So word came down this morning that the rumored scheme to convert a house in our ‘hood into a homeless shelter is not true. No.
They want to turn it into a church.
This news came ahead of an email from the lady who does the homeowner’s association newsletter. My nose has been glued to the grindstone all day — read another 80 pages of copy on five hours of sleep — and so I haven’t had time to open that message. But I believe she sent something similar to the missal from the person who passed the report along.
So that’s s-o-r-t of good…a makeshift church is better than a homeless shelter. I guess.
Still, there’s no question the ‘hood is up in arms about it. And you have to say: taking a private residence, ripping out the landscaping to surround it with a parking lot, and sticking an Assembly of God sign on it is not especially desirable.
In the first place, it’s tacky. No population is more sensitive to tacky than the residents of North Central. 😉
And more to the point: we really don’t need another church so badly that it’s necessary to convert a private home into one. There’s a church directly across the street from the targeted house. There’s another church about a block to the west. There’s another church half a mile across Feeder Street EW. There’s yet another church about a mile up Conduit of Blight, and yea verily, another one a quarter-mile north of that. There’s another church about a mile south down Main Drag NS. And still another church on Main Drag NS, northerly about a half-mile from my house. If Americans were just slightly less fat and lazy, as a group, all seven of these would be considered within walking distance.
Plus this particular denomination has at least 21 churches in the Valley. How many churches are enough, already?
Meanwhile, speaking of our very vibrant Homeowner’s Club, the group engineered the coolest thing: a big neighborhood party in the park! They’ve got food trucks and a bandstand and live music and all sorts of stuff going on.
The pooches and I walked over there after I finished the 80-page editorial project of the day. Wish I could’ve taken a camera…but one wouldn’t be comfortable posting an image that might have someone’s kid identifiable. And there were kids — galore! What a hoot! Parents with their lawn chairs and coolers and 87 gerjillion little cuties running or bicycling around. Three young boys were trying to launch a kite shaped like an F-16….alas, the air is dead still this afternoon, so the only way they could get it into the air was to run like the wind themselves.
Ruby and Cassie, of course, are Kid Bait. They all come over and ask if they can pet your dog. And they both dote on children…they just think that’s the best thing that ever happened.
So we hung around awhile until Cassie started to tire — she’s showing her age these days. Then came back so the hounds could chow down. Now I’m about to finish off the current job and maybe send it to the client this evening. Really, I should probably sift through it one more time. But I’m tired. I’ve already read it four or five times. I think I may let it rest overnight and then give it a glance in the morning.
In the wake of the homeless shelter rumor, I learned that a Realtor friend is planning to put her house on the market this summer — for less than she thinks she could get for mine. It is a good long distance from Conduit of Blight and the Meth Habitat, and it is in North Central. It’s to the east of both the north-south main drags that have reverse lanes, so if you live there, you can turn east to Scottsdale without a problem. From my house, I have to make my way through not one, not two, but three neighborhoods to reach an arterial that will let me turn east during the rush hour. But is that enough of a PITA to cause one to sell one’s house?
Her house is older — probably built in the 50s, I’d guess; maybe the early 60s. It has good bones, and she did a LOT of fix-up on it. And it’s smack-dab in the middle of one of the fastest-trendifying districts in the central city. That whole area is going berserk. Property values likely will continue to rise, probably faster than they will here in the ’hood because no serious blight is nearby. On the other hand, I have seen panhandlers in that area.
It has no pool (which could be good, could be bad, depending on your attitude toward pools and pool care). But it does have irrigation! And that means one could have lawns front and back for very, very cheap.
In neighborhoods where irrigation is grandfathered in, the Salt River Project pumps in untreated water — this area was all farmland and citrus orchards until late 50s and early 60s. It was way out in the country! So you get very, very cheap water to throw on the ground around your house.
On the other hand, power was also very cheap in those days, so houses built in that era are very expensive to air-condition. In the summer, my son pays over $300 a month to (barely!) air-condition 1300 square feet. My house is almost 1700 square feet and it has a pool, and I never pay anything like that. while I don’t overcool my house, I sure don’t let it get as hot as he does…plus I have a pool pump to operate. So I’m afraid if I traded over to her place, whatever I’d save on the water bill would be eaten up by the electric bill.
Speaking of real estate, check out these 50 fab studio apartment interiors. Gosh, they’re cool! And gee, I’m glad I don’t have to live in any of them!
What a great development…..and the “community celebration” is icing on the cake. This is how communities are resurrected…IMHO….The biggest factor in the sale of your home will be something you have little control over…..schools. If you have good schools in your hood you will be MUCH more attractive to young professionals. In this neck of the woods there is a direct correlation between school test scores and capital appreciation in housing. It seems you are “itching” to relocate….what has got you so motivated?
