worth more $$$ to someone not from the neighborhood!

not always. look at the value of your home before you bought it and look how long it was worth that. then look 30 years before that and see what it was worth. it was probably worth a whole lot more 40 years ago then it does today and that is not just because of its condition. socioeconomics where a product of poor city management and putting poor black people into high-rise developments in order to keep an eye on them is wrong and poor judgment. i have heard people say that we should just give these people some $$$ and send them somewhere else. personally i dont understand this, and i did not move to the hood in order to kick my neighbors out regardless of their socioeconomic standing or race. i like the way that it is but, as my neighbors would agree, i want to see the vacant building be inhabited and do not want people dealing drugs on any corner, anywhere. i especially do not want guns used as toys.

i dont think that is the issue here. go ahead and ask your neighbors, have you? i have, and most dont care. i do not because as eldondre said the only way to benefit from this is to sell your house and unless nothing has changed there is no point. look at grays ferry. personally i think that it is all a scam to get people to move in light of development. its a legal way of kicking people out without dealing with eminent domain, a bit communistic. i want people to move here but at some point paying 100K for a run down house where there are people dying every day from crime seems a little far fetched.

that' s a bit shallow. it is not all about money. most people want a better way of life rather then more money. rich is not always rich. it is the white mans rich

i am assuming that an argument that could be presented is that raising value and raising taxes will better the hood. in some cases maybe. idealistically yes. sometimes all you get is a hood plated in gold. how long do you think that people will tolerate the things like noisy neighbors, drugs, gun violence? 15 years, 30 years? it could take that long for the ideals of the pioneer to come to light and those few beginning pioneers may have already moved out just as those long term residents did 10 years prior.

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There were lots of replies and comments on this thread, so instead of individual rpelying,I will just take a moment to address it in one post.

I never said to ship the "poor off into their own area". I never said to separate the socio economic groups. All I said was "apartments would probably be smarter. Apartments does nto imply 20 story projects surrounded by fencing stuck off in the distance.

For instance, take some of the duplex PHA homes around the area. Instead of two homes, they could have done three double lot apartmens stacked on each other. One apartment per floor with a double lot foot print. It could be built sturdy, functional and house 33% more people. It wouldn't be an elaborate "house" but at some point, what do you want for cheap? I feel the goal should be reasonable subsidized living, not cheap housing. Double apartment buildings like that CAN be peppered throughout a neighborhood. You retain mixed income diversity without giving away the farm.

I also think it teaches better lessons. I would like peoples' thoughts on this. What lessons are being taught? Why do we want to reward lack of accomplishment? I am not saying to make peopel homeless. I am wondering why low income people should have a better quality of life than someone that makes $10K more a year then them? What motivation is there for the adults, and the children, to do better if you take a loss in quality of life for it?

As for fighting development coming in, from an economists stand point, I am big on market forces. Life is about adjsutment. My grandfather worked somewhere for most of his life. The are turned bad and work dried up (lower-middle class laborer). Instead of sitting on his ass and crying poor me, he packed the family up, traveled to a new state to get work. My parents gave birth to me in a city and lived there for years. As I was getting older, they were concerned about schools. The moved to a new area for better schools that cost more. They had to make a lot of concessions to afford it, but they chose what was important and they made adjustments.

That is what life is about. It isn't about feeling you are getting crapped on or being done wrong. No one says that, since you lived in an area for 20 years, you are owed that area. If an area starts pricing you out, you have to do what you need to do to adjust. If an area starts to get bad, you either stay and fight the wave or you get out as well. You have to adjust in life. Too many people have a feeling of entitlement.

People fault the degradation of the neighborhood to redlining and other policy ... ultimately it was forced down. Why is it ok when some residents want to do the same just because they cry poor? Sure there needs to be policy to help the underpriviledged, but also at what expense? The expense of stopping all growth?

Has the old saying of "give a man a fish he will eat for a day, teach him how to fish and he will eat forever" been forgotten? The key to good social programs is not to keep people alive. The goal is to get them out of the situation of needing social programs.

In order to make a neighborhood better the poor must be moved (pushed) out. Then they move to somewhere else which makes that neighborhood "bad".

Rinse repeat.

Poor people complain that you're destroying thier homs but in reality the poor moved into (or remained) in areas that already saw the orginal owners leaving for whatever reasons (crime, no jobs)

Areas like SW are at the end of the decline cycle. They will either crumble into the ground (like Logan) or be gentrified (like SWCC) depending on the demand.

Francisville should have seen this coming.

