Yeah, exactly. I’m not terribly worried about this kind of thing*, but if gunshots at night and getting your house broken into a fair amount of times isn’t considered a “bad” neighborhood, then wow, my viewpoint is totally askew I guess.
I’m admittedly a bit guilty of the ‘stay away from the ghetto!’ mentality. I lived on a farm where you didn’t even need to lock your door at night, and you’d leave the vehicles unlocked. In our nearby city, the West Flat is known as the ghetto part. That isn’t bad in and of itself - the crime stats prove more crime goes on there - it is the racial part. That part of town has a high school that was reserved for rural kids only, but because of falling numbers, starting accepting city kids from that part of town. Those city kids are primarily Natives (Canadian aboriginals). The West Flat’s crime rates went up when Natives started moving there in larger numbers. The aforementioned school went down the toilet. They went from a school with a great overall average, good sports teams, etc. to the type of school where they just try to get everyone out with a diploma.
I usually wouldn’t go there, but I went to school down there for a while, and then I got a friend who lives down there, but it is definitely a ‘lock your doors, don’t go outside alone, don’t go out after 9pm’ kind of place. So yeah, I guess I have a bias. Good houses there are dirt cheap, but they don’t sell because of the neighborhood.
WHAT? You mean it ain’t the whole Yunáited Stéis, that’s a ghetto?
Cos that’s what many people told me when I first moved Over There… “oh my God, you’re going to America? Aren’t you AFRAID? They have drive-byes there!”
After several months of that reaction, the wide-eyed looks from other University of Miami students when they heard I was living in South Miami were like sardines to a sperm whale. In the way, but nothing you really pay attention to.
Funniest thing is, my part of Spain is “terrorist country”, so it’s not like I don’t know anybody who’s been murdered… it’s just that our murderers often have a pseudo-political excuse. Before ETA started operating in other parts of Spain, I ran into many “outsiders” who asked us how could we stand living there. Well, cos it’s our place and they’re not going to run us out, that’s how.
So I guess I’m from the bad part of the country 
Anybody who can’t take the heat is welcome to stay away, we like it as it is.
Completely Off Topic
Don’t I know you from another board? Come back and see us!
Sorry for the interruption!
I’m not from the bad side of town. I actually grew up in a semi-rural area in Michigan (that is now completely suburbanized), and moved to Indianapolis. We have a “bad side” of town – and I’ve lived and worked there for 15 years.
The East side of Indy is considered by the rest of the city to be crime-ridden, poor, and scary (except for a few gentrified neighborhoods). Part of that is true, but it doesn’t tell the whole story. I get a little defensive when talking with people from the 'burbs about where I live. I get completely ticked off when our local newspaper only writes about the negative stuff – apparently they aren’t interested in the rest of the story (and BTW, I work for a small paper OWNED by the big paper and it cheeses my drawers).
Most of the neighborhoods around here are working class to middle class. There are blacks, whites, Hispanics living on my street. We try to help each other out, look out after each other. I’ve never been burglarized – I’ve never even had a lawn ornament swiped out of my gardens. I’ve left my house unlocked (accidentally) for days, and no problems. Sometimes rough looking characters can be found walking up and down the street, but they keep to themselves, as far as I can tell. No Jets, no Sharks gangbanging.
So yes, I’m defensive. I like my neighborhood (for the most part), and enjoy the amenities nearby.
I grew up in the suburbs and going into DC was something that was only done for work by my parents, museums, and maybe lunch in Georgetown. It was the same for most of my parents.
I currently live in on what friends would consider to be a not so nice neighborhood albeit one that is in the beginning stages of gentrifying. The reactions that I get when I tell people where I live are amusing were amusing at first although they’ve gotten annoying.
I think a lot of them are just ignorance and left over stereotype from the days when DC had a horrifically high crime rate. I like my neighborhood because for the most part the neighbors are friendly and they do keep an eye out. I like that I don’t have a long commute like most people. My wife has a co-worker who lives an hour and change away from work. He moved from Alexandria because he “didn’t feel safe”. This is the kind of reaction that annoys me.
Is living on the “bad side of town” some kind of badge of honor? Excuse the snark, I really don’t mean it that way, it’s just that the tone I’m getting from some of the responses here is that it is somehow bad to want to live in a neighborhood where one’ self and belongings are safe. And lest you think I’m coming from some white bread yuppy stance, I have lived in my share of “bad” neighborhoods. In fact, the one I live in now aint so grand, but it’s the only place in which I could actually afford to own a home. It’s improved considerably in the last few years, but it’s still very questionable in my opinion and you know what? Sometimes I freakin’ hate it. I don’t want to live amongst scumbags, be they black, white or whatever (in this case, it’s a mixed bag). I know you all think it sounds snobby but in my experience areas inhabited by those on the lower socioeconomic side of the scale tend to be more problematic. And this is coming from someone whose earnings are just above the poverty level.
