Anyone familiar with South Shore? (Lincoln, Roscoe: transplants, crimes, houses)

[meatpuff]

PokerPlayer1:

Well, there's the speculators, and then there's the rest of us. Your analysis sounds off-key because you're acting like everyone is a speculator.

The speculators are driving the sale prices of the properties in the "up-and-coming" areas. It is true that the sale prices of properties can shoot way up if there is a general feeling that the area is up-and-coming. After all, the sale price of a property should be nothing but the discounted present value of all future income/equity that that property can generate.

But in a truly up-and-coming area, i.e. edge of the present ghetto, the first "gentrifiers" to arrive are generally renters. The place is currently a craphole, and the only people who will live there are people who can't afford to live someplace nicer. And someone who can't even afford to rent in, say, Jefferson Park, is not of the financial means to be buying any real estate. So the urban pioneers are renters, mostly.

But gentrification happens because of the residents, not the speculators, and this is what you aren't grasping. A Starbucks opens because there are now residents in the area with a taste for premium coffee, not because the speculators have bid two-flats up to x dollars per square foot. I think everyone understands that most of the early speculators don't actually live in the unit. After all, that's your plan.

There is a rental market and a speculators (buyer/seller) market, and the two interact very little. No renter will agree to pay more to live in a crappy area just because the landlord paid an arm and a leg for the building.

Originally Posted by PokerPlayer1

There is definitely sometimes such a thing as "true gentrification", however, as another poster alluded to, there's a massive price to be paid in terms of a diminished (often times, grotesque) quality of life if you're buying as a primary residence and want to get in while it's still 'cheap'. Simply dismissing the trajectory of gentrification as "ignoring the riff raff" is a woefully inadequate description of what the first salvo of urban-pioneers have to endure during that critical 'first decade' when the "up and coming area with all that potential" is still a 3rd world jungle of crime and squalor, pretty much totally unfit for habitation by respectable people
...
That said, I do believe I'll live to see the day when South Shore is "the next big thing". Whether it turns out to be or not depends on a lot of things that no one can predict. I'm just not going to live there myself during the changeover, but I might dip my toe in to a property to hold as a long term gentrification play, or, a "sell on the rebound" type of deal.

Oh, and the price to be paid for living in an up-and-coming area depends on your lifestyle. If you're in one of the new condo units in EGP with secure entry and secure covered attached parking; and you're happy enough driving to work and for shopping, you might sacrifice very little living over there.

[PokerPlayer1]

Originally Posted by meatpuff

PokerPlayer1:

Well, there's the speculators, and then there's the rest of us. Your analysis sounds off-key because you're acting like everyone is a speculator...

But gentrification happens because of the residents, not the speculators, and this is what you aren't grasping.

I really don't see where anything I've written might suggest that I believe gentrification occurs as a sole (primary, or even marginal) result of speculative money. South Shore would be a great example. Plenty of speculative money put in there from 2002-2006, not much change since not enough white people moved in.

With that said, speculative money can definitely exacerbate an existing and ongoing gentrification process, when poor minorities are selling out their long-time homes for bigbigbig profits to white "rehabbers" ala Bucktown, Harlem of the past 10 years or so, etc.

Furthermore, I think it would be naive to suggest that in the year 2009, people are out there buying homes without any consideration to it's future value. That's speculation, in a nutshell, and people do it as a byproduct of the standard decision-making process that goes into buying any home. While "speculator" has become a cachet for any retard who turned on the spigot of unlimited credit and bought a 2nd, 3rd or 4th house over the past few years, the speculative process itself is still pretty much an integrated dynamic of home buying in the city of Chicago, including those buying their primary residence.

I think you are trying to make a counter-point to a point that wasn't made to begin with.

[meatpuff]

Originally Posted by PokerPlayer1

I think you are trying to make a counter-point to a point that wasn't made to begin with.

Maybe. In that case, glad you agree with me!

Originally Posted by PokerPlayer1

I really don't see where anything I've written might suggest that I believe gentrification occurs as a sole (primary, or even marginal) result of speculative money. South Shore would be a great example. Plenty of speculative money put in there from 2002-2006, not much change since not enough white people moved in.

I don't know the area, but it seems other posters in this thread familiar with South Shore don't believe there ever was an outsize run-up in real estate prices there.

[ChiMack]

my friend had a friend who lived on 79th and jeffrey and i went there once.. that area is kind of rough

[cutechicago3]

Hi is 72nd bennett safe.I looked at an apartment today and loved it but wondering is it safe for me and my 12 year old daughter and 15 year old son....he is not a gang banger and she is very shy and sheltered

[noma77]

This is the most racist discussion I've seen in um...one whole day. The final cumulative point being that white people make better neighborhoods--or rather, the perception is that white people make better neighborhoods. How about some true economic justice? Safe and thriving neighborhoods for all people and an end to poverty so that everyone can have a good quality of life. Not just shoveling the so-called 'problems' off to other neighborhoods and suburbs so that some white folks can make it rich, drink their coffee and walk their dogs without the ever-present nuisance of the street corner 'riff-raff'.

[dewthedru]

so what's your point? and i don't mean that in a bad way. are you saying that white people moving into a neighborhood that was formerly all black isn't a sign that it's getting better? i know it sounds bad but i'm afraid it's generally true.

btw, i don't think that anyone is saying white residents are better than black residents.

[Lookout Kid]

Originally Posted by noma77

Not just shoveling the so-called 'problems' off to other neighborhoods and suburbs so that some white folks can make it rich, drink their coffee and walk their dogs without the ever-present nuisance of the street corner 'riff-raff'.

Sounds good to me. What neighborhoods and suburbs can we shovel "riff-raffy" people off to? I live in Uptown, so we'll need a really big shovel.

I see your point, but in a country where white people are a majority, it's usually a bad sign when they avoid a real estate situation with a conveneint lakefront location and housing stock like South Shore. There's a reason that South Shore is avoided by the white majority, and it goes far beyond racism.

[tonythetuna]

Yet another reason this area sucks the big one:

"A person was killed and four others — including an 8-year-old and 10-year-old — were shot Tuesday night during a memorial for a teen on the Southeast Side, officials said.

The group was shot about 9 p.m. near East 79th Street and South Escanaba Avenue, said Fire Media Affairs spokesman Will Knight."

One killed, four others

[skyeINIL]

Thanks, chirack.