Marketplace - American Public Media

When first reported last night, news was that there'd been an earthquake near the Korean peninsula. Then the political scientists took over from the seismologists and the tremor became North Korea's third nuclear test. But given the impoverished state of the country and the fact that building weapons is pretty expensive, how can North Korea afford it?

"The economy is certainly a decrepit economy but it is in the range of $1 billion in terms of annual production," says Georgetown Asian studies professor Victor Cha. "In addition, they devote about 30 percent of the entire nation's resources to the military and to the development of weapons systems."

"So," he adds, "their people are starving, but they are able to do this."

North Korea gets its money by selling minerals to the Chinese but, says Cha, a lot of its financing comes from "front businesses" run by the military that are both legal and illegal, including the sales of black market pharmaceuticals and cigarettes.

More economic sanctions are expected from the United Nations.

Survivalist used to be just another way of saying right-wing extremist who either hated the government, thought the world would end...or both.

But then Hurricane Katrina hit, the economy collapsed, and Superstorm Sandy devastated New York City and New Jersey.

“People are feeling anxiety about the economy, the threat of pandemics, you name it," says Jim Rawles who runs the website SurvivalBlog. “Preparedness has become big business.”

Sales have only continued to grow at the Ready Store, an online firm that sells emergency preparedness supplies.

“The most expensive thing we sell is a year supply of food. It’s about $3,500,” says marketing director Jonathan Dick.

Dick estimates consumers spend half a billion dollars a year on things like water storage tanks, shelters, battery-powered radios and of course food rations.

And then there are all the trade shows, like the Self Reliance Expo, run by Ron Douglas, an entrepreneur in Colorado. Douglas says visitors can attend a broad array of classes.

“Soap-making, candle-making, I think we have bread-baking...full-on gardening classes. Raising rabbits,” he says.

Douglas -- who charges $10 for a two-day pass to the Expo -- says he’s seen his crowds swell from several thousand a few years ago, to more than 10,000 these days. You don’t have to tell him that this self-reliance industry is becoming more mainstream, he sees it.

“You’ll see a guy sitting three in dreadlocks and flip-flops and two seats down is a camoed-out guy, and two seats down from him is a mother with a stroller,” he says.

When it comes to marketing though, Jonathan Dick at the Ready Store says the industry still has some work to do.

“If you start shopping around, you’ll notice there is a lot of doom and gloom out there. And frankly, I think it’s a lot of people trying to get people to buy stuff by making them afraid,” he says.

Dick says in a way, loading up on solar panels, extra food and equipment isn’t much different than an insurance policy that customers -- hopefully -- won’t ever need.

But if they do...

Thank goodness I got married in olden times -- when the big decision was not whether to make your wedding website password-protected. When the words "page view" and "unique visitors" were not wedding lingo. When you didn't have to brand your own love story.

Have you clicked on one of these sites? Forgive me, but some are more entertaining than the wedding itself. There are polls asking guests to vote on the first dance; pop-up tabs making it easy to pin photos on Pinterest; credits naming the bride's hairstylist; links to PayPal for "honeyfund" contributions; and breaking news tidbits from the couple's trip to register at Target, perhaps, or a dress update.

And pity the couple who didn't "meet cute," as they say in Hollywood. Because the centerpiece is almost always the blow-by-blow account -- or in some cases, the blow-by-blow video -- detailing the proposal or the "how we met" story.

The sites are so popular that a new form of wedding entertainment has emerged: mocking others' websites. As one 30-something on the wedding circuit told me, "if I don't already know how you met, why am I going to your wedding?"

Here's another issue not faced by the mother-of-the-bride generation: what to name the website. With more than two million weddings a year, not every Michael and Jessica (the most popular names of the 1980s) can get their top choice.

But if you choose a URL that celebrates your special love and doesn't include your names, forgetful guests may end up at the site of some other Mike and Jessica, reading their adorable story -- or even worse, clicking the link for their Bed, Bath & Beyond registry.

Sure, some sites are tacky. But they do cut down on calls. As one bride confessed, before she got her site running, her aunts called endlessly with questions. Now? She simply directs them to her FAQ page.

Netflix is teaming up with DreamWorks to create its first original cartoon series. The new Netflix cartoon will be based on the DreamWorks movie, Turbo, about a snail who becomes super fast through a freak accident, and dreams of becoming a race car driver.

Netflix spokesman Joris Evers says, with the Turbo series, Netflix is shifting more of its focus to kids.

“Last year alone our members streamed more than two billion hours of kids content," says Evers.

