txags92 said:
Serotonin said:
txags92 said:
Serotonin said:
Sea Speed said:
This is going to reach a tipping point where the normal folks won't take it anymore, right?
It really depends. Both NYC and Detroit were in terrible condition and headed wrong way in '80s but one chose to crack down on crime and implemented broken window theory policing.
There is still time but it doesn't look very promising right now.
With the shift in technology and business philosophy allowing and encouraging a much larger number of employees to work from home, the need to congregate near large urban areas is going to go away. I predict we will see a massive shift away from the urban areas over the next couple of decades as the people who have the means to do so move out to the country to get away from surging crime. That is why I predicted that Houston is going to go the way of Detroit. The city is mostly landlocked by other municipalities at this point, and the folks who live there insist on voting for the soft on crime judges and DA. The left is never going to have a chief of police that will take on the DA and get tough on crime, so it will just continue to get worse.
I don't think Houston will be Detroit because we don't have the demographics of Detroit.
I know it's not PC to say but the average black population has extremely high homicide rates compared to hispanics, whites, or asians.
African-Americans are actually less of the US population than Hispanics (13% to 18%) but have way more homicides -- 6,318 to 1,576 in 2018.
https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2018/crime-in-the-u.s.-2018/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-3.xls
Detroit is 81% AA and Houston is 22%, so it would be almost impossible for Houston to become Detroit.
Don't get me wrong though, we can probably increase our normal homicide rate by 30-50% with terrible policies, which is what is happening now. But I think there will be pushback.
Detroit's demise is often credited as starting in the 1950s with "rapid suburbanization". In other words, the population left the city for the suburbs. In 1950, Detroit had 1.8M people living there and it was ~84% white and ~16% AA. By 1990, 800,000 people had left the city, and the population was 21.6% white and 75.7% AA. That is what I am referring to regarding Houston going that direction...those with means to do so...aka whites and mobile hispanics will leave for the suburbs if crime is left unchecked and there is no need to be in the city to be employed. Those without means (regardless of race) will be what is left behind. Once the people with means leave the city, the taxes they can collect will no longer cover what is needed to maintain the city, and things will snowball further. Unless we can convince people that voting blue is the pathway to Detroit, we will be headed that direction. And a study of the Detroit demographics and population shifts suggests that it won't take as long as many think to reach a tipping point. With WFH proven out by the Covid experience, lots and lots of companies are going to realize that the expensive leases they are paying for high rise office spaces are an unnecessary expense. Without the draw of tens of thousands of people wanting to live near where they are required to work 5 days a week, many of the hot inside the loop properties are doomed.
I agree with your history of Detroit. By 1950 whites started looking at demographic and crime trends and headed for the suburbs. But they also suffered a huge economic decline after WWII, and major racial tension in the 40s.
I think the key demographic difference here though is that AAs were still flooding into Detroit during that time so the population was skyrocketing whereas in Houston it's flat.
In Detroit the black population went up 342% over 30 years from 1940 to 1970.
In Houston the black population went up 12% over 30 years from 1980 to 2010.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Detroithttp://www.houstontx.gov/planning/Demographics/docs_pdfs/Cy/coh_race_ethn_1980-2010.pdf Black and white population in Houston has been pretty flat for decades. It's the hispanic tidal wave that will take over the city, whether whites decide to move or not.
At this point it would be demographically impossible for Houston not to be a hispanic majority city in the coming decades, which will make it a very different place than Detroit just given homicide and violent crime rates by demographic.
But I am in agreement that the policies being implemented are insane.