[A-List] Foreclosures helping change color of some suburbs ?

[Nadja Tesich]

cb.
I don't understand anything.Do I have to apply for membership?Or something else?
 
Inform me since I don't like anything bureaucratic.
Nadja




t at lists.econ.utah.edu; marxism-thaxis at greenhouse.economics.utah.edu
> Subject: [A-List] Foreclosures helping change color of some suburbs ?
>
> http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Foreclosures-helping-change-apf-3776738990.html?x=0&.v=1
>
>
>
> Cheaper housing costs open suburbs up to lower income Detroit
> residents, sowing conflict
>
>
> This Wednesday, Feb. 23, 2011 picture shows a previously opened bottle
> of beer resting in the snow on the side of the road in the Detroit
> suburb of Southfield, Mich. Many in the black middle class moved out
> of Detroit and settled in the northern suburbs years ago; now, due to
> foreclosures, it is easy to buy or rent houses on the cheap here. The
> result has been a new, poorer wave of arrivals from the city, and
> growing tensions between residents and the newcomers. (AP Photo/Carlos
> Osorio)
> Corey Williams, Associated Press, On Monday February 28, 2011, 12:02 am EST
>
> SOUTHFIELD, Mich. (AP) -- Three years ago, Lamar Grace left Detroit
> for the suburb of Southfield. He got a good deal -- a
> 3,000-square-foot colonial that once was worth $220,000. In
> foreclosure, he paid $109,000.
>
> The neighbors were not pleased.
>
> "They don't want to live next door to ghetto folks," he says.
>
> That his neighbors are black, like Grace, is immaterial. Many in the
> black middle class moved out of Detroit and settled in the northern
> suburbs years ago; now, due to foreclosures, it is easy to buy or rent
> houses on the cheap here. The result has been a new, poorer wave of
> arrivals from the city, and growing tensions between established
> residents and the newcomers.
>
> "There's a way in which they look down on people moving in from
> Detroit into houses they bought for much lower prices," says Grace, a
> 39-year-old telephone company analyst. "I understand you want to keep
> out the riffraff, but it's not my fault you paid $250,000 and I paid a
> buck."
>
> The neighbors say there's more to it than that. People like John
> Clanton, a retired auto worker, say the new arrivals have brought
> behavior more common in the inner city -- increased trash, adults and
> children on the streets at all times of the night, a disregard for
> others' property.
>
> "During the summer months, I sat in the garage and at 3 o'clock in the
> morning you see them walking up and the down the streets on their cell
> phones talking," Clanton says. "They pull up (in cars) in the middle
> of the street, and they'll hold a conversation. You can't get in your
> driveway. You blow the horn and they look back at you and keep on
> talking. That's all Detroit."
>
> The tensions have not gone unnoticed by local officials.
>
> "I've got people of color who don't want people of color to move into
> the city," says Southfield Police Chief Joseph Thomas, who is himself
> black. "It's not a black-white thing. This is a black-black thing. My
> six-figure blacks are very concerned about multiple-family,
> economically depressed people moving into rental homes and apartments,
> bringing in their bad behaviors."
>
> For example, "They still think it's OK to play basketball at 3 o'clock
> in the morning; it's OK to play football in the streets when there's a
> car coming; it's OK to walk down the streets three abreast. That's
> unacceptable in this city."
>
> Thomas has seen the desperation of the new arrivals. His officers,
> handling complaints, have found two or more families living in a
> single house, pooling their money for rent. They have "no food in the
> refrigerator and no furniture," Thomas says. "They can't afford the
> food. They can't afford the furniture." But they were eager to flee
> the gunfire of their old neighborhoods in Detroit.
>
> The foreclosure crisis made it possible.
>
> "We had a large number of people who have purchased homes from 2005
> on, where the banks were very generous with their credit and they've
> allowed for people without documentation and income verification to
> borrow 95 to 100 percent of home values," Southfield Treasurer Irv
> Lowenberg says. "Many purchased homes when they had two jobs in the
> household and one of the jobs was lost.
>
> "As values began dropping, people were looking around and saying 'Why
> should I stay and pay my mortgage when other people aren't?' They
> decided to hand the keys back to the bank."
>
> Many of the foreclosed upon Southfield homes were going for $40,000 to