Why is kids programming so attractive? It might have something to do with monster hits like Sponge Bob, which generates billions -- making money on and off the screen.

Stuart Levine, TV and features editor at Variety, says a popular show can spawn its own product line.

“You know, the DVD's and the toys and the pillows," he explains,  "and that’s what makes it such a huge hit for both the network and the studio.”

Plus, Levine says, children's shows don’t cost much to make, and a hit like Sponge Bob, can run forever.  

There's a certain magic that comes with reading a good story. Even one that's not about a magical time. Which is to say, the last five years in this economy.

Novelist Jess Walter has a new collection of short stories out about people and the lives they've lived the past five years. "We Live in Water," it's called.

"We are in the midst of a recovery but when I look around my neighborhood I see what I think are yard sales, and then I look closely and I see it's everyone's funiture on the lawn because they have been evicted," says Walter. "So I do think we have left a lot of people underwater as we come out of this -- more than we even realize."

His collection is full of tragic characters -- the homeless, the drug-addicted and those who have lost everything to gambling debts. But it is not without humor. "I look in those lives for moments of redemption and light and humor," he says. "That's the thing that always draws me to a story is humor and, thankfully, you don't need to make $80,000 a year to have a sense of humor."

President Obama called for stronger gun control laws last night in his State of the Union address -- and one of the big ideas being talked about is closing what's called the "gun show loophole."

In many states, it's completely legal for a private seller -- you or me -- to sell a gun to someone without running a background check. Garen Wintemute, who heads the Violence Prevention Research Program at UC Davis, explains:

"No identification. No waiting period. No record. Cash on the table, and you're gone with the gun."

That kind of transaction does happen at gun shows, but it also happens outside them. It is easy to find buyers and sellers online, for instance.

Daniel Webster, who directs the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy Research, says, for that reason, he avoids the term "gun show loophole."

"'Loophole makes it sound like it is a tiny, little exception," he says. "The reality is it is a huge gap in the law."

Last weekend, I attended a big gun show in Chantilly, Virginia. An ad read, "Get Your Guns While You Still Can!"

Jerry Cochran, a federally licensed firearms dealer who owns two gun shops, had a big booth there. Cochran said he avoids the term "gun show loophole," but for a different reason: It doesn't exist.

"People listen to the television and the radio, and they think that there's not a background check here, at the gun show. But there is. We've never sold a gun in the 34 years I've been in business without a background check," said Cochran.

Licensed dealers have to do that. But I spotted someone wandering the aisles with a handwritten "for sale" sign -- they were selling their own guns. What bothered Cochran was that many of them weren't licensed.

"If you're going to set up here on a weekly basis, and you're going to sell guns, you ought to have a license and do it the proper way," he said.

But the thing is, under current law, you can't get a federal firearms license if you only do business at gun shows. And if you don't have a license, you can't access the National Instant Criminal Background Check System.

President Obama gives his State of the Union address tonight, and you're likely to hear one of my favorite words a few times: infrastructure. No, really. Robert Puentes, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, follows infrastructure as part of the Metropolitan Policy Program. He says President Obama's State of the Union speeches have been unique in their focus on the topic.

"I mean, infrastructure doesn't usually come up in the State of the Union. Until this president it wasn't really part of the speech," he says.

Investment in infrastructure was a big part of the stimulus package. Remember all those shovel-ready projects?

Puentes says last year's speech was less about getting people jobs with shovels, and signaled more of a shift to big-picture planning.

"Not just spreading money like peanut butter all around the country so everybody gets something," he says, "but focusing on those investments that matter because they're going to result in long-term economic goals."

That's happening, though slowly. Puentes says the Obama administration has been looking hard at systems. One example? How streamlining shipping and freight can expedite an increase in U.S. exports. Last year's speech suggested the end of the war in Iraq meant more money for that kind of thing. The president said he wanted to take money that was being used for the war in Iraq to pay down debt and "do some nation building right here at home."

That's not easy, since war funds cannot simply be shifted over to domestic projects. As for the likelihood that infrastructure projects mentioned in last year's State of the Union -- or this year's -- will get going?

"The reality is that none of those are going to get passed by the Congress," says Chris Krueger, a policy analyst at Guggenheim Securities.

He says even though improved roads might seem easy to agree on, infrastructure spending has been a sticking point for the two major political parties since 2009. Krueger says Democrats see it as more investment, while Republicans call it more failed stimulus.

Until lawmakers build more bridges between each other, no actual bridges are likely to get started.

