This may be why people are fleeing. Look what happens when "they" arrive:

http://abclocal.go.com/wpvi/story?se...cal&id=5476438

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willingboro,_New_Jersey

Key statement from wikipedia description of Willingboro, NJ:
"Presently, Willingboro is filled with crime[6], gangs[7], and has a very poor school system[8]. Recently, three elementary schools in the town were forced to close due to mismanagement of funds and other reasons.[9]"

Keep in mind, these are surburban areas populated by people with a little bit more income that those in Trenton or poorer areas of Philly, so don't bring on the "It's Poverty" debate.


I'm not saying all the flight is right, but there are reasons and it's not that whites in the NE are ignorant Neanderthals just scared of people's skin colors. There is precedence. Many whites in the NE are from K&A, Wiss, Southwest Philly, Olney, Frankford, etc... and they saw what happened when those neighborhoods changed. Things typically didn't get better. It seems as if the same things are happening in suburban areas like Willingboro, NJ, Bristol, PA, and Ewing, NJ.

In this case, Philly.Man, I wouldn't discount the evidence because of the source.

The National Association of Real Estate Boards (now called the National Association of Realtors) in 1920 or thereabouts recommended that its member boards urge agents to write racially restrictive covenants that ran with the land into deeds when property was sold. It also drew up a set of guidelines for mortgage bankers to use in determining whether to grant mortgages on properties. The formula used a number of factors, including age of the housing stock, average income levels in the vicinity, and racial composition of the neighborhood to rate properties on a scale from best to worst. The older the property, the poorer the neighborhood, and the higher the percentage of nonwhite inhabitants, the lower the property rating.

When the Federal Housing Administration (created in FDR's administration) began guaranteeing mortgages, it adopted the NAREB's guidelines as its own -- thus guaranteeing that the Northern urban neighborhoods to which blacks were flocking from the South would experience gradual disinvestment. And the NAREB -- and by extension the FHA -- continued to recommend that lenders not issue mortgages to properties without those covenants.

When the Supreme Court in 1948 ruled those covenants unenforceable in Shelley v. Kramer, the FHA gave the Realtors and the mortgage bankers two years to continue to write racism into sales transactions, announcing that they would no longer guarantee mortgages on properties sold subject to covenants after the middle of 1950.

Still, the NAREB's rating system survived this -- it wasn't until the Fair Housing Act of 1965 that it became illegal to discriminate on the basis of race in the selling of real estate or the issuing of mortgages.

Now, none of this even touches on those more recent phenomena you mentioned, namely, that of blacks and Latinos leaving the 'hood behind once they get enough Benjamins. That can be explained in terms of class aspirations and concerns for safety. The problem is -- and remains -- that even with all the real advances we've enjoyed since the 1960s, the effects of racist past actions work their way through the body politic and social in so many different ways that it becomes difficult at best to disentangle them from any actions that they might influence.

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Sandy Smith, Exile on Market Street, Philadelphia
"Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier." --Gen. Colin Powell

We've had eight years of "decisive," "experienced" "leadership." Why not try intelligence this time around?

Good post MarketEl. As the why the so called "White Flight" I think in this case is has to do with demographics and the current housing market. Now if that combination makes it easier for those with lower incomes to afford the area what can you really do. Upward mobility works at all levels of the economic and class food chain. A neighborhood becoming more racially diverse does not have to be a death sentence if the change is gradual, which means if there is no panic selling which drops property values and prices. Where I live in East Oak Lane we are nearly 50/50 Black White and the neighborhood has not turned in to drug/crime haven. The old timers did not panic sell and let the market work. You bought in if you could afford the area.

In the Northeast I think what you have going on is the movement of a lot of the WW2 generation, the elderly, who are leaving for various reasons. That along with a housing slump means a lot of houses are on the market. Bargains are to be had. Now if that situation is exacerbated by people panic selling because they don't like who is picking up the bargains then that is a bad situation indeed. Because it forces the price down still lower. Again not much that can be done. Who ever said that humans are rational.

B-Real said "I'm not saying all the flight is right, but there are reasons and it's not that whites in the NE are ignorant Neanderthals just scared of people's skin colors. There is precedence. Many whites in the NE are from K&A, Wiss, Southwest Philly, Olney, Frankford, etc... and they saw what happened when those neighborhoods changed."


They think they know what happened. Panic selling drives property values down. Those people were the unwittingly the authors of their old neighborhoods destruction. If that is their pattern then look for it to happen all over again. Easy to blame the new comers but someone has to sell cheap in order for the home to be bought cheap.

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The people who were packing their bags like crazy in the 50s, 60s and 70s are still with us and still behave just like they did 30 and 40 years ago. So?

