My new home is basically in the 'hood, and I have been extremely dissappointed / enraged by the poor quality of social services in the neighborhood. Like any of the other people in my neighborhood would be surprised by this realization I guess. And I've always known in a theoretical sense that this is the case, but experiencing it first hand has brought a whole new meaning to the problem for me. It is best exemplified by construction and garbage collection. When I first moved in, there was construction all over my neighborhood. And the construction was organized, or NOT organized, in such a way as to make driving around the neighborhood very difficult, and all sorts of bus routes were detoured making it difficlt for non-drivers as well. These construction sites would be left un-touched in a state of half assed mess for days at a time. The place looked like a third world country with half ripped up streets in a messy state all summer. And when they did work, they routinely did the noisiest jobs earliest in the day. So they finally "finished" and poured concrete so the neighborhood wasn't either bathed in dust or a big mud pit, and then they just left it like that, with no tar for going on two weeks now.
Garbage collection in my neighbohood blows. There is all sorts of piles of garbage all over the place that never or only intermitently get picked up. And the recycling really never gets picked up. I need to basically take it to a recycling center or just throw it in the trash (which I'm not even totally convinced isn't what happens to it on the rare occasions it actually does get picked up anyway, but so like...). Now, many people who don't live in this type of neighborhood routinely complain that the people who live here are the one's leaving the trash. And there are all sorts of class/racial overtones to that sort of comment. And that complaint is to a certain extent accurate. But their is a sense that the city has deserted the neighborhood. Why keep it clean if nobody gives a fuck about the neighborhood. And I would be hard pressed to contradict that view. All the evidence points to the fact that this neighborhood is way low ont he city's list of priorities. And one of the most frustrating things about that is gentrified blocks only 3 or 4 blocks away receive much better services.
