Where is the Ghetto? (Pittsburgh, McKeesport: income, jobs, health)

[pittsburgh,pa]

What are you people for real pittsburgh has no real ghettos!!! Pittsburgh has ghettos and they are dangerous you cant talk about ghettos if you never been to one. If you dont belive me go to youtube.com and type in bloccs projects and see wat im talking bout Wow!!! do your research HOMEWOOD,THE HILL, NORTH VIEW,MANCHESTER, and alot more

[supersoulty]

Originally Posted by pittsburgh,pa

What are you people for real pittsburgh has no real ghettos!!! Pittsburgh has ghettos and they are dangerous you cant talk about ghettos if you never been to one. If you dont belive me go to youtube.com and type in bloccs projects and see wat im talking bout Wow!!! do your research HOMEWOOD,THE HILL, NORTH VIEW,MANCHESTER, and alot more

I've BEEN to those places. They aren't really as bad as you say they are. Would I go there after dark... no. Are they slightly more dangerous than some other places... yes. But they aren't THAT bad.

[Pitts10yrs]

I just drove thru one of those places today. Sitting at the light someone threw a empty can out the window, drove forward parked on the side of the road....around ten people all standing there doing what I dont know. Then another girl, finishing some potato chips tossed the gutted bag right on to the street. I though to myself, "I guess I know where I am at." Glad I was just passing thru and I dont live there.

[MissShona]

Originally Posted by Pitts10yrs

I just drove thru one of those places today. Sitting at the light someone threw a empty can out the window, drove forward parked on the side of the road....around ten people all standing there doing what I dont know. Then another girl, finishing some potato chips tossed the gutted bag right on to the street. I though to myself, "I guess I know where I am at." Glad I was just passing thru and I dont live there.

Littering = the ghetto? Hmmm... maybe by Pittsburgh standards. All of Manhattan is like that.

[italianbluesboy]

Another approach to this is for you to locate the Monongahela, Allegheny, and Ohio Rivers on a map. The further back you move away from these the less chance you have of being the in a ghetto. Think Mt. Lebanon, or Shadyside, or Monroeville. But if you get too far back away from these rivers you may end up in Redneck Run or Hillbilly Holler. The trick is to locate somewhere between the urban ghetto and the rural hollow. Because Pittsburgh can transistion from urban Northeast to rural Appalchia somewhat quickly in some locations.

By the way, Braddock is so ghetto that the mayor has photos of boarded up ruined structures on his website about his own town: Braddock Pennsylvania - Ruins ! I was on a tour of the Carrie Furnaces there last year and there was plenty of gang graffiti, though it may have been created by wanna-be posers, I'll give you that.

[PeterRabbit]

TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Wednesday, January 30, 2008

12-Year-Old Killed, Mother Shot On North Side

Two feuding North Side groups are responsible for the slaying of a 12-year-old girl and investigators fear retaliatory shootings might erupt as authorities work to dismantle the gangs, police said today.

One arrest in fatal shooting of girl, 12 - Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
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WPXI.com
Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Teen Shot, Killed In Homewood

A 15-year-old boy is dead after someone shot the car he was in with his mother and an 11-year-old girl.

Police say the victim was in a car near the drive-through of a Kentucky Fried Chicken on North Homewood Avenue just before 10 p.m. Tuesday.

Teen Shot, Killed In Homewood - News Story - WPXI Pittsburgh
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That's two juveniles murdered in two days in areas some of you think aren't *that* bad. Police state there are gangs involved in the one incident. But we don't have real gangs here, do we?

[oktaren]

Originally Posted by MissShona

Littering = the ghetto? Hmmm... maybe by Pittsburgh standards. All of Manhattan is like that.

The garbage is everywhere in Pittsburgh. The urban tumbleweed flows like crazy throughout Mt. Washington thats for sure. Even so, the areas previously mentioned are very ghetto.

[suzeeq521]

Italianbluesboy - I'll be sure to tell my neighbors in Lawrenceville and the folks who pass through from Washington's Landing and other neighborhoods that our neighborhoods are ghetto by default.

I'm sure they will all appreciate that. Or more likely, laugh at it.

[italianbluesboy]

Originally Posted by suzeeq521

Italianbluesboy - I'll be sure to tell my neighbors in Lawrenceville and the folks who pass through from Washington's Landing and other neighborhoods that our neighborhoods are ghetto by default.

I'm sure they will all appreciate that. Or more likely, laugh at it.

Oh, no, I never meant every town along the rivers was ghetto. Sewickley isn't. Neither is Fox Chapel. But the chance of ending up in a potentially ghetto place is greater along the rivers. I admit that's just an opinion, not a fact. Monessen, Clairton, Mckeesport, Braddock, Homestead, Hazlewood, parts of North Side, New Kensington, Aliquippa, Mckees Rocks, Steubenville...quite a collection of possible ghetto places. And not every part of every one of them is ghetto.

[MissShona]

Originally Posted by PeterRabbit

That's two juveniles murdered in two days in areas some of you think aren't *that* bad. Police state there are gangs involved in the one incident. But we don't have real gangs here, do we?

No one said they are no gangs here; however they are young-hoodlum, dollar-store thugs what have you compared to gangs in other cities. On top of that, the vast majority of people living in the region have no interaction with these places or people fostering the culprit activity. Believe me, there are many cities where some people need to drive at length through the ghetto to get to work (we are talking about 5 miles or so) or have significant levels of gang activity in their downtown areas (L.A., San Antonio, etc.).

Put it this way, I have an aunt that lived in Homewood for years and parked her BMW on the street. Basically went to work in Shadyside, and took her trips...came back home to sleep. Never had any problems. Meanwhile in other cities you have nice areas mingling dangerously close to fringe ghetto areas due to population surges which causes serious strife. I lived in a very Jewish neighborhood in Miami and there were 5 break-ins in 2007 where there was forced entry. One was a carjacking turned house-robbery where they made the woman drive back to her home and tied her up and left her alone afterwards. Another Jewish woman in her 60s had her home broken into at night and was robbed at gunpoint. Her answer to that was to buy a dog. Unfortunately, the going rate for housing in the neighborhood was already sky-high....it's not like you can afford to move to a "nicer" place!

I really, truly feel for innocent people who are victims of this shooting foolishness. But it came out that the girl's sister was the target...so who knows what she was involved in. The reality is if you have a family member that's involved in drugs, gangs, or whatever - you don't know what you'll liable to encounter while with them. That's just common sense.

So sure there are gangs in Pittsburgh. But they are pretty darn easy to avoid. Put it this way, there are quite a few music concerts and DJ events that were held in Miami that I would miss out on because I knew the probability of guns being brought was high (oh, and these were "multicultural" events that would draw Blacks, Hispanics, and White people ~ not necessarily "upscale", but the college crowd). Can't say that about anything I've wanted to see in Pittsburgh in my 10 years of going out.