Tiffany Sandberg
On the Move
I grew up in different parts of the United States. I was born in California. My dad was in the army and so we moved a lot the first few years of my life. I lived in California, part of it in
At first, because my dad was just getting out of the military, he was trying to get a job. So we lived with his parents up here on St. Mary’s circle, up above the zoo. My parents’ first home was in what’s now called East Liberty. I started my school years up at Emerson Elementary on
Any Neighborhood Has Potential
I moved to the west side shortly before we had our oldest daughter. So, my husband and I were a newly married couple. One of the things that my husband and I both love is old homes and fixer uppers and projects. We had started saving some money for a house. Not much because we were still starting out ourselves. He still had student loans to pay and you’ll see how all that is [laughing]
We needed something that was affordable and we figured that some of the coolest old homes we’d seen were in the Capitol Hill area. We knew it’d be years til we could be able to afford a home there, even a fixer upper. So we were just kind of biding our time. One day, my husband’s cousin called him. She was working as a building inspector on the west side of Salt Lake at the time. She said, ‘I found this great house, you guys need to buy it.’
She told him a little bit more, that it had been sitting vacant for five years and that meant that it was condemnable by city code. So, in a few days, she was going to put a condemned sticker on it and then the house couldn’t be bought or occupied at all. At that point, the city would turn the house over to the fire department who would use it as a teaching tool. So this beautiful house that was built in 1896 was going to be set on fire! [laughing]
And then the city would sell the lot for somebody to build a home on. So essentially, we saved our house from destruction. The purchase price in 1990 was, I think, forty five hundred dollars and it was just back taxes.
The first time I went to see the house, being a girl growing up on the East side, I had my own prejudices against the West side. My husband said, ‘You gotta come and see the house, it really is cool and I think you’ll like it.’
I drove out there one day after work and I walked into the house. They had just started doing the construction phase of putting it back together and making it livable. I walk in and I looked up, and I could see the sky because there were huge holes in the roof. And it was just… I couldn’t imagine how this house was ever going to be livable. I told my husband, ‘Thanks, thanks for showing it to me.’
I got in my car, and I drove around the corner and I sat there and I cried for 30 minutes thinking, ‘What the hell have we gotten ourselves into? I’m gonna have a baby in May! I can’t bring a baby into this house!’ And so I was really discouraged and upset and just thinking, ‘this was stupid, this was stupid, this was stupid, this was stupid.’
But one of the things that I liked about the neighborhood when I did drive around the block and have my melt down was there were a lot of neat old houses. And a lot of them needed work, but I thought, ‘You know, any neighborhood has potential.’
We’re still in the same house today. It’s been through a lot of different phases. At first, our goal was just to get out of the apartment and into the home, so we weren’t paying rent. We had to take out a mortgage to do the improvements. I think the final purchase price of our home at that point was $32,500. Even in 1991, that was a darn good price!
Good Neighbors
My first impression of the neighborhood was that, people were really keeping to themselves in my immediate neighborhood. But, we were the new guys. So, I would go out and I wasn’t as outgoing at that point in time as I am now. Plus, I had a brand new baby I was taking care of so I didn’t get out much either.
One evening, we hadn’t been there quite a month and I was out front planting some flowers. A neighbor walked past from two doors down and introduced herself to me. She was my first neighbor to introduce herself to me. She still lives there. She’s in her 80’s now and unfortunately, fairly homebound because of medical issues. But, I’ll never forget that day when Beth took that opportunity to introduce herself to me and welcome me to the neighborhood. That really struck me as a good thing because when I lived on the East side and we moved, nobody came and introduced themselves to us. It took me going out as a young child and playing to get the other kids to say, ‘Hey there’s a new kid.’ And you know how all that goes. I really liked that aspect of the neighborhood a lot; that somebody was willing to stop as she was walking past and introduce herself to me.
