Living in Charlestown has its obvious advantages and disadvantages. The neighborhood speaks for itself on its own everyday to everyone living here and for all those who come to visit. Frankly, it is a great place to live and it is a great place to visit.
It is also a safe place to live and a safe place to visit – unless of course you are living in the city owned and run developments, which used to be known and called projects.
There were two unsolved homicides inside the projects last year. And a cursory reading of the Boston Police crime report from week to week reveals that a huge percentage of violent crime is committed inside the projects with a lesser amount of the crimes committed throughout the neighborhood.
Bottom line, and statistics recently released prove this, crime is not rampant here. Crime is not pervasive. Violent crime explodes now and then – not very often, really – but often enough to remind all of us that crime is a reality we all have to live with.
The vast preponderance of violent crime in this neighborhood is violent crime committed by violent people against other violent people. That’s in the first instance.
In the second instance, nearly all-violent crime in this neighborhood is drug related in one way or another.
Violent crime is also a manifestation of those who carry guns and knives as if to improve the condition of their lives or their safety.
The Charlestown of today is not a violent place and yet there is violence here nearly all the time.
But it is, as we have pointed out, contained violence, prevalent in the same places nearly all the time throughout the year.
The neighborhood is less violent and less paranoid than in the past.
It is a healthier, prettier, better place to live and to bring up children than ever before.
The vast majority of project families are struggling to get by, to raise their kids, to get educations, to find jobs and steady employment and to get up and out. This is the American Dream and it remains alive and well in Charlestown.
Project dwellers aren’t looking for homicides on their doorsteps or walkways. They don’t approve of drug use or violence of any kind – but it is there and it rears its ugly head more often than everyone cares to tolerate.
As a neighborhood, Charlestown succeeds as one of the safest places in Greater Boston.
The violence that rings out from time to time shocks all of us but it doesn’t damage life here to the point where people want to move out.
Charlestown in its present incarnation is a place sought after to live in, with the highest prices paid for its real estate.
Not withstanding the time-to-time outbursts of violent behavior here, Charlestown remains a great place to live in and to visit.