Most people agree that high-rise housing projects like Cabrini Green needed to be demolished in Chicago. But the neighborhoods where many of the former project residents ended up often weren’t much better than the projects themselves. Moving project residents into new neighborhoods created tensions with established residents and that sometimes led to violence. In fact, some say public housing policy is one of the causes of violence in some poor Chicago neighborhoods.

Jamika Smith lives in a Chicago-style bungalow with her husband and baby daughter on the South Side of the city. But she grew up in a housing project on the city's West Side. As she recalls, it was not such a bad life.

“You could leave your doors open,” Smith says. “Everyone knew each other, and it was just this close-knit community.”

Jamika Smith's daughter, Mariah

But it didn't stay idyllic for long. Soon drugs moved in. Upstanding residents moved out. And life got tougher. “We were just like, oh, they’re hanging out on the corners now,” says Smith. “All of a sudden, you just see the rise of violence in the community. And people just could not walk up and down the streets because they’d get shot.”

Smith moved out of the projects, went to college in Tennessee and eventually ended up in Marquette Park on the Southwest Side -- just in time to greet an influx of residents relocated from demolished housing projects all over the city, many with competing gang affiliations.

“For example, you may  have been Cabrini Green, that’s one gang,” says Smith. “And then you have the Horners, who are another. And you put them all in one community area. Then you have war.”

Such violence has now found its way to Smith’s current neighborhood. Yellow police tape near a blood spot on the pavement marks the area where a 17-year-old boy was shot five times -- just blocks away from Jamika Smith's house.

Blood stains the pavement where a 17-year-old was shot

Chicago is in fact something of a war zone today. More people were killed in the city last year than U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan. But did tearing down the projects cause the recent explosion in violence?

“I think the good news is that after we tore the high rises down, we moved thousands of families into other areas of the city,” says Charles Woodyard, CEO of the Chicago Housing Authority, “and that crime was reduced I think as much as 60 percent at transformation sites.”

By transformation sites, Woodyard means places where the high-rises once stood. And he says that crime didn’t go up in most of the neighborhoods where former project residents moved. “There were a handful of exceptions, though,” Woodyard says, “and it’s all about concentration. What I mean by that is the number of these relocated households compared to the number of households in the neighborhood that they live in.”

Put another way: If too many people from the projects ended up in one neighborhood, there was trouble. But Susan Popkin of the Urban Institute warns against oversimplifying the violence problem in neighborhoods where former project residents now use rent vouchers. “The Section 8 [voucher] holders tend to move to places where rents are low already and crime is already high,” Popkin says.

They went from poor, violent high-rises to poor, violent neighborhoods that already had problems. That did have some effect on the crime rate, she says. Violence was down in 2010, but it would have been down even more in certain neighborhoods if not for the arrival of former project residents. “So I’m not saying there was no effect at all. What I’m saying is that it’s not nearly as big as people think it is.”

A row of houses in Englewood on the Southside

Popkin says that factors like concentrated poverty and the foreclosure crisis shoulder a far larger share of the blame for violence in Chicago. “You have a situation where you have extremely poor people who have a lot of problems all living in one place, and you get a situation that’s not healthy,” she says.  

Wentworth Gardens is a low-rise housing project on the South Side. Many residents are people relocated from other projects across the city.

Reggie Lee Ricks is one of them. On the third floor of one of the buildings, Ricks is doing word puzzles at his mother's kitchen table. His family was the last to leave the infamous Cabrini Green housing project. They were not happy about the move.

“The neighborhood we moved out of, at least we knew everybody,” says Ricks. “You couldn’t get touched. Over here, you can get touched.” 

Moving to Wentworth was supposed to be better for Ricks and his family. But he and his brothers were hassled by gangs that didn't know them, and his mother Annie constantly worries about their safety. “It’s pretty much the same,” says Ricks, 22. “Wherever, you go, it’s going to be the same. People still out here killing each other.”

In fact, for people like Ricks, poverty and violence go hand-in-hand in Chicago. “If everybody had a mansion, don’t you think everybody’d be more happy?” he asks. “But they say money don’t make you happy.”

He says step one is fixing how people live. Maybe then, it wouldn't matter where you ended up.

President Barack Obama is delivering the first State of the Union Address of his new term on Tuesday evening. The address is the president's chance to lay out his agenda for the year ahead. In his address, he is expected to return to his progressive themes heard during the election -- and he is expected to urge Congress to approve more tax revenue increases.