Our neighbors to the south of us emigrated here from Mexico. When Jeff was working on the house, Rosa and Andy would bring hot tamales and hot coffee to him in the morning to eat. Rosa would come over and check on him and make sure he was ok. At that point, Rosa didn’t speak very much English. She was pregnant with their youngest daughter at the time. So that was kinda cool cause, while I was still home on maternity leave, Rosa brought home Angelica.
Angelica and Jessica were very good friends the whole time they lived there. They had this little language of their own that they’d come up with that was kind of half Spanish and half English. It’d be really funny because my Spanish is horrible and they’d come running in the house and they’d start talking to me in this, I called it Spanglish, asking for water and cookies and things like that. It was really fun to watch those 2 grow up and how much each one of them learned from the other one.
We’ve had some really good neighbors to the north as well. Right now we have an older gentleman and his son living there. And they’ve been there for probably, I think, five years now. They’ve taken incredible care of the place. They actually put a yard in because it was all dirt. The landlords are slumlords and they don’t care; they just want their rent money. But Ray and Dali have really shown that they love where they live. They’ve put in a yard. They’ve painted the exterior of the house. They’ve done all kinds of improvements on their own that the landlord would’ve never thought of doing.
A Very Friendly Place
Well, compared to the East side, the West side was more friendly. The people who lived there were more friendly, more open. I know my neighbors. Granted, I’ve been there for 18 years so I should know my neighbors at this point. But, I know my neighbors. I got Ray and Dali next door, and then there’s Clarence and Beth, and then there’s Ponch and Elisia, and then there’s Kevin. Then, across the street I got Christy, and I got Donna. So, that wasn’t something I always knew on the East side. Everybody seemed to stay in doors a lot. The kids would go out and play but it never seemed like the adults intermingled.
So to me it’s just a very friendly place. It’s a lot more friendly and open. It just seems like people don’t judge each other as much. People are a lot less judgmental.
PTA – Getting Families Involved
I started out my involvement in the neighborhood by being PTA president at my kids’ elementary school. Jessica was 9, so it would’ve been in 2000. I was the PTA president there for 5 years. We did some really neat things during that time and that’s what really got me more involved in the community.
My husband and I felt that a lot of families thought that PTA activities, and the PTA, and the school community council weren’t for them. They didn’t understand that these were both organizations that were going to help them have a better say in their children’s education and what goes on in their children’s school. We were all about trying to educate other parents who had moved here from other countries and parents who had even lived inside of the United States their entire lives but just felt that, you know, ‘They don’t want me to be involved.’ And it’s like, ‘Of course we want everybody to be involved.’
So, we started an activity called ‘Family Fun Night’ at the elementary school. One Friday evening a month, at first, we would do a family activity. We would invite everybody in the school to come. It ranged anywhere from showing a movie, to playing bingo, to having different presentations done. We brought
We had some really successful nights. Christmas Bingo was a big one. At the big ones like Christmas Bingo and the Thanksgiving party we would have over a hundred people show up. The Halloween Carnival which was the big event every year; we’d have about 600 people show up. That wasn’t including my volunteers that I had.
It was all funded through donations. For Bingo I would go to All a Dollar and they would donate a hundred items for me. Then, I would go to Albertsons and I would get gift certificates and turkeys donated. We would have people donate bicycles. Besides having the bingo game, we would have a raffle. Nobody ever paid for anything. They’d just walk in the door, each family was given a raffle ticket, every person was given a bingo card, and we just played bingo for a couple hours.
For the Halloween Carnival, we would fund that from the proceeds from the previous Carnival. My big deal with that was I wanted to make sure that every kid in that school could participate, no matter what their income was. So we would sell tickets. If you pre-bought your tickets, they were 5 for a dollar. If you bought them the night of, they were 4 for a dollar. But everything at the carnival was a ticket. If you wanted to play a game, it was a ticket. If you wanted a hot dog, it was a ticket. A bag of chips was a ticket. So, it was an affordable night. The whole family could come, they could feed their family, the kids could play games, everybody could have a good time, and it didn’t cost much.
