While making a visit to Kelvyn Park High School, I drove around the Hermosa Neighborhood for about an hour and a half, block to block just to discover poverty, an incredible lack of resources such as quality food markets, constant liquor store on street corners, currency exchange and payday loan facilities, several laundromat stores around plazas and the community. Segmented assimilation theory focuses on the second generation and will experience upward or downward mobility depending on a number of factors. It depends on its incorporation into society, the type of neighborhood it lives in, social and cultural capital available within the ethnic community and race. The Hermosa neighborhood has an area of 1.154 square miles and has a population …show more content…
The store itself seems neglected, alongside an Aldi that wasn’t too far away. This illustrates that the area is low-income and there is a need for multiple dollar stores nearby. Additionally, there were countless amount of currency exchange facilities, called “PLS Check Cashing”, their purpose and operation is to have the poor rely on them in order to act as a middleman for services such as cashing in government benefits, and unfortunately, preying on the poor with loans such as an auto title loan (See Appendix 9). Liquor stores could be found on almost every block, though they also provide a resource of convenient stores for individuals and families to shop for groceries. As far as the supermarket goes for the neighborhood of Hermosa, is a grocery store called “International Foods” in which it is incredibly small and a Cermak, which has very poor quality food (See Appendix 10). Stopping inside the store showed that much of the food was well-aged. No such thing as an organic foods or retailer anywhere near the area such as Trader Joe's or Whole …show more content…
It was strange to see it the first time, but as I drove around the area, the empty and vacant lots had become numerous and common. Simply, real estate development is non-existent. No new infrastructure is found; buildings are simply left to deteriorate; absolutely no real estate interest. In comparison to Park Ridge which had a huge variety of apartments, houses, condos, and mansions, Hermosa Park just had large apartment complexes with no new infrastructure. Not one single mansion in the area, and the houses don’t seem to show any new signs of new infrastructure as they all share the same bungalow style, Overall, there seems to be no consideration for investing into the