One car ride, two trains and two long walks later and I’m in my old neighborhood in Chicago for the long weekend. Mostly I’ve been visiting friends and I’ve had several substantial walks around my old stomping ground and had a few observations.

Finding housing isn’t the problem. Affording it is.

The area is starting to gentrify but still has plenty of rough edges. Lots of lower income folks are still here and still a significant presence of the very poor seeming people so it’s hardly some luxurious neighborhood yet. But when I walked past a building I once considered moving into I was shocked to see their available apartments posted. They have shoe box studios for $715 a month. These units couldn’t have been much over 250 square feet and while they seemed safe and clean enough they sure weren’t “nice.” Once basic utilities are tacked on this is over $9,000 a year just to have enough space for a bed, dresser and desk. To keep housing below one third of yearly income this would require earning over $30,000 a year before taxes. This in a town where the average per capita income is slightly over $20,000 yearly.

There’s little wonder in my head why today I found out that another friend is moving out of this area for greener pastures. You simply pay too much to stay in some place that’s a tiny little bit of floor space in an area where gun shots still are all too common a sound.

Poor Folks: broke and made to stay that way

A friend of mine lives in a neighborhood that’s just on the edge of a place you don’t go easily at night. It’s one of the higher crime areas but as it’s relatively affordable it’s where lots of poor and struggling people resort to living. But, this is also a ‘hood where old stock houses are going for up to $800,000 in a condition requiring total gutting and redevelopment as they were once micro-divided flop houses that now house only pigeons and puddles. Granted they could easy be made into two or three unit apartment building so they’re large, but they’re still in a gang ridden crime rich area with some very low per capita income stats. Clearly another enclave of affordability is going to get crazy expensive in comparison to average income.

It was here I went thrift shopping and was shocked at the high prices poor people are expected to pay for cast off junk and occasional gems. This is where I’ve done much of my shopping over the last few years but now their prices aren’t making sense at all. Some of the items were priced near retail and still weren’t a bargain on half price Monday. So where are the poor supposed to save a buck? This isn’t a cash cow outlet in some upper middle class suburban strip mall used to subsidize sales at other locations, this was in the heart of a severely depressed area!

On the way back to my friends house we stopped at a convenience store. Mind you, this is the sort of neighborhood that doesn’t have conventional grocery stores. There’s a couple small ethnic markets but mostly it’s little corner convenience stores that charge and arm and a leg for everything. I treated myself to a bottle of Coke, breaking my no caffeine rule, and my friend wanted beer and was shopping the six packs.

I was appalled at the price gouging on alcohol and as she debated on brand I realized that most of their food items were grossly inflated too. Easily they had marked up prices a good 50% over what a normal grocery or liquor store a few blocks away would charge for the same item, be it beer or food. And when the local grocery is already inflating their prices the gougers are really making a killing. But they evidently sell well at such inflated prices as they were mighty busy selling to people who were too lazy to take the nearly one mile round trip walk to greener shopping pastures.

My Coke was oddly $1.29, the current going rate in Chicago for a single serve bottle and at this place was an absolute steal.

It’s all a mater of perspective.

I was riding public transportation and a gentleman was nearing his stop and was edging his way to the door to exit. He was rather well past due on showering and his clothing probably hadn’t been washed since Eisenhower was in office. He was the epitome of disheveled. Stops are more like pauses so you best be ready to exit and readying yourself while the bus is moving is the norm. As he was walking and using both hands to keep himself up his pants dropped to the ground.

Sitting next to me was a woman who was in her early middle-ages, a decade or two younger than the embarrassed flasher. She was seemingly missing an eye with no prosthetic or patch to cover the gap, wild and crazy hair, poor skin, fashions from the last decade or two and lips that looked like gnarled tree bark covering the few remaining teeth she had. She broke from her stupor to say, “That man needs to get his self together!”

The haves and have nots

It’s been really refreshing to get away from the status and material wealth obsessed people I’ve been around the last month or so. Flirting around in easy van dwelling territories has brought me into many conversations where being poor means not buying new cars rather than walking a couple miles to save the two bucks for a bus. One suburban person couldn’t understand why I didn’t just order an RV with all the things I wanted rather than buy an old used van, repair it and build my own. When I mentioned the price barrier she said, “oh no, they’re really not that expensive. So and so just bought one!” As so and so must be much richer than I could hope to be I just let this topic fade as there was going to be no common ground. My entire van cost about what one month’s payment would be on such a ready made convenience.

Being around people this weekend who are appreciative of things as small as having pants that stay up is really refreshing. Same with being in urban neighborhoods were everything isn’t all homogenized and polished like in suburbia. My urban homeland might be gritty but at least it feels real and not like some pretentious Hollywood facade.

Trackback This Post | Subscribe to the comments through RSS Feed