Victimized by Vibrancy & Vandalism

Livable Raleigh was recently contacted by an Historic Glenwood-Brooklyn neighbor. Their community has been suffering from issues related to the Sahara Hookah Bar and it seems ridiculous that the City isn’t able to do more. On top of that the spillover from Glenwood South is getting worse. Please read the email below (names have been removed in the interests of privacy) directed to City Council members and imagine what it’s like to have to put up with this every weekend!

Livable Raleigh calls on the City Council and city administrators to solve this problem quickly and permanently.

This e-mail chain is related, but distinct from the Sahara troubleshooting that is ongoing. As my wife has previously mentioned, we have watched the spillover from Glenwood South deteriorate further over the last year since we moved here. We accept a degree of inconvenience; the occasional bottle thrown in our yard, the occasional public indecency in the form of someone urinating on the tree in front of our yard in the middle of Glenwood Ave (happens ~3x/night), etc. What we do not accept is people routinely breaching, vandalizing and stealing from our property, casually vandalizing city property (street signs) and actively being funneled to our residential neighborhood at 3am directly as a result of city policy. We have lived in Manhattan and Chicago, and I have never seen anything so routine and brazen, all without consequence and in this instance exacerbated by policy. We chose to move here, not because of any direct connection to Raleigh, but because we read all those lists that city officials no doubt covet about Raleigh being a great place to live, a great place to raise a family, and a SAFE place. We feel misled.

To that end, this is not just a complaint, I have two very specific requests that I would appreciate a response to and follow up on. I do not expect this to solve all our issues, but these are imminently addressable and would help:

Immediately revisit the Rideshare pickup policy for Glenwood South. 

This is the single worst policy decision I have ever seen at the local level. I understand the rationale behind it, it’s congested on Glenwood South, but there was seemingly little thought given to the consequences of what would happen and where all of that would go, which are extremely predictable, and we are all living.

You have effectively taken all the foot and car traffic that was at Glenwood at 3am, where there is a police presence and things are actually mildly monitored, and pushed it into the surrounding residential areas, where nothing is monitored and peoples’ homes are. The multiple incidents every single one of us has every single weekend are in part a direct result of this.

Ubers now pickup directly in front of all of our houses leading to noise, loitering, and inevitably damage/trespassing/theft/public urination/etc. Happy to share any of the 20+ videos we have of these types of things over just the last few months, only a handful of which we have bothered to report that rose to especially egregious occasions.

Why is it a good idea to funnel the traffic from the entertainment district built to serve this into residential neighborhoods?  

Secure your parking signs. 

It has seemingly become a sport for this crowd either when they get a ticket or even if not to uproot the signage, hit things with the sign, throw the sign into the road and fairly often, our yards. I’m attaching a video of the latter from last night for your enjoyment, best to listen with audio.

Can we not cement these, or do anything to more securely install them so these individuals can’t rip them out?  Where once there were 4 signs on our one block of Glenwood, there is now 1, which also then defeats the purpose of even having parking restrictions. I have seen the same with surrounding street and stop signs for what it’s worth.

Thank you for your time and I look forward to your follow up regarding these two points.

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