I'm all for gentrification.

[residinghere2007]

Originally Posted by cqholt

Also the tailgaters who do not live in that area, just throw their trash anywhere because they don't care about the residents and homeowners.

We won't even get into the bold!!

They not only litter but urinate and go #2 in the neighborhood after Falcon's games and throw up all over the place.

Guessing the traveling man thinks that that is also the responsibility of the neighborhood residents to clean up as well.

[pandorafan5687]

Originally Posted by residinghere2007

Sigh, not sure how many times it has to be repeated around here but the crime rate in Chicago is way lower than it was 10 years ago. Also, over the past 10 years it has a lower crime rate than the city of Atlanta.

CHA followed Atlanta's lead (AHA was a trailblazer in mixed-use/mixed-income redevelopment of public housing locations starting with Techwood and East Lake Meadows in the 1990s prior to the Olympics coming to the city. This started happenening 20 years ago, crime was much worse across the country and in both Atlanta and Chicago 20 years ago).

Crime in those areas where public housing has been demolished in Chicago have seen crime rates decrease. CHA also has not torn down all of its public housing and neither has Atlanta. There are still family units in Chicago however, unlike Atlanta, which demolished all of its family housing units, only senior public housing remains. Chicago still has both family and senior public housing.

So perhaps it's lower than it was ten years ago, but still pretty high considering the circumstances. That said, my point was to say that simply kicking low income residents out of a section of a city is not a guaranteed deterrent to crime. It simply spreads it around the city. Gentrification is good to a certain extent, however the goal of revitalizing should not be to simply eliminate the poor from a neighborhood out of sigh out of mind. That's all I was trying to say.

[arjay57]

Originally Posted by residinghere2007

They not only litter but urinate and go #2 in the neighborhood after Falcon's games and throw up all over the place.

Sheesh, that is outrageous.

Wonder if it would help to deputize some citizen monitors and deploy them in strategic locations? You start busting some of these offenders in the act and that might put the quietus on this kind of behaviour. Post their photos on the web.

Pooping in somebody else's neighborhood is beyond the pale.

[pandorafan5687]

Originally Posted by residinghere2007

we won't even get into the bold!!

They not only litter but urinate and go #2 in the neighborhood after falcon's games and throw up all over the place.

Guessing the traveling man thinks that that is also the responsibility of the neighborhood residents to clean up as well.

yuck!

[bryantm3]

Originally Posted by Forhall

I find this hilarious and so true. Those young white people who the most vigorous in pretending black crime is not an issue always seem to move to midtown, Virginia Highland, decatur, etc. Why is that? Perhaps because it's safe. And why exactly is it so safe? Why don't those same people move to the Southwest side instead since there is no black crime issue. It should be just as safe there then. Certainly you could get more bang for your buck!

dude you are racist as hell. you are so racist you think that every person defending those neighborhoods on here is some kind of white savior. hell, you probably think everybody on here is white. why? because you don't see black people as people. you don't think about black people doing anything that is not somehow something that "they just do" because they're black. i'm calling you out. but i want you to know that your condition is not permanent. if you start using your damn head for something else than a place to put your hat, you can choose not to be a racist. i did. check out my earlier posting history. i said some pretty dumb stuff because i was ignorant, and my fear was keeping me from learning anything.

bend your brain a little bit. show some empathy. and by 'empathy' i don't mean feeling sorry for someone because you think you're better than them. i mean start putting yourself in another person's situation and really thinking hard about it. empathy requires brainpower... and right now you aren't using it, because your arguments are so blatantly ignorant that they aren't even worth deconstructing. you ought to know better than this. how old are you, anyway? smh.

[residinghere2007]

Originally Posted by pandorafan5687

So perhaps it's lower than it was ten years ago, but still pretty high considering the circumstances. That said, my point was to say that simply kicking low income residents out of a section of a city is not a guaranteed deterrent to crime. It simply spreads it around the city. Gentrification is good to a certain extent, however the goal of revitalizing should not be to simply eliminate the poor from a neighborhood out of sigh out of mind. That's all I was trying to say.

On this, you only think that Chicago has high crime because it is always in the media. It is not even one of the country's "most dangerous" cities. Also, you compare crime statistics to previous years, usually in 5-10 year increments in order to account for outliers. Chicago in the last 5 years is the safest it has been since the 1960s. I'd say that means it is very low considering the circumstances and the history of crime in the city and especially so in relation to homicides. They used to have nearly (and some years over) 1000 homicides in Chicago in the 1970s. Today on average it is about 550. That is substantially safer than it used to be when public housing was concentrated in certain areas in the city itself.