Class conflict hits home

November 14, 2005

BY CHERYL L. REED Staff Reporter

Rashaun Williams, a 26-year-old investment banker, owns two houses, drives a BMW, and his annual salary is well above middle class. But Williams doesn't live on the North Shore or in Lincoln Park or on the Gold Coast, as many in his income bracket might.

Home for Williams is the North Kenwood/Oakland neighborhood on the South Side, an area once in the shadow of towering public housing complexes. As recently as 2000, it was one of the city's poorest communities.

Now, there are enough BMWs, Lexuses, Mercedes, Jaguars and Range Rovers in the rapidly gentrifying neighborhood to fill a luxury-car dealership. Most of the vacant lots and boarded-up houses are gone, replaced by new and refurbished homes with tidy front yards and, in the summertime, colorful petunias.

The transformation going on here is unusual in that it's being driven largely by professional, upper-middle-class and wealthy African Americans looking for a home near the lake with easy access to downtown. Their influx has driven prices beyond what the neighborhood's poor and working-class blacks, and even those who are solidly middle class, could afford.

"They have no desire to kick out poor black people, and yet they know that their presence is contributing to that," says Mary Patillo, a Northwestern University sociology professor who is writing a book about the area and the tensions between its new and affluent members and the poor who have long lived there. "They surely want to change the behavior of the poor, black people who live there."

Black neighborhoods on the South Side have historically lagged in price compared with largely white neighborhoods on the North Side. That's a disparity that has hurt the bank accounts of generations of blacks and contributes to a widening wealth gap between blacks and whites.

Now, the rise of real estate in Near South Side neighborhoods has made some black residents rich and pitted affluent blacks against impoverished blacks. Tenement buildings have been converted into upscale condominiums, and plans for future public housing units have been challenged in court. Though blacks who have lived in the neighborhood for many years want to see their property values rise, not everyone wins when a poorer black neighborhood goes upscale.

'It makes a big difference'

Wearing a T-shirt that reads "I (heart) black people," Williams sinks down in his black-leather sofa. African artwork stares down from his walls.

An economist, Williams argues that what is happening in his neighborhood is the natural result of the most basic economic concept: supply and demand. He feels neither guilt about pushing out those less fortunate nor pity for those who have had to move.

"I would assume most of the low-income people around here don't go downtown on a daily basis," says Williams, who works at an investment bank on Wacker Drive. "So, whether they are on this street or on 105th Street on the South Side, it's not going to make that much difference. But, for the person who makes the commute every day, it makes a big difference."

Williams says he believes that setting aside lakefront property for public housing conflicts with natural economic demand. He points to the lakefront on the North Side, where high-end high-rises dominate the skyline. It was only a matter of time before North Kenwood and Oakland became equally in demand, he says.

Of the public housing that once dominated his neighborhood's skyline, Williams says: "All of that was suppressing the value of this very valuable land. People who are on government subsidies, in general, don't have a right to any particular land because taxpayers are the ones paying for it, anyway. If I'm supporting the whole thing, should they get a better view of the lake and I get a view of a south suburban neighborhood and an hour-and-a-half commute?"

If Williams sounds like a man who was born with a Tiffany's spoon for his baby food, think again. His family was working class. He grew up in Chatham, and his father was a factory worker. He could see the Sears Tower from his house, but Williams says he never went downtown until he got his driver's license at 16. He also says he never met a white person until two white police officers showed up near his house when he was 12 years old.

"I'm not unusual in that respect," Williams says. "There are thousands of people on the South Side who grew up only interacting with the people in their neighborhood."

Earlier this year, Williams sold his tony Lake Point Tower condo and bought a three-story house on South Oakenwald where he now lives. He thought it would be a good investment, and his neighbors were largely black professionals like him.

"Now, all of a sudden, the land starts to appreciate in value, and we can live close to downtown and be around people who look like us, who are not drug dealers, gang-bangers and low-income people," Williams says.

'It's kind of going back to that day'

One of the neighborhood's main draws is its castlelike graystones and brownstones and majestic, brick mansions -- homes that would sell for millions on the North Side. Newlyweds Linda and Anthony Edgar dreamt of rehabbing a giant old graystone in Oakland. But by the time the upper-middle-class couple discovered the neighborhood in 2004, being able to get a full graystone was beyond their means. So they bought a condo in a new building built to look like an old graystone.

Still, even with the new construction going on, many parts of the neighborhood aren't safe, says Linda Edgar, so new neighbors on her block look out for one another. Sometimes at condo meetings, the Edgars and other recent arrivals to the neighborhood talk about whether they are displacing poor people.