The NE is a little different. They are not the direct cause of their decline. The decline is moving in daily. the NE (specifically the lower NE) views this as an "attack" and blames the rest of the city for the influx.

The lower NE just happens to be unlucky....the cheapest and safest homes in an increasingly expensive city. Wrong time at the wrong place. Race isn't as much of an issue as people think. They aren't "White" sections as much as they were Italian, Jewish, Irish, etc sections...the "white" moniker always seems to be used by non-"whites". (For the record I've never heard a "white" person refer to themselves as "white" ...they almost always go by what heritage they are)

The lower NE also watched as every neighborhood south of them died. (1960-1990 Logan up to Olney) They thought they were next and bailed. Right before it turned around for Philly. Mayfair was a couple years late in declining...and for that reason may recover fully...

but the NE is slowly being bought by outside investors...and that will mean long term issues for whoever stays.

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And that is why policy needs to be to help the poor out of the situation and to better life and not sustain the poor.

what expence are you willing to give up to keep the neighbors that you have. we have had these discussions before and i sympathize with my neighbors, not all but most. i was reading today that in chicago in the 1920's they would sell a house on an all white block to a black person to scare the whites into selling their property cheap. this created the black ghettos of the south. raising value to get the "poor" out and putting them in subsitized housing is another way of cheating those less fortunate. it is not fair and it is wrong. why not use subsities to fix the homes if those less fortunate? i wonder why you would rather let the "market" take ahold of you neighborhood. you should think hard about the decisions that you make and consider who you affect cause you gonna be here for a long time.

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Education. If you want to learn you get ahead and end up not being poor.

Poverty is intertwined with a lack of education that sets limits. But some poor people are poor becuase they are lazy trash who will never amount to anything.

Provide education and let drive and ambition sort it out.

You can lead a horse to water but you can't make poor trash learn or sweep the steps.

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Here is an example. A couple months ago at the Brewerytown Civic Association meeting, a group of developers stoped by to talk about some housing they want to put up. It is on 25th behind girard college on a big broken up fencned in private parking lot. I think it was like 11 homes for $400K each.

There were people there asking the developers what was going to be done if their property tax goes up because of it.

So what do you do? Leave a crappy parking lot because some people in the area don't want their property tax to go up?

The part I don't agree with you on is the "raising the value to get the poor out". No one is artificially raising the rates and if it is, it is JUST property tax. They can't make their mrotgage more expensive. They can't make their food more expensive. Gas and electric is the same price for everyone (except if they are poor, it is most likely paid for by other people anyway). If the city was going in and over a year raising their property tax from $200 a year to $1000 a year, I would agree that it is a poor assessment (this is NOT incorporating the proposed city-wide reassessment) and typically you have the right to appeal.

The thing is, I haven't seen these sweeping property tax increases that are being decried. Does anyone have any examples? If someone does, give me the property address and I will check the tax records.

Also, Rob, your Chicago example is a larger topic as well if you want to tie it in. Racism. That is aprt of it too. A lot of these neighborhoods don't want white people moving into their neighborhoods. We all know that is what Al Alston screams about.

I completely agree. Education and job training is the biggest help. The sad thing is, those tools are out there. f you are at that poverty level, I am pretty sure there are a variety of job training programs available for free.

As for the lazy ones you are referencing, should we care about their tax concerns? They are just going to be drains on society no matter where they are.

it is all speculative! and what if it does not happen. no one is going to pay 400K for that house! you know who is going to buy those houses, investors from jersey or new york who are not fimiliar with the area and will end up renting the house to some grad student from temple who parties all the time and has no respect for the neighborhood. i dont know which one is worse, the vacant lot of the jock. and more so the sale of that property will increase the property value of the area and will force people who cant afford their taxes purely on speculation. look around adam how many sales on your block are by people like yourself? no one is moving in, people are sitting on property so that they can flip it in a year. that does nothing for the neighborhood. they dont give a rats ass about crime or a way of life. they want property value to increase so that they can resell. and when the speculative bubble pops it either looks like northern liberties of it stays the same as it was when you moved in. either way its your neighborhood.

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www.rob-sutherland.com

One thing I've learned in my job is that laziness is a symptom of a bigger problem, and not the disease.

The disease is that some people don't have basic life skills. They can't take care of themselves. Or their children. Those kids grow up with the same deficiency of basic life skills and have the same poverty-ridden, under-educated, lazy, chaotic existence. And so on and so forth.

The reason Philadelphia schools are so bad isn't because they are bad, it is because the above children make up far too large a % of the students attending the schools.

If suddenly all the rich & middle classes sent their kids to Philly public schools, you'd see instant raises in their performance which would be sustainable.