We were urban pioneers 40 years ago, as were my neighbors. Nice little stable neighborhood, a block from downtown.
Now we are fighting repeated attempts from the city to blight our area and make us ripe for land clearance action because they want to build apartments and increase the "hipster" population around the downtown.
I would say that we'll remain as an "UP" house, but the laws in Missouri are very heavily weighed towards the development community.
I remember watching a show on HGTV where a nice looking blonde was buying houses for $1 in Detroit and trying to restore them.
I’m very sorry to hear that. This also happened when we were pioneers in a beautiful little town in NJ in which stunning old Victorian hotels had been turned into homeless shelters. The homeless wandered the streets but we took a chance and bought a home. We were there for 10 years, the neighborhood became horribly gentrified (along with tear downs of the gorgeous older buildings!) and they raised the property taxes through the roof. It’s now a gay and yuppie haven from hell.