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sxswnxnw t1_j6cymck wrote

Reply to comment by Frofro69 in How bad is the crime rate here? by Corgi_Lopsided

It was more rant than productive, your summary was much better!

I have lived in the city 8 years now as a middle class 20, 30, and now 40 something black woman. Even with stints in Baltimore County and Howard County suburbs, I still choose the city.

My first apt here was in a nice area, but I had mice near the end. My rent was affordable... But I decided I valued not having mice more than the lowest possible rent. Bumped my housing budget by 200 a month, and no more mice. Since then, I have bumped my budget many times, and I am paying at least twice as much for housing as I was back in 2011, and I have not had to deal with mice since.

Similarly, If you don't want to see homeless people or poverty or want to be insulated from violent crime, bump your budget enough and you will be able to afford to live in a neighborhood where you will not. If you want dedicated off-street parking: money. If you want to be able to walk to an ice cream shop and not be visually reminded of the weight of the world, that too is just a matter of having enough money to live in a walkable neighborhood where you will not.

But first, you have to be honest with yourself. And, you have to have the money to have a high enough budget in the first place.

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Frofro69 t1_j6d2om4 wrote

>But first, you have to be honest with yourself. And, you have to have the money to have a high enough budget in the first place

That's the key right there, being honest about what you want and if you can afford it. It is also a case of necessity. Even though people might not WANT to live in Sandtown or Penn-North, the cycle of generational poverty can force people to need to live in those areas because its all they can afford.

I, like many other people, grew up insulated from the world's problems and simply chose to ignore the root causes. This is a weird case for me since I'm mixed and my parents come from generations of rural poverty in the Midwest. But poverty is a different beast entirely, I could make a whole post about it and still never scratch the surface

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