The Oak Park of today is a far cry from the depressed, crime and drug-ridden community of 25 years ago.
New housing, new businesses and new young families bring an aura of bustling prosperity. Even the Sacramento Food Bank and Next Move, nonprofits who serve the disadvantaged, appear to brighten the area.
But there are no great gains without some losses, to flip the old saying.
At the same time the community was reaching its potential as a good place to raise children or start a business, the housing market in Sacramento was getting tight as prices began to soar.
Patti “Patris” Miller, an artist and longtime Oak Park resident, said she has seen artist friends priced out of the neighborhood when the properties they rented were sold. She was very nearly a victim of the phenomenon herself when her building went on the market – but at the very last minute funding materialized allowing her to buy the building.
Still, it’s hard for her to harbor serious regrets, when she sees the thriving businesses now serving the community, and when she can freely walk to and from them without fear of being accosted by men looking for sex workers.
“I’m blessed to wake up every morning and be here,” Miller said.
Midmorning on Tuesday, the Old Soul Café on Broadway was comfortably filled with a diverse cross-section of peopl of various ages, ethnicities and socioeconomic classes. A weekly Bible study group occupied one of the tables.
Joyce Glover, one of the Bible studiers, has watched the neighborhood change over the years. Although she's not an Oak Park resident, Glover worked at the Food Bank for a number of years and said Oak Park wasn’t the first gentrification she’s seen.
“This is my third one, and it’s very interesting,” Glover said. The other two were in previous locations in Philadelphia and Ohio.
Compared to those two, Glover feels the development that has been happening in Oak Park has been more in tune to longtime residents’ needs. She noted that the Food Bank and Next Move are still serving their clients in the midst of the newer, more upscale businesses in north Oak Park, and this was not how things played out in Philadelphia, where developers bought up large blocks of row houses to gut them, sending underprivileged residents packing.
However, she too knows of Oak Park families who had to move out of the neighborhood when the time came for them to buy a house.
So what's the difference between gentrification and simply natural growth and change over time subject to various market forces?
With the high demand and low inventory of available homes in Sacramento, housing prices are rising all over the region, not just in Oak Park. Sam Allen, one of the owners of Grounded, an Oak Park real estate firm, said Oak Park is still the most affordable neighborhood in the downtown core.
“I don’t want to discredit people’s feelings,” he said. “Midtown rents have doubled in the last few years – a shortage of housing units is really pushing pricing and rents to levels we haven’t seen before. A lot of people in the public and in the real estate world are uncomfortable with the pace of change.”
The Broadway Triangle, which includes 20 houses, 10 loft apartments and 9,000 square feet of retail and restaurant space is one of Grounded’s projects.
Kitty-corner from the Broadway Triangle on 35th Street, Georgia “Mother Rose” West has been running Underground Books since 2003.
“We are the literary hub of the community – Oak Park has no library,” West said. The shop, which specializes in African-American literature, is thriving in the area.
“It’s more than a bookstore,” West said, explaining that the shop hosts book signings, children’s story readings, book clubs and literacy lessons. “People love the ambiance!”
West had no complaints about the changes to the neighborhood.
“It’s great for our community,” she said.
Down the street in Oak Park, the after school crowd hadn’t quite arrived, but the skate park was already filling up. Jennifer Duffy with her three small children along with a friend and her three children visit the playground.
Duffy, who has only lived in the neighborhood for two years, self-identified as “a gentrifier,” albeit a somewhat apologetic one. She said she didn’t like the idea of original residents being pushed out when a neighborhood becomes fashionable, but like everyone else interviewed, she said she simply loves Oak Park.
She loves the “walkability” and the close ties between neighbors, although she has not yet established those ties herself.
“People don’t sit on porches chatting anymore,” she said. “But my neighbors do.”