Each year we’d see more and more families show up to participate. Each year I’d have more and more people volunteer. By the time my youngest daughter was in sixth grade and it was my last year at the school, I didn’t have to solicit volunteers for the Halloween Carnival. I had people lined up to come and help us.
These days, the Halloween Carnival does continue. I’m not so sure about the rest of the activities. I had a concern that when I left, things might not continue happening. But I knew that if I came back and started doing it all, nobody else would ever step up to the plate and take over. So, I just sat back quietly and heard through the grapevine that the Halloween Carnival was happening. And really to me, that was the only event that really mattered; that the Halloween Carnival continued. Everything else, it didn’t matter. But that had to continue on.
WLI – Finding the Leader Within You
There was a little newspaper on the West side that was being put out once a month by a friend of mine. I received it in the mail one month and I opened it up and inside there was a flier talking about finding the leader within you. I thought, ‘I’m a leader.’ And it was called the West Side Leadership Institute. So I applied and got accepted.
That must’ve been 2004 then because I graduated from the West Side Leadership Institute in 2004. I graduated from the WLI in 2004 but I was still at the school through 2005. I graduated from this program thinking, ‘You know, I’m a leader, but I need better leadership skills because I know that there’s more that I could do in my community.’ Working in the school, volunteering in the school like that really inspired me that there was more work to be done and that I was the right person to do it [laughing].
The WLI was a partnership at that point between University Neighborhood Partners, NeighborWorks Salt Lake, and Salt Lake City Weed and Seed, which is a program that no longer exists. It was a really fascinating class to take. It was a nine week course and each week we learned about a different subject; about being a leader and conducting meetings and so on. Each one of our courses was taught by a University professor. I just thought that was amazing. I mean, I paid $30 to take this 9 week class and being taught by University Professors.
So, I started networking through that. One of the things that I loved about the WLI was that I got to meet other community leaders and community activists who also saw so much potential and wanted to continue the growth of the west side on the right path. It was very inspirational to meet these people and be able to network. Oh well gosh, if I need this, I can call this person, I can call this person, I can call this person, and so on.
I Was So Set Up
In the middle of that I also became a Girl Scout leader. I am still a girls scout leader today. I love Girl Scouts! One day, I was at the school delivering girls scout cookies [laughing] and one of the teachers came running down the hall and she said, ‘Tiffany Tiffany, somebody’s here who wants to see you.’ And I’m like, ‘Who the heck knew I was here?’
And I turn around and it was this man named Daniel Pacheco. He was a kind of community organizer or advocate at Neighbor Works Salt Lake at the time. He said, ‘Oh I’m so glad I found you. I have something I want to show you.’
I looked at him and I said, ‘Ok well I’m delivering cookies, can it wait?’
He said, ‘No, I want you to come right now.’
I said, ‘Ok.’ So I go out in the parking lot with him and I say, ‘Well what?’
He said, ‘Come here I need to take you for a quick ride.’
And I’m going, ‘What the heck?!’
So, his daughter’s with him, he’s in this Neighbor Works van and I’m like, ‘Ok well that’s not too creepy.’ [laughing]
So, I get in the van and we go for a ride and we get a block away from the school and he said, ‘Look, somebody’s doing something to this building. There’s finally a business moving in.’ It was on the corner of 8th West and North Temple.
I was like, ‘That is a really horrible pink color. I can’t believe somebody paint the building that. So I wonder what the heck it is.’
So he goes, ‘Well let’s go find out.’ He takes me over to these people who were working on the building. He knew exactly what he was doing. He said, ‘So, what kind of business is going in here.’
This guy looks at me and says, ‘Well, it’s the Blue Boutique’
I just completely stopped. I was like, ‘Oh my God, this is one block away from my children’s school! You’ve got to be kidding me!’
Daniel said, ‘Come on Tiffany, come on Tiffany.’
I threw over my shoulder, ‘It’s a little close to an elementary school don’t you think?!’ And Daniel put me in the van, took me back to the school, and I was going, ‘You’ve got to be kidding.’
