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Fact is the millenials, unless they make a lot of money are getting priced out of the up and coming areas in the city. They are not buying. My son turned his nose up at the suburbs and look, now one of his friends is moving to Forest Park from Ukrainian village because he had a kid and was living in one of those garden apartments. I do think that we will see more young people moving out of the city as others move in. One you live there for a while you might be ready for a variety of reasons for suburban living even if its an urbanized place such as Berwyn or Oak Park. Yes I think Bru is right, Hispanic populations and other recent ethnic groups are expanding faster than caucasion lower priced housing. That's why places like Brookfield, Westchester, Villa Park, Glendale Heights, etc. are seeing more diversification.
I grew up in a working class area, but with very little crime. We were decidedly middle-class, or even upper middle-class, but that put us in a higher socioeconomic strata than most of the people around us. The schools I went to were safe, but not on anyone's "best of" lists. I was able to take calculus and British Literature in high school along with a choice of a whopping total THREE offered AP classes. I was near the top of my class and got in to a good college anyway.
My wife lived in a variety of towns, from declining working class rust-belt city to affluent suburb, and she always believed the affluent suburb was a better childhood experience that provided better opportunities to the kids there.
I went to college at a large university, and noticed that the kids from nicer suburbs were better-prepared and had come in with a lot of AP credits and advanced classes in math and science. It took me a couple of years to catch up. I also noticed kids from these suburbs used more drugs and had more "attitude". I guess there is always a tradeoff. I also noticed that a lot of the unprepared kids from lesser schools struggled and sometimes dropped out.
When the time came to buy a more permanent home, we didn't really consider Berwyn. My wife wasn't even sold on Oak Park, as she was tired of dealing with "grit" and crime after eight years in Uptown--and I just couldn't convince her that these issues weren't major concerns in Oak Park. She was tired of worrying about the kids playing outside and wanted to give them more freedom. She was tired of looking over her shoulder. So as part of a joint married couple decision using multiple criteria (transit access, good public schools, walkability, Trader Joes, among others), we went from living in one of the most diverse areas in the entire nation to an overwhelmingly white suburb in one of the most segregated metro areas in the nation.
Was it all about schools? No, not really. They were certainly a major factor, and we wanted a good public school option that would serve us K-12... But there were many things about raising kids in the city and our housing situation that were irritating, and we needed to move regardless.
Is a place like Oak Park the answer? I do think it is doing more than most towns in its situation and appreciate the efforts to remain diverse. We did look for houses there, and probably would have jumped on the right house. But Oak Park is tricky... Inventory is low, prices are high, taxes are high. We couldn't find anything we liked there and my wife wasn't as sold on it as I was.
Are we part of the problem? Yes, I do think so, unfortunately. We are perpetuating the segregated residential patterns in the region that negatively affect society, but benefit us. But if a family like ours has the mobility and income level that will allow us to live in a nice area, it's really hard to voluntarily give up so much for such a small, incremental slice of "common good" which may or may not really have any effect on anything. Sure, thousands of kids from well-off families in Berwyn schools would have an effect, but my kids alone would probably just get lost in the mess. There is no critical mass yet, so it's hard to be the "first one in"--especially in a case like Berwyn where the momentum seems to be heading in the opposite direction. Additionally, my wife didn't find Berwyn to be particularly charming, and that half-hour Metra ride can be had in many other suburbs due to express train service.
I don't regret our decision.
Last edited by Lookout Kid; 08-05-2015 at 12:43 PM..
Berwyn definitely needs the Lookout Kids in its elementary schools in order to raise itself up from a lower middle working class suburb to something more like Oak Park. But the schools are so high % low income now, it'll be much more difficult to get those kids then it would have been 20 years ago.
About the only thing I can think of would be to build a magnet/charter school and make it performance-based admission.That doesn't solve the integration problem but it would raise the income level of the community.
There is, of course, no political chance this will ever happen. It would require raising taxes for one thing --their education funding is already among the lowest in the State -- which wouldn't fly. I'm also sure there'd be a lot of debate over taking resources from needier low income students and diverting it to higher income kids.
So I guess the chips are going to fall where they may. I think it'll largely keep heading in the same direction it is now, at least for the next 20 years or so.
Are we part of the problem? Yes, I do think so, unfortunately. We are perpetuating the segregated residential patterns in the region that negatively affect society, but benefit us. But if a family like ours has the mobility and income level that will allow us to live in a nice area, it's really hard to voluntarily give up so much for such a small, incremental slice of "common good" which may or may not really have any effect on anything. Sure, thousands of kids from well-off families in Berwyn schools would have an effect, but my kids alone would probably just get lost in the mess. There is no critical mass yet, so it's hard to be the "first one in"--especially in a case like Berwyn where the momentum seems to be heading in the opposite direction. Additionally, my wife didn't find Berwyn to be particularly charming, and that half-hour Metra ride can be had in many other suburbs due to express train service.
