Suburbia, the next slum? (Chicago: loan, preschool, subsidized)

[TempesT68]

Originally Posted by supernerdgirl

I guess I'm laughing more at the developers who thought it would be smart to build thousands of homes in the middle of cornfields. Trust me, where I lived in Tennessee, that idea spread like a cancer and now it's just a mess.

I agree and i think also ties in with the main topic with the chicago area i think it's pretty much pushed it's limits of how far away from the city it can go. I remember about 10 years ago all the buzz was about oswego with people saying it's going to be the next "it" city like naperville which never took off like expected, same as yorkville like mentioned. Sure you can get new construction for a song, but i think after time people get sick of having to drive very far to pretty much anywhere, especially the city, also no metra train in oswego (don't know about yorkville)
What seems to be happening is the nicer areas keep getting nicer, and poor, poorer. The "middle" area cities are seeming to dissapear. You can look for example downtown naperville has some smaller or average sized homes that are being bought, wrecked and huge new homes being put on those small lots.

[BRU67]

Very hard to walk the line in the middle these days, largely because the working class is so much smaller and less affluent than it was 20-30 years ago. In a lot of historically middle class suburbs, including mine, there's strong tensions between those who want to attract more affluent people to the community versus those who want to go back to 1957 and get it back to how it was. Unfortunately, the latter is impossible now. I definitely think things will trend towards "haves" and "have nots" in terms of suburbs and Chicago community areas.

Yorkville and Oswego were supposed to be ember hot by now. Of course, those predictions were based on the flawed premise that real estate values would keep going up and that the population would somehow be able to absorb new inventory that would get increasingly more valuable.

[jdiddy]

Originally Posted by sukwoo

What is up with your obsession over hedge funds? You know there's more to the economy than hedge funds right? Besides, the most prominent Chicago area hedge fund is located in the Loop.

I think HSW is actually Will Farrell just boning up on a new character he's creating. The completely self-absorbed 'hedgie'.

It's hard for me to believe this guy is a genuine person, what with every post being an exact mirror image along the Chic has pking grgs...NYC...third world...Chic/Sf/Sil Valley....hedgies...hedgies...Lk Frst...Manhattan...Grnwich

[AthmaGirl]

I hate to agree with this article but I kind of do. I think it's mostly due to the amount of crime and gang activity moving out to the suburbs. That factor alone, can literally ruin a decent average neighborhood in just a few short years.

The only neighborhoods that seem untouched, are the wealthy ones.

[oakparkdude]

A follow-up, of sorts.

In the Exurbs, the American Dream Is Up for Rent - WSJ.com

By CONOR DOUGHERTY

PLANO, Ill. -- Kim and Robert Discianno had the American dream. Now, they rent a few streets away.

The Disciannos moved from Aurora, Ill., to their home here in Plano three years ago, lured to the outermost fringes of suburbs, known as the exurbs, by the promise of owning their first home. Today, their credit is shot and they no longer own, but Ms. Discianno still has a four-hour commute

.

[otters21]

Originally Posted by sukwoo

A follow-up, of sorts.

In the Exurbs, the American Dream Is Up for Rent - WSJ.com

By CONOR DOUGHERTY

PLANO, Ill. -- Kim and Robert Discianno had the American dream. Now, they rent a few streets away.

The Disciannos moved from Aurora, Ill., to their home here in Plano three years ago, lured to the outermost fringes of suburbs, known as the exurbs, by the promise of owning their first home. Today, their credit is shot and they no longer own, but Ms. Discianno still has a four-hour commute

.

Not good for the exurbs especially in this economy and insult to injury, gas prices are going up again.

[team_evans]

What a sad story, and it's happening everywhere.

Someone more knowledgeable than I, can you address whether there is any situation where someone can 'afford' to buy if they have no down payment?

It seems to me that no down payment equals no equity....for years and years and years. (Fake equity based on a fantasy of home values that go upward until infinity doesn't count.) Other than writing off the mortgage interest, why would someone want to take on a $235,000 loan that they pay down a couple hundred bucks a month--especially given the property tax liability and the fact that the home's value can (and in this case, did) plummet?

I'm not being snarky; I'm truly asking what people were thinking. I know it made sense to some people at the time and I'm curious to know how.

[meatpuff]

Well, I missed the heyday of this thread. But I'd like to comment on the general discussion from earlier in the thread:


1. There have been prognosticators predicting the end of the suburbs since the beginning of sprawl. Likewise, people have been predicting the imminent end of cheap oil since at least 1956. Right now I think most experts will tell you that mankind only has discovered enough oil reserves to last about ten more years. This was the same thing experts said with alarm ten years ago, and ten years before that. And so far, we keep finding more.

