Editor’s Note: Andrew is BWNA vice president and chair of the BWNA Communications Committee.
Thank you to the 72 neighbors who responded to our neighborhood survey sent out in September via e-mail. Through five questions, we learned so much!
There is a wide mix of new and established neighbors, walkability and sense of community are the favorite characteristics of 75 percent of respondents, and our newsletter is a leading source of neighborhood information for residents. The second is a tie between talking to your neighbors and Nextdoor.
In the open-ended question, “What’s the biggest challenge facing our neighborhood?”, we received clear feedback on what’s important to us as Beaumont-Wilshire residents.
The overwhelming theme of your responses was the need for a safe community. Safety showed up in terms of rising incidents of crime, unmarked intersections, and speedy street traffic. While crime is something we’re combatting as a city, BWNA’s transportation committee has been taking feedback from neighbors and working with PBOT to improve traffic safety.
Our neighbors’ expression of community, however, presented itself in three different ways: to increase our sense of community, a desire to create a more stable community, and the need to diversify the community.
Breaking it down, some neighbors believe the biggest challenge is getting to know your neighbors and restoring the fabric of our community in a post-pandemic world. Others voiced the concern that more dense housing and renters will degrade the neighborhood, while a number of respondents shared that we need to expand the accessibility and openness of our neighborhood to more people.
As I see it, we all really care about our neighborhood, notwithstanding differences of opinion regarding characteristics of an ideal community. And of course there will be conflicting elements we cannot control. It’s my hope that regardless of the size of house or number of units, we can see each resident as a neighbor and treat each other with warmth and consideration.