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[side_show]

I had an interesting conversation with my nextdoor neighbour yesterday morning.

Background:

My neighbour V is a senior citizen who moved to Canada about 30+ years ago from Asia - she's Thai, but spent some time in other Asian countries before moving to North America.  She is a lovely lady who is a one-woman neighbourhood watch.  She is super nosy, but in a polite way.  The nice thing is that she speaks a whole bunch of languages, so she gossips with almost every neighbour.

To understand the following story, you need to know that myself and most of my neighbours keep their fenced backyards locked tight due to on-going theft problems.

Yesterday:

I was walking my dog, and V came hurrying over.  She told me that two weeks ago the SWAT team was chasing a guy down our front street, and that he climbed atop our rainbarrel and used it to jump our fence into the back yard, where he was then trapped because our back gate is pad locked shut.  The guy somehow then jumped over from our backyard into my neighbour's adjoining yard and by that time the SWAT guys were in the back lane and managed to arrest him.   "The Police, they have BIG GUNS!  Like this!"  she says loudly while gesturing about 2 1/2 ft in size.  "The BIG guns!  BIG BIG guns! Six, seven police cars!"  A Jehovah's Witness that was shovelling a couple houses down down was trying to not to look like he was listening, but she was so loud, all shouting about the guns and all...

This is the same lady who, when she sees me leaving the house in the morning yells "WORKING?!" at me as I go.  In my head I'm thinking "thanks V.  Thanks for announcing to our crime riddled neighbourhood, including the gang house across the way, that I will be away for the next 8 hours.  Thanks."  I occasionally lie to V and say, loudly, "No, I'll be right back" if the gang members are out front of their house.  I like that she's watching out, so I'm a tad torn by not telling her the truth, but I don't like to publically announce my day long absence.

[side_show]

Update - I just remembered that I found one of our storage milk crates against the neighbour's fence.  I has assumed my husband put it there... but now I'm thinking no.

[greenkoolayd]

[[sings]]
bad boy bad boys
what ya gonna do
what ya gonna do when they come for you

[KeithHernandez]

I'm pretty sure gangs have better ways of getting money than by stealing from you.  It is the druggies who give money to the gangs that you got to watch out for. 

[Choop]

dude your nabe might be all wired like this and mine is like that, but petty thievery is part of bing in a gang evurwhar

[KeithHernandez]

Yeah, maybe the gangs just bus in to my neighborhood to sell drugs.  They take care of the other gang things elsewhere.  That would make sense.

[wombat]

Smells I know I have said this before but damn, your life is just much too interesting for comfort.

[AugustWest]

Yeah, maybe the gangs just bus in to my neighborhood to sell drugs.  They take care of the other gang things elsewhere.  That would make sense.

Maybe there's nothing good to steal in your neighborhood, but their customer base is there.

[side_show]

I'm pretty sure gangs have better ways of getting money than by stealing from you.  It is the druggies who give money to the gangs that you got to watch out for. 

I'm not worried about the gang members stealing from me, I'm worried about the fringe characters who buy from them, and the young hoods who pick up from them stealing from me.  They are all hanging out on the front stoop of their house most days, riding in and out on their bikes.  I'm thinking that there is some sort of a probation order that must prevent them from having people into their house, as they have a sign up on their door saying "no visitors" and do all their business on the front yard.  Everything that's not nailed down gets stolen.  I'm serious.  I came out one day, and our recycling bin was stolen - the recycling nicely dumped on our boulivard.  I was baffled at first, then my husband deduced that some addict now has a "kitchen table".  Our air conditioner cover was stolen.  I think our house often gets targeted because it's one of the nicest ones on the block.

[Arachno-capitalist]

If I were forced to live in a scenario where gangs lived across the street I would carry a gun (as many of my friends have done) and purchase a 24 hour security system that watched my stuff. If I were not forced,  I would live somewhere else.

[theinevitable]

my friends were totally OK with having a crack dealer on our street because he was "such a nice guy." I never got that, because he sells something that kills people and destroys entire communities/families.

Also I always imagined that when my friends got mugged, it was by people who were in the neighborhood to buy drugs from my neighbor.

[side_show]

I do have 24 hr monitored security, and clear signage to indicate such, which is why the house itself has not (yet) been broken into. 

I will never own or use a gun, or have one in my home.  Having lost a family member to suicide by gun, and having experienced my own severe bouts depression, that is one tool I do not want anywhere in my home. 

Our plan is to move away in August of 2015.  Our house was part of a government initiate program for low income people, and back when we did move in, that was us.  If we live in our home for a total of 10yrs, which we will reach at that point, the $46 000 the government put into building the home is ours - no strings attached.  The same caveat prevents us from renting the house during that period and they do occasionally check on us to be sure we aren't renting.  Property values in our area have more than doubled in the five years since we moved in too.  Even with the shit going down, the neighbourhood is gradually getting gentrified, which has it's inevitable pluses and minuses.  My same neighbour, V, was caught in the middle of a gang shoot out about 15 - 20 years ago and insists that things are incrementally improving.  Admittedly, there is only one empty house on our block, while there were around 5-10 abandoned properties when we moved in.  Last winter a house burnt down due to arson, and within less than 10 months there is now a new house built on the lot, almost ready for occupancy, which is pretty rad. 

The thing is, both my husband and I have seen major increases to our income since we moved to the neighbourhood, and most notably, this year, after changing careers I more than tripled my income about 7 months ago.  I love my job and see myself sticking it out in the long term.  It makes it tempting to say “fuck the $46 000” and just leave now.  It’s only money… but to me, it’s a lot of money.  I think to most people, it’s a lot of money.

But then again… staying alive an unharmed is integral to my future plans.

[theinevitable]

The other day I helped a customer carry his groceries out, and he talked about how he works at the Community Development Administration. They are currently doing work in my neighborhood!

also, I should have asked him if they were hiring/taking on interns. It sounds like interesting work. I think I'll poke around their (horrible) website and see if I can find someone to contact to see if there is anything I can do. Even filing or something a few hours a week as a way to get my foot in the door.

Well the good news is now I know where he lives.

[side_show]

Oh man, social services and community websites (at least in my area and apparently yours) are the worst.  All having a message on the front page about an event that happened months or even years ago, all having a FAQ section... with no FAQ's.... all having a community calender that arbitrarily covered a five month period for a year and a half ago where not much happened...  all having a "links" section full of dead links... all having pages under construction that have been "under construction" since 2002...  The sad part is that so often, I just know the organization spent way too much money up front, with a total lack of understanding that sustained funds would be necessary to maintain such sites. 

[wombat]

The sad part is that's farther than some nonprofits get... In January I was hired by a group that had a grant to write a website for an inner-city public school. The city doesn't provide sites for individual schools, so in the rich neighborhoods, the parents get together and make fancy sites on a volunteer basis. We were supposed to do the same for this school.

I spent a month doing interviews, trying to get teachers on the phone (which is on a par with the difficulty of getting zookeepers on the phone) and turning down other work in order to get the first draft done by the deadline. They were very firm about the deadline, they wanted to get the site online in time for an ad campaign they had scheduled for February.

I sent the material in and, wisely as it turned out, an invoice for the first half of the money they owed me. I got the check and waited for them to tell me what else they needed and to send me the information for the rest of the site. And... nothing.

A couple months later I emailed the woman and she was all "oh sorry I have not been able to get around to it." And I have heard nothing since.

But you what is the saddest thing? When we started, the woman said to me not to be surprised if I had a little trouble getting people to get back to me, because they were so used to rich white people swooping in and making big promises and not following through. Uh huh.