Berwyn YES or NO... fill me in!!! (Chicago, Naperville: house, neighborhood)

[BerwynBoy]

I've lived in Berwyn for over six years now. Moved here from Chicago where I was born and raised. (NW side) I have children who attend elementary school here in Berwyn and I believe Berwyn is a good place to raise children. I cannot speak about ALL the areas of Berwyn, but just like Anytown, USA, there's good and bad. There are 500K homes, and there are $500 basements in a three flat for rent. Some areas look a little run down, and some homes look like they're straight out of a Homes and Gardens magazine. The point is you will never find a perfect town, anywhere. As for Berwyn, I pretty much speak to all my neighbors (some never say hello), and if you get involved with your children's school, you will meet and get to know other parents and community members, teachers, and so on; people who actually care about their town, and want to look out for each other. So what else does Berwyn have besides the usual high school fights and crime present anywhere? About two miles between two major expressways, a mall and plenty of walking distance grocery stores, nice parks, Pace Bus Transit, Metra Commuter Train, restaurants with dance floors!, bars, barbers, beauty salons, book store, lawn mower repair shop, ..................etc. Just like Anytown, USA.

[chet everett]

The points raised by BerwynBoy are interesting. In my experience there are a smaller number of students that go on to well rated colleges after having gone through the Berwyn/Morton Twnshp schools, but there are some. There is something to be said for that.
When people wax on about the "diversity" of some schools they may not realize that many schools that are diverse on paper are probably MORE segregated then your average downtown office...

Perhaps the difficulty in the mortgage markets will get people to turn away from focusing on the financial investment they make in their house and the sort of investments they make in the time spent working on strengthening their community...

[BRU67]

Originally Posted by chet everett

Perhaps the difficulty in the mortgage markets will get people to turn away from focusing on the financial investment they make in their house and the sort of investments they make in the time spent working on strengthening their community...

We can hope! Seems like people have learned to commodify their communities as opposed to becoming involved. They pay bookoo bucks to get into an "upscale" area and then expect everything to be handed to them, including rapid appreciation. Nice thing about Berwyn I've noticed is that there seems to be an increasing number young homeowners who get the correlation between good schools, community involvement, economic development, and sensible historic preservation and quality of life and, ultimately, property values.

[Mr Bigman]

Im one of the big guys on here so let me put in my 2 cents here.

I lived in Berwyn since mid 1994 and when i got here, i thought it was an Italian polish town cuz of the things ive heard through my aunt who told us abotu the area.

I own a home in south berwyn and its ok but yes their is alot of hispanics here but their not my problem cuz i get along well them and alot of them are my clients and they pay well for my service as a pc tech.

Problem i have is no jobs or big development and good restaurants.

Part of the issue is the crooked mayor and his staff like to keep things as they say status quoe here nothing new just leave it alone.

We have nothing big here as far as good places to work but with the hispanics becoming the majority, this is good for those who like there food and shopping at their stores which have some pretty cool stuff.

Blacks aren't even an issue here either but they only go where things are cheap like the Family Dollar or Wallgreens.

For the most part, Berwyn is pretty much your working class suburb with a variety of flavors in people and shopping but i can assure you , you will never find a TGI Fridays or Applebies here cuz of the nature of people and this isn't lombard or Downers Grove.

And another big issue is, when stores become vacient, they pretty much stay that way for years until the recking ball does them in. Like that pgins nest at Cermak and Oak Park, still nothing going on their.

But a bright spot is their building a nice mixed reatail residents building at the corner of Stanley and Oak park which i hope adds a surge to the the depot district.

[skyeINIL]

Originally Posted by Mr Bigman

Blacks aren't even an issue here either but they only go where things are cheap like the Family Dollar or Wallgreens.

Disregarding the ridiculousness of the rest of this statement, since when is Walgreens cheap?

[Mr Bigman]

Their prices aren't that bad. And there was nothing disregarding or ridiculous about the statement.

Ive stated its a decent working class area and those findings are very true.

[Mr Bigman]

WEll they finally took down the spindle. Yay.

[Humboldt1]

Mr. Bigman,

Skye and I often disagree but you statement "blacks aren't even an issue" is too general and indicates all blacks are bad. This simply isn't true. I have had many issues with "ghetto blacks" but this is more a factor of their poverty and upbringing than their skin color.

Walgreens is pretty cheap and stores such as Walgreens and CVS are often used to buy convenience goods in the city. Prices aren't any better than Jewel but not everyone has a car or wants to endure long bus ride to go to Jewel.

Family Dollar is cheap and often sells stuff that doesn't sell in the first few months of its life at other stores such as HI C, though some do sell juice and milk.
Your statement about blacks was a sweeping generalization and unfair to blacks who work and abide by the law without a sense of entitlement. This is all coming from a guy who has lost money time and time again from certain ghetto blacks and been nearly killed while being robbed by a group of ghetto blacks. I have no sort of respect for ghetto people of any color with an entitlement mentality and believe they are for the most part a drain on society.

Berwyn is for the most part a stable working class area. I don't recommend the schools but certainly believe it is much nicer than cicero to the east. Oak Park to the north of course is much nicer and has better schools.

[Mr Bigman]

That is the term i was looking for is ghetto.

You can't say that their all that way cuz their not.

We can't base people on what they look like or we will all be introuble.

Its not the 50's anymore where if it was different than everyone paniced.

But i do get along with most people in Berwyn but its those who are sucking the system dry that need tos tay out cuz it makes living in apartments bad but from my experience with apartments, it was white people who made it bad living their cuz sometimes they would be up all night drinking and makeing loud noise and blasting their music.

But if you can afford to buy a house, Berwyn is fine but don't rent cuz the people who live in the apartments aren't very pleasing.

[Humboldt1]

Mr. Bigman,

Not sure exactly what you were trying to say in your post. It is not whites sucking the system dry and making lots of noise in many neighborhoods such as Humboldt Park. We simply do not have white people other than a few token people such as myself. With my new renter there are now 3 white people on the block. Hispanics will sometimes make noise on th weekends but not typically during the week other than some who drive by blasting their music which many cultures do. This is not the case with a few blacks on my block but the block is noticeably quieter after I evicted my black tenants earlier this year (with the help of my black handyman who referred my lawyer).

Many of the few blacks in my area (it is mostly hispanic north of grand and division) are okay but there are some that are loud, blame everyone else for their problems, have kids by multiple dads, simply give a bad name for the rest of their race. I rented to 3 black families that fit this bill. They owe me over 10M and I doubt I will ever see a dime. I call my former renters "landfill garbage" as it can't think of a strong enough word for them.

I don't know of a lot of blacks in Berwyn. Most of the problems I have seen are gang related. You are right that the corrupt city hall doesn't help either.

Essentially, most of the people of Berwyn are hard working people doing the best they can to get by. Still, I would not raise a family there if I had a choice and would go north to oak park instead.

Renters as a whole are always worse than owners as their is pride in ownership. You always care more if you own the place.