Those observations go into the data pool, but I'm also hearing very positive reports from a few people I know who are living there -- whom I've been interrogating about this subject -- and they're renting, so it's not "buyer's cognitive dissonance" that's biasing them. A couple twenty-something, very attractive female friends I've talked to about it, for instance, both say they feel very safe walking around their (old-CB) neighborhood -- as safe as they would in the LaSalle/Wells/Clark & Division area, they said.
A visual scan of evening bikers, joggers, dog-walkers, etc., suggests the same sense of safety predominates, although I'll forever be a skeptic until (unless) they do something about the row-houses.
The goal, I suppose, would be to function similarly to many other "urbane-urban" neighborhoods throughout the US. Not entirely free from trouble, that is -- and maybe never as safe as, say, Lincoln Park -- but safe enough to enjoy city life in it.