"Nobody feels bad," she says. "This really is a prime area, and in its heyday, Bronzeville and this neighborhood was really for upper-middle-class blacks. It's kind of going back to that day."

What troubles Linda Edgar more are the white people trickling in.

"I don't want it to turn out like Lincoln Park," she says. "I'd like it to be mixed, like Hyde Park. So I wouldn't want the homes to get priced to where no one else could buy them but upper-class Caucasians."

Recent events have convinced Linda Edgar that, even though her Oakland neighborhood is 98 percent black -- as are North Kenwood and nearby Bronzeville -- the area could turn into a majority-white neighborhood. She points to the black man who moved out of the condo above hers and the white couple who moved in. Also, a new development is going up across from the Edgars, with condos there going for half a million dollars.

"Who can afford that?" Edgar says. "Old money. And who has old money? Mostly Caucasians."

'Huge cultural gap'

Tracy Pruitt says blacks -- not whites -- should be revitalizing South Side neighborhoods. A 31-year-old management consultant, Pruitt moved into a newly rehabbed condo development three years ago in a gentrifying section of Woodlawn. Pruitt says he doesn't sense any tension between affluent blacks and poor blacks but that it's harder for whites to fit in.

"There's a huge cultural gap between poor blacks and whites," Pruitt says. "The average white person isn't used to people blasting their music. It doesn't bother me because I grew up with it. For the most part, poor blacks can't tell that I'm affluent, especially if I'm walking around in my T-shirt and shorts. As a black person, you fit in."

'Segregation in this city is striking'

But some middle-class and more-affluent blacks say they sometimes find it difficult to adjust to neighborhoods that are almost entirely black.

"I feel I have to warn my company when they come: Watch your car," says Mercedes Carnethon, who bought a condo in the Oakland neighborhood last July.

She's African American, 30 years old and an assistant professor at Northwestern University's medical school downtown. Last year, Carnethon says her car window was broken. Several of her neighbors have had their cars vandalized. One had friends visit in a rental car, and while they were eating dinner, someone stole the spare tire. Another neighbor was attacked while carrying groceries in the front door. Carnethon's own building had copper piping pried off it.

She used to rent an apartment in the South Loop, where the population was more racially diverse. But, as with other young professional friends, she got priced out when she tried to find a place to buy there.

"I've spent most of my life on the West Coast, and the segregation in this city is striking," says Carnethon, who's single. "It's one of the first things I noticed. I feel like I have segregated myself here. I've grown to see the comforts of it, but I don't think it's the ideal. If I had children, I wouldn't want them exposed to a single-race type of society."

Certain aspects 'challenging'

Sheila Brown, a dentist with a practice in the South Loop, says she worries about an average person being able to buy in to her North Kenwood neighborhood.

"But I don't know what to do about it," says Brown, who, with her husband, bought a town house in 2001 that the bank holding the mortgage on had foreclosed. "We got a good deal."

Her husband had wanted to move to Beverly. But she preferred North Kenwood because it's convenient to downtown. Still, she says, from the day the couple moved into their new home, they found certain aspects of the neighborhood "challenging." People who lived in the rental buildings nearby were often noisy and hanging out at all hours.

"I just think it's not as quiet as it is in the suburbs," Brown says.

Still, she says the apartment buildings keep the neighborhood grounded, preventing it from growing too swank.

"We need all of us to be here," Brown says. "I don't want it to become an exclusive neighborhood where the children feel they are the elite of society."

Slow-growing romance

Some African Americans bought in to the neighborhood as an investment. They expect to reap a handsome profit and don't see any reason to feel bad about that.

In 1997, Deborah Jones-Buggs was trying to persuade her husband, Thaddeus Buggs, to move from their Edgewater neighborhood on the North Side to Beverly, a racially mixed neighborhood on the South Side. But on the day they were going to go look at houses there, the couple ended up sitting in traffic on the Dan Ryan Expy. Buggs turned to his wife: "Debbie, I'm not doing this every day."

Instead, the couple -- who are black and whose government salaries put them above middle class -- ended up driving around North Kenwood and Oakland. Eventually, they picked up a vacant, city-owned lot for $17,500 in North Kenwood, liking its access to downtown, and built a three-story, red-brick house.

Buggs warned his wife not to get too attached, though. "I told Debbie not to fall in love with the house because this was a business deal," Buggs says. "But, of course, she did. It's now her house."

But it was a slow-growing romance for Jones-Buggs, for years putting up with vacant lots, crumbling homes, littered lawns and legions of young men hanging around day and night. The couple's garage has been broken into several times. Neighbors' cars have been vandalized. Often, garbage is strewn around the neighborhood.