There's smarter people out there these days that can detect when they are being snookered. For instance, the criminal release program and out-of-town investor invasion in Frankford; there are residents who are fighting this.

And there is gentrification which is a new force that's only been seen in the last 15 years which is taking advantage of white flight and the depressed and distressed property it created--it's created a bargain basement sale of formerly what was nice white people's housing--and is offering an opportunity for younger people in search of urban housing to be able to afford it and remake their communities.

Whether a gentrified neighborhood becomes diverse, or like Manhattan... becomes a lot more white, is totally up to the people living in the community.

Harlem proper is now 20% white. That was in the single digits a decade ago.

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Buh-bye.

Why can't more people on this blog rationalize the entire situation like you just did?

You, Ma'am, are my new best friend on here!

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Buy Lawndale!

People who don't live in these sections shouldn't have so much to say.The bad element is here,becoming unsafe,they hang around all day and night..People want to raise their kids in a good neighborhood.Murder in Tacony last night?Getting too close for comfort!

My Thoughts on Crime in this City, State, Country;

If we only adopted some punishments on the more serious criminal activity like other countries do..(cough-caning-cough, make our prisoners rot in jail, not live the high life -often better than many of us on this blog do- make them work for nothing and offer them only what they need to survive the least...bread and water....make them afraid to committ crimes) we'd prolly see a significant drop in the petty crimes that pleague our City, State and Country that only when allowed to get away with, lead to the more violent criminal activity.

But we all know a Democratic society can't do this because we are far above these lesser countries and are more advanced in our laws and punishment (cough)..which is why our country and its' governmental leadership at all levels is so corrupt?.....but alas, we are the land of the Free!.....Free to do whatever the hell we damn well please and use our various constitutional rights and good sheister lawyers to get away with murder.....literally!

My Thoughts on the whole "white flight" issue;

Pathetic excuses for human beings we all are if we feel this is just a skin color issue....or an socioeconomic issue. My Great Grandparents came to this country with nothing.....they lived in Kensington (9th and Cambria/Hutchinson behind St. Boneventures to be exact) nearly till their dying days....but they made something for their children and [their] kin...they didn't steal, they didn't beg, they didn't sit on their ass and wait for handouts...they worked...they were given nothing in return for themselves but what they physically worked for .....and there are many people already here and still coming to the NE that are just like them...of every color and creed....but the few that aren't are giving an overal reputation of dismay and disempowerment to each and every community.

What kills me the most is that you never hear or see threads full about the loads of white filthy trash that have long populated this City and the NE in particular!...I wonder why? Reading many posts on here, you'd think that they/we were THE UPPER CRUST of all of Philadelphia. We have long been know outside the NE as nothing but 'wanna be's' who were peasants compared to the rest of the City, phsyically and financially. Only in the later years did we ever get a better reputation, and that was only after most of the real upper crust left this City for the Main Line and the other suburbs nearby. The NE is comprised on land once FILLED with high end property owers who fled to other parts when most of our ancestors started "coming in droves" to the greener pastures that were the NE. They ran from the white trash like we are running now from so called lesser kind.

Do you honestly think that every single WW2 vet that came up here on GI mortgages (Gov. Subsidized) was of high class?....do believe that domestic and racial violence didn't happen up here constantly?...do you believe bigotry didn't exist within each neighborhood?

If you do, YOU are looking through rose colored glasses.

Please don't try and tell me that I don't know what these areas are going through. My parents, neighbors and I lived through hell in the late 1980's up to the mid 1990's in our own community dealing with wanna be rich, white trash who allowed their kids to destroy our community, homes and cars and then blamed it on those dreaded "others" coming in. Only now are we relaxing a good bit since most of that lily white trash moved out to the suburbs, (replaced by a different color and now living in realative peace)...to create the crime there that you all seem to think only comes from Blacks and Hispanics and Asians.

And if you don't like what I've said....I don't give a damn!

I love the Northeast and I am not going anywhere regardless of how many houses are sold and how much "crap" moves into them.

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Chuck Norris can kill two stones with one bird.

“Anybody toting guns and stripping moose don’t care too much about what they do with Jews and blacks. So, you just think this through." Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-FL)

Yes there is a place where you wont be treated like a child.

Why I am voting Democrat!

Who commits all the murders? The white trash? I don't think so.

Nah, they just come in from the suburbs and buy all the drugs, get doped up, booze up, get behind the wheel of a car and kill people via lovely "accidents"...they beat up their kids, wives, husbands, parents, aunts, uncles, neighbors (at bar room brawls).....etc....

yes, they are just sooooo much better.

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Buy Lawndale!