White Flight Article.... (Atlanta, Peachtree City, Reynolds: budget, showing, apartment complex)

[Huckleberry3911948]

flight is a negative word, it seems more like some sort of migration no?

[cmtiger]

gt6974a, what are you talking about? There are some outstanding intown schools. You don't have kids, so you probably just haven't paid attention to the schools yet. My area is swimming with kids, as are adjacent intown areas.... and a large majority of them are in public schools. Take a look around in some of the better intown neighborhoods - you will see that a huge number of affluent intown kids attend public schools.

[blackrabbit]

Originally Posted by cmtiger

gt6974a, what are you talking about? There are some outstanding intown schools. You don't have kids, so you probably just haven't paid attention to the schools yet. My area is swimming with kids, as are adjacent intown areas.... and a large majority of them are in public schools. Take a look around in some of the better intown neighborhoods - you will see that a huge number of affluent intown kids attend public schools.

Correct, more and more familes are moving intown.

[atlantagreg30127]

Originally Posted by martarider

Where did you get that info? Not doubting you, just curious.

Basically, you have people from all over the U.S. moving here, be it from Omaha to L.A. to Seattle, and some from predominately Black areas like Detroit or Baltimore, but simply by what you see in these forums (among others) online indicate that more are coming here from predominately White areas. Also, since the Olympics, Atlanta has seen a large increase in foreigners moving here. Mexico, U.K., Germany - predominately White relocators, and while there is an increase in people from places like Kenya, The Bahamas, etc., they're relatively small in comparison.

Just an observation myself, and from a conversation or two with realtors I know, but it does seem like White or "other" are moving here more than Black lately.

[atlantagreg30127]

Originally Posted by MMANN

Its not the mayor or city council tearing down the projects, its the Atlanta Housing Authority. These are two different entities, and the mayor/city council tried to stop the AHA from tearing down those projects, even by writing a letter to the HUD to deny the AHA permits to tear down the projects.

Interesting. But then she flip-flops and whenever they do a news piece on one of these projects going up, she'll stand in front of the cameras and say "what an asset to the city" it will be.

[gt6974a]

Originally Posted by cmtiger

gt6974a, what are you talking about? There are some outstanding intown schools. You don't have kids, so you probably just haven't paid attention to the schools yet. My area is swimming with kids, as are adjacent intown areas.... and a large majority of them are in public schools. Take a look around in some of the better intown neighborhoods - you will see that a huge number of affluent intown kids attend public schools.

I was referring to schools in my suburb as getting worse. As far as schools in Atlanta, I'm not convinced either unless they're private.

I did say there were some nice areas if you have an indisposable income, but I mentioned an affordable home with a yard.

For 200-300K, I can get A+ schools, a yard, low crime, big house, close to the lake. Therefore, the painful commute is worth it for us.

You can't find anything in that price range, in what 'I' consider a decent area to raise kids, downtown.

[south-to-west]

One aspect that is often overlooked in this argument has been the choice of an overwhelming number of black young professionals to locate in the suburbs. For decades the vision of the American Dream with a large house and nice yard in the burbs has been advertised perpetually. A lot of young black professionals, including many of my friends, bought homes in the suburbs as soon as they could as a badge of pride to show their family and friends that they "made it" (yours truly was the odd one to choose city life ). Even when signs of gentrification became more evident by the influx of white young professionals into the city, young blacks kept moving to the burbs and tossed aside the idea of living in the city as it represented the days of blacks being confined to one section of town through housing discrimination.

However, I do believe that the tide is turning among young black professionals and you are seeing more and more choose to live in the city and opt for a smaller condo in Midtown over a 2,500 sq. ft. home in Lithonia or Austell. I think this will slow the net loss of blacks among the city population over time.

[masonbarge]

It's not just the higher density areas of Buckhead that are increasing white population. Many traditional in-town neighborhoods, particularly those adjacent to more affluent neighborhoods, are getting a higher percentage of white residents. Typically, the prices of housing in these neighborhoods skyrockets at some point -- Midtown, Candler Park and Poncey Highlands being examples. I would imagine North Kirkwood will be getting quite expensive at some point in the near future. People have been trying to "restore" Grant Park for decades, but areas that far south are a lot more resistant to gentrification.

And yes, some public schools in the city are acceptable even to very highly educated, upper middle class white folks, particularly elementary schools. A lot of people at the high end of the educational spectrum will send their children to Warren Jackson or Sarah Smith Elementary, for example, then put them in private middle and/or high schools.

It's not quite so much a directly racial situation anymore, although I don't know many white families that would move into an all-black neighborhood and I am sure the same is true of many other ethnicities. Even people who would like to have some other races in their neighborhood want to see "some" people of the same race.

There is an interesting passage on how this leads to single-race (or single-ethnicity) neighborhoods in Tim Harford's book, "The Logic of Life". It's an application of game theory. For example, take a thousand dots, half of them red and half of them blue in color, controlled by a computer progrm. Have them move around a grid at random, then add one "rule" and see what happens. All dots (except on the edges) have four "neighbors", ie dots directly adjacent. If you program it so that movement is random, except that each dot wants at least one neighbor to be the same color, you get almost total segregation.

So, taking white Anglo families, even if everyone were 100% to have all black neighbors as long as they had at least one other white family next door or across the street, all neighborhoods would become 100% segregated by race. (Of course, there are a ton of other factors involved in reality, but I thought this insight was extremely informative.)

[Merin]

Originally Posted by gt6974a

I'm sure more people will continue to move there, but not people with kids. Just doesn't make much sense. Housing costs, house size, crime, etc. I just don't see people with kids, of any age, raising a family there.

Unless you live in one of the n-hoods with indisposable income and private schools, I don't see it as attractive.

I live in the city and there are tons of people with children who have no intention of moving to the burbs.

[rvbrad]

You're seeing a lot of retirees moving to Atlanta in place of Florida. With the property taxes FL assesses and the heat, etc. Many like the lower cost of Atlanta, availability of good health care, relative location to the mountains, beach and so on, and then the great airport for travel. Considering Florida's insurance crisis and the hurricanes, I believe you will see many more retirees flocking to the area - this dispraportionately makes the black/white numbers skew white.

If Georgia does eliminate the state income tax next year, you better believe that many, many retirees from up north will look to the area.