The trash was gone, part of a new steel fence was erected and light fixtures were put in to illuminate darkened corners of Mayor Wright Homes in Liliha.

“Everything’s cleaned up,” said Gov. Neil Abercrombie during a Friday afternoon visit to the property to see the improvements to state public housing. “Everything has changed. There was garbage everywhere before.”

Mayor Wright was the site of some of the state’s most “egregious neglect” of public housing, but the state has taken a new approach to rehabilitate the property that will also be used at other state housing properties, Abercrombie said.

Abercrombie expressed concern about Mayor Wright’s security in March 2011, but the concern intensified after two fatal stabbings happened within five months on the property, the last in January.