Who here has lived in a legitimate ghetto?

[Edgnar]

You could build an epic grow room in there. Or a woodward type facility. However, with what the other guys have pointed out- you would have basically no local clientele.

[Meadow Skipper]

...The last time we did that I found myself wondering if some of those places are actually so abandoned at this stage that living there would be like a rural experience....wondering if some of those huge old factories were ever for sale and for how much.

Well, last time I was in Detroit I listened to a fairly serious discussion about opening up some of the wasteland areas to urban homesteading. Prove up on a block or building and it's yours. Little House on the 'Hood.

I like the grow room idea.

[dipstik]

My grandmother lived in the Warsaw Ghetto. She never talked much about real estate prices, though.

[dan_pdx]

You could build an epic grow room in there. Or a woodward type facility. However, with what the other guys have pointed out- you would have basically no local clientele.

I think a massive industrial space like that cries out for an indoor MTB park like Ray's. Who knows, you might even draw enough traffic to revitalize whatever neighborhood you buy in: sounds like lots of people travel significant distances to visit Ray's.

[single]

Yeti, I think Butte would be more fun. Great skiing, climbing, biking, fishing, etc all close by. And fits more of a historic wasteland than ghetto. As a matter of fact, butte had electricity before washington DC, and in its height (early 1900's) was bigger than both portland and seattle.

Plus the real estate is ridiculous.

19 bucks a square foot.

http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/2-...41724300_zpid/


http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/83...78193469_zpid/

[Ted Striker]

That firehall would have been my dream home when I was in my 20s.

What you're talking about isn't the same thing as a ghetto. Ghettoes are crowded. What you're talking about is a place so fucked people don't even live there anymore. This is fine so long as you don't ever expect to have customers for whatever it is you're doing, and so long as nothing of any value is ever unlocked, including your car. Wherever you get will need a rollup door so you can park indoors.

It's a cool idea, but I'm not sure how you make a living. If property is worth nothing, that means no one in the area has any money.

I've lived in a legitimate ghetto, and ^^^^ is accurate.

[meatdrink9]

Ha. My office is a mere 3 blocks away from that last listing and my new primary residence is 6 blocks away. I lived in 5-points in Denver (former black panther meeting house).

In all my years of fixing up historic homes and living in the ghetto I've maybe had 3K in tools stolen and a little graffiti. I also lived in St Louis and had my car broken into at work one day. That's it.

[AKPogue]

You could build an epic grow room in there. Or a woodward type facility. However, with what the other guys have pointed out- you would have basically no local clientele.

If you ever do the grow room thing just make sure you figure out how to disguise the electric bill. Have some friends that are cops and that is how they bust a lot of people. The electric company turns them in. Get a generator that way they can't track you that way.

[zion zig zag]

Ha. My office is a mere 3 blocks away from that last listing and my new primary residence is 6 blocks away.

Yeah, my house is a couple of blocks from that listing, definitely not legitimate ghetto, not even close. Ogden has it's share of problems but I wouldn't consider any of the hoods around here to be real ghettos.

[JimmyCarter]

My college apartment was in Worcester above a biker bar and next door to a halfway house. Of course half the people inside were sketchier than the ones outside...

That said, one of my coworkers bought a cheap place in Roxbury and pimped the shit out of it. Old industrial-type building, he turned the elevator shaft/glass roof into a skylit bathroom, threw a sweet roofdeck on top with a pool table and jacuzzi and otherwise cleaned it up. Main perk of the roofdeck being that you can drink beers while you watch your car get broken into.

[grrrr]

My neighborhood doesn't qualify as a ghetto, because it has trees and shit. But other than that, it has meth labs and flop houses. More than once I've come home and found several squad cars parked in my driveway. They use it as staging for domestics and drug busts.

It's not as bad as Kendall, or the Lummi.

[crstlextrm]

^^^ Not all of Lummi is bad. My grandparents live on Lummi Bay and it is pretty damn nice. I used to live out there when I was young and didnt even see the real shitty area until I drove through it a few years ago.

[Dhelihiker]

I live in the hood, like 3 people have been killed in gang violence on two different occasions 200 yards from my house in the last year. The Norcal MS 13 leader was apprehended in his house directly across the street from mine.

But its cheap and no one goes to the hood to steal shit. The flip side is Im scared to open my garage and I cant comfortably ride by bike from my house. But I have nice bikes. Also crack is cheap and hookers couldn't be any more convenient, we love it.

[powder11]

I lived in East Boston for a summer back in the 90's when the Latinos started moving in droves. My buddy owned the building and gave me and my friends free rent for the summer so that he could dodge a single mom section 8 applicant. We had some EPIC mushroom tea roof parties and used to crank golf balls off the roof into the streets. There is no better skyline view of Boston anywhere else in the city.

I moved out after a month when one of the neighbors hacked his roomates arm off with a machete when they were drunk.

[concretejungle]

If you ever do the grow room thing just make sure you figure out how to disguise the electric bill. Have some friends that are cops and that is how they bust a lot of people. The electric company turns them in. Get a generator that way they can't track you that way.

You disguise it by paying your large non-fluctuating bill every month on time. They're just happy to get paid.

I've never lived in the ghetto but was driven through the ghettos of SE DC by my track coach when I was in high school and didn't think it suited me.

[dipstik]

My college apartment was in Worcester above a biker bar and next door to a halfway house. Of course half the people inside were sketchier than the ones outside...

