part of the problem.

We've lived in this house well over 4 years now, and the neighborhood is changing. I don't know how much it was accelerating before we adopted Leela last year; now that I have a roommate who will literally start jumping up and down and barking at me if not walked soon enough after eating, I see the change very clearly. Houses do change hands, it's true, but mostly what I see is Latino families moving out.

I'd never bothered to think about it, but it takes a much longer time to move out than to move in. Moving in, your new place ingests whatever boxes and couches you've chosen to bring with you, and you put the bed together and unpack a couple pots and then you're officially living there.

Moving out, especially as a tenant, should just be the mirror end of the process, but instead it drags on and on. Maybe your housemate leaves some stuff behind. Maybe you like your new girlfriend more than she hates your couch. Stuff has to be Freecycled, or put out through Craigslist, or left out on the curb. If you're using the Friends & Family Moving Company, just moving stuff takes days and days, depending on when your someone's co-worker or relative has a truck available. Then the place has to be cleaned up enough to get the security deposit back.

So it takes a week or two or three, and the dog routes are arbitrary enough that I rarely pass a house less than once every week or two. The people on the streets are more white and Asian, with some black and Southeast Asian. More dogs and babies being walked; fewer poorly-behaved, stir-crazy dogs barrelling into their deadbolt-weight screen doors as we go past. Cars become newer, unmodified, European: Mini, Fiat, BMW, Volvo, Audi.

The problem with gentrification is that it's an inevitable outcome of having cities where people can buy and sell real estate. The Latino couple who raised their kids in this house, before retiring to Gilroy to be full-time absentee slumlords, were going to sell the house, one way or another. There was no scenario in which that didn't happen. Probably flippers wouldn't have bought it--too much work for too little profit--but the way it had appreciated, its days as a run-down low-income rental property were over.

The neighborhood does better when the homes are cared for: after the two very exciting police incidents in the first few months, our intersection is quieter, and seems to be calmer every time Anna has some dismal trees removed, or has a fence put up, or engineers the window replacements, or gets the house painted.

The evenings smell less and less like delicious Mexican food, though. We're losing so much diversity, and I don't know where it ends up.

I'm betting it's gonna be messy.