No, the schools are not great. But no public schools in AZ are what you’d call “great”: we consistently rank among the bottom 3 in terms of quality, nationally.
However, the ‘hood has the advantage that the city allows people to send their kids to any public school they please, now that the busing laws have been lifted. If you can manage to drive your kids to school yourself (i.e., you have a car and one person in the family can get away from work to pick them up after school), from here you can drive them to the city’s one public school district that does have a good reputation. Historically it has served the upscale North Central area. Many of the young mothers here are SAHMs — you’ll see them outside in the afternoons playing with the kiddies.
Also there are a number of charter schools now. Those that don’t cater to problem children and aren’t questionably operated draw quite a few kids. If you earn enough, you put your kids in private or parochial school here — but thanks to the demand, tuition is very high, so you have to be pretty well heeled.
Why am I itching to relocate? Somebody taking a dump outside my back gate and decorating it with gummy toilet paper.
If in fact this scheme were going to be a homeless shelter, I absolutely would leave — we have enough of that kind of thing without deliberately calling it into the neighborhood. To put up with it when I was in my 20s for the sake of living in a centrally located neighborhood with “character”: fine. But at this age, I’ve had enough of it.
Hmmmm that’s an interesting way to do education. How do they know how to staff if anybody can go to any school? In this neck of the woods the “prize” is if the school in you “hood” is designated “Blue Ribbon”. I have rental property in the area of a Blue Ribbon Middle School…..I swear when a vacancy came up and you mentioned it was in a Blue Ribbon school district…you’d have thought it was free tuition to Yale! People are very focused on education here.
Hmmmm….I get it about the “visitors” leaving deposits in the alley….not a fan. And the cops could really care less as they have more pressing matters. Around here eateries and such have been locking the bathrooms as there has been a rash of overdoses. Heroin is a BIG problem in pockets around here….rich kids who get hooked….and other folks who were addicted to prescription drugs and can no longer get the prescription filled. AND evidently heroin is cheaper than prescription drugs.
Might be time to …”take the money and run”…..
They apparently have limits to the NUMBER of students they can take in. So where you can go is subrogated to how many kids are in a given school. For some years, the white middle class was steadily moving out of the center part of the city, leaving older residents whose kids had grown up.
Our neighborhood, for example, was full of original owners and people like me who bought in 20+ years ago. This is true of all of North Central — and the better areas flanking Central Avenue are SO expensive that the people who can afford them are either older or they have enough money to put their kids in private schools, which even in the best districts are preferable to public. So the district’s schools were simply emptying out: there was lots of room to accept out-of-district students.
As these older owners have downsized or moved to areas like Sun City (cheaper) or Scottsdale (more upper-middle-class amenities), the young urbanites are moving back in. Eventually it will become difficult to get your kids into the better schools, so you’ll be stuck with charter schools or private & parochial schools. But for the nonce, it’s good. Very good.
Yeah…our “homeless” use that alcove in the alley to do drugs, too: occasionally I find paraphernalia and other indications out there. I’m going to fix that wall so as to get rid of the alcove. I can’t do anything about the neighbor’s, which abuts mine, but at least I can get them away from my own gate. And make it harder to get into the yard.
I’m pretty sure my solution will work. I’m not gonna advertise it, but hope that as other neighbors notice it, they’ll also find ways to block people from the alcoves, too.
That issue with having someone take a dump behind your yard is the sort of urban phenomenon that seems to be universal. Sister and I lived in city neighborhoods just two miles apart, both on the “nicer” north side of Chicago. She found human bm in the alley in front of her overhead garage door a few times. In my ‘hood, one afternoon I was standing at a window in my kitchen near the sink (which overlooked the alley that ran along the side of the house and the neighboring condo parking lot) and saw a man drop his pants and “attend to business” right there. I sent my (then) husband out to chase him away. The drunk guys who stopped one evening under my dining room windows to pee on my fence just waved me off when I yelled at them to zip up and move out. I should have sicced the dogs on them.
Those days are behind me now, thank goodness. While I miss the convenience of alleys, there is no doubt that they can be misused.
Yup. They’re pretty bald-faced. When we lived in Encanto, the old houses tended not to have garages. The ones that were still standing were too small to hold even a small sedan or else they’d been converted to “studios.” Many had been demolished. So people had to park in their driveways or on the street. If you didn’t lock your car door, the bums would climb in and go to sleep in your back seat.
But I do like having an alley: I like that it provides about 30 feet of extra distance between me and the neighbors behind me. For my taste, the more space between me and the neighbors, the better. Good fences (and lots of air) make good neighbors.
There’s an easy solution: simply fence each end of the alley with electric gates. Give openers to the garbage guys, the utility workers, the cops, and the fire department. And of course to the residents on the streets. It wouldn’t make it _impossible_ for a bum to get ahold of an opener, but it would make it very hard.