The first occurred in 1993, after an elderly white man was shot and killed near his home in a robbery by two black men, one a neighborhood resident. People were just scared. The other occurred three years later when a black real estate woman was showing a neighborhood home to another woman, and both were raped. It's not that such things don't take place all over, but such things hadn't happened before in Ashburn that anyone could remember, Philbin said. And bringing race into the mix alters people's thinking.
People are more aware of crime.
Philbin said the sense of panic has passed, but the fact is that in each of the six years Ashburn has had the highest single-family housing sales of any community in Chicago, the peak being 759 in 1996, according to the Chicago Association of Realtors. The group said 703 single-family homes were sold in 1998. That increase of 11 percent, however, is below the citywide average rise of 19 percent over the same period. And some people clearly feel racial change has lowered their property values. The neighborhood is going black, and that's what happens in a neighborhood that changes.