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To quote George Carlin…
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“Through twilight, darkness and moonrise
My scarlet tears will run
As stolen blood and whispered love
Of fantasies undone”
But they might steal your car to get away in.
More rants:Subdivisions. What’s the idea? I liked the old grid city plans.
Waferboard.The subdivisions will only last 30 years, as long as the waferboard roofs etc hold up.
I think the “white-flight” phenomena can be summed up this way:
Percieved property value is, say, $200k…
African-American family moves in.
Home owners in the neighborhood panic, and put their homes on the market. Since they want to sell it as quickly as possible, they’ll take damn near any offer that comes to them. <— <b>THAT</b> is what lowers the property value. (Boy, all those houses in that neighborhood are selling cheap, these days, aren’t they? property value must have gone down.)
Now, that’s just a theory off the top of my head… how close to base am I?
I don’t suffer from insanity…
I enjoy every minute of it!
Some of you are just full of shit today.
My husband and I just bought a house - in a neighborhood that has {gasp} folk of the colored persuasion.
Not all white people are as ignorant as you make us out to be.
Carpe Jugulum
We live in the southeast, on the outskirts of a large city. White flight does not exist. Our subdivision is about 60% white, 20% black and about 20% hispanic. Our property values have gone up about 5% a year consistently for almost ten years. A reasonably priced home will sell in about two weeks. I cannot thick of a “white” area in or around my city. The south has come a long way indeed.
I think there are also two seperate issues. On one hand, I’m talking about “Low-income” housing. Those housing units that have people on welfare, or other government subsidized income. You’re talking about people that move because someone of color moves in next door. Those are two different issues. I could care less what color the people down the street are, but I’d fight like hell to keep a section 8 houseing area going up.
I live in Florida…my neighborhood is maybe 60/30/10 white/black/hispanic. Our values have just increased over the last five years. I think it’s actually kind of odd, considering the generally large latino population here, that there aren’t more in my neighborhood.
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My only rant is not with homeowners but with the neighborhood associations that restrict a lot of things and can be petty beyond belief. Don’t get me wrong, I’m GLAD they don’t let people paint their houses hot pink (oh, it happens!) or park their eighteen cars in their yard, but sometimes things happen that are so absurd, they’re hard to comprehend.
Case in point: recently, the development built a park, complete with lots of climbing and swinging-type objects for the kiddies to frolic on. The showstopper? The slide was shaped like a large purple dragon. Now, even though this park is (1) not viewable from anyone’s house or future house, and (2) for KIDS, for crying out loud, the adults in the association put on an incredible two-month display of whiny peevishness and insisted that the dragon too closely resembled Barney the Dinosaur, and such a monstrosity MUST be repainted to exist in this elite community. (And no, it was not a legal issue at all.)
I could not believe that letters to the editor poured in, day after day, complaining about the purple dragon. JFTR, there are so many more important issues the area faces, like the fact that we have a four-lane, four-way stop at a busy intersection that has been approved for and DESPERATELY needs a light before someone is killed, or water issues, or zoning laws. But no, all eyes had to focus on a slide, for kids, that resembles (faintly) a cartoon character kids love, so adults could show how cool they are, they don’t like Barney!
So, the damn dragon is now green, and there’s still no light at the intersection.
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What would be wrong with living by a tavern? I live several blocks away from one, and every time I go by it, it has people drinking and socializing, occasionally music playing, and sometimes a guy outside that wants to shine shoes. I can’t imagine anything that goes on there being bad for families nearby - maybe taverns in your areas have gunfights every day, but around here, people just drink in them. No problem.