12th st. is a major street that runs through what is know as the "12th street Neighborhood" a nice little middle class residential area. It lies between the west end slums and downtown Boston, the boundery between the slums and the 12th street neighborhood is twentieth street for the most part, though in some places the slums extend further east, going all the way to fifteenth in one or two places. This boundry is very official, for the standard police and even some churchmen will go out of their way to stay on the east side of the boundry. Likewise vagrants, gangmembers and most criminals stay to the west of it. Yet those who take heed of that boundry must be careful because the boundry is not visible in any way, the western most blocks of 12th street neighborhood look just like the slums.
From that boundry the 12th street neighborhood extends all the way to downtown boston. The unofficial, yet very visible boundry is fifth street. Upper middle class housing on one side of the street, ten to twenty story buildings on the other. The change in quality of housing in this neighborhood is very gradual, it starts out looking like the slums, then apartments and low income housing from the late 1990s, then condos, then small houses and townhomes, and once the townhomes are gone, only houses remain, and they just keep getting bigger until fifth.
