Set against the Franklins on the hillside beside UTEP and the Cincinnati entertainment strip, Kern Place sends us calls that split almost evenly down the middle — students clearing a rental at the end of a semester, and longtime owners finally parting with a house their family has held for decades.
Houses dating to the 1920s climb the hillside in Kern Place, within a block or two of UTEP and the Cincinnati Avenue bar strip, on streets so narrow and winding they feel like a small town stitched onto the rest of El Paso. Two very different groups of callers keep this neighborhood on our schedule. Right when each semester wraps, student rentals need clearing out in a hurry — futons, flimsy particleboard shelving, abandoned bikes, a full year's worth of clutter — so the next lease can start on time. The other half of our work here comes from owners letting go of a character home after decades in the family: steamer trunks, crates of vinyl, a window-mounted AC unit retired once central air finally went in. Either job means carrying everything out by hand, since these streets run far too narrow and climb too sharply for a truck to get anywhere near the door, and taking care around the original floors and trim the whole time. Up here, detached garages and basements run small but end up packed solid anyway. What still works gets donated to a local charity, everything else gets recycled, and we let an old house like this set its own pace.