4 out of 25 bad neighborhoods is in Atlanta (bad areas, aquarium)

[RoslynHolcomb]

In your town, why do you figure that the white neighborhood remained stable but the adjacent black one became a hellhole? I have trouble accepting the notion that blacks are any less capable of holding a community together than whites.

I would be the last person to say that blacks aren't capable of holding a community together. God knows my parents held ours together through some absolutely horrific times in North Alabama. No, I think if the manufacturing base had held, that neighborhood would still be highly desirable. The next generation wouldn't have moved away had there been jobs there. I think most of them couldn't get much money for their parent's homes and decided Section 8 was the way to go. My parent's home was more valuable because of the improvements and the larger size lot. Most of the houses were worth a lot less, if you could sell at all.

[RainyRainyDay]

I went to a fund-raising event at Emmaus House, Atlanta a couple of weeks ago. The chaplain led a walk around the neighborhood and kept pointing out the sites of former businesses (lumber yard, commercial bakery etc.) and hammering the point that the biggest problem for the community there is no jobs, no jobs, no jobs. Pretty hard to escape the cycle of poverty when you've got minimal resources and there's no place to find a job near your home.

[RoslynHolcomb]

I just don't understand why it is that Germany and other countries have managed to hold onto their manufacturing base, but ours is gone and can't be revived.

[DeaconJ]

It takes some interest and a few pioneers to revive declining neighborhoods...usually an area has to hit rock-bottom before the homes are cheap enough to draw some attention. We've seen gentrification over and over in different areas of in-town Atlanta and will continue to see it in the future. I'm not sure government programs or other such incentives are the way to go, but rather simply give people enough time to discover the hidden gems. Neighborhoods (black, white, whatever) come and go in cycles.

[RainyRainyDay]

Originally Posted by RoslynHolcomb

I just don't understand why it is that Germany and other countries have managed to hold onto their manufacturing base, but ours is gone and can't be revived.

Germany and those other countries are "socialist" i.e. they have priorities other than unfettered pursuit of the biggest profit. Our capitalists have exported all their manufacturing jobs to places with lower wages, so they can make more profits. CEOs and shareholders don't care about providing jobs for American citizens. That's not part of their value system.

[back2dc]

Originally Posted by RainyRainyDay

Germany and those other countries are "socialist" i.e. they have priorities other than unfettered pursuit of the biggest profit. Our capitalists have exported all their manufacturing jobs to places with lower wages, so they can make more profits. CEOs and shareholders don't care about providing jobs for American citizens. That's not part of their value system.

This is an excellent point. Germans and most Europeans (and Canadians) strive to make their companies profitable, but not obscenely profitable. Compare the pay of most American CEOs with their European counterparts for example. European companies also don't have the health care cost overhead that American companies shoulder because the social democracies of Europe and Canada already provide health care for their citizens.

It's rather unfortunate but not surprising that the richest capitalists in America are so anti-health care reform and so against higher taxation of the upper classes. They "scare" the middle and lower classes into thinking such a move is "socialist", "communist", "fascist" -- anything to frighten people into voting against their own self interests. Meanwhile the American capitalists are short-sighted, interested in a quick massive windfall and outsource all of our manufacturing overseas to lower their overhead. It's sickening and un-American and inherently criminal that they hoodwink the lower classes into thinking they are supporting them when actually they are abandoning them to poverty, destitution and hopelessness.

The Germans have more of a "communal" nationalist spirit -- a long, term focus on steady profits not massive windfalls. They realize that in order to succeed all elements of society have to prosper. They, like all Europeans, were faced with riots and violence in the past when the working classes threatened to abandon democracy and install totalitarian communist or fascist regimes when times got rough.

Social democracy isn't perfect, but it definitely means there is more social and economic stability to lessen the extremes between the upper and lower classes. Stability is the goal with free health care and education for everyone providing the way for democracy to continue in Europe.

I honestly don't know what will happen here in America if we continue on this unsustainable path with massive swaths of our population uneducated, underemployed or unemployed and with no social safety net for them to turn to. It's scary to me.