These people have always been around predicting these things. They just didn't used to land articles on the cover of popular magazines, until we had a spike in the oil commodity markets, and a collapse in housing prices.

Do you think they are right this time, after being wrong so many times before? Has something fundamentally changed this time? Maybe, maybe not, we shall see. I am reminded of the saying that economists have predicted ten of the last three recessions.


2. And, as others have said, people had good reasons to move to the suburbs. You could get bigger houses for less money, the schools were great, and crime was low. Let's not forget violent crime was a lot higher and rising in Chicago in the early 1960's when this stampede was getting going.

Just reiterating that people didn't flood to the suburbs for the reasons some New Urbanists fantasize about; that some blockheads just hate density and public transportation and other races. Many people moved (and are moving) to the suburbs because they valued personal safety, education, and having a nice home, and could purchase more of these things in the suburbs. In short people moved to the suburbs because they were being rational; not because they were being irrational as some would have you believe.


3. An earlier poster mentioned that some WMD attack on a major city might spoil people on dense urban areas for decades to come. I hypothesize that this sort of thing happened in the 1960's. This event was the steadily rising crime rates of the early '60's, followed by the 1967-68 riots.

The riots broke out in urban areas all over the country, and Chicago had it almost as bad as anywhere. Thousands of ordinary peoples' homes and businesses were burned to the ground, groups of police had gun battles with groups of citizens, civilization broke down in parts of the city for days. And Chicago's experience was not unique. I think these events as a capstone to the trends that had been happening, helped to spoil a generation on urban areas.

[BRU67]

Originally Posted by meatpuff

Well, I missed the heyday of this thread. But I'd like to comment on the general discussion from earlier in the thread:


1. There have been prognosticators predicting the end of the suburbs since the beginning of sprawl. Likewise, people have been predicting the imminent end of cheap oil since at least 1956. Right now I think most experts will tell you that mankind only has discovered enough oil reserves to last about ten more years. This was the same thing experts said with alarm ten years ago, and ten years before that. And so far, we keep finding more.

These people have always been around predicting these things. They just didn't used to land articles on the cover of popular magazines, until we had a spike in the oil commodity markets, and a collapse in housing prices.

Do you think they are right this time, after being wrong so many times before? Has something fundamentally changed this time? Maybe, maybe not, we shall see. I am reminded of the saying that economists have predicted ten of the last three recessions.


2. And, as others have said, people had good reasons to move to the suburbs. You could get bigger houses for less money, the schools were great, and crime was low. Let's not forget violent crime was a lot higher and rising in Chicago in the early 1960's when this stampede was getting going.

Just reiterating that people didn't flood to the suburbs for the reasons some New Urbanists fantasize about; that some blockheads just hate density and public transportation and other races. Many people moved (and are moving) to the suburbs because they valued personal safety, education, and having a nice home, and could purchase more of these things in the suburbs. In short people moved to the suburbs because they were being rational; not because they were being irrational as some would have you believe.


3. An earlier poster mentioned that some WMD attack on a major city might spoil people on dense urban areas for decades to come. I hypothesize that this sort of thing happened in the 1960's. This event was the steadily rising crime rates of the early '60's, followed by the 1967-68 riots.

The riots broke out in urban areas all over the country, and Chicago had it almost as bad as anywhere. Thousands of ordinary peoples' homes and businesses were burned to the ground, groups of police had gun battles with groups of citizens, civilization broke down in parts of the city for days. And Chicago's experience was not unique. I think these events as a capstone to the trends that had been happening, helped to spoil a generation on urban areas.

To a large measure, Americans' move to the suburbs during the 1950s-70s was subsidized by government policy. DOT dollars towards highways as opposed to improvements in our urban public transporation infrastructure, educational funding and policies that favored suburban expansion, cheap gasoline, etc. Not saying it was irrational or racist, it was just subsidized by government policy. We can only hope, for the sake of our environment, that these policies are reversed and urban living is encouraged.

[Lookout Kid]

Originally Posted by BRU67

To a large measure, Americans' move to the suburbs during the 1950s-70s was subsidized by government policy. DOT dollars towards highways as opposed to improvements in our urban public transporation infrastructure, educational funding and policies that favored suburban expansion, cheap gasoline, etc. Not saying it was irrational or racist, it was just subsidized by government policy. We can only hope, for the sake of our environment, that these policies are reversed and urban living is encouraged.

You left out red lining and cheap FHA and VA loans... Suburbia was a government-funded project.