Granny’s Gone to Brooklyn: Grandparents Invade the Hipster Haven

[hrmjustin]

Sonja Sharp

Barbara Standley went through the usual frustrations when she first moved from Phoenix to Greenpoint in 2011: fruitless weeks crawling Craigslist for an affordable apartment and months turned about by the neighborhood’s oddly intersecting streets. Fortunately, the 69-year-old wasn’t alone—the Brooklyn neighborhood best known for Girls and half a dozen just like it are undergoing an invasion of grandmothers.

Hannah Horvath, meet Blanche Devereaux.

Coveted neighborhoods from Greenpoint and Williamsburg to Carroll Gardens and Crown Heights are experiencing an influx of formerly suburban grandparents, a crop of graying gentrifiers who join some 380,000-odd elderly in New York’s most populous—and popular—county. It’s a trend that shows no sign of slowing, even as its harbingers do.

“I like people younger than myself, but I also have girlfriends my age, so I’m quite happy,” said Ms. Standley, who currently rents an apartment overlooking Greenpoint’s McGolrich Park, just blocks from her granddaughter, Juniper, 4, and her infant grandson, Jasper. “I thought I would never live here, that [New York City] was a horrible place. But here I am."

http://observer.com/2014/04/grannys-gone-to-brooklyn-grandparents-invade-the-hipster-haven/

[oshma]

1. Good for her! I'll look for an apartment

and I will expect an AARP Happy Hour!