[cwkimbro]

I have done a decent amount of social science research using statistical analysis and I can say with a rather good degree of confidence we should ignore what that study says.

There is a statistical anomaly to their study design that is very bad for Atlanta and really good for places like New York City.

There is a negative bias with any area that is frequented by a high amount of people, but is sparsely populated. All of these neighborhoods have something big in it like the GWCC that draws in tens of thousands and sometimes hundreds of thousands of people at one time, but yet the only housing in the neighborhood is single family housing and there are some empty lots.

This happens because they are taking the number of crimes in an area and dividing it by the population that lives there. This would be better to do for the Atlanta region as a whole, but not for small neighborhoods.

Realistically, there is a moderate amount of crime at the GWCC, because there are tons of people, but relatively few people live just west of there (high number of crimes...low amount of population)

[cwkimbro]

Also, If your skeptical... I would recommend people going to that site and look at the boundaries for the neighborhoods and then look at the google aerial map of them. In the Atlanta neighborhoods it is fairly easy to count just about every housing unit.

The neighborhood that has Turner Field in it also includes about half of Mechanicsville. A better way of tabulating crime data would be to include all of mechanicsville and not include the turner field area and make a notation that large venues were excluded from the study.

[johnatl]

Originally Posted by cwkimbro

Also, If your skeptical... I would recommend people going to that site and look at the boundaries for the neighborhoods and then look at the google aerial map of them. In the Atlanta neighborhoods it is fairly easy to count just about every housing unit.

The neighborhood that has Turner Field in it also includes about half of Mechanicsville. A better way of tabulating crime data would be to include all of mechanicsville and not include the turner field area and make a notation that large venues were excluded from the study.

Exactly! Just as the most dangerous neighborhood on the list in Chicago is the location of the United Center Arena, a surrounding industrial wasteland and zero residential.

I think someone at Walletpop just wanted to put their name out there for a little recognition. This "list" is pure garbage, in every single way.

[alinka72]

I thank you for your candor. My husband's family is the same way. There is no way of changing them either. You have to complete hopeless ones and also the ones who I call intermediates who are not totally hopeless but just keep their heads above the water. An arrest here and there but always expecting someone with money (my husband) to pay the bail. I am afraid of having too much proximity with them because I never know what they are up to.

Originally Posted by brownhornet

There is ALWAYS going to be a lower class...and honestly the way people are losing jobs there are going to be more and more people that USED to be middle class that get forced into the lower class. The educational system, the lack of jobs and the fact that it almost impossible for ex cons to get jobs (after they've been "rehabilitated") wont allow it. There are some that no matter what you do they WONT change. Coming up I had a rather large family on my mom's side. She had 7 sisters and 5 brothers. That WHOLE side of the family came up in the projects. My mom was second from the oldest and after their parent died basically became the second mother.

Out of the 13 of them, 5 moved out of the projects (my mom included) and the rest refused. Why? Easy living... 4 were convicted felons (and technically felons arent even supposed to live in section 8 housing), and the rest were just too lazy to do any better. It wasnt because they couldnt, they just wouldnt. Now out of all the cousins I have on that side.. (26 of them) 6 are convicted felons, 3 are doing life, 4 sell drugs... to sum it up only 6 of us even went to college. ALL of which came from the families that left the projects.

My mom basically refused to let me hang around them because of their mindstate and they hated us because we had the things that they wanted. To this day I only talk to 3 of them on a regular basis because they actually frown on the fact that I left the hood to do something with my life other than hang in the hood forever. It was basically a situation where you know you HAD to leave that town if you wanted to get away from their way of thinking and their oppressive mindstate. The only options other than leaving were attending a local college or a trade school or working in one of the manufacturing mills there. For me, that just WASNT an option.

So with that said, some mentalities no matter what you do will not change. And honestly, as much as I HATE section 8 I think its a necessity. You take section 8 away and itll be like releasing hungry wolves in a closed room with three legged sheep. They dont live by the same rules as we do. The one time I did try to be nice and let one of my cousins that was doing bad live in my place because she was homeless and had 2 kids... she brought drugs into my house. So from that point on I said to hell with that there's just no changing some folks.