The South End Is So Over

Consider the response of some South End arrivistes to a local agency that runs addiction recovery programs. Hope House wants to sell three Upton Street brownstones it has operated as halfway houses for 52 years to the Pine Street Inn, which would use them as apartments for people transitioning from homelessness. Some nearby residents, led by one who moved to the street three years ago, are trying to use zoning laws to block the sale, claiming such facilities no longer represent the “character of the neighborhood.” The controversy follows another that played out in September, when the city demolished a Peters Park wall on which a local youth organization, the African-American Latino Alliance (ALA), had painted murals for the past 20 years. In one cringe-inducing encounter, a five-year South End resident out walking her poodle approached a group of ALA youths as they stood near the pulverized remains of their artwork and the blank wall that had taken its place. She admonished them thus, as quoted in the Herald: “I hope you’re not planning on painting stuff that is offensive and racy. Children play in this park.” Previous ALA works had included a mural of Malcolm X and a tribute to Katrina victims.

“I’d like to see folks who are concerned about teen violence not just calling the police, but supporting programs to engage youths in community-building activities,” says Vanessa Calderón-Rosado, CEO of Inquilinos Boricuas en Acción, the social services arm of West Dedham Street housing development Villa Victoria. “I sense more of a colonial attitude in some of our new neighbors, a desire not to fit into the South End, but to conquer it, to remake it in the image of wherever they came from.”

What remains to be seen is how many disaffected South Enders will cash in their appreciated condos and seek refuge elsewhere. Unlike those pressured by earlier influxes of wealth, many of us can afford to stay. But will we want to? Choosing to live here used to be an expression of taste, of commitment to a certain kind of lifestyle. And even though a few badly behaved, and badly dressed, party crashers have made it harder to feel good about having a South End address, many residents still believe the positives outweigh the negatives. So we rationalize things—the poorly parked SUVs, the dogs wearing sweaters—in exchange for at least a few more years.

Cindy Morton, a marketing exec with a place near Worcester Square, has lived in the South End since 1999. “I love the architecture, the parks, my community garden plot,” she says. “I don’t much care for that Lilly Pulitzer crowd, but I see them more on the Back Bay side of the neighborhood than on my block. I’m sorry to see some of my gay neighbors move away, but I’m relieved the area has gotten safer”—and it has, with reports of rape, burglary, vehicle theft, vandalism, and prostitution dropping dramatically since she moved to the neighborhood.

Morton’s sentiments are echoed by Margaret Anderson, who moved to the South End in 1993. “I realize you can’t stop progress, and that I’ve benefited from the rise in property values. I think about leaving, but I love the South End, and I will stay here—as long as I can afford to.” Morgan Jones, a venture capitalist who exchanged his Back Bay condo for a single-family home on Union Park in 2006, says he thinks he’ll stay, too. “We had some concerns about crime before we moved here,” he says, “but those seem exaggerated now. Especially since our friend got carjacked in the Back Bay.”

MC Slim JB is the pen name of a South End–based food writer. His work can be found at bostonmagazine.com and on the Boston page at chowhound.com.