> $60,000. The median home value dropped from more than $190,000 to
> below $130,000 over the same period, according to Census figures.
>
> With so many empty houses available, rents also dipped by hundreds of
> dollars. Renters increased from about 13,100 in 2006 to 15,400 in
> 2009.
>
> The lure of low prices to Detroiters was obvious -- as was the
> likelihood that their arrival would not be without issues.
>
> "Blacks, like all Americans, want good schools and a safe community,
> and they can find that in the suburbs," says Richard Schragger, who
> teaches local government and urban law at the University of Virginia.
>
> Now, suburbs closest to big cities are "bedeviled" by the same
> problems that helped spur urban flight decades ago, Schragger adds.
> "And you're seeing further flight out. Rising crime levels, some
> rising levels of disorder."
>
> These were the things that prompted Richard Twiggs to leave Detroit 23
> years ago for the safety, quiet and peace of mind Southfield offered.
>
> "The reason suburbs are the way they are is because a certain element
> can't afford to live in your community," adds Twiggs, a 54-year-old
> printer. "If you have $300,000, $400,000, $500,000 homes you're
> relatively secure in the fact that (the homeowners) are people who can
> afford it.
>
> "But when you have this crash, people who normally couldn't afford to
> live in Southfield are moving in. When you have a house for $9,900 on
> the corner over there -- that just destroys my property."
>
> The pride that comes with home ownership and a large financial
> investment in the property is missing, says Clanton, who lives across
> the street from Twiggs on Stahelin, about a half-mile north of
> Detroit. Back yards are deep and mostly tree-shaded. Sidewalks are
> few.
>
> "I treasure what I bought," Clanton says. "I want to keep it, but I
> don't need somebody to come in and throw their garbage on mine. Why
> would they come and make our lives miserable because they don't care?"
>
> Though they acknowledge they would lose money by selling their current
> homes, Clanton and Twiggs are contemplating moving further north.
>
> Sheryll Cashin, who teaches constitutional law and race and American
> law at Georgetown University, says it would be a shame if black flight
> from the city set off black flight from the near suburbs.
>
> Some blacks just don't want to live near other blacks, she says:
> "There is classism within the black community. The foreclosure crisis
> may be accelerating it." But she says middle-class blacks, like
> middle-class whites, are also put off by behavior of impoverished
> blacks who "have developed their own culture, one that is very
> different from mainstream America."
>
> Those who contemplate fleeing have fallen into what Cashin calls the
> "black middle-class dilemma."
>
> "You have a choice of whether you are willing to be around your people
> or go 180 degrees in the other direction," she says. "To the higher
> income black people, if you don't want to love and help your
> lower-income black brethren, why would you expect white people to? If
> you can't do it, no one in society can do it. You can try to flee or
> you can be part of the solution."
>
> Southfield officials say one solution to changing neighborhoods is
> blight enforcement, other ordinances and costly fines. The idea, said
> the police chief, Thomas, is not to chase people away, but to help
> them assimilate.
>
> Soon after Grace, the telephone company analyst, moved into his house,
> he was cited for parking a small trailer on the property and storing
> interior doors outside. These are things that would have drawn little
> notice in Detroit amid the crime and failing schools, he said.
>
> He paid $400 in fines, got rid of the doors and put the trailer in paid storage.
>
> Eugene Williams found a foreclosure steal in one of Southfield's many
> well-kempt and stable neighborhoods. Williams, like Grace, wanted to
> get away from Detroit.
>
> "The kids are running around without any control," says Williams, a
> 56-year-old auto plant worker. "They walk down the middle of the
> street and block traffic. There was gunfire at night. It was a common
> thing to hear gunfire."
>
> But the transition to life in the suburbs hasn't been easy. As he was
> making improvements indoors, Southfield ordinance officials were
> writing citations outside. He was fined $200 for noxious weeds because
> the grass was too high and dandelions covered much of the front lawn.
>
> "It wouldn't happen in Detroit," he says. "Your property is pretty
> much your property. I think, here, they are going a little overboard."
>