I would see if you can track down some recent sale prices. I've been hearing what LJ reports -- that developers (and/or evil speculators <G>) are beginning to grab properties in that area as SWCC prices skyrocket. Another tip... drive around the area at night. Weekends, weekdays. Are you going to feel comfortable in the area, or are you going to feel like you have to run in and out and keep yourself locked in the house.

If you are comfortable and will be happy living there, go for it. If not, avoid it like the plague. A house should be a home after all.

Ann

26th and Dickinson is routinely cited as a top trouble corner by the 17th Police District. This doesn't necessarily mean you'll have trouble -- I've lived just a block or so from some notorious drug corners for years. But if proximity to trouble makes you nervous, you might want to factor that into your decisions.

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Yeah. Or as a renovator who shall remain nameless said to me last summer, "We're going to buy up all this property and drive them out. Then we're going to go across Washington and drive them out there, too."

I didn't ask precisely who he means by "them" but I could make some guesses.

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I heard the same about Grays Ferry. Now, it seems like the area east of GF, before Broad is not being touched.

To defend the use of the word "them" when used by a renovator, or employee of a renovator, speaking for myself, and in my experience, it means the criminal element.

This criminal element might be black and poor, or it might not. Honestly living people of any race or class have nothing to fear from renovation. Their own equity will go up. People who pay their bills on time or close, and who don't sell or do drugs, or who don't drink malt liquor for breakfast, are not the ones the renovators mean when one uses the pronoun "them."

SWCC has turned into a truly diverse racially and economically place, which it was not before. Don't we want that? Rather, don't we need that critical mass to pay property taxes for schools, fire, and police?

Also included in the word "them" are the corrupt politicians and the narco-clerics /extortionists who support them, see:

http://phillyblog.com/philly/showthr...887#post143887

If international drug rings, see crime in SP blog on recent ecstasy meth pot bust, and street payment taking muslim clerics who mandate collection from drug dealers and give money to the local democratic party, stay out and in business, then that will be the "them" that keeps the traditional drug/shooting areas violent and high intensity.

Grays Ferry has been rich with crime that is hooked in all the way to the top echelons of city government. Knowing exactly how is critical to moving it away. I've lost the hope that I could kill it. But we did move it.

Yes, renovators drive "them" out. That's why Street is hostile to renovation and the property tax collection that aids it.

Shamsud-din Ali is out on bail. Are the drug dealers continuing to make street payments to him now? If so, then they will have to "hustle" day and night, as one complained on the FBI tape, to make payments, and when they hustle day and night, Grays Ferry's corners turn red and become unlivable. This hurts the good people who live there and sweep streets and try to raise families.

If you buy in that area, leave your PC assumptions at college, or you will miss the narco politics that keeps a multi multi million dollar drug area in business.

I strongly recommend reading up on the books by George Anastasia and Sean Patrick Griffin, who write about organized crime, local politics, and its poisonous effect on neighborhoods and local government.

Let's be honest about who is the enemy of black people. I don't know any renovators who coldly gunned down kids who owe them money. But I do know that Shamsud-din Ali is out on bail and back in business. Where is the PC upset at the effect this has on neighborhoods?

Give me a big old break.

"We don't believe he was guilty" states Muslim Clergy Council. Uh, then what was that whole probe thing where the drug dealer complains that he has to "hustle" and work so hard to pay the street tax levied by Shamsud-din Ali?

In SP and in Grays Ferry, there is a problem in the local black muslim community, and I'm not so PC that I can't say it. Many members are involved in crime.

You could call it denial, you could call it outright fraudulent representation of drug dealers, runners, holders, and carriers as deeply orthodox muslims. The problem is serious.

But the local muslim community is strongly tied to drugs and violence here, in an organized fashion that dates to the first days of the indigenous black muslim movement in Philly.

Not everyone. There is a movement to disassociate from the criminal element that is deeply involved in the faith here. Meanwhile, liberals are looking to explain black crime with racism. Any mention of the poisonous local Democratic corruption is taboo also.

Politicians and their brokers such as Ron White are simply asking no questions, telling no lies, and quietly underfunding initiatives that rid Grays Ferry and SP of drugs.

So forget the street tax paid to the local muslim leader and power broker, who gives cash to the local deal maker, who sees to it that the treasurer of the local Democratic party gets a PAC contribution. No, those things are not what kill blacks here and keep the houses worth less than the sum of the total of what it cost to build them in adjusted dollars.

It's the renovators. Yes, we want to drive out black people!

The solution is to elect Johnny Doc, Blackwell, Street, who also run down builders and try to seize the properties for their contributors. They spout a liberal line, and these locals buy it, but can't put together for themselves that Philadelphia has a narco-economy the size of the economic contribution of the Univ. of Pennsylvania.

Yet we must have our demon, and the politicians and locals point to builders. It's not the neighbor whose kid is on the corner. It's not the users. It's not people with addictions who don't pay their bills and lose their house as a result. It's the builders who are killing the black community. So if you renovate a house here, you become one of the baddies. Forget the guys with guns! They are victims. You will be the victimizer.

So if you buy and renovate a house here, you have to read the Daily News and follow local organized crime to understand how it is that so many good people feel so powerless to demand normal neighborhoods. Then others can't see what the problem is to begin with. First, read this:

http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/12690224.htm

most people i know who lived there have moved out recently ... still, if you are willing to stick it out, it may come through for you.
I think the edges of greys ferry are the safest, then as you go inward towards point breeze, it gets a bit rougher.
my friends used to live at 28th & dickinson - that was a nice block and had a good deli nearby, a nice church... it was just a block from the bus line, two blocks from greys ferry ave, which if you bike - is an easy diagonal path into center city or west philly/u.city.
nothing bad ever happened to them or me when I visited - but there were times i would go visit that made me uncomfortable, and times they felt a little uncomfortable, or would hear stuff going on a block away that made them want to stay in with the doors locked.