So he and I met really quickly with the principal and I was going, ‘We have got to stop these guys from moving in. It’s too close to the school!’ I said, ‘You know, even if it were a few blocks down the street, it would be better than right here.’
The next thing I know I have all these reporters calling me to talk to me about the Blue Boutique going in. The principal had sent out a news release… [laughing] …about this, and put my name down as the contact! [laughing] I was so set up…
So I called and I organized a community meeting and I called together the community. And I went and I talked to the woman who was in charge of the Relief Society at the local church and asked her to get people involved with this. I talked to the Tongan church on the corner and I had them get people involved. I went to Our Lady of Guadalupe. I went to all of the churches. That’s the best way to get information to people, I think…. in short time. Because if nothing else, the gossip circle’s gonna start. [laughing] Even if you miss a Sunday service, the gossip circle will start and you’ll start getting people involved and interested. As the school community council chair, my husband sent a letter home to all of the parents in both English and Spanish saying we were gonna hold a public meeting to find out what we could do about this.
At my public meeting, the media was there. I had two people from the city office to talk about codes and what was legal, what wasn’t legal, and what we could do at this point. The meeting ended up being very long because we did have everything translated into Spanish. And of course, everybody was very upset and adamant that we didn’t want the Blue Boutique there.
Unfortunately, everything was too far into the process there was nothing we could do to get the business to move. So we changed direction in our thinking and decided that we would just make sure that they remained good neighbors and that their displays weren’t outrageous. And that they were upholding the law and keeping their back area closed and not allowing any minors in there.
They pushed it a few times, and community members immediately called the police to get their window dressings changed. They’ve been very good about that since then. I don’t know if they’ve ever had any problems or gotten in trouble for minors being in the wrong places in the store. And then, everything kinda turned around and every year, they make a hundred dollar donation to the Elemenary school for the Halloween carnival. So I have to say that one good thing happened with the relationship with them. But another good thing that happened was our community council formed what was called a Business Committee.
The business committee tries to work closely with the city. I was a member of the community council, but I was not on the executive board at that time. They formed the business committee and my husband ended up being the chair of that. They would work closely with the city, keeping an eye on the vacant buildings and finding out what kind of permits were getting pulled for businesses so we could jump in on things prior to licenses being issued.
Now we know what’s going on. I mean, we haven’t heard of anything that we would feel was inappropriate coming in. But I think that letting the city know that we’re very interested in what’s moving into our neighborhood has helped a lot.
So there was a big community council meeting shortly after that where an attorney from the mayor’s office and a bunch of people from the planning department, and so on, came to talk to our community council about if we had any legal recourse to get rid of them and to define to us what an adult business was and what was and wasn’t legal again so we could be watch dogs. And we discussed putting covenants on buildings so that businesses like that couldn’t move in that close to a school. We discussed all kinds of things. Basically, our hands were tied except that we could police them and make them be good neighbors. And we have. Yes we have.
And then it was shortly after that that I got elected on to the executive board of the community council. That would’ve been 2005. So I’ve been part of the executive board of the community council since 2005.
Community Change Since Involvement
I’ve seen a dramatic decrease in crime in my community. I think a lot of that has to do with the increase in home ownership and decrease in rental units within the neighborhood. It also has to do with having police chiefs who are very proactive recently. When we first moved into the neighborhood, there was a police chief who was not a good cop in my eyes. And he did not force his staff to be good cops either.
When I was working at St. Marks Hospital, I was working on Sundays because I liked to have a weekday off to spend with the kids and deal with, you know, doctor’s appointments and all that stuff. I got up one Sunday morning and there had been… the neighbors next door had had a party. We have no off street parking, so I ended up parking my car down the street a little bit; no bit deal.
Before I had went to bed, I asked my husband to move it back in front of our house so that it’d be right there when I got up. I woke up in the morning and I have a straight shot… I can see from my coffee pot in my kitchen, through my front window, to where my car should’ve been. And I looked out there and my car wasn’t there. I was like, ‘Uh… that lazy guy! He didn’t move my car.’