One word we can expect Obama to utter is, of course, 'jobs.' How many have been created under his watch -- remember, over the course of the past four years, the U.S. lost 4 million jobs, then created more than 5 million. Net gain: 1.2 million. The education and health care fields created many of those jobs.

Why? We're getting older and trying to get wiser. But it also may be hard to replace workers in those fields with technology.

"Education and health care are two sectors where location really matters," says economist Ronnie Chatterji at Duke University. "The bedside manner of a physician, for example. Or a teacher being in the same classroom as a student."

Other sectors seeing net job gains included retail, leisure, and energy. Though there are signs of economic improvement, millions of Americans are still struggling to find work. The U.S. created 157,000 jobs in January, but the jobless rate remains stubbornly high at 7.9 percent.

Obama is also expected to address immigration reform in his State of the Union.

Many in tech sector will be watching to see how he address high-skilled immigration. But how high a priority does the administration place on innovation and technology?

"We have a president who is incredibly passionate about the power of technology and innovation to improve government," says White House chief technology officer Todd Park. Park says the government is already working to attract tech entrepreneurs.

"We've actually found a lot of people in government who are very entrepreneurial, who are extremely mission-oriented, brass-knuckled, and want to get things done. We've actually also found that it is incredibly beneficial to bring people from outside government to complement the people that we've got to deliver even better results," says Park.

What topics do you expect Obama to address? Immigration? Afghanistan? Gun control?

What phrases do you think he will say?

"We the people?" Obama used that phrase during his second inaugural address. How about, "great nation?"

It's safe to say that words like "Congress" and "jobs" are givens.

Print out our handy Bingo cards and play along while the president addresses the nation. Click on the links in the sidebar to see larger versions of our cards for you to print.

During the bubble, many snapped up properties in neighborhoods they thought were going to become more affluent. But instead of moving up, Chicago's Englewood neighborhood has been spiraling down.

Perhaps every successful politician promises employment. But looking back at the president's first term, where have the jobs actually come from?

Today marks four years to the day since the last fatal crash of a commercial airliner in the U.S. In addition, the New York Times points out that last year was the safest for global air travel since 1945.

And finally, And finally, back by popular demand, a Valentines Day invitation from New York City's Environmental Protection Department: Come tour the sewage treatment plant in Brooklyn. Last year's lovers got to take in a foul odor from the plant's digester egg which breaks down waste into sludge and gas.

One big piece of today's economic news will come from Washington tonight when President Obama delivers his state of the union address. Juli Niemann, an analyst with Smith Moore & Company, shares her thoughts on what Obama will highlight and the state of jobs and the economy.

Much of the excitement over social networks has been based around the idea that they can sell targeted ads and maybe eventually things. Well, “social commerce” is becoming a bit more real. Starting Wednesday, American Express customers who link their cards to their Twitter accounts will be able to make purchases with a tweet.

Here’s how it works: American Express will release a list of things you can buy as favorites on their Twitter page -- think a Kindle Fire or an X-box. Each product will have a special hashtag. You tweet that hashtag, along with a second confirmation tweet from American Express, then the product gets mailed to your billing address.

“Everything happens within the Twitter eco-system,” says Doug Pierce, the head of research at Digital Due Diligence. “So there’s no going to the merchant site, no fumbling to find your card. It’s really simple, seamless.”

Pierce says it’s seamless because a lot of marketing already happens on Twitter and so that’s where you may first find a product you want. But the new payment system may be more about social media cred, than just about making money.

“It’s something to help spread the word about what can be done and how to do it, ” says Ingrid Lunden, a staff writer for TechCrunch. “And how cool and hip American Express is, rather than something that really will generate massive returns.”

Lunden says at least for now, what you buy with this system will likely be limited, as will the number of people who choose to participate.

The Wall Street Journal and other media are reporting that the people who brought you the iPhone are working on an iWristwatch. While wearable electronics seem to be the next must-have gadget, it's not clear whether Apple wants to jump into a market that is in its infancy.

"The expectation is that if Apple is going to do it, they are going to go above and beyond, they are going to make it amazing in some way that it was previously not amazing," says Molly Wood,  executive editor at CNET. "Honestly, the biggest step they could take in that direction would be to make a smart watch that is, in fact, attractive."

Though Wood is skeptical that Apple will put out a new product in this area any time soon, she says that smart watch makers, such as Pebble and Martian, are likely nervous about what an Apple iWatch would mean for the market.

So what would a smart watch do? Developers are working on devices that alert the wearer of incoming phone calls, make outgoing calls, and sync up with smartphones.

