Today as I was driving to get a bite to eat a handful of blocks down from our house, I saw a young black man running faster than I’d seen anyone run in quite a while. Less than a minute later, a police car calmly drove down the road and turned on the street that the running youth turned onto. While I was waiting in line at the drive-thru I saw another police car turn onto the same street. Then a police SUV. Then the SUV came back and turned down a neighboring street. As I drove home with my food, I turned down the street that was seeing a lot of action. Two police cars were parked in front of a house. The officers were stepping out with their guns in their hands aimed at the ground. I wondered if the cop(s) in the SUV were coming at it from the other end. I drove by before seeing what, if anything, transpired afterwards.
The remnants of the former crime zone of the neighborhood Clancy and I live in are still around. A lot of the local establishments have bars on the windows. Almost all of them have big signs with big lettering saying “NO LOITERING” with threats of prosecution. Hoodies, bags, and baggy clothes are almost as likely to be forbidden at convenience stores as the shirtless and shoeless are. Yet it’s not all as worrying as it might be.
Despite what I say in a previous post about my neighborhood in Cascadia, it is in a sort of transition. Whereas my neighborhood in Santomas was transitioning from a poor neighborhood to a yuppie white neighborhood, our neighborhood here in Soundview simply changed from a crime-ridden neighborhood to a safer (or less crime-ridden) one. Both the Northside neighborhood in Santomas and the Eastport neighborhood in Soundview have historically had crime problems, though things in Eastport (and Soundview on the whole, from what I understand) have changed in recent years.
I can definitely say that things feel different here than they did there. I wasn’t generally worried about my personal safety in Santomas, though I was frequently worried about my stuff. The main reason for that was the drug dealers living across the street. I didn’t see any turfwars brewing or anything like that, but I could quite easily see someone wanting to buy their next hit by bartering my car stereo or worse. I was horrified at the prospect of UPS leaving a package on our porch and not a Netflix shipment went by that I wasn’t worried that someone swiped it from the mailbox (which someone did, but fortunately only once).
Things are somewhat different here. Someone left two very large boxes on our porch here in Soundview the other day (racks from Target.com). I didn’t think to myself “Oh, thank god nobody took it!” I’m still going to see what I can do about having stuff put on our back porch instead of our front one, but I’m not going to go crazy with worry the way that I would have in Santomas. Hopefully life will not make a fool of me in that regard.
So what’s different here? On the whole I wouldn’t say that my current neighborhood is wealthier than it was there. In fact, the houses are smaller and we’re not as close to downtown so I would wager that there isn’t much difference. I’m honestly not entirely sure what it is. Part of it I think is that we live on a road that sees a lot of traffic coming through. We’re not ideally situated for someone to carry out some nefarious act. The lighting is also better. If I lived on one of the side streets, I might be more worried. Another difference is the lack of a transient population. The folks in the Zaulem Sound area are probably squishy liberal types when it comes to homeless, but mother nature isn’t nearly so kind to homeless people here as it was in Estacado.
A bigger difference, though, is the police. Some of it comes in the knowledge of knowing that they (and whatever social service agencies help) successfully cleaned up the area. Knowing that improvements have been made and that the police are monitoring the situation helps. Their presence here is felt. They’re very frequently driving through on patrol. If I were a thief, I wouldn’t feel all that comfortable breaking in somewhere.
In Santomas, the police weren’t around a whole lot. When they were, it seemed that they were there for a purpose. I say this because they always seemed to be in a hurry somewhere. I got the sense that they were there to take care of something and when they took care of it they would leave. In Soundview they’re often around taking care of business as with the case above or the other day when we were eating at a restaurant down the week and saw seven police cars speed by with their lights on, but often they just seem like they’re around rather than trying to get somewhere in particular.
Like I said, hopefully my time here will not make a fool out of me.
Take-out Chinese restaurants provide a very good way of determining whether a neighborhood has a high crime rate. If they have bank-style bulletproof plexiglas shields above the counters, with small sally ports for passing through food, you know that the ‘hood is dangerous.
Comment by Peter — August 19, 2008 @ 7:15 am
Will, do you live in a house or apartment? (Easier to burglarize a house — more privacy.) Who lives around you — do they look different/speak different languages (meaning, you stand out)? Are they home during the day (and therefore, in a position to observe your comings and goings)?
Do you get a lot of door-knocks from strangers purporting to be solicitors or looking for someone else? It may be that they’re trying to determine if someone is home. People almost never cold-knock in our new neighborhood, but it happened 4-5 times a week in the old one. And those are just the ones when I was home.
After getting burglarized twice in a year in our previous house, Mr. Spungen and I assessed our situation. We’d lived in the same house three years ago with no problems. One difference: We were driving a lot nicer cars than we used to. Number two: The house behind us was now vacant. Number three: There seemed to be fewer whites and older people, and more very large families with people who were around all the time, watching us. The second burglary happened the *day* after we left for vacation.