So I finished my coffee. And then I thought, ‘No, I know he went out and moved my car.’ And so I went out there and there was this big pile of glass where my car should’ve been parked.
And I looked down the street and there was no jeep. And I looked the other way, and there was no jeep. I was like, ‘Hmm… somebody stole my jeep.’ [laughing]
So we called the police to report it and about three hours later a police officer called me back and he said to me that he was just TOO busy to come and take a report and he was TOO busy to go out and look for my car and that if I really wanted to get it back, this is where it might be and that I should go and look for it myself.
Yeah, he knew where kids were taking jeeps and four wheeling them and just leaving them when the run out of gas and that I should go and look for it myself if I wanted to find it.
Can you even fathom that? I didn’t even know what to say! I was just like, [pause], ‘Ok?’ And I hung up the phone and I’m like, ‘I can’t believe it.’
My husband said, ‘Well what did he say?’
And I said, ‘He told me to go look for my damn car myself!’ So I got in my husband’s truck and I went to look for my car and it wasn’t there.
About a week later, a detective finally called me who had been assigned my case. [sarcastically] It took only a week… only a week later. She called me and she said, ‘Well, I just wanted to let you know that I’m the detective assigned to your case and here’s your case number.’
I’m like, ‘Why did it take a week to get me a case number? Shouldn’t I have had that the day I reported my vehicle stolen?’
‘Well the case number was there…’
I said, ‘Then why wasn’t I given that case number?’ You know, I had never had anything happen. I’d never had to call the police before. I had no clue of what I was doing. I’ve called them since for different things. But um…. So, I just thought, ‘this whole thing is just screwy, its so screwy.’
The week after that she calls me back again at work and she goes, ‘Well I’ve got good news and bad news.’
And I said, ‘Well just give me the bad news!’
She said, ‘Your jeep’s totaled!’
And I said, ‘Ok, so what’s the good news?’
She said, ‘We know where it is.’
I was like, ‘Ok?’
And she said, ‘You wanna hear something really funny? Your jeep was actually impounded about an hour before you called it in stolen’
And I’m like, ‘Ok?! Why was this never put together? Why has it taken two weeks?’
[Big Sigh]… ‘Oh I don’t know. Things are just really slow. They just move slowly.’
And I said, ‘Ok, well can I go to the impound lot and look at it and get my belongings out of it? Have you guys already gone and done your detective work and gotten fingerprints and stuff?’
‘Oh we’re not gonna bother with that. You just go get your stuff.’ They just didn’t care! Just… didn’t… care. I have no idea why except, I blame a lot of it on the police chief at that time because I just don’t think he cared. So if the boss doesn’t care, why would the employees care? It’s all a trickle down thing.
So yeah, we went up there and we got our stuff out. Sure enough, it was totaled! Both axels were broken. They’d taken it up the hills in North Salt Lake and rolled it down.
When we get back home after we had gone and gotten a hold of our belongings that are left out of it, one of my neighbors walks around the corner and he goes, ‘So did the police ever call you?’
And I said, ‘About what?’
And he said, ‘You know, I’m on Neighborhood Watch and the night your jeep got stolen, I had seen some kids hanging around it. And so I went and talked to them you know, You shouldn’t be hanging out, it’s two ‘o clock in the morning. You guys should be inside, it’s not safe to be out this late.’
He said, ‘The kids razzed me a bit so I just went back home.’ Then he said, ‘And I was doing my rounds again and they were still standing out there so I called dispatch and told them.’ So it was completely preventable. But it didn’t get prevented. I was very bitter against the police department a long time… [laughing].
I believe in leading by example. I always feel that if I am active and involved, and I’m doing positive things for my community… that other people would kind of jump on the wagon and start doing the same thing. I believe that’s happened. People are much more involved at the elementary school. Their PTA has a huge membership now. I went to one of their school community council meetings about a year ago to make a short presentation and I couldn’t believe how many people were there. The room was packed and it made me so happy because that’s what it should be. That’s what it should be.