"It's still changing," she says. "It still has a ways to go. We still have some issues."

But Thaddeus Buggs sees signs to suggest the neighborhood is transforming. Recently, he saw a white woman walking her dog nearby and another white woman jogging.

"You know this neighborhood is starting to do well because we are getting a lot of white people," he says. "I think it's great. I don't have a problem with it at all. I don't think the neighborhood should be viewed as a black neighborhood, but just a regular neighborhood."

In eight years, the couple's investment has tripled in value.

"Now, I wished we would have bought a few more houses," Buggs says. "In 10 years, it's going to be an outstanding neighborhood."

'It's just a matter of time'

Ora Mosely, 40, has rented an apartment on Lake Park Boulevard for 10 years and says she's worried how long she can afford to stay. Her landlord just raised her rent, pointing out how the area has improved. Mosely is the mother of a 7-year-old son. She works at a charter school. She's happy there's less crime in the neighborhood these days and fewer drug dealers. She says that's a direct result of wealthier residents demanding more police patrols. But she also worries that middle-class people are being priced out.

"You look around, and, to me, it's mostly upper-class people who are moving in," Mosely says. "I think it's just a matter of time before I'll have to move out. They talk about my building going condo. You can't afford the prices."

Nearby, long-term residents Al Towns, a retired CTA bus driver, and Vernetta McGlaston, a retired public school teacher, debate whether it's a bad thing that middle-class people like themselves are finding it harder to buy homes in the area. Leaning against the steel gate in her front yard, McGlaston points to the new condos going up across from her two-flat graystone that she bought for $265,000 eight years ago.

"They want $360,000 for a new condo," McGlaston says with evident disgust. "What middle-income person can afford that?"

But Towns, who moved into the area 23 years ago and endured the gangs and drug dealers, says it's time he reaps his reward.

"It's the way of the world," says Towns, 52, who bought his brick house for $15,000 in 1979. "This is a big city, and there are still houses in other neighborhoods. Do I feel bad that middle-class people can't move here? No. I feel incredibly lucky and blessed and all that. I took a gamble. The place had bottomed out, and I thought it had nowhere else to go but up. We didn't get this without a struggle."

Disappointment in Bronzeville

Mike Cleveland and Linda Coleman Cleveland are an affluent couple who built a house in Bronzeville nearly four years ago, when they heard the neighborhood was the next "renaissance area."

"I'm extremely disappointed that things haven't taken off," Mike Cleveland says.

The couple moved from Bucktown, where they'd bought a place years before the real estate rush hit there. Having watched that North Side community quickly transform, the Clevelands were dismayed that things haven't gone the same in Bronzeville.

"The retail that has moved in is very typical of what you get in an African-American community -- which is another Foot Locker, Pizza Hut, KFC," Mike Cleveland says. "But there's nothing like a Panera Bread or a Starbucks or an Einstein's Bagels. There's no nice deli to offer you a nice lunch, vs. having to go get Popeye's or White Castle or McDonald's. It's been very disappointing."

The couple moved to the area because they wanted to raise children in a culturally rich neighborhood and wanted to be a part of a movement to re-energize historic Bronzeville, now freed of the towering public high-rises that overshadowed the neighborhood for decades.

But the Clevelands -- who now have a 14-month-old daughter -- say they feel like they are living on an island. Mike Cleveland describes his house as a "fortress," outfitted with security cameras front and back. They know the other newcomers on their street but don't interact much with people elsewhere in the neighborhood. They shop and dine in other neighborhoods.

"We're always on guard," Linda Coleman Cleveland says. "We still have homeless people ringing our doorbell asking for a couple of dollars. At the end of my block, it's like a total other world. I hate to say this because these are my people. But this is just a different world for us."

The Clevelands grew up in working-class neighborhoods on the South Side. They say the move of more-affluent people makes the neighborhood a better place.

"If there weren't people like my husband and me moving into neighborhoods like Bronzeville, they would continue to decline," Linda Coleman Cleveland says. "I think it's a good thing that they tear down the projects. They are crime-ridden, and that's not appropriate housing for anybody. The people who would disagree are the people who grew up there and don't know any better."

But unless the schools improve, the vacant lots get developed and the area attracts more upscale businesses, the Clevelands say they'll end up moving.

"I just cringe when I think about having to move to the suburbs, to a subdivision," Linda Coleman Cleveland says. "That's where housewives used to be, cookie-cutter houses, where every third house has the same chandelier. But we're really starting to think we need to get out."