In 1981, three days before Darla Ballinger was to move into a house on Boston Avenue on the south side of Youngstown with her two small children, neighbors vandalized it, painting racial slurs on the walls.

At the time, the neighborhood was at the “peak of its desire,” she said—and predominantly white. Ballinger, who is Black, was undeterred. She moved in and made the house a home for herself and her family. It would come to be known as “the happy place” by many members of the community. 

Forty-three years later, Ballinger remains in that home on Boston Avenue, though the neighborhood looks different today. A casualty of disinvestment and inequitable systems, plagued by gang violence, drug trafficking and persistent poverty, the neighborhood has had the highest homicide rate in the city for the last several years. 

Ballinger has never stopped believing in the neighborhood. 

“They said, ‘There goes the neighborhood.’ [But] I’m still here. I’m the neighborhood.”

Over the years, as the neighborhood declined, Ballinger continued on her mission to make it a happy place for herself and her neighbors. She would participate in neighborhood cleanups and frequently pick up trash on her own. But in 2019, she went a step further. One day, Ballinger took out her push mower and some trash bags and began cleaning up three empty lots behind her house, the site of frequent drug activity and violence. 

“I started cutting down trees,” she said. “They thought I was crazy.”

Ballinger worked with the Sixth Ward Councilwoman Anita Davis to form a nonprofit, the Boston Avenue Neighbor Association, and got the city to do an emergency demolition on a house on one of the lots. She slowly began transforming the space into the Happy Place Sanctuary. 

Today, the nearly one-acre space features a meditation garden, a walk path and a small shed with refreshments. And Ballinger isn’t stopping there. She has a vision to expand the sanctuary to the lots across the street and to add a mural and a pocket park for children, as well as a driveway to make it more accessible. 

“I want to make the sanctuary so beautiful,” she said.

The community is grateful for the space. City council members and other officials make it a point to bring people by to visit. She was recently the recipient of an award from local company JW Murdoch & Sons.

Ballinger has worked with volunteers from Youngstown State University and United Returning Citizens to maintain the space but does the majority of the work on her own. She’s received financial support from the Wean Foundation and other funders to help turn her vision into reality.

Ballinger’s determination is a reminder to others to be a part of the change they wish to see. “You have no right complaining about anything if you are not doing something about it. If you’re doing something about it,” she said, “it changes your mind, your body, everything.”