What part of town? Because your description pretty much places you anywhere in Worcester.

[JoeStrummer]

I say go for it. The more distressed and abandoned the better, you can be like Charleton Heston in "Omega Man."

[SweetCorn]

while STL has its ghetto areas it aint too bad, its east st. louis that is the real ghetto. strip clubs, a casino, and block after block of crack houses and hookers on every corner. i would never live there.

In high school we were rural ass kids newly minted with drivers licenses and used to take these all nighter road trips... One was to St. Louis. We didn't know any better and stopped at Jack in the Box at about 4 am on the way home in East St. Louis.
I remember the bullet glass and the employees lookin' like they were talkin' about our cracker asses behind the counter. Wasn't until a few years later when I read ESL overtook Gary, IN for the highest murder rate per capita that I realized it wasnt so smart

There were murders a couple times a year on the block behind mine (Morse Ave) in a northside 'hood in Chicago. A nice, old Asian man who owned a liquor store around the corner was killed in a stickup while I lived there. Fortunately I wasn't in there getting a rosie in a skirt at the time.

I used to order my pizza right before the pizza place closed at 2:30 am on Saturday nights, walk there and bring my pie home passing the toothless hookers, the guy taking a dump on the newspaper by my back gate and the gang bangers. That was how I got my kicks before I started climbing.

Edit add on: the interesting thing about that neighborhood was that the street i lived on was quite nice actually. the buildings were kept up, there was a nice restaurant/bar and it was relatively clean. But just one block south...
some good measures of how ghetto an area is are: the number of cops around and how much litter is on the sidewalk and what percentage of that littler is the cheapest malt liquor on the market. used to be those camo 32 oz cans and black plastic bags and cops in chicago. start seeing that stuff, on your toes..

[jibij]

Lived in downtown Atlanta from '77-'79, across the street from the projects. They condemned our building, moved us out, and turned it into a prison facility. It wasn't as ghetto as some areas, but it was ghetto enough that I carried a knife to walk home from work at night. It was 2 of the most interesting years of my life, and it's amazing what becomes normal in a short period of time.

[umby]

I lived in East Boston for a summer back in the 90's when the Latinos started moving in droves. My buddy owned the building and gave me and my friends free rent for the summer so that he could dodge a single mom section 8 applicant. We had some EPIC mushroom tea roof parties and used to crank golf balls off the roof into the streets. There is no better skyline view of Boston anywhere else in the city.

I moved out after a month when one of the neighbors hacked his roomates arm off with a machete when they were drunk.

Haha I had never driven through Eastie before last weekend when I was trying to get from Route 1A to Chelsea (to my buddy's warehouse/office) and the Chelsea St. bridge was closed. I definitely did not fit in there. Eastie looked just like an even shittier version of southie, where I currently live. A guy that works for my buddy is a life long East Boston resident and said the running joke is "no one has been killed there.... Today!"

[AdironRider]

East Boston is terrible.

One of my buddies rents a place there that some guy bought for cheap and fixed up really nice. First time I was there I couldnt believe it, then when were drinking beers on the roof deck and hear gunshots and police sirens literally all night long it made sense.

That view is sick though, so I could see how he rented the place without knowing any better.

[DoWork]

Ugh, dude the ghetto sucks. If you have even relatively nice things they will all be stolen. They (meaning tweakers, crackheads and random homeless or scrappers) will find a way into your house, your car and your mind. My advice- get two HUGE German Shepherds. It's the only thing they're actually afraid of.

I've lived in some pretty damn ghetto places and so has my brother- I'll be damned if I ever move back again- I'd rather camp forever than live in a mansion in the ghetto. My brother even had his laundry room broken into and got a full load of laundry from the washing machine stolen. Then there's the weekly car break-ins just to get the change out of your changewell, the basement-window shimmy-in to run around in your house and look for something- ANYTHING to take, and the ever present shitbags on the corner ice-grilling you for being alive and looking at them while they're trying to sell rocks/ice/whatever.

Don't do it. You'll be miserable. Nobody moves to the ghetto by choice.

[The AD]

Lived on lower height in san fran.

And the reason you never got any mail when you lived there is you spelled the name of the street wrong. It's Haight.

[powder11]

East Boston is terrible.

One of my buddies rents a place there that some guy bought for cheap and fixed up really nice. First time I was there I couldnt believe it, then when were drinking beers on the roof deck and hear gunshots and police sirens literally all night long it made sense.

That view is sick though, so I could see how he rented the place without knowing any better.

There are some decent pockets up on the hill, but anything down toward Maverick Sq is 3rd world. Some old school Italians still camped out over there, but they're pretty ghetto in their own special way.

[coreshot-tourettes]

As someone that has (a) lived in the ghetto (Thieveland E123rd represent!) and (b) knows people that have done the Dirk Pitt industrial living thing:

1. Property taxes in a ghetto can still be high if it's industrial. Talking $1000+ a month.
2. Heating and cooling, don't even think about it. Get used to wearing 2-3 sweaters and a hat all the time.
3. Environmental wastes can be bad - think not just asbestos, but cyclohexane, benzene, nitrated organics, coal tar, etc.
4. The roof will be leaking all the time. Get used to covering your couch with a tarp when you go out.

That said, the best option is to build a separate house - well insulated, to code, etc. - inside of an industrial site and live there using the rest of the space for a shop.

Where I lived, all of the Taco Bell drivethroughs have bulletproof glass and the guy taking orders asks you after every order: "You wan' weed with that?"