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This is not a baiting question and I am genuinely curious. I know there are tons of white poor people (not too far away from being one of them myself!) however it seems they either live in rural areas or suburbs or trailer courts. My dad grew up in a very poor predominantly white area in Manhattan however by the time he had become an adult many of the poor were older rent controlled tenants being replaced by the starving artist punk rocker type and the local born young people had moved their families farther out to the "suburbs" like Bensonhurst or Marine Park Brooklyn, Maspeth Queens or Throggs Neck in the Bronx (he is from what you would call the East Village but he and I would call the Lower East side, e 5th street between 1st and 2nd aves. Which was mostly half Ukrainian/Polish Catholics and Italian immigrants whereas across first avenue was primarily Jewish west of Tompkins Sq and Puerto Rican east, although by '75 most Jews who could afford to had left) this area and in general most of Manhattan barring east Harlem and the area between 140th and 160th are havens for the rich, as is a good percentage of queens and brooklyn adjacent to Manhattan and easily accessible via subway. There are still plenty of poor areas but these areas but they tend to be African American black areas (opposed to Jamaican/Haitian areas where it is usually more middle class), Hispanic, and certain types of Asian (FOB Chinese from rural areas)....only poor areas where it is mostly white are Hasidic Jewish areas and these usually are well kept neighborhoods that look 30 times richer than the numbers shown on paper.
I know a lot of inner city white communities were decimated by white flight and in my city the ones that weren't were either killed by gentrification or the fact that the local kids moved to the burbs and their places were taken by either the Chinese (in lower Manhattan) or Puerto Ricans/AA in the outer boros.
There are always a few outliers though, for instance the show "Shameless" showcases what seems to be a dirt poor white neighborhood in the middle of Chicago. My only experience with chicago is being in Ohare during a layovers so I have no idea of the accuracy of this depiction.
I AM NOT GETTING INTO A RACIAL DEBATE I am genuinely curious.
There are benefits to keeping a poor population of any type in inner city neighborhoods. For instance it makes it easier to provide services if everyone requiring them lives in a close in area. Also it is much easier to keep a community's traditions alive if you can cluster them onto easily accessible city blocks in close proximity to the population (I think this is why the Jews didn't suburbanize to the degree of other groups...they NEED to be walking distance to shul, and they need kosher food and many other things). In big cities people who can not afford cars and
There are pitfalls too, like the fact that clustering a lot of people in one area, especially poor people leads to higher crime. Also the fact fhat cities are generally more expensive in terms of rent and utilities etc than other places
So can you name any predominantly white poor inner city neighborhoods? I don't wanna move to one obviously but I am curious. I want to hear about current areas, not areas that were 5/10/20 years ago and are now hipsters/hmongs/parking lots but areas that today 2/23/2015 still are functioning poor white inner city areas. I mean not too offend anyone either, I'm seriously just interested.
By urban neighborhoods I mean a dense area with multifamily housing, street fronting retail on ground floors of buildings as opposed to strip malls etc. I'm not giving guidelines as per the cities size, because Phoenix is way bigger than providence RI or Newark NJ for instance but doesn't have any places that I would describe as the inner city at all, and I'm assuming that poor white people in Maricopa county just live in older more rundown suburbs or in trailer courts.
Thanks so much, and please no arguing or incinuating racism, I'm seriously just curious lol (I know I keep emphasizing that but from lurking I see that this forum can get pretty high on the racial tension meter so I want to avoid that) if you're wondering my background I'm white descended from the area around Naples.
Looking forward to hearing from you, and sorry for typos I'm on my phone typing this
Pittsbugh still has a few of these, which shouldn't be too surprising, given we're one of the whitest cities in the country. Less white flight means a fair number of slummy looking white neighborhoods.
The first area that comes to mind might be Southie in Boston. I do not know how much gentrification has affected that area however, because for years I was told to STAY AWAY from South Boston!
Go to cities that received Appalachian whites back during the Great Migration. So cities like Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Cincy, Indy, Louisville and even Detroit, have poor white neighborhoods.
NYC has none, I believe. LA has none. The coastal cities generally don't have urban poor white neighborhoods anymore.
The first area that comes to mind might be Southie in Boston. I do not know how much gentrification has affected that area however, because for years I was told to STAY AWAY from South Boston!
I went to undergrad in Boston, South Boston is really nice now and quite expensive in some parts. It is not an Irish ghetto anymore that was in the 60s and 70s
I went to undergrad in Boston, South Boston is really nice now and quite expensive in some parts. It is not an Irish ghetto anymore that was in the 60s and 70s
Yeah, I've heard people calling it SoBo in the last 10 years.
Parts of Dorchester are still working class white though, IIRC.
I don't like the word poor because it's not but Port Richmond neighborhood and a few other surrounding neighborhoods in north philly remind me of your description
Go to cities that received Appalachian whites back during the Great Migration. So cities like Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Cincy, Indy, Louisville and even Detroit, have poor white neighborhoods.
NYC has none, I believe. LA has none. The coastal cities generally don't have urban poor white neighborhoods anymore.
The only one I can think of here in NY would be Gerritsen Beach in Brooklyn. Still poor Irish families living in bungalows that aren't intended for year round use. Only reason it stayed put is because its surounded by water, the belt parkway, the mall and a part of the Midwood neighborhood that is essentially a new world version of an Orthodox Jewish shtetl in eastern Europe.
I am gonna check on the other ones but at 85% black Detroit doesn't have white neighborhoods in general, most "white" people in the detroit city limits are arab. As for Cleveland I don't know, it's one of the cities i am researching for relocation and I looked at the schools and they are 97% black although the cities west side (a good chunk, little less than half) is mostly white. That says to me that cleveland's white population are either generally childless (which suggests hipsters) or they are well off enough to send the kids to private school.
There are always a few outliers though, for instance the show "Shameless" showcases what seems to be a dirt poor white neighborhood in the middle of Chicago. My only experience with chicago is being in Ohare during a layovers so I have no idea of the accuracy of this depiction.
The neighborhood is called Canaryville, although the location shoots for the outside of the houses on the show are filmed in other Chicago neighborhoods. There's a few threads in the Chicago forum about this neighborhood. It's remained (for now anyway) working class Irish and very insular.
I posted about Pittsburgh's blighted white slums, but it also has some intact, nice working-class white neighborhoods which still haven't gentrified. My favorite of these is Troy Hill because it's reasonably intact and of a very old vintage (some houses were built before the Civil War, most before 1900).
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