hilos

i like to walk around my neighborhood at night. in the summer when it’s hot all the families hang out at their doorsteps. There is the mother, the father, and the little kids. Sometimes it’s the grandmother and grandfather and uncle and the kids. sometimes there is a dog. Sometimes it’s a group of older men sitting and talking. sometimes they drink. Sometimes it’s a group of young men, and women. friends from school or friends that met at school becasue they can’t afford to go anymore. sometimes they drink, and sing, and draw on each other.

this is what i see when i ride or walk at night around the inner streets of little village. But lately buildings have begun to spring up. well, more like their insides have been torn apart and they have been changed and their names have been changed to ‘condos’ and maybe a loft or two.

on the boulevard, where i live, there use to be this old factory like building. i would look at it beause it was on my way to the park. one day i noticed that a light was on at the very top. It stayed on and slowly the windows began to change. i realized the building was being renovated. now each floor is being advertised as a loft, or a condo.

i could see that. i mean it’s on the boulevard. But what surprised me for sure is that one day i was heading towards Arte y Realidad, and as i walked on saywer, there it was. a house that seems to have sprung over night. a condo selling for 269 000.oo dollars. according to the census tract of that are the majority of people make under 49 999.00 dollars a year and the majority of them rent. i don’t see how the re-made houses are gonna help the people who live here stay here if they want.

in class we read and interesting article on gentrification that came to the conclusion that gentrification did not cause people to leave their homes. when the rent went up they just payed more. They did nto want to leave because the transportation was getting better and the community was being provided with more services (i.e. cleaning) now that people with more income, who are usually identified as being of a lighter skin color, where moving in.

i’ve seen these condos in little village, and i’ve seen the changes that come along when people with higher incomes, and lighter skin, move in. One concrete example is what used to be the 54/cermak blue line. it never had great service, i’ll admit. plus the costs really added up when having to make a lot of trips. it did not work on weekends and it took a real long time to come and go. But not too long ago modifications were made to this line. the station was upgraded, which is good for everyone. But the service was changed. The new line was the pink line. and while it supposedly comes more frequently it only goes down town and back. supposedly this would be more convenient for everyone. and i’m sure it was convenient, for those that had to go downtown. not for the people who had to go to UIC or anywhere around there, and it’s not like the bus services improved that much as to make this change negligeble. yea the blue line still runs but only in rush hour during the morning and afternoon.

there is a whole campiagn around transportation, forming a driver-rider alliance to have the community decide how to best work transportation, etc. But anyway, my point was that before more affluent people started coming to pilsen and little village the service was horrible. Now it’s better but only for some. Great.

that’s the way i see gentrification play out in my neighborhood. There are some better services but these only came up when the new people with more money started moving in. The houses are better, the place nicer. But costs do go up, and even if people can pay a higher rent and higher priced services they have to cut back from other things. Their access to resoures is being diminished. More that it already is!

yea i’m sure my friends appreciate that the streets are cleaner on their way to work becasue they don’t have the money to pay for college.

furthermore, even if people who are renting are not moving away in big numbers what about the people who are not renting but were living in vacant houses? they simply get pushed out. how do you survey them and how are they affected? i mean i know it’s doable i’m just bringin up that they might be undercounted in the article i mentioned before.  

the thing is, people should be able to live where they want. and make demands about the services they need. idealy they would make enough money to get all the things they need and even more ideally our society would not be based on buying and selling and consuming, but rather on working together to give everyone what they need and the access for them to develop and create themselves and their communities as they please.