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Comment by jobs_throwaway | Hacker News Reader

> While the University has emphasized the positive impact the projects will have on the local economy, some residents are concerned about rising rent and how much benefit will reach the community as opposed to investors.

What a non-issue. You have this massive development that's going to benefit your community and you're concerned because the people who actually contributed to it are going to benefit as well? The entitlement is just unreal.

I've lived on one of the streets mentioned in the article and its hard to overstate how shockingly dangerous the area is. Hearing gunshots was a regular occurrence. I knew someone who intervened in a robbery and was shot and nearly killed. I wouldn't allow friends to come visit after dark because I feared for their safety. If anything, the University and its police force should do more to rid the neighborhood of its anti-social element.

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Poverty, housing/employment, and generally, migration are hard topics.

The university has so many buildings in Hyde Park that they often make the decisions about which businesses are there or not. I've been happy with most of their choices recently; bringing in a Trader Joe, for example. However, some residents have differing opinions.

>I've lived on one of the streets mentioned in the article and its hard to overstate how shockingly dangerous the area is

Just anecdata. I had a family member living there for the six years, several addresses including their condo on Drexel Ave, one block from Cottage Grove (more or less the western boundary of campus proper). Their first child was born there, mom often went on long walks with the stroller to parks, etc with no problems. I visited several times, never had a problem. I walked to The Cove at night for a few beers, Sister Sledge on the jukebox was a conversation starter. Reggie's at the Beach (63rd St.) was a nice place, easy parking.

Every large city has "dangerous" areas, Hyde Park probably has fewer per capita than most.

I’ve lived in the neighborhood for over sixteen years and am raising a family there.

There’s a lot to say about the crime factor, and it’s complicated. I will say that it’s common to miss it if you don’t happen to witness it. Streets that look quiet, well-developed, and peaceful will suddenly become violent and then go back to normal as if nothing happened.

I also lived on Drexel for a few years. A graduate student was shot and killed nearby while walking home. Another night we witnessed a drive-by shooting while eating dinner. I’ve got a number of crime-related stories after living here that range in severity from “funny-in-retrospect” to “somebody died.”

Something that still strikes me is how crimes can happen right outside homes without anyone noticing. The University Police have a daily email list of “serious” incidents that I check - I’ll often notice a carjacking or home invasion within 500 feet of where I was taking a nap on my couch.

It’s a great neighborhood with a lot going for it, which is maybe part of what makes the crime issue so hidden. It doesn’t look sketchy or violent until it suddenly is.

> It’s a great neighborhood with a lot going for it, which is maybe part of what makes the crime issue so hidden. It doesn’t look sketchy or violent until it suddenly is.

This conversation is fascinating to me. When I lived there, not one person had any illusion about the fact that we lived in a very violent place. The regularly-heard gunshots on 53rd got rid of those notions very quickly.

Students are regularly held up at gunpoint, sometimes shot and killed.

How on earth can you live in Hyde Park and not know of the violence?

> I've lived on one of the streets mentioned in the article and its hard to overstate how shockingly dangerous the area is.

The army used to train their trauma surgeons in Chicago because of the number of knife and gunshot wounds seen in the city's hospitals. From 2001 to 2021, there were about 1,000 more murders in the city than American soldiers killed in Afghanistan and Iraq.

It's not far from Englewood and New City (Back of the Yards / Canaryville). Some of the worst areas anywhere (although waaaay nicer than when I lived in Chicago 30 years ago).

There was a race riot there in 1919: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_race_riot_of_1919

Even closer to woodlawn and the infamous o block, arguably the birthplace of Chicago drill. Blocks away from campus

Relevant: TIL that Chicago street gangs today identify themselves by song. By listening to what drill music (a Chicago form of gansta rap) is playing, youths can tell which gang's territory they are in, or even when gangs are working together.

<https://np.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/5t7ig0/til_th...>

A reply to the post:

>Drill rap, possibly the first genre of music that will end up disappearing because its practitioners have killed each other off.

> You have this massive development that's going to benefit your community

A community is made up of people, not real estate, and if you get priced out of your neighborhood, it is of no benefit to you. It's a "non-issue" like me kicking you out of your house and fixing it up, and then for some reason you're not happy about how much better the house looks now that you're on the street. A truly YIMBY view of the world.

Will the people who can only afford to live in a "shockingly dangerous" neighborhood, after being priced out, end up in a less dangerous place?

"What a non-issue. You have this massive development that's going to benefit your community "

Yes, because it is no longer "your" community. Most of those residents complaining know they will in short order be priced out. The relatively few residents who own property and can hold onto it aren't the ones complaining.

> If anything, the University and its police force should do more to rid the neighborhood of its anti-social element.

AKA "the blacks".

Ironically, you are positing the same concerns as the people you claim are "entitled" but instead of questioning the university's policies you want to give them more power to enforce racial segregation.

No, the anti-social elements. It is wrong to paint an entire racial group as anti-social, as you are doing.

What?

I'm pointing out that's what the op is doing through their faith in the historical methods of the universities 'community stabilization' efforts. What the op is proposing is exactly what the university did after the Supreme Court shut down the discriminatory laws on residential neighborhoods.

Anti-gentrification is a very strange confluence of extreme small-c conservativism and leftism. Quite the odd bedfellows.

Whereas YIMBY-activism is a bunch of wealthy upper-middle class professionals who want what they want when they want it, sponsored by massive owners of real estate who would like that real estate to become more valuable.

Both conservatives and leftist are pro-community. Their opponents are wealthy migrant laborers who plan to make their money, then leave to go back to the communities they came from. In your city, they're YIMBYs. When they're back in the suburbs and little towns they came from, they'll be HOA warriors.

When you start talking about actual human people in terms of "getting rid" of an "anti-social element" you know you've got an issue figured out and are definitely on the right side of it.

700 murders and 10,000 armed robberies per year.

That's wild - the country I live in (Australia) has 10x the population of Chicago but only half as many homicides per year. It's hard to imagine that many in one city...

Chicago doesn't even have the highest murder rate in America, that's the really wild thing.

It's not even in the top 20.

Yes, people who rob, murder, and shoot guns in crowded urban areas are anti-social and should be removed from society. This is 100% the right side of the issue and I can't believe anyone would pretend otherwise.

People who oppose you aren't pretending, I have sincere and deeply held objections to this sort of language and the actions they precede.

Anyway where are you even going to put them, where is a place outside of society? If you're thinking of prisons, why do we have this problem in the first place if we already imprison more people than any other country. If this hasn't worked so far what will be different when you do even more of it? Why are other countries able solve this issue in other ways?

A sincere & informed commitment to reducing violence quickly takes you in very different directions from this one. It's other values that have you itching to eliminate people you find undesirable.

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