"I think wearables have a lot of potential, but I think the watch is actually still limited because of the screen size, and you don't want it to light up in the movies. People buy watches for style, not necessarily all these functions" says Wood.

Anywhere you look, the trend seems clear. One forecast shows smartphone use will double to two billion around the world in the next two years. Another shows 700 million phone/computers will be sold this year. No doubt many businesses look at those numbers and think: 'We need a mobile app, ASAP'.

That's where Alex Moazed comes in. He and his team at Applico are app-makers, catering to the likes of AT&T and NBC. His first big hit was an app for the New York City transit system. Since then, he's realized that companies need to think beyond just a mobile app:

"A lot of people rushed to the market, and said, 'Well, we have this web product, let's just extend it to mobile'," says Moazed. "But then if you really take a step back and think about what mobile allows you to do, that's where you can embrace innovation, you can really start to rethink your entire business model."

Moazed says successful businesses are already starting to create mobile innovation groups to enhance their business models and prepare for the future.

Today marks four years to the day since the last fatal crash of a commercial airliner in the U.S. In addition, the New York Times points out that last year was the safest for global air travel since 1945.

According to Keith Mackey, an aviation safety consultant in Ocala, Florida, there have been several key technological advancements in airline safety, including better weather radar, new plane tracking systems, and better equipped planes.

In addition, Mackey says the airline industry and regulators are learning from mistakes.

"One of the things that we learned from our last accident, in Buffalo four years ago, is some of the airlines were hiring very inexperienced pilots, and the FAA is taking steps now to change that," says Mackey.

Who's that sitting over near First Lady Michelle Obama tonight at the President State of the Union address? Word is it's going to be Apple CEO Tim Cook.

The State of the Union speech will no doubt address jobs and immigration reform. But how high a priority does the administration place on innovation and technology?

"We have a President who is incredibly passionate about the power of technology and innovation to improve government," says White house Chief Technology Officer Todd Park.

Park says the government is already working to attract tech entrepreneurs.

"We've actually found a lot of people in government who are very entrepreneurial, who are extremely mission-oriented, brass-knuckled, and want to get things done. We've actually also found that it is incredibly beneficial to bring people from outside government to complement the people that we've got to deliver even better results," says Park.

On Thursday, the President will take some of his State of the Union ideas and do a Google Plus online hangout, 4:50 in the afternoon eastern. Google Plus will be town hall style, but the questions will be curated and vetted. Some politicians have become leery of the free-for-alls that can happen in some online formats.

North Korea television confirmed this morning that the country had successfully carried out a third nuclear test, the first since Kim Jong-un took power. An international monitoring agency in Austria said the explosion was twice as big as North Korea's previous test in 2009, despite allegedly involving a smaller, "more advanced" device.

North Korea's foreign ministry has threatened even stronger action -- though it didn't say what -- if the United States kept up its hostility.

The BBC's Jon Sudworth in Beijing says a test like this would have cost billions of dollars and that's money North Korea really needs to feed its own citizens. The country has struggled to feed its own people and regularly needs food aid in order to stave off famine.

The test has been strongly condemned in the region. South Korea and Japan are pushing for even harsher sanctions. According to Sudworth, the Chinese response is harder to read. On paper the Chinese government has strongly condemned the North Koreans, but Sudworth suggests that some military hawks in China may welcome a little sabre-rattling by its closest regional ally as a message to the U.S.

The state legislature in Ohio continues hearings today on a new budget with some interesting tax ideas. Gov. John Kasich's (R) proposal cuts income taxes and it lowers the sales tax. But there's a catch: It levies sales taxes on a big list of services for the first time.

Here's a partial list of the services that could get hit with a 5 percent sales tax: coin-operated laundry, dating services, investment counseling, online downloads, movie tickets, funeral services, and haircuts.

Demetrius Williams, who runs Ambitions Barber Shop in Cleveland, is no fan of this idea. He says some of his customers complain they're already paying too much for their kids' haircuts.

"They say, 'Hey how much is a haircut?' And you tell them $10, it's like, 'Woah, $10? For a child? He doesn't have $10 worth of hair.'"

Most policy experts support the idea of taxing services. Zach Schiller, at liberal think tank Policy Matters Ohio, says if you want to keep state governments running, you've got to do it. But he has a big problem with the governor's plan to cut income taxes 20 percent. He says that unfairly favors the wealthy.

"The people in the top 1 percent will receive, on average, more than $10,000 a year in a tax cut. People in the bottom fifth will on average pay $63."

