Gentrification in Chicago's Humboldt Park Neighborhood

Tonight, I'm taking the bus out to the west side of the city. I'm on my way to Chicago's Humboldt Park neighborhood, a part of town where two years ago, ATMs didn't exist and you couldn't buy more than one roll of toilet paper at a time. Humboldt Park was both an alien landscape littered with abandoned buildings and a stereotypical setting for a race war threatening to break out. It was also a place full of earnest families who looked out for each others' kids and gossiped across fences.

This was the Humboldt Park where I used to live. The Humboldt Park that I visit tonight will be a different kind of unfamiliar, one full of shiny white faces and skinny hipster kids dancing the night away. Before I arrive at my destination, I already know that I will be underdressed for sipping expensive cocktails with these interlopers.

Just two years ago, the poverty and racial tension in this neighborhood meant that most of my friends refused to come to my apartment. Large, multigenerational Puerto Rican families lingered en masse on communal porches, while Black teenagers ruled the street corners. The Puerto Rican families who owned their homes and took pride in adding elaborate decks and gardens were angry at their adult children for assimilating and moving out of the neighborhood. They were angry at the young Black families who rented the empty flats because these tenants were poor, often Section 8 tenants, and not similarly invested in the neighborhood. Coming from a culture of poverty, a broken school system, and learned anger, the young Black teenagers reacted with aggression and vandalism.

According to census data at the time, Humboldt Park was only 3% whit and the remaining 97% was split almost evenly between Black and Hispanic. As the only white face on my block, I occupied an interesting space as an outsider.

It's dark and humid as I walk down California to what has become a destination bar, but I don't see many families out. Instead, the three blocks to the Clipper are filled with twenty-something year olds dressed to dance and be seen. Like other so-called up-and-coming neighborhoods, I am in the cultural majority on this stretch of road.

I've been back to Humboldt Park three times in the past two weeks, which is exactly three more times than in the rest of the two-plus years it's been since I moved away. My old two-flat building is still there, but someone has finally fixed the porch and planted some bushes around the once brown and weedy lawn. The abandoned houses on my street and surrounding blocks have been torn down and replaced with glittering condos. Many of the old buildings still standing sport new brick facades mortared over their aging fronts.

With all this fancy new real estate comes new business catering to condo clientele. Falling-down factories and warehouses have been converted into artists' studios and performance spaces. Empty storefronts now boast wine bars and chiropractors' offices. Rent is still dirt cheap, but for how much longer?

I'm happy in a bittersweet kind of way for my old neighborhood. On one hand, the gentrification of Humboldt Park means that my old neighbors will have nearby grocery stores with fruit and health care options. Their property values will surely rise. On the other hand, the sense of community and generosity that exists in a fragile neighborhood can't last for long in a sea of anonymous condos that lack porches and yards. But this is progress for progress' sake, and once gentrification begins, it may take decades for the neighborhood to feel like a real neighborhood again.