I guess I just don’t understand why YOU don’t understand why some neighborhoods are stigmatized and why anyone would decline to visit / live there.
I agree with you on the problematic side. I wish that my neighborhood had a really good grocery store like a Trader Joe’s or a Harris Teeter. However, often times, the reaction that you get when I mention is all out of proportion to what the area is really like. My wife the coworker with the long commute, (the guy didn’t feel safe in Alexandria!*) ask if she has to dodge bullets on the way to work. My neighborhood is not super high end, but it is a mix of working class, and professional class folks with some pockets of poverty. It isn’t that bad. I’ve spent all day working on the front yard and had to endure no worse than cheerful greetings from neighbors, chats with some of them and someone asking me for directions. There is some yelling at night every so often, and I’ve seen crackheads getting arrested, but these things happen in the city.
Perhaps I do. Perhaps I have a special respect for people who are willing to take a chance on a neighborhood and discover for themselves all the ups and downs of a place. It’s people like this who keep neighborhoods from being bad and “good” neighborhoods from being overcrowded.
But I think you are reading more into this thread than is written. I for one don’t have a problem with people who don’t want to live next to a crackhouse or dodge bullets. I’m just annoyed by people writing places off just because they aren’t picture perfect or don’t look picture perfect.
I don’t think it’s bad to hold these things as important criteria when choosing a place to live. But I also think people should question their prejudices in their deliberations.
I had a coworker, back in NJ, who always made a big deal about how nervous she was driving around and seeing kids just “hanging out” on stoops, porches, and street corners. From my perspective, the more people I see, the safer I feel. As long as they aren’t engaging in illegal/annoying activity, why would I be afraid? But from her vantage point, these kids (all of them black) represented a Menace, deserving of fear and apprehension. That viewpoint just encourages the bad eggs to act out.
She’d ask me how I could ride through Newark on my bike without fear. I told her I’m completely used to seeing people on the street. I have stood on the street before–just like anyone who’s ever had to wait for a bus. Something this coworker had never done before.
I never said there was no such thing as a bad neighborhood, dude. Maybe you found one. Or maybe you have a lower tolerance for stuff that I–or other posters on this thread–have. No need to be so defensive.
My point isn’t that we shouldn’t have standards. My point is that sometimes it’s worth taking the risk and living on the “wrong” side of tracks.
I grew up in a stigmitized neighborhood and loved it. In college, I lived on a questionable street in ramshackled building, surrounded by an asphalt jungle, and I loved it. In graduate school, I lived in a dingy apartment complex and my neighbors were every non-English speaking immigrant you can think of, and I loved it (although the roaches were down-right awful!) Now that I’m making better money, I live in a gated apartment complex in a ritzy part of town. And guess what? I’m completely “meh” about it. It’s too sterile and overly manicured for my tastes. Plus, I pay too much in rent. Way too much. (And for all it’s hype, there’s been a surge in crime. Just goes to show no one is entitled to safety.)
You need to tweak your mind-reading device a bit because you’re completely off base here, at least as far as the OP is concerned.
Monstro, I’m not sure what the “ups” are in a “bad” neighborhood, other than being more affordable. But thanks for the respect I truly do try to do my part to keep my street from being worse than it is!
Actually, my comments were based not so much on your question but on some of the responses to it. In answer to your actual question, no, I’m not in the least bit offended that some of my friends think my neighborhood is scary- it is (though not as scary as they perceive it). At least I never have to drive when we go out because no one wants to leave their car on my street.
Didn’t think I was being defensive. Sorry 'bout that. And that’s DUDETTE to you
By the way, does being a single female give one any leeway in the matter?
Again, I don’t see the “worth”, other than financial reasons. Of course, as you mentioned, different people have different standards for what “bad” is.
I think it is less a chance of willingness to take a chance, and more a question of can they afford to live someplace nicer? 
Location. The appeal of my "not so nice neighborhood, and what is driving up the price drastically, is that the location is really central. The Metro is close by as is Union Station and it is maybe 10 minutes to 20 minutes by car to Downtown in the mornings. Compared to friends who paid similar prices for places in the nice suburbs, it makes a difference.
I agree that price plays a huge role in determining where you want to live, say 75%, with the other percentage allocated to other factors such as location, schools, etc, but I believe that price isn’t the only factor.
Twenty years ago, I lived in the projects, with my mom. It was my choice to do so. I had been living in an upper-classed neighborhood with my father, but that hadn’t worked out well.
Back then, the place I lived was clean and inhabited by elderly people and young families, both white and black. They were nice people that just happened to be poor. There were other projects in the same city, with worse reputations. But it made me see an ugly side of society, that I had never been exposed to. As soon as anyone heard where I lived, I may as well have been living in a plague infested war zone. I think I’m more sensitive about growing up wealthy, than living in the projects. One made me who I am, and the other didn’t do me a damn bit of good in the long run.
