62strat said:

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EclipseAg said:

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The Woodlands is 50 years old and still a desirable place to live.

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yes it's 50 years old.. but very few people lived there until the 90s.

So I think it's more like 30 years old.
I bet in early/mid 90s, it was 90%+ white.

Now it's 65%.

As that number falls, desirability falls.

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Except I haven't seen any indication that home prices reflecting that. Which is the first indicator of a neighborhood's downfall.

The Woodlands is known for the wealthy foreign nationals that don't impact the look of the neighborhood by neglecting upkeep or appearance of homes as renters often do.

AgLA06 said:

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62strat said:

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EclipseAg said:

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The Woodlands is 50 years old and still a desirable place to live.

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yes it's 50 years old.. but very few people lived there until the 90s.

So I think it's more like 30 years old.
I bet in early/mid 90s, it was 90%+ white.

Now it's 65%.

As that number falls, desirability falls.

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Except I haven't seen any indication that home prices reflecting that. Which is the first indicator of a neighborhood's downfall.

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Home prices have continued to go up everywhere, even real ghettos.

BoDog said:

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SteveBott said:

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Hard to not think the OP is a troll or a racist or Both. But I will assume otherwise for now. I'm from Houston. I graduated from HS in '78 so I guess old enough to see the demographics discussed. You have to increase your timeline than 30 years. Go 60.

In Houston all the old neighborhoods were center city . Heights, inside the 610 loop on the west side (east side was bad even then) even near 610 west side. I grew up in Spring Branch and right after I graduated HS it started to deteriorate. But in the last 20 years it's being redeveloped. The entire west side is the same.

Hell the Heights one of the most desirable areas was a rat hole in my teens. Just above the Wards. Now the floor is damn near a million for a house there.

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That is the easy/lazy response to give. As someone who was born and raised in Plano (and currently live close by), I am not sure what the OP said that is factually inaccurate?

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A lot of people are scared to talk about some things. See the third or fourth poster who question whether this topic was 'appropriate'

Shouldn't be that way but it is.

Yesterday said:

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Bottom line is lower income leads to more crime and when you have more crime you start to see higher income families leave and then the snowball effect is very hard if not impossible to stop.

Southlake resident here.

Let's not try to make this discussion difficult. Money is the number one issue. There is a direct line between wealth, crime and schools. There is a direct line between schools and a property values. Southlake doesn't have the best schools because the administration is great or the teachers are amazing. We have the best schools because everyone that lives here makes sure their kids are doing their homework, being respectful in class and striving to go above and beyond. It's actually exhausting sometimes. We have our stains for sure but pound for pound Southlake has a strong conservative backing through its citizens and elected officials.

My kids 8U baseball team was 60% white and the other 40% were Asian, Indian(i know they're Asian too) and one black kid. Want to know what they all have in common? They're generally speaking wealthy and do not want apartments. Doesn't matter the race, we're all on the same page.

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This is the correct answer.

OP took an issue that is complicated, immediately jumped to causal instead of correlated, gets called out, and people come to his defense saying anyone that called him out is lazy. He correctly pointed out correlated facts, and nothing more. It barely contributes to any real conversation, and yes, it reads as borderline racist.

I work with a black dude that is probably 10x more conservative than me. He will not watch Fox News because its too liberal. I cant wait to forward him this thread....

126233 said:

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Thank you for your wonderful multi-post analysis on this issue. What's interesting to me is that, given the clear evidence that apartments eventually lead to decline (both demographic and socioeconomic), why do residents allow this?

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A lot of it has to do that people don't understand the consequences of their actions:

They ask their rep, "why don't we have a chick-fil-a or Whataburger within 10 minutes of here"
Rep calls up his developer friend and tells him the city needs more restaurants.
Developer says he will build a Whataburger and a Chick-fil-A if he changes zoning to allow apartment complex too, since franchisee won't build there without apartments for workers nearby.
Rep changes zoning.
Developer build CFA & WB.
People rejoice.
Developer builds apartments.
People complain when rep gave them what they asked for.

If you want to patronize a business that relies on cheap labor, you can't be mad when cheap labor follows the business to town.

BoDog said:

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I work with a black dude that is probably 10x more conservative than me. He will not watch Fox News because its too liberal. I cant wait to forward him this thread....

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let me guess, he lives in an area that is predominately black?

lol. Of course he doesn't.

62strat said:

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BoDog said:

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I work with a black dude that is probably 10x more conservative than me. He will not watch Fox News because its too liberal. I cant wait to forward him this thread....

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let me guess, he lives in an area that is predominately black?

lol. Of course he doesn't.

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He lives in Lewisville. Not exactly Southlake.

He has reminded me several times over the years that it is the white lib that has set his people back 40 years. His words... not mine.

I didn't reference percentage of economically disadvantaged students or median income stats in my first post because the correlation between more minority enrollment and declining schools, property values, and falling median income is enormous and clearly obvious.

Now this doesn't mean that every suburb which sees white flight invariably will fall into decay, but there's a tipping point once schools reach a certain percentage of economically disadvantaged students (I have no idea what that percentage is, it likely fluctuates based on the suburb), schools will see performance indices fall.

Just like the many suburbs before it which have seen an exodus of white people and a corresponding increase in black/Hispanic people, Plano schools have seen surging low income enrollment over the past decade, and Plano's inflation adjusted median income is lower today than it was in 2000 or 2010.

