Posted on 02/08/2007 3:40:38 PM PST by Lorianne
And there you have it. There are a segment of Freepers who deride anyone who wishes to live in the suburbs or country. But think about it:
Dirty, delapitated, crime-ridden city house with no yard or:
maintained, clean, safe suburban home with at least a little yard.
Easy decision for those who can afford it.
So America's population begins more and more to resemble locusts.
Descend upon a city, vote in Democrats, suck its resources dry, fly off to richer fields for rape and pillage...
There is a growing movement on the Left of those who would keep all of us in an urban environment, thus allowing the natural world to recover from our corruption and degradation. No thanks. I love living out in the sticks.
I work in the "elite" section of town--toney shops catering to yuppies, glitzy high-tech companies (like the one I work at), all surrounded by high-priced suburban homes, yet it's rapidly becoming the city's high crime area. How did this happen so quickly? The city mandated that any new suburban developments include low-income housing.
Suburbia Ping!
My sister owned a cajun bbq carryout resturaunt at the intersection of of Darbytown and Williamsburg Rds called the "Chillin n' Grillin Shack". She closed down last year but still does catering in Richmond.
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IMO there is a much larger group who deride anyone who does choose to live in the city.
They will all get old someday.
I'm starting to see the wisdom in current construction standards. Make sure the houses don't last long enough to get old.
Personally I buy land. If it's already got a nice house on it so much the better. But I'm not even looking at it unless the lot and location are right. Absolutely no H.O.A.s (which invariably go with dinky lots and neighbors I wouldn't @!#$ on if they were on fire).
You're right. My view is this:
It's CHOICE. I have no problem with someone who chooses to. personally, in most cases, I don't want to, but it depends on the city and my life situation.
I wouldn't want to raise kids in most US cities these days, but if I were single and going to stay that way, I may consider it.
I'm getting married in Sept. and we probably won't live in the city, but probably fairly close-in until kids are in the picture.
It is easier to move to the suburbs, to leave the crowded, shabby neighborhoods for a land of "maintained, clean, safe suburban homes with at least a little yard", than to stay and fight for one's neighborhood.
Unfortunately, once you abandon a neighborhood, it goes to hell.
And what happens to that suburb full of "maintained, clean, safe suburban homes with at least a little yard" after twenty years? It gets crowded, it starts to look shabby, and the crime rate increases. The house-hoppers abandon it, just as they abandoned the old neighborhood, and the "undesirables" move in. What was once a place of "maintained, clean, safe suburban homes with at least a little yard" becomes a ghetto.
Meanwhile, even further out of town, the prairie is being levelled as a new development of "maintained, clean, safe suburban homes with at least a little yard" goes up. Abd the cycle begins again.
Can't you see that this sort of thing is unsustainable? America cannot afford to keep building and abandoning suburbs. The toll on the environment is too high, and the psychological toll caused by the lack of real community is too steep. Human beings were not meant to live like ants -- but living like locusts is just as inhuman.
And the basic cause of the situation you describe is that the older, shabbier suburbs are being filled not only with our domestic poor but with our imported poor, the illegal aliens. People who want to be safe move away from areas where they're moving in. Soon they dominate a neighborhood, and then they trash it so that it looks like Mexico City.
Our problems in this regard would be minimized if we did not have twelve million strangers forcing the rest of us out further and further.
The problem us liberals. They destroyed the cities. Coonservatives moved to the suburbs. Seeing the nice suburbs, the liberals moved to them, which they then destroyed. See the suburbs of NY and Philly as an example.
Could it be that these, not cute, wooden structures were low income housing that no one wanted to claim?
Houses that last twenty years before falling apart and being torn down.
Low income housing is simple. Those with money choose where they want to live. What's left is low income.
If market conditions change those with money will, as a group, make different decisions.
But a fact remains, the older the house the better the build quality. I envision a day when many McMansions built in the last five years become rooming houses for the down and out. Only the really rich will be able to afford a ten minute commute.
So because I like to garden, and sit on my porch and see trees, I'm an evil person?
2. Much as urban renewal in the early 60s led the American underclass to migrate from the old ghettos to the "outer" city, so now are the underclass displaced by gentrification of the cities being dumped on older suburbs, Section 8 vouchers in hand.
3. I will agree that, in places like southern California, Texas, and Colorado, the illegals are moving into the old cookie cutter houses, but in places where the cost of real estate is high (New York, the Bay Area, New Jersey, etc.), what you see BUYING houses in the old suburbs are noveau riche immigrants (like the Indians tearing down the small postwar homes in Edison and North Brunswick for tacky monstrosities that go to the property line), or native-born minorities getting their first house out of the city (see Union, NJ and Langhorne, PA).
You get the "ghetto" effect when you have too many Section 8ers in the rentals or "Hud Families" in the homes.
I am single, and will opt for the latter option soon. Nevertheless, I do occassionally feel bad for those of modest means (not the underclass, but the lower middle class) whosd only choice is to rent or live in the ghetto or a shabby, older area.
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