Whoops.
Joshua and the kids and I went to look at a two-bedroom apartment yesterday. As we were finishing up our tour, I went downstairs to talk to the leasing agent. She was finishing up a conversation with another prospective tenant, so I stood there and waited for them to finish. He asked her on his way out the door and down the steps if she was also the one showing the place on Capp Street. She didn’t know which property he was talking about.
As he was walking down the steps, I moved closer to ask her a few questions and jokingly called out after the man, “Which place on Capp?”
The leasing agent turned to me and firmly said, “Oh, you don’t want to live on Capp Street - that’s not a good area.”
I looked at her for half of a second while I debated in my head what to say next.
“Actually, we live on Capp Street.”
You could see her visibly try to recover.
“Oh, so that’s why you’re moving.”
“No, we’re moving because we have a family of four in a one-bedroom apartment and we need more space. I love where we live.”
She then started talking about how she had heard it wasn’t a good area and so on and so forth and I re-emphasized how I liked where we live, that it WAS a good section and in no uncertain terms put to rest her her misperceptions.
Don’t talk bad about my ‘hood, yo.
Oh, and we won’t be renting that apartment after all.
April 30th, 2007 at 5:00 pm
dude-that happened ALL THE TIME since i went to USC. “oh, good school, bad neighborhood”, “don’t worry they have gates”, “too bad about the area” “oh god are you safe?” etc. i lived in those neighborhoods for 5 years and never had any negative interactions with anyone, even walking around late at night. one neighborhood i lived in that was more “resident” and less “student-friendly”, people called out greetings to me while i biked to school. they’re not BAD neighborhoods, they’re WORKING CLASS. that’s like, the backbone of the american dream, homies. people in this county are like “omigod, you lived in LA? i just didn’t feel safe there after the riots.” um, ok.
when residents in a neighborhood are black and brown people, and white people are like “oh that’s a terrible area”, it’s pretty hard not to chalk it up to racism.