Monica Yant Kinney: Gentrified only partially: Uneasy state

Everyone knows when a not neighborhood becomes a hot neighborhood. It's when young professionals decamp on once-sketchy streets, opening gastro-pubs, planting community gardens, and installing brushed-pewter art deco address numbers in front of $400,000 remodeled rowhouses.

But what happens when robberies and an undercurrent of unease remind transplants that the extreme makeover remains incomplete? How much of any old neighborhood should newcomers expect to stick around in perpetuity?

That's a question being asked by Kathy Henley, a 24-year-old medical student renting at 20th and Webster Streets in an area so in flux, people can't decide whether to call it Graduate Hospital, South of South, or Southwest Center City. (Specifically, between South Street, Washington Avenue, Broad Street, and the Schuylkill.)

"We've been here two years with no issues," Henley tells me in her living room, with Christmas cards still displayed on exposed brick walls. "But then my friend got broken into at 21st and Montrose. They took his guitar and TV."

Henley panicked. She had nothing irreplaceable in her house except a satchel of jewelry belonging to three generations of her family, including her late parents.

"I can't risk those rings being stolen," she thought. "So I'll put them in my backpack, because it's always with me."

On Sept. 8 at 3:30 p.m., Henley parked her Nissan Pathfinder a few feet from her front door on the narrow side street. In the moment she stepped inside while unloading the SUV, someone opened the vehicle's door, reached in the backseat, and made off with the backpack containing a laptop, camera, and a white-gold, pear-shaped diamond engagement ring engraved 11-22-74.

The ring had belonged to Henley's mother, who died in 2005 of multiple sclerosis. The drawstring bag also held antiques with "gorgeous filigree patterns and pavé diamonds," her late father's simple gold wedding band, a World War II-era engagement ring, and a ring her grandmother had worn in high school.

"The policeman scolded me," Henley recalls. "He said, 'What are you doing leaving your car open even for a minute? Do you really trust your neighbors?' "

She does, did. Shouldn't she?

Andrew Dalzell, 25, runs the South of South Neighborhood Association and raves about the area's diversity. But the group's website tracks crime trends and warns new arrivals not to be naive.

"If someone breaks into your house, don't clean up the glass. Wait for police to arrive so they can dust for prints," reads one safety committee report. "This neighborhood may have become wealthier, but it is still dangerous."

Jon Adler owns the three-year-old Beauty Shop Cafe at 20th and Fitzwater Streets. The entrepreneur celebrates the metamorphosis, lamenting only that he no longer lives where he works: "We got priced out of the neighborhood."

Better to be priced out than driven out? After making me an iced Peppermint Pattie latte, Adler's employee Drew Taurisano mentions that thieves pried the sill off his window Tuesday night while he slept.

"They lifted a 32-inch flat-screen TV right off the wall. They even took the remote."

Across the street at the four-month-old Raja Yoga, Wes Tudor says he's excited about adding a Mommy and Me class. "I feel completely at home," but he's still debating whether to open the curtains at the street-level studio and let the neighborhood see inside.

"That's what we still struggle with here," he says, "the balance between security and visibility."

As for Henley?

She prays the thief sold her ring to a pawnshop or jeweler who reads this and contacts me or the police.

"My lease is up in February," she says, sadly. She plans to move.