Schiller says Ohio should tax the wealthy more, not less. According to Schiller, state funds have been cut back in the past few years for local government and social services. He says right now, what low-income people really need is tax relief.

"If we go ahead and start taxing movie tickets and haircuts and so on-low-income people who can least afford it, we should take steps to protect them."

State tax commissioner Joe Testa says many of the services that would be newly taxed are professional services used by wealthier people.

"We're talking about hiring lawyers and accountants and engineers and architects, and markerters."

Testa says Ohio's been moving down this road for decades.

"Two-thirds of all consumption is services as opposed to goods. Whereas back when sales tax was started, back in the '30s, it was almost the opposite."

Hawaii and New Mexico already tax more than one hundred services. Several states, including Louisiana and Minnesota, have floated their own service tax ideas. Experts say this shift has been a long time coming.

UPDATED (9:15am EST): Publishing company McGraw-Hill swung to loss in the last quarter, but it's bigger problem could be a Justice Department lawsuit related to the housing bust and financial crisis.

The federal government claims Standard & Poor's inflated credit ratings on mortgage-backed securities that turned out to be worthless.

"The government's allegations are as grave as one could imagine," says securities attorney Lance Kimmel. Rather than a slap on the wrist, he says a $5 billion penalty would destroy McGraw-Hill, which earned less than a billion dollars in 2011.

That profit fell to $437 in 2012, as McGraw-Hill reported a $216 million loss for the fourth quarter.

"S&P, facing what I think would be a death knell, has no reason to settle, they're in a fight for their life," Kimmel adds.

McGraw-Hill already refused to settle once. And it could be tough for the government to prove that S&P manipulated ratings and hid that from investors.

"I think the government's going to have a hard time on this one. Fraud is always a bit of an amorphous concept," says Kimmel.

The other two major ratings agencies, Moody's and Fitch, also gave top grades to bad mortgage bonds, but so far the government has not sued them.

When President Obama went to Newtown, Conn., last month after the horrific shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School, many people in Chicago wondered when he would visit the Windy City. Over 300 Chicago Public School students were shot last year, 24 of them fatally. This Friday, the president will be coming to Chicago and he’ll be giving a speech all about gun violence and murder. The president's attention to the problem will be appreciated by people like Bob Bennett, who has seen the value of his home in a South Side neighborhood plummet as a result of gun violence.

Houses on a block near Bob Bennett's home in Englewood

As the housing bubble grew, so did the appetite for homes in poorer neighborhoods in major cities like Chicago. Almost 13 years ago, Bennett was one of many homebuyers who bet big on places they thought were on the way up. In fact, the inside of Bennett’s 2,000-square-foot, five-bedroom home in Englewood on the South Side of Chicago is something to behold. The place is decorated with beautiful paintings, leather couches, hardwood floors and granite countertops. But it’s another story when you look outside his back window.

“This house right here?” Bennett says, pointing out his kitchen window to a distressed property across the alley. “Board up to right, board up to the left. So, that’s three we’re looking at right outside the window.”

In fact, abandoned houses and empty lots line the streets around Bennett's home. When he bought the two-story frame house in 2000, he was betting that Englewood was about to make a dramatic comeback. He'd seen it happen in other historically black neighborhoods on the South Side.

“I was looking for a neighborhood that I thought was going to be the next Bronzeville,” he says. “And obviously that unfortunately has not really happened.”

Bennett bet wrong on gentrification. Instead of coming up, Englewood's been spiraling down. Home prices are off over 50 percent from five years ago. And the neighborhood has one of the highest murder rates in the city.

“If I had it to do all over again,” Bennett says. “No. To be honest with you, I would not have moved here.”

But neither is he willing to sell the home for pennies on the dollar. “I’m not just going to give my house away,” he says.

Bennett serves loose-leaf tea in his kitchen

Critics of gentrification say people like Bob Bennett push poor residents out. But city officials like Alderman Willie Cochran say middle class pioneers like Bennett are just what Englewood needs.

“The most important thing about that character in the community is that they have stabilized the community to the point where  I can advocate for reinvestment and redevelopment,” says Cochran, who represents Chicago’s 20th Ward, which includes Englewood.

Cochran says he needs well-educated people who make good money to help him attract new business and job opportunities.

But Bennett says the first step to economic prosperity is not attracting more middle-class families. It's stopping the violence in Englewood.

“It destroys any economic growth that you could hope for,” says Bennett. “It destroys property values. It can totally destroy a community.”

Get rid of the violence, he says... and a more prosperous neighborhood will follow.