These buyers put a premium on tolerance
Monday, November 17, 2003
BY MARY JO PATTERSON
Star-Ledger Staff
When Pete Hobday decided to buy his house in downtown Trenton, it looked so bad the bank wouldn't even give him a loan.
The house, a little two-story affair with a notched roof of simulated stone, was at 250 Jackson St. in Mill Hill, an historic but ragged and not-very-safe neighborhood of old row houses. The year was 1985.
Purchase price: $25,000.
"It was horrible," Hobday recalled the other day. "There was no heat. There were a lot of people living here -- and a lot of kerosene heaters."
Hobday's parents came through with the loan, but he didn't let them see his purchase for a month. For a while he was even afraid to tell his partner, Tom Moyer, that he'd bought it.
"When my mother came to look, she wouldn't even go upstairs," said Hobday, 49, who grew up in Long Branch and Howell. "Her big thing was, 'You borrowed our money for this?'"
Gay men and women live throughout the United States, in cities and sprawling suburbs and little towns. Their demographics are similar to those of everyone else.
But the country also has definite gay clusters. Some are sizable and widely known, like parts of San Francisco and Manhattan. Others are tiny.
In such places, same-sex couples tend to be more affluent than their neighbors. They are also -- like Hobday and Moyer --more likely to be white than other adults in the surrounding community.
This is true not only in Trenton, but in Asbury Park and Plainfield, where there also are gay enclaves.
In all three places, gays were attracted to the housing, which was undervalued, and undeterred by poor schools. They also found tolerance.
Plainfield's situation was similar in that its housing stock -- much of it grand -- had deteriorated as badly as Trenton's and Asbury Park's. But, said Plainfield Mayor Albert McWilliams, many of the houses gays have restored are in historically white neighborhoods.
Trenton's Mill Hill, meanwhile, has become something of a gay enclave. Pete Hobday counts 24 gay people on his block, now a showpiece of urban gentility.
He and Moyer altered their house dramatically and put on an addition. Practically all of the other houses also have been rehabilitated, and are adorned with wrought iron fences, brass lamps, planters or other elegant touches.
Number 214 is for sale. The asking price? $279,000. "Pricey for the size, but it's one of the smarter areas of town," said the listing broker.
Straight couples also are moving into the neighborhood. "We're starting to have young people having babies," Hobday said.
In the late 1970s, the city of Trenton did its share to jump-start redevelopment in Mill Hill, installing brick sidewalks and gas lamps. But gay men and women, individually and in networks, have played at least as big a role.
"I think gays saw an opportunity to take hold of it. Nobody else wanted it," said Nancy Hillman, president of the Trenton Gay and Lesbian Civic Association. "It's not just Mill Hill. Part of our platform is to attract gays to all neighborhoods. We find Trenton a very wonderful place to live."
A similar phenomenon has played out in other depressed areas, shunned by middle-class families seeking good schools.
In Asbury Park, gay men and, increasingly, gay women, have transformed many formerly grand homes that had come to resemble flophouses. Others, not so large, have been similarly upgraded.
John Loffredo, a 49-year-old Asbury Park councilman and one of the city's gay pioneers, said the transformation started with "a couple of men" who moved into town. Their friends came to visit, looked around and decided to do the same thing. Gays often "go into places that are run-down," he said. "They see what the community can be, which is a good thing."
Last month, Loffredo, a real estate agent, provided a tour of the city in his 2003 gold Lexus. Sixth Avenue, in the northeast corner of the city, has become the city's showpiece. Now, similar improvements can be seen farther south.
"This house here was absolutely destroyed," Loffredo said, pointing with his left hand to a proud restoration on Sixth. "A guy bought it and totally did it over. Now it's magnificent. It was really gross -- I know, I showed it -- you had to go in with a flashlight. There was a dead cat in there."
He switched hands on the steering wheel to point out another showpiece on the right. "This was a wreck. Absolutely awful," he said. "Basically uninhabitable."
Many recent buyers have moved from Manhattan, including Jon Pickhardt and Chad Caranto. Pickhardt, 34, a lawyer, and Caranto, 29, a fitness consultant, bought a house on Fourth Avenue and Bond Street in 2001.
"Asbury Park appeared to be an amazing town that was down on its luck, and really trying to pick itself up by its bootstraps. From a financial perspective, there was inexpensive property, with potential," Pickhardt said. "It was also just a kind of exciting underdog-type story."
The couple bought a 110-year-old house, with about 2,500 square feet, for $135,000. They gutted the structure and started over. So much work was required that it was nine months before they could sleep there.
Not all the newcomers are gay. A heterosexual couple with a 6-month-old baby lives across the street from Pickhardt and Caranto. But there is comfort in having a supportive gay community around, Pickhardt said.
"We had something happen to us last Halloween. That night, we had what we presume were local kids -- although we're not sure -- spray anti-gay epithets on the side of our house," he said. "That's a horrendous thing to have happen."
The pair told some of their friends what had happened.
"They actually organized a community event," Pickhardt said. "The next day we ended up with maybe 75 to 100 people in our front yard, with paintbrushes."
In some towns with significant gay populations, gays and straights inhabit two different worlds.
In others, common concerns unite them.
In Trenton, for example, the Gay and Activist Civic Association encourages members to get involved in the community. Last month, after reading that the 300-year-old St. Michael's Episcopal Church downtown was in dire need of new members and repairs, association president Nancy Hillman decided members should "adopt" it and help raise funds. She telephoned the pastor.
The Rev. John Conners was thrilled.
"The fact that it's an Episcopal church probably didn't hurt," he said, acknowledging that the denomination's liberal stand on homosexuality probably helped get the group's attention. "But the offer really had to do with preserving this piece of Trenton. I think we've made a good start."
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