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Loida Casares Ruiz

Wife, Mother, Writer, Advertising Manager

Loida Casares Ruiz grew up in Northeast Houston. She graduated from the University of Houston with a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism and Minor in English. She received a Master of Arts in Communication in 2001. She works in advertising by day and is a mother, wife, and writer by night. She has al...

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Living Inside the Loop

Shoegirl's Corner

One of the things I am most passionate about, living in a big city like Houston, is living in the city.  I am passionate about both the positive side of it, as well as the negative points.

I remember when I was pregnant with my first child, having a conversation with an advertiser and a co-worker about living in the city versus living in the suburbs. They both adamantly believed that living in the suburbs was the better choice for raising a family. They thought the city was too dangerous and that the schools weren’t very good.

After that conversation I read somewhere that kids who grow up in the suburbs had a higher probability of drug and alcohol abuse.  I pondered this phenomenon and wondered if where we live really makes a difference. Or is it what they see in the home growing up and how involved parents are in children’s lives?

I had this conversation with my best friend, who also grew up in the inner city, and she agreed that where we grew up made no difference as to whether we smoked, drank or used drugs. What made a difference were our parents and the rules set in our homes. Besides, we reasoned, maybe growing up seeing it in the streets as much as we did made us abhor it even more. We got to see first hand what it did to people and it represented a life we didn’t want for ourselves. Growing up in poor homes we wanted more and drug use represented the opposite of success for us.

My husband lived in the city when he was a little boy and he got into his share of trouble with friends. That is, as much trouble as you could get into in the ‘70s, which doesn’t compare to the trouble kids get into today. In the ‘80s his parents decided to move them out to what was then a really new suburb. He doesn’t think it made a difference. Kids who are trouble and who have no direction at home live everywhere. He met quite a few of them in the suburbs.

So now we are raising our children in the city, or “inside the loop,” as we say in Houston. We believe that the home makes a difference, as do the programs in the schools. I’ve talked about my belief in the Magnet program. I really believe that kids can get as good of, or a better, education in our inner city schools through the Magnet program.

But to make living in the city work people have to be involved in their communities. That’s one of the reasons why the Neighbor’s Project really interested me, when they picked up a link to my personal blog on their blog ,a while back, regarding gentrification. I was thrilled to see a non-profit organization like this one giving back to their communities in this way. Check out their Neighbors Checklist.