I see the neighborhood is cleaner in some senses. Little signs that people care more than when we first moved in are everywhere. People are buying the homes, painting them, fixing them up, and taking care of them. There’s a real sense of community. It’s fun to go to the grocery store because I run into all these people, especially during the winter. My older neighbors who walk when the weather’s good are not walking when it’s cold and icy. So the grocery store’s where I run into them now to check on them.
They Don’t Know They’re Welcome to be Involved
I think diversity just is my neighborhood. At my children’s elementary school, Jackson Elementary, there were 23 different languages spoken in children’s homes. You had kids from everywhere going to this school. That’s one of the things that inspired our Thanksgiving project, Jackson Elementary Family Thanksgiving. It was a potluck and we asked everybody to bring a food that was traditional in their homes. It didn’t matter the time of the year they usually ate it, we just wanted them to bring a food that they traditionally ate in their homes for this potluck.
And it was frickin’ amazing! I mean, we had Bosnian food, we had Russian food, we had Polynesian, let’s see, we had Samoan and Tongan, and Australian, American, Mexican, Puerto Rican, Peruvian… I mean, just loads of different foods.
To me, it was just amazing to see people who had immigrated here from like say Bosnia, eating their first taquito. Which to me seems just like a normal food you know? [laughing] Or like people from Mexico eating their first peroghi, which is traditional in Bosnia…. Which again to me seems like normal food. It was just, it was so cool. It was so cool. It really brought a good turnout.
So that’s one of the things I love. I love learning about different cultures. I love being around different cultures because when you think about it… we were all immigrants here at one point, except for the Native Americans. Not one of us or our ancestors was originally here.
And I just think we have so much to learn from people that come from other cultures. It’s a different way of thinking. In getting to know some of my neighbors that have emigrated from Mexico, they’re school system is so very different than it is here in America. A lot of them just figured school systems were the same across the board. So they would send their children to school, knowing there’s an afterschool program so their kids could be there til 5 ‘o clock at night. They assumed it was like school in Mexico where the kids would go til 5 ‘o clock at night and all of their homework and everything would be done so that they wouldn’t have responsibilities when they came home to do homework… not understanding that the afterschool program was time to play, basically. So they couldn’t understand why their children weren’t doing well in school.
But they also didn’t know that they were more than welcome to come to the school and try to figure out what was going on so that they could help. For me, you need to be able to help educate people on how the systems work because it is different. Try and give them a hand in figuring it out and learning how they can help and how they can help their families.
I almost feel like these things were inbred in me. You know, my mom was a PTA president, my mom was always involved at my schools and so to me it just seemed normal that that’s what you’re supposed to do. I realized that for some people, that isn’t normal. That isn’t the way things happened in their lives. And it’s not that they don’t want to be involved, it’s just that they don’t know they’re welcome to be involved.
Yep, they just don’t know. But, you know, the diversity brings a lot of neat things. One of the things I love is driving down 9th West from like North Temple to 6th North and looking at the houses. They’re bright colors and they’re cheerful. And they’ll have like this bright blue house next to this bright pink house, right next to this bright orange house, and then… and I love it. I love the color.
I love to look at people’s yards and see how they decorate them. You know, the people who love flowers a lot and so even during the winter, they’ve got their fake flowers out front. You know [laughing]. And different statues that are probably from where they were from originally and things. And it’s just, I don’t know it’s quirky and it’s neat, and it’s funky and it’s kitchy and I love it. I just love it.
Everybody Says Hello!
The immigrant population is pretty large. I was looking at the statistics recently. And it’s actually kind of hard to figure out for sure because of legal issues for some people. They aren’t here legally and therefore they don’t get documented.
