Maybe they re the family whose members have almost paid off their single-wide mobile home and are on the brink of something better. In short, there is no average resident of the area considered the North Side for these weekly pages. The area is diverse, with at least 20 neighborhoods that stretch as far north as Orange Grove Road and as far south as Grant Road. Some of those neighborhoods are predominantly low-income, with unusually high levels of residents who rent rather than own. That s a bad sign, social scientists say, because renters are less likely than homeowners to fix up their homes or improve their neighborhoods.
Some neighborhoods are predominantly affluent, dotted with large homes on large lots.
Kevin Daily, president of the Flowing Wells Neighborhood Association and Community Coalition at the North Side s western edge, describes his neighborhood as mostly working class. It also is unusually close-knit because all elementary schools within the Flowing Wells School District feed into one junior high and one high school. The neighborhood encompasses the entire school district and spans roughly from Ina to Grant Roads and from Fairview to Shannon roads. Many residents of the area are particularly concerned with crime, and have been developing strong relationships with police, he said. On the other edge of the North Side, Jim Herzfeld is equally proud of the Richland Heights West neighborhood, which is between Campbell and Mountain avenues and Prince and Fort Lowell roads.