Comment by Spungen — August 19, 2008 @ 10:10 am
It’s always nice to feel safe in your neighborhood. I hope it continues on this trend for your sake.
Comment by Beth — August 19, 2008 @ 10:27 am
It’s interesting that the changing color of the neighborhood’s population mattered to you, Spungen.
That being said… the growth of crime in our neighborhood, combined with the influx of (low-income) hispanic and black neighbors (whose kids, alas, sport gang clothes and tend to behave in a manner indicating they are gang members), hasn’t gone unnoticed here either.
Comment by Webmaster — August 19, 2008 @ 2:25 pm
Spungen, we live in a house here and we lived in a garage apartment in Estacado.
Our neighbors go as follows:
**Single women living alone both to our right and our left.
**A single mother with two young boys I’d say in the 8-11 range and possibly a girl about 14 (I see her a lot less regularly)
**A single 30-something man living with his mother.
**A young childless couple and their dog
**An apparently single woman with a teenage son
If I am worried about anyone, it’s the kids. Probably because it’s the summer and they’re around all day and their parents aren’t. In Estacado I was more worried about older people. Most of the neighborhood miscreants were in the 30-50 range. Oh, and I was of course worried about the drug dealers’ (who all appeared to be in their 40’s) clientele.
Comment by trumwill — August 19, 2008 @ 8:02 pm
Though I know nothing hateful is meant by it, let’s try to keep clear of the racial implications of neighborhood transitions. I actually cut two paragraphs from the post exploring the issue because I didn’t particularly want to go there.
Comment by trumwill — August 19, 2008 @ 8:07 pm
It’s interesting that the changing color of the neighborhood’s population mattered to you, Spungen.
Oh, don’t start that. I was analyzing what had changed in the neighborhood As I said previously, it may have just been that we stood out a lot more than we had three years ago.
Comment by Spungen — August 19, 2008 @ 9:26 pm
But probably not *just* that. I’ll refrain from a longwinded exploration of race and economic status, since Will wishes not to go there and we know the basic arguments anyway.
Comment by Spungen — August 19, 2008 @ 9:29 pm
Interesting that there are so many single women. I wonder what your percentage of owners v. renters is; that can be important. The households you describe sound small, fortunately; all it takes is one person there to start letting a lot of other people hang around, though.
Comment by Spungen — August 19, 2008 @ 9:34 pm
It’s interesting that the changing color of the neighborhood’s population mattered to you, Spungen.
I’m black, and I’ll admit that it had a role in determining the neighbourhood we chose. I spent nearly twenty years in a working class and middle class black neighbourhood that had a significant Caribbean population. The neighbourhood was relatively quiet, and under other circumstances, we probably would have stayed put, but the neighbourhood was changing with new residents who could be described as ghetto, and the juvenile delinquent across the street had friends who thought robbery was a fun activity.
So when it came time to move, my parents wanted somewhere that wasn’t next to a questionable black area, and thus, wouldn’t “turn bad” for a generation. So, we ended up in a neighbourhood with a handful of black residents (2.5% black), instead of another working/middle class black neighbourhood. Admittedly, I don’t like our current neighbourhood because our neighbours are real middle class, and my dad’s high prole wages just can’t compete. Maybe I’ll spin it off into a blog entry one day…
Plus, the housing style my mother wanted only exists in white neighbourhoods for some reason.
Comment by David Alexander — August 19, 2008 @ 9:40 pm
There are the seeds for a good conversation here that involves race, housing, and crime. Unfortunately, good conversations draw bad people and spin out of control become bad conversations pretty quickly. Let’s move on, please.
Comment by trumwill — August 19, 2008 @ 10:10 pm
I didn’t realize it until I started writing it out, but there really is a dearth of men over the age of 25. There is a single guy I forgot to mention across the alley, but there really aren’t many at all, including households with kids.
Comment by trumwill — August 19, 2008 @ 10:13 pm
Some neighborhoods can have relatively high crime rates even though most of the occupants are respectable types. This often occurs when the ‘hoods are close to highway exits or other transportation arteries, allowing criminals easy access.
Comment by Peter — August 20, 2008 @ 6:25 am
I’ll throw my immediate neighborhood demographics in here:
- Medium-sized city in Tennessee (Knoxville)
- Western (fairly affluent) suburb
- Very low-trafficked roak (loops off of larger road, spurs off into a cul-de-sac)
- Nearby neighbors:
1. Elderly couple with frequent visits from children and grandchildren
2. A not-so-elderly couple with less frequent visits from children and grandchildren
3. Young couple with 2 young kids
4. Young-ish couple with 7(!) kids - 2 of their own, 5 adopted. Interestingly (or not) 4 of the 5 adopted are black siblings.
5. Young-ish couple with 2 youngish kids
Except for one time someone stole my wife’s camera out of her car from the garage I carelessly left open (I thought she’d closed it) that’s the only crime I’ve seen there in eight years.
Comment by Barry — August 20, 2008 @ 6:45 am