The South End of Boston has been expensive for a long time
This past week, a contributor to the South End News lamented some of the changes that have taken place in the South End during the past years and decades.
The talk is of revitalization, bringing our neighborhood back to life. Yet there was more life before, a lot more. Stores once sold things we needed and could afford. We had evenings in wonderful local restaurants and seedy bars and didn’t land in the poorhouse. We took public transportation and walked; we didn’t need a car. Once, after a hardware store closed, a developer asked what we’d like to see in its place, and a woman said, “What we need around here is a hardware store.”
While much of what she says is true (yeah, the talk of “diversity” in our neighborhood is ridiculous – we’re segregated by race and income and ne’er the two will meet), it bothered me that she seemed to see “gentrification” as part of the problem (or maybe I was interpreting her comments incorrectly).
Having been a part of this neighborhood for over two decades, I feel I have as much a perspective as anyone and what I’ve seen as improvements over the years far outweigh the negative effects (I don’t need another $25-$50 per entree restaurant, either).
I happened across another article about the South End, this one from the New York Times, circa 1998.
In the last six months, according to Paul Rinkulis, a broker with Keliher Real Estate, residential prices have hit historic highs, with single-family row houses selling for $1 million or more for the first time.
In large measure, the South End is sought after for its convenient location and as one of the city’s few truly diverse communities. There is a mix of races, and about a third of the owners and renters have incomes in the low to moderate range, said Rinkulis.
Bustling South End streets reflect the mix. On one block is a park for the local baseball league. Nearby, trendy new restaurants and boutiques emerge monthly.
If I had to choose between the South End of today or the South End of 1988, I’d choose the South End of today. I was sitting in Stephi’s on Tremont just yesterday reminiscing about the changes and realized I was sitting in the location of the old liquor store at that same location, the one where drunks would be passed out in front of it in the middle of the day. IN THE MIDDLE OF THE DAY.
It’s not the cost of housing that’s at fault for what ails society. While high rents will of course mean people can no longer live in certain neighborhoods, much more is going on. Rents rose because investors (looking for a profit) bought up old, run-down properties and renovated them, making them more attractive and appealing to people. What’s the alternative? Let them sit there with hundred-year old plumbing and out-dated (and, unsafe) electrical service?
I lived on Waltham Street in 1997-1998 and our rent was $1,300 per month. We couldn’t afford that – we thought it ridiculously “expensive”. What I’d give to be able to pay just that, now.
Cities across the US have become desirable places to live during the past decade, during the past two decades, the result of hard work on the part of “urban pioneers”, government spending, good leadership on the part of cities’ officials (mayors and police chiefs), and a pretty good economy for much of it.
I’m not willing to go backward.
What I think this points out is that living in the city has often been considered “expensive”. I found a book in the South End library a couple years back that quoted a woman saying, “Prices are so high now, I can’t see them going much higher. Who can afford to live here?”
It was written in 1962.
Photo courtesy of the New York Times
