Grrrl in the 'hood

I haven't written about my neighborhood yet, but today I'm breaking my (relative) silence today because a) I think that a small minority of my neighbors actually has an internet connection, and b) the chance that one of them would find my blog and c) be irritated to read my thoughts about them as a collective whole is pretty remote. So here we go.

My neighborhood is cute, in a shabby-genteel, working class kind of way. I bought my house three years ago for what would now be considered a song. Housing prices have risen steadily since then, and Booby and I are hoping that the trend continues, especially since we are about to embark on some pretty large-scale improvements (a bathroom in the basement, for starters) to make the place more saleable (and to make more money off of the sale).

The concern we have at the moment is our neighbors. We have some good ones (they snowblow our sidewalk when there's an eighteen inch snowfall, and sweep up the seemingly-constant trails of trash that float down the street from our curb, just to be nice), and some bad ones (the trash-leavers, the people whose dog sits chained on a 3 foot lead in their scrap of a yard all day, whose holiday decorations are STILL up and who we always hear screaming at their listless, dull-eyed kids). The problem of late is the bad neighbors, of course.

We have a few Section 8 houses in my hood. In theory, this is a good thing. Low-income families should be given a chance to own homes. The problem is that the families in the HUD housing (which is up the street from me, perhaps a quarter of a block) seem not to care or have any pride in their homes. Trash is everywhere, and blows down the street into every other yard on the block. Windows are broken and go unfixed for months. Beer cans and liquor bottles (not to mention dogshit) litter the sidewalks. The kids are running around breaking glass in the alleys and playing knock knock, zoom zoom (and lighting cherry bombs near each other's faces, in one particularly memorable incident this summer). I guess it's not too bad compared to some of the things that go on in the average city (there doesn't seem to be any drug abuse or burglary, and I've never felt unsafe walking around at night), but the point, for me, is that I left the city proper to get away from this sort of shit. My elderly next-door neighbor went into a nursing home some months ago, and the report is that once she makes the move to assisted living, her house will be put up for sale. I can't help but worry that it, too, will become a Section 8 house like the others slightly up the road. Moving is starting to seem pretty attractive with that possibility as an incentive, and I had always planned on this being a starter home. I'd miss my friendly, helpful neighbors, but I would wither and die if I had contsant trash piles in my breezeway.

But perhaps there's hope. This article discusses plans to do a little sweeping out of some of the more down-at-heel neighborhoods in the township (although I have to wonder why the mayor thinks that having trash blowing around creates a criminal environment), while this blogger discusses in no uncertain terms his feelings about Section 8. I don't know if I'm quite as vehement as he is (he has another post that gets a little too racial for me; Section 8 is not a color issue in my experience, and even if it were, so what?), but then again, I don't live in his part of town. I looked at houses in his part of town, which were often beautiful (I'm talking leaded glass doors, original hardwood flooring, and huge yards, in some cases), but just too damn close to what is well-known as the criminal element that lingers around the 69th Street Terminal.

What have you done when you've had less than stellar neighbors?