[Clemenza]

Well, this was pulled because it was not excerpted. The problem has now been corrected, obviously.

[Clemenza]

OK, I corrected the problem with the article. Tawk amongst yerselves!

[Clemenza]

Vaquero, in response to your earlier post, most towns in Nassau that have "changed" have done so in terms of ethnicity rather than social class, ie the faces change, but the towns neither went downhill nor improved. Elmont and Valley Stream were considered "white trash" areas when I was a kid, now they are filled with folks of all colors, including many immigrants. Same goes from Brentwood and Farmingville out by you, I guess.

As property taxes go up, and housing becomes relatively expensive, you see many of the immigrants combining two or more families in a single family house. After all, who would want to pay $500K+ for a tiny Cape Cod on a lot the size of a postage stamp? Those houses were built for returning veterans on modest incomes.

[peyton randolph]

I've seen this in every major city where I've lived. In Dallas, illegal immigrants are destroying suburbs that 10 years ago were considered nice places to live. Like every other city that has a metro/subway, there are crime clusters that begin with each new rail stop - circles of crime surrounding each station. What is supposed to make commuting easy turns into a means for the bottom end of the socioeconomic scale to invade the suburbs.

[gridlock]

The New York Times might have a point here, but this particular house has nothing to do with it.

Look at the thing. It obviously dates from before the Post-War building boom on Long Island. It is a farmhouse left over from the agricultural economy that existed 60 years ago. It is on Main Street, Hempstead, which is an industrial/commercial area where nobody wants to live. It is bordred on two sides by industrial buildings. This building should have been pancaked fifty years ago to make way for a gas station. Somehow it survived. But the fact that the old coot who lived there finally kicked the bucket and nobody else wants to move in is not indicative of anything.

Though I will say the fact that it is still standing after standing vacant for more than a month is a testement to the ineffectiveness of local government. This house could be siezed under Eminent Domain, and I don't think anybody would object.

[E Rocc]

The biggest problem in the "inner ring" suburbs isn't even economic class. It's people who refuse to control their kids, and "public interest" lawyers who take their case when they threaten to sue the schools/cops for attempting to do so.

-Eric

[Galveston Grl]

Looks to me like Liberals are gearing up for their planned community reconstructions by naming the inner subrubs as blight in need of centralized planning's rejuvination. They call it "sustainable communities."

The other thing that is comming - with this flood of immigrants - "doing the work Americans won't do" - we are going to see liberals race-bait differences in income levels between whites and Hispanics. They will use the poverty of illegal immigrants (folks who send a lot of their money to their homelands and work in low paying jobs) to justify affirmative action (discrimination) in middle income jobs.

This immigration wave is going to be hugely disruptive and expensive to middle class Americans. Expect to see more studies out of liberal think tanks calling for liberal action in Hispanic immigrant flooded areas.

[oh8eleven]

But the report cautioned seekers of the suburban dream: "The experience of today's minorities in first suburbs may not
represent the same upward mobility transitions that it did for whites in earlier decades."
And if that's so, it's because of work ethic, not racism!

[Old Professer]

I live in such an area here in Nashville, my home was built in 1967.

When tract-built homes get this old, the maintenance costs rise and many people die or move away by then.

I put over $12,000 in this house last year just for a new roof, gutters, and replacing the HVAC.

I've lived here for 11 years and hated every minute of it.

It is getting to where every time the T.V. says a tornado is in my area, I find myself rooting for the tornado.

[gridlock]

I live in one of the first suburbs of New York City. Cranford, NJ was built up in the late 1800s as a resort town for people getting out of NY by train for the weekend. It had a major boom as a suburban "bedroom" community starting in 1920. Today it is still a very desirable community and housing prices continue to rise.

Sure the Levitt houses are falling apart. But they were far from the first suburban developments. Older suburban communities are doing just fine. Frankly, I like living in a town where I know that somebody is not going to build a 300 unit townhouse community across the street and screw up the traffic. It is nice to live in a place where all the problems of development have been worked out, long ago.