Who is willing to bet on a future upswing? If you're right, you benefit from buying low and enjoying the benefits of better amenities and schools over time. If you guess wrong, you've lost money (perhaps a lot of money) on your house and endured worsening schools and crime. Not many people are willing to gamble on the future of their kids and their largest financial investment.
Who is willing to bet on a future upswing? If you're right, you benefit from buying low and enjoying the benefits of better amenities and schools over time. If you guess wrong, you've lost money (perhaps a lot of money) on your house and endured worsening schools and crime. Not many people are willing to gamble on the future of their kids and their largest financial investment.
I think our experience of buying in Uptown showed us how slow these things happen, even when it's further along than Berwyn and has more momentum. We weren't willing to do it twice. We wanted a place that offered everything we wanted today.
The parents that "bet" on Nettlehorst improving in the Lake View neighborhood had a neighborhood with natural advantages that always had at least some high-end appeal, even when the neighborhood was more working class. And from what I've been told, they collectively decided as a group to send their kids to the school, almost all at once. They were a dedicated group who had already spent quite a bit of money in a hot Lake View housing market in the 1990's/2000's. I'm not sure Berwyn has a similar group of parents with enough housing demand behind them to replace them/prop them up over time.
As another anecdote, I has a boss who lived in NW Oak Park before I had kids. We were visiting his house one time about 2004 and mentioned to his wife that we may be interested in moving to Oak Park one day. She made the case for Forest Park, claiming that it was attracting a lot of younger people and would be "the next Oak Park". If we had followed her advice, we would be still be waiting eleven years later, and living in an area with a terrible school district. It's hard to argue that Forest Park is any nicer now than it was then, although the Madison Street strip is more developed.
The parents that "bet" on Nettlehorst improving in the Lake View neighborhood had a neighborhood with natural advantages that always had at least some high-end appeal, even when the neighborhood was more working class. And from what I've been told, they collectively decided as a group to send their kids to the school, almost all at once. They were a dedicated group who had already spent quite a bit of money in a hot Lake View housing market in the 1990's/2000's. I'm not sure Berwyn has a similar group of parents with enough housing demand behind them to replace them/prop them up over time.
There's a small but spirited cadre of parents who make up CARES and What Would it Take? Some of them have recently been elected to the D100 school board. It's good that they're there and their hearts are in the right place but they are also very liberal, and tried to pass a $1,000 per house per year property tax increase for just one of the school districts in April 2013.
The problem is the schools don't have enough money and the community does not have the kind of tax base which can absorb a large enough tax increase to really remedy that. I think that's a pretty big concern that's going to come to a head at some point.
I think our experience of buying in Uptown showed us how slow these things happen, even when it's further along than Berwyn and has more momentum. We weren't willing to do it twice. We wanted a place that offered everything we wanted today.
The parents that "bet" on Nettlehorst improving in the Lake View neighborhood had a neighborhood with natural advantages that always had at least some high-end appeal, even when the neighborhood was more working class. And from what I've been told, they collectively decided as a group to send their kids to the school, almost all at once. They were a dedicated group who had already spent quite a bit of money in a hot Lake View housing market in the 1990's/2000's. I'm not sure Berwyn has a similar group of parents with enough housing demand behind them to replace them/prop them up over time.
As to Nettlehorst, boy, did they shift the demographics. In 2000, the school was 44% Hispanic, 35% black, and 16% white. It was 80% low income. By last year, it was 60% white, 17% Hispanic, and 10% black. It was only 22% low income in 2013. That did jump to 28% for 2014, which was weird. Maybe a brief downturn in a mutual fund pushed a few parents into the free lunch program or something.
I mean, what did they do with all the poor minority students?? Effectively gave them a one way bus ticket to the suburbs or more impoverished City 'hoods is what they did. I guess it's not hard to be a "success" story if you can manage to pull that off.
I recently checked and virtually every single school in Little Village and Pilsen is projected to lose students from last year (and will thus losing funding of course). The Census showed that South Lawndale's (Little Village) population dropped by nearly 13% between 2000 and 2010. The Lower West Side (Pilsen) lost nearly 19%.
It might not be a bad guess to say that this is because the families with kids in those neighborhoods are moving to the suburbs. Total enrollment in Berwyn D100 has gone from 2,900 in 2000 to 4,000 last year. In D98, it went from 2,500 in 2000 to 3,400 last year. That's a big increase! CPS has lost almost 32,000 students in that same time span.
There was a story on WBEZ this morning about Chicago area real estate and flips in particular - Berwyn was one of two places mentioned as having a high percentage of flip sales. Does anyone know if it's a couple of people / firms doing this, or are there several active in Berwyn? Seems like there's a ton, and they are selling. It will be interesting to see who those buyers are and how they impact Berwyn over time.
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