You don’t have to live in a racially and culturally homogeneous neighborhood, or have your kids go to school with only white middle- and upper-class kids. Those things are significant downsides to some of us.
There’s likely to be more public transit available than in the suburbs or some wealthier areas (some people in richer areas actually try to keep public transit out, to keep “undesirables” from getting there).
The neighbourhood I live in now has a bad reputation. It is quite literally on the wrong side of the tracks, the street is quite trendy on the east side of the tracks, but as soon as you cross to the west, you’re in sketch-ville. It’s bad rep is mostly historical: it’s close to a big, old mental hospital, so there are lots of support services for mental health patients around (and, therefore, lots of mental health patients); also, when they built a highway nearby, the rich people moved out and the rents went way down. Now it’s packed with recent immigrants, the aforementioned mental health patients, and artists looking for cheap rent. (Although, to my despair, it’s gentrifying - the closest Starbucks is still several blocks away, but I fear further encroachment).
It’s reputation is, as far as I’m concerned, undeserved. There are hookers and drug dealers, but these are not in and of themselves dangerous. Also, recent studies demonstrated that most of the clientele of the hookers and dealers came from other neighbourhoods. It does piss me off that we get a bad rep because people come from their own well-reputed areas to do their dirty business in ours.
I think it has mostly been dangerous in years past, but it’s improved a lot. I’ve been paying attention to the local news since I moved in, and most of the murders that happen in Toronto happen in other neighbourhoods. (With a few exceptions, of course: for instance, a community support worker was found chopped up in an alley right by my house, she had been murdered by her partner with whom she lived, nearby.) When I woke up to find a homeless man eating his breakfast on my front porch, it was in a different neighbourhood, right by the university.
I feel quite a lot safer in my ‘hood than in, say, my parents’ - they live in a suburb, where there is nothing around but six-lane roads and quiet empty tree-lined streets, and cars. If something were to happen there would be no-one around to hear me scream. In my neighbourhood, on the other hand, there are always people around - although they may be drunk / homeless / crazy / smelling like pee, or even “foreign” / sketchy-looking (to the eyes of sheltered suburban white people, they are my neighbours, they are not threatening to me, and I know there will always be someone to come to my aid if I need it, whatever the time of day or night.
I don’t mind the reputation but it probably helps that I didn’t grow up there, I have the benefit of age and experience to realize that calling my neighbourhood dangerous is more a reflection on the ignorance of the speaker than on the 'hood itself. If I was a kid, I’d just be pissed off.
I am in no way equating racial diversity with being “bad”. I don’t think I implied anything close to that, but if I wasn’t clear, I hope I am now. That being said, how would having your kids go to school with only white middle and upper-class kids be a “significant” downside?
Please don’t hand me my arse on a swastika; my question isn’t meant to tout white supremacy. I’m just wondering where the horror lies in being able to afford to live among middle - upper class people (whatever their race).
Lack of socioeconomic and cultural diversity among their friends and classmates, which can lead to a lack of understanding or even lack of empathy for people who aren’t white/aren’t well-to-do.
Except that many bad neighborhoods if not most are racially and culturally homogeous.
This is an attitude that always surprises me. I don’t mind a little gentrification. Hell, some of that gentrification is making my neighborhood much nicer. Right now, we have a coffee shop that has been open for a year. They aren’t open past 7 on Saturdays and past 5 on weekends. There are now two sitdown restaurants that don’t serve greasy food. I would say that half of the businesses in the neighborhood have safety glass separating the client from the cashier. There isn’t much variety in what shops we do have and this neighborhood is better off than other neighborhoods in the District. We do have a supermarket that is not too far although it doesn’t have a great selection so the people who don’t have a car aren’t stuck buying their groceries from the corner stores and paying an outrageous markup.
I think that people who go to school with only white kids are more likely to believe stereotypes about non-whites. They might even think some of those groups were inferior in some way, or that white upper and middle class culture was somehow better than other cultures. They also might be less comfortable later on if they did find themselves in a more racially and culturally diverse setting. People who go to school with only middle- and upper-class people might believe stereotypes about poor people and be uncomfortable around them.
That’s not because of anything wrong with white middle and upper class culture (though I think it, like all cultures, has its problems). I think the same thing would happen in any culturally homogeneous community. I think it’s better to have experience with a wider cross-section of society and more different types of people.
I am not a parent, but my gut instinct is that people will choose the best they can afford for their children. Are you saying someone would consciously sacrifice their child’s education for the sake of exposing them to cultural diversity? One of the biggest issues in my state right now is the gaping chasm between the quality of education in the more affluent (read white)and the poorer (read everyone else)schools. Until the culturally diverse schools can provide the same level of education (meaning when they receive the proper funding), I’d have to opt for the better school and hope that I could expose Little Wook to the “real word” through other means.