But thinking along my street, we have a family from Mexico. We have us, we’re Caucasian. We have Ray and Dali who are American but of Mexican descent. Clarence and Beth, Caucasian. Ponch and Elisia are Hispanic. Kevin, Caucasian, grew up in the house he lives in now. And then there’s the duplex and there’s such high turnover that I don’t even know who’s living there anymore. Then there’s another Caucasian family and a Hispanic family.
The apartment in the corners, we have a lot of families that are refugees from Somalia living there which is really cool. One day we were driving home and they were having a wedding ceremony out in the front yard. We stopped. [laughing]. We stopped. I mean, here’s all these Somalis in their beautiful bright colorful clothing and they’ve got these big fans made from palm tree leaves. And they’re singing and they’re happy, and it was like, ‘How cool was that?’ And this is happening down the street from me! [laughing].
And they didn’t mind us watching. When I was in class last, listening to Muna, she was talking about how in her country people are very friendly and they say hello to each other and how she doesn’t see that here in the States. You don’t see that very often, unless you’re in your own little immediate community because people are afraid of each other.
A lot of the folks who’ve emigrated from Somalia don’t have vehicles and there’s an Albertson’s 3 maybe 4 blocks away. They walk there everyday to get groceries and then take them home. It is probably very common in Somalia to buy your food on a daily basis buying what you need. Every morning when I’d be out getting my car ready and getting kids in the car to go to school, some of these Somali women would be walking down the street. I’d always say hello to them and they would just light up because somebody said hello to them.
You know, their kids would be riding up and down the street on these cool new bikes they just got. I’d say, ‘Hey guys!’ And it was amazing what a difference that made because their faces would just light up and they’d smile and they’d say hello. I don’t think many neighbors would take that opportunity. Because they’re probably going, ‘Well they don’t speak English.’ Everybody says hello! [laughing] All you have to do is say hi and smile at somebody. It makes all the difference in the world.
Everybody in My Neighborhood is Important to Me
There’re always challenges. A big challenge we’re facing right now is with the North Temple rebuild; and so Salt Lake City wanting to turn North Temple into a Grand Boulevard and an entrance to the city. I’m all for it. I think that’s a good thing. I think it’s been a long time coming because North Temple is the gateway to the city from the airport. It’s a shame that people’s first view is as crappy as it looks. But the challenge in doing that is making sure that gentrification doesn’t occur. Revitalization is good; gentrification, not so much. Because then you end up losing the people who are already living there because they get priced out of their homes either through tax assessment and their property values going up, or because they no long feel that they fit in.
So I think one of the challenges is to have this good development occur and have these hopefully good services that we’re lacking on the west side right now come with that development. At the same time, I don’t want my 85 year old neighbors to have to move out of their home because they can’t afford their taxes anymore.
So I’d like to see the city do something like California did several years ago. I think it was called Proposition 1, where your taxes were grandfathered so that you could remain in your home. Because, everybody in my neighborhood is important to me. They’re why I’m there. Clarence and Beth built their house almost 60 years ago and moved into it as a newlywed couple and raised their children there. They brought their grandchildren home to there. I’m hoping that’s where their lives end because that’s the way it should be as long as you’re able to maintain and take care of yourself.
I don’t want to lose those neighbors because they’ve seen the history of the neighborhood. They’re the ones who told me all about the previous occupants of my house, you know. They knew all the neighborhood gossip. There are also young families that are just starting out the way we were, it’s an affordable neighborhood still. The nice thing about young couples moving in is that it might be their ‘starter’ home, (which is what we said our house was.. and here we are 18 years later) but they might end up loving the neighborhood and seeing that they can actually really make a difference and participate in things and then they wanna stay.
In 5 Years
In 5 years, I would like to see TRAX going to the airport and North Temple revitalized. Revitalization will mean that vacant buildings will be filled with businesses. The city can usually turn it into a redevelopment area, a designated redevelopment area. This means that existing businesses can get low interest loans from the city to do cosmetic changes to make their buildings and properties look better. It also means that a lot of times you can bring new businesses in because property prices and leases would be lower. We are currently missing services. We have no real mass retailer on the northwest side The closest thing is Wal-Mart on the 13th South and 3rd West.
