abandoned property issue that has plagued the parish for years.

"We have hundreds of properties," Fontenot said. "And they're very bad. The parish is very widespread, so we are just touching every area."

While the challenge of tending to hundreds of properties seems daunting at first, Fontenot said the support from residents and the team taking the time to prioritize which properties to demolish first makes it easy to remain focused and enthusiastic for more demolition Fridays to come.

"I wish we could just go down the list, but we trying to get those guys in the worst shape and causing the worst public nuisance in the community," Fontenot said. "Every Friday morning, 7:30, we're going to be somewhere in this parish demolishing a house, making it safer for the residents in that community."

Fontenot said the plan is to be right back in Eunice next week to demolish another property, with hundreds more across the parish to follow.

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