Do you hate us? (Allentown, Wilkes-Barre: violent crime, houses, employment)

[KevinE]

Originally Posted by maven2160

Have you seen quality of life raising or dwindling ever since we have step foot in your town? Does our attitudes and views clash with yours? Would you prefer for us to stay in our tiny new york apartments and eat our hipster foods?

It's not as if the best and brightest of the NY metro are moving to the Lehigh Valley, rather it is mediocre folk with mediocre tastes who can't afford the NY metro... and at worst the criminal overflow from certain ethnic groups. So rather than hipster rehab of decaying old towns we now have ghettoized city cores that are to be avoided, and horrible cookie cutter developments blighting the landscape. ... And of course the rural roads are bottlenecked

Strip malls and Starbucks does not equal culture.

[PacoMartin]

I think you have to figure 3000 to 3500 seats on buses going to NYC every day. Many of those seats are empty, and some are occupied by day trippers and not commuters. Also many of the seats are people who live in Clinton NJ where all the Lehigh Valley buses stop.

If you look at the numbers of people boarding Raritan Valley NJ transit train to Newark where they must change to a PATH train to go to Manhattan, you see that is a lot more commuters.


Passengers boarding daily on Raritan Valley Line NJ Transit starting close in suburbs
Westfield 2,376
Fanwood 974
Netherwood 546
Plainfield 893
Dunellen 945
Bound Brook 622
Bridgewater 336
Somerville 677
Raritan 638
North Branch 72
White House 110
Lebanon 21
Annandale 82
High Bridge 72

Commuter ridership falls rapidly in outer suburbs of New Jersey. It is not very high in Pennsylvania.

The previous poster is correct, that the major demographic change in the Lehigh Valley is not NY hipsters, it is the NY urban poor moving to the Lehigh Valley urban areas.

[johnp292]

Originally Posted by loose cannon

A burnt hot dog.

100% agree. Tried them once when we lived in the Valley to see what all the hype was about. Only once. Never figured out what the hype was.

[PacoMartin]

The increase in population of Lehigh Valley is relatively small compared to nation or nearby counties. Lehigh Valley MSA consists of first four counties in the list.

County population in 2010 relative to 1950
113% Carbon
161% Northampton
176% Lehigh
200% Warren (NJ)
205% USA whole
432% Bucks
524% Monroe

[2nd trick op]

Originally Posted by julian17033

Maven,

After listening to many residents here it really boils down to what type of person is moving or has moved into the Lehigh Valley from metro area's east.
You have productive, tax paying people that have moved here or are moving here and then you have the influx of poverty that overwhelmingly has come from the NYC/NJ metro area.

When the rates of the unproductive, uneducated far outweigh the quality transplant the result are cities like
Reading, PA.

People here including myself are extremely leary and tired of the population that has come here and is nothing more than a financial lead weight around the neck of this area.

Crime has quickly followed this type of transplant and has done nothing more than to wreak havoc on absolutely everything from the school districts and public assistance agencies to the safety and well being in large sections of the cities of the Lehigh Valley.


You are a professional that obviously works hard to provide for his family. You pay taxes and are a productive citizen of this area.

I for one have nothing but praise for you and others like yourself that have chosen the Lehigh Valley as their new home.

As a Lehigh Valley transplant myself (8 years ago, but only from Luzerne County) I don't see how the issue could have been addressed any more candidly -- or fairly.

[Mrs. Skeffington]

Originally Posted by KevinE

It's not as if the best and brightest of the NY metro are moving to the Lehigh Valley, rather it is mediocre folk with mediocre tastes who can't afford the NY metro... and at worst the criminal overflow from certain ethnic groups. So rather than hipster rehab of decaying old towns we now have ghettoized city cores that are to be avoided, and horrible cookie cutter developments blighting the landscape. ... And of course the rural roads are bottlenecked

Strip malls and Starbucks does not equal culture.

You mean CUL-cha. I lived in Allentown in the early 90's and even back then I heard many a NY transplant lament the lack of it. We Pennsylvanians were "ignorant FAH-mahs". Then the "criminal overflow from certain ethnic groups" started arriving in our neighborhood (thank you Section 8 housing), turned it into a cesspool, and we left - but not before property values tanked.

I'm originally from Berks county, and I agree with "Julian" - Reading is even worse.

[loose cannon]

Regarding Reading people just do not appreciate what they have. My friends and i were in Reading earlier in the year to see Morrissey which is absurd as it is for someone of his artistic intellect to play there, but actually the downtown looked more built up than previously. All we saw were people walking around with their pants hanging down. Some people just have no clue. They have no Historic appreciation. They just drink 40's and smoke blunts. The same can be said for Allentown as I walked through the Arts Park by Symphony Hall at 11pm last week and cars went by blaring some autotuned hiphop nonsense.

[george99]

I found this all very interesting.

What do you all think about the Wilkes-Barre area?

Are there a lot of inner-city transplants there as well? Hipster transplants?

The country's demographics are changing very fast.

I prefer to be neither here nor there, not an inner city and not a hipster revival colony.

[Rusty Avocado]

Like another poster said if you are integrating into the area and are productive I have no problem.
It's the influx of welfare people that are destroying the area.
That being said this area is just not big enough to support all the growth! Well, maybe it's just the roads that can't support it...

[faeryedark]

Originally Posted by maven2160

This is a question for Lehigh Valley residents who are born and raised or at least spent a good portion of their life in the Lehigh Valley Area. How do you view the New Yorkers who have been moving to and settling in your cities, towns and villages over the few years? For example: Do you hate us for coming and driving up or bringing down the cost of houses in your area? Have you seen quality of life raising or dwindling ever since we have step foot in your town? Does our attitudes and views clash with yours? Would you prefer for us to stay in our tiny new york apartments and eat our hipster foods?

First let me say, I no longer live in the area, but I now live in Franklin County (South Central) and we have tons of people from DC and Baltimore coming into our neck of the woods. I can't speak necessarily for the people of the Lehigh area, but I suspect many of the "gripes" are the same.
Often when "city" people move into a rural area, they complain about things that people in rural areas do, or they complain about the smells from the farms, or the buggies on the roads.
I guess what I'm saying is, most times people won't have an issue with a newcomer, if they accept the area and the people for what they are and don't try to change things