With the TRAX going in, I also think that that’s going to encourage the community to become more walkable. I envision people walking to North Temple to get on TRAX and leaving their cars home. The nice thing about people walking in neighborhoods and being out and about is that helps deter crime because the criminals see that people are walking around and that they’re keeping an eye on things.
In 5 years, I also see more owner occupied housing. I just have this gut feeling that more people are going to be moving back into the city from the suburbs because even though housing prices in Salt Lake City in general are higher than they are in the suburbs, you can usually get a bigger house, a bigger lot out South or out West than you can right in the city itself, I think people are getting tired of commuting.
I think that the whole City Creek project that’s happening downtown is going to bring a lot more jobs into the downtown area and therefore more people are going to want to be moving into that immediate area so that they don’t have to commute. The City Creek project, or Downtown Rising project, is where they leveled downtown and now they’re building it back up [laughing]. ‘Well we blew up downtown and now we’re making it nice.’ [laughing]
Expectations
Oh I definitely feel there are expectations. I think everybody expects everybody else to be a good neighbor. And in that meaning, keeping your yard looking nice, kinda doing unto others as you would have done unto you; living by the golden rule which is something we should all do. And pretty much that’s it; I mean just maintenance type stuff. Which, again it’s an education issue. You know, you take somebody who’s lived in an apartment their whole life, and all of a sudden they own a home. They don’t know they’re supposed to mow the lawn. They don’t know they’re supposed to be shoveling the walks. They’ve never had to do these things before. There’s always been an apartment manager or a landlord or somebody who was out doing those things. So you know, a little friendly, [whispering] ‘You know you’re supposed to shovel you’re snow.’ [laughing]
There are a lot of neighbors from other parts of the community that complain that people aren’t doing it. And I say, ‘Well have you told them they’re supposed to?’ [laughing]. I mean, you gotta think about it, did this person emigrate here from another country? Or are they a first time home owner who may not understand these things? I mean imagine their surprise when they start getting utility bills where they’ve never had them before because everything was included in their rent.
Take a Walk on the West Side, People
If there’s one thing I’d like outsiders to know about my neighborhood is that it’s not scary! It’s not scary. I wouldn’t have stayed there for 18 years if it was scary. It’s been through rough times, absolutely. But, people just need to come down and see what’s there. I mean, there’s so much that can be offered. And there’re such amazing people that live there.
I really feel that my life is richer because I’ve lived on the West side. So, take a walk on the West side, people! [laughing]. But I think people would be… well, you read the blogs. You see what people say. And you see what people say whenever there’s a crime committed, ‘Oh deport them!’ It’s a white guy! Who’s an American citizen! Where do we deport him to, Nebraska?
But you know, people’s perceptions are really, really bad. Whenever the media shows something bad on television, you can bet that 85% of the time, it’s something bad that happened on the West side. So even if that exact same crime or problem is happening on the East side, they come to the west side and portray it being down there. I really hate how the media perpetuates people’s fear of the west side.
I’ve had people, when events have happened at the Fairgrounds, come to park in front of my house and I’d be out working in the yard or something and they’ll say, ‘Is it safe to park here?’ And I’ll look at them and say, ‘Well, I park there every night!’ [laughing]. ‘So, I kinda think it is.’ [laughing]. ‘But, if you’re worried, you should probably pay to park.’ Give them some revenue.
But yeah I get very frustrated with that. I get very frustrated with media representation. I get very frustrated with every time anything that does happen on the West side is portrayed in the media, immediately everybody thinks it’s a minority who caused this problem.
I get tired of people telling me that my crime rates are higher than they are anywhere else. If they would take half a minute to check their facts, the crime rates in my neighborhood are lower than they are in Sugar House, the Avenues, Capitol Hill. We have one of the lowest crime rates in the city.
So, I wish people wouldn’t just spout off what their parents used to say and what they’ve heard and instead look at facts. I hope that this project can help to dispel some of those misperceptions.