As the poster from Southlake argued, an inextricable correlation between school performance, relative affluence of an area (few or no poor people) and neighborhood desirability is undeniable. But the race and ethnic composition of the neighborhood also influences these factors, and to suggest otherwise is to be disingenuous at best and willfully blind at worst.

The leftists who demand the unquestioning celebration of diversity (racial of course, never diversity of thought), fall silent and can't seem to explain why schools and property values fall when whites leave an area en masse. Rather than explore this question with an open mind, the "cult of diversity" leftists would rather lodge accusations of racism at those who employ simple pattern recognition and reject the contemporary tenets that demand ideological reverence to "diversity".

There was a time Bellaire was undesirable? When I drive through Bellaire it looks like a slightly downscale River Oaks. It's hard to imagine that area ever went through cyclical decline.

If it's not race, then I'd love to hear you name a town or suburb in Texas which was majority white, later experiencing an influx of low income black people or Hispanics, and saw property values rise, schools improve, and overall neighborhood desirability improve.

I could have been more tactful in my first post, but calling reliably observable facts racist just makes you look petty and immature.

You're not seeing Bellaire like I saw it. I lived on Bellaire Blvd in a run down apartment complex with a single mom and sister while mom worked on secretary salary. I would say we lived just above poverty l.

Again your time cycle is too short which I stated. All of the Houston SW areas around the loop were like the heights as I stated. No idea on Montrose but it was filled with poors (like me and my soon to be wife right out of college). I bet it's being redeveloped.

West University area in that area was the first to be redeveloped. Then that activity spread across the loop and south to the loop.

Think 60 years not 20-30.

JJxvi said:

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In suburbs the house is worth more comparatively to the land so as the homes age they have less value compared to newer homes being built somewhere else where land is similarly cheap. Neighborhoods not subject to this likely either had a similar period of stagnation in the distant past until land values rose or land value was always high enough to generate continuous renewal of the homes.

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Zero star post, but they pretty much nailed it here. In the Charleston metro it's basically the same but different. Surrounding downtown are neighborhoods that at one time were considered suburbs (parts of downtown were also advertised as suburbs when developed over 100 years ago but that's a tangent), largely post war to 1970 builds. Over time they declined to a certain degree, and have since come back way up in terms of price as well as improvements/redevelopment because of this reason. There's value in the land.

The reason is, there's a small number of places to live where you can be downtown at College of Charleston, Medical University of SC, or any number of hospitals, legal offices, and other high paying jobs within a 10 minute commute. You'll find lots of places with a view or deepwater access on tidal creeks and schools that are at the top of the state rankings. Because there's value in the land we see continual improvements made and for the most part houses are kept up pretty well over time. Similar story in Mt Pleasant. In Hanahan, Goose Creek, and North Charleston suburbs of similar age up to 2000ish you see more of the Texas suburban pattern because there's not as much value to the land. It's inland and all the same; there's always more and the commute already sucks even if you're moving farther out. It makes more sense to do that than to deal with a bunch of things that need actual investment at 20+ years old so the same thing happens as Houston and DFW.

What you are seeing is the differences in culture. This day and age the culture has really gone downhill for the African Americans. It didn't use to be that way. They care little about education and it's only getting worse. When they moved in to the older, more affordable areas, their culture follows. Crime goes up, single parenthood goes up, drugs increase. This is not only black people, rednecks are basically the same way. Now obviously not all of them are like that but they predominantly are.

I'm sure I'm probably going to be called racist to left wingers for saying that. They are so easy to upset lol. My best friend is black and agrees with my synopsis. He is one of the few who had both parents at home who kept him away from the gangs and such and made education important. Funny how people turn out when raised that way.

BoDog said:

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62strat said:

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BoDog said:

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I work with a black dude that is probably 10x more conservative than me. He will not watch Fox News because its too liberal. I cant wait to forward him this thread....

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let me guess, he lives in an area that is predominately black?

lol. Of course he doesn't.

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He lives in Lewisville. Not exactly Southlake.

He has reminded me several times over the years that it is the white lib that has set his people back 40 years. His words... not mine.

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white liberals huh?

I figured it had to do with 75% of black children being born out of wedlock (compared to only 20% in 1960), or the fact that 1 in 20 black americans commit crimes that puts them in jail or prison.

But he's right, it's probably just the liberal whites that set them back!

Agilaw said:

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Lazy, but expected, that some on here would accuse the OP of being racist for simply stating facts. Anyone familiar with the North Texas area knows exactly what the OP is talking about. Would be nice if others looked at the legitimate question and the facts and not immediately spout "that person is likely racist". It's a tired exercise.

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OP spent a whole bunch of time conflating "areas becoming worse" with "areas becoming less white"... Do you really not see it at all or do you ALSO associate areas that are less white with areas that are less desirable?

126233 said:

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If it's not race, then I'd love to hear you name a town or suburb in Texas which was majority white, later experiencing an influx of low income black people or Hispanics, and saw property values rise, schools improve, and overall neighborhood desirability improve.

I could have been more tactful in my first post, but calling reliably observable facts racist just makes you look petty and immature.

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Racism is one of the major reasons that those correlations exist... "There goes the neighborhood" types move out when non-white people move in.

The fact that outside of the politics board, the real estate board is the place where I see the most thinly veiled racism should tell you that racism and real estate are extremely tightly intertwined in this country.

Some rando's black friend agreeing with them doesn't mean they don't hold racist views.

No. I don't. I see data and then look to what are the trends or what is causing the data to be what it is. Lots of other people immediately look for reasons to say "that's racist/racism".