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But wouldn't an increase in house prices in and around Reading help with the drug/gang/crime problem? I would assume one of the key contributions to keeping the riff raff in Reading is due to how inexpensive the housing is no? I would think a more educated group of people living in Berks and commuting to the Philly area would be a good thing.
^^^^Allentown/Bethlehem/Easton is a suburb of NYC. That is what has caused the resurgence. People want lower taxes, and better quality of life so move from Jersey, over the border into PA (then bring their lib values with them, and try to create another Jersey, but I digress).
I don't think Reading has a prayer. Our "Reading" is Coatesville. That's a lot closer to Downingtown, Exton, and West Chester yet is still a pit. It is surrounded by some very nice areas, but it is still horrible, and will be until there are major changes.
I know what you mean. There are a lot of people with a holier than thou attitude about being from New York or Jersey. They talk a lot of **** on the area, when they are the ones ****ting it up by contributing nothing but crime and taking all the free **** they can get. In reality, NY/NJ produce a lot of failures with elitist mentalities. They can't make it back home or they got dumped off here to make NYC look better.
The Spanish community has matured from the early 2000s. There seems to be a civil war of sorts. A lot of them really do care about the city and in some ways run rather parallel to the PA Dutch population (conservative, traditional, industrious, religious, accountable). The other side gives them a bad rep (vote leftist for free stuff, entitled, secular, unaccountable, untrustworthy liars that play the victim 24/7).
It all comes down to parenting at the end of the day. Sadly, the working-class that is barely keeping afloat is paying for the welfare class to breed like rabbits. These rabbits then romp around the streets until they either start breeding themselves, get killed, arrested, and/or have some hard sense knocked into them by someone else.
Of course, the welfare class is shielded by many in the upper classes. A lot of cause-oriented, moneyed people who feel guilty but want to be virtuous from a lawnchair come to the defense of slobs and criminals before the average Joe. They drastically amplify the victim mentality and give them high platforms to spew their BS. They don't live among them, they don't understand what's going on, and in some instances assume they are the baseline for poverty at $70k-$120k/year (relative to their peers). No matter, they can bankroll this from a financial point, given their mindset they assume everyone else should have no trouble paying for it too.
In reality, mandatory drug tests for welfare, food stamps, and public housing would be a good start. Certain loopholes - pretending to look for work by getting an interview somewhere and then never showing up so they can continue to collect - they need to be dealt with. I'm sick of lazy, able-bodied slobs taking advantage of everyone else and I'm damn well sure I'm not alone. Let them protest and ***** about the change. Let them deal with it for once. At least it will get them off the sofa.
I know what you mean. There are a lot of people with a holier than thou attitude about being from New York or Jersey. They talk a lot of **** on the area, when they are the ones ****ting it up by contributing nothing but crime and taking all the free **** they can get. In reality, NY/NJ produce a lot of failures with elitist mentalities. They can't make it back home or they got dumped off here to make NYC look better.
The Spanish community has matured from the early 2000s. There seems to be a civil war of sorts. A lot of them really do care about the city and in some ways run rather parallel to the PA Dutch population (conservative, traditional, industrious, religious, accountable). The other side gives them a bad rep (vote leftist for free stuff, entitled, secular, unaccountable, untrustworthy liars that play the victim 24/7).
It all comes down to parenting at the end of the day. Sadly, the working-class that is barely keeping afloat is paying for the welfare class to breed like rabbits. These rabbits then romp around the streets until they either start breeding themselves, get killed, arrested, and/or have some hard sense knocked into them by someone else.
Of course, the welfare class is shielded by many in the upper classes. A lot of cause-oriented, moneyed people who feel guilty but want to be virtuous from a lawnchair come to the defense of slobs and criminals before the average Joe. They drastically amplify the victim mentality and give them high platforms to spew their BS. They don't live among them, they don't understand what's going on, and in some instances assume they are the baseline for poverty at $70k-$120k/year (relative to their peers). No matter, they can bankroll this from a financial point, given their mindset they assume everyone else should have no trouble paying for it too.
In reality, mandatory drug tests for welfare, food stamps, and public housing would be a good start. Certain loopholes - pretending to look for work by getting an interview somewhere and then never showing up so they can continue to collect - they need to be dealt with. I'm sick of lazy, able-bodied slobs taking advantage of everyone else and I'm damn well sure I'm not alone. Let them protest and ***** about the change. Let them deal with it for once. At least it will get them off the sofa.
You make a couple of decent points but your hatred of those who supposedly take from the government teat (and those who feel sorry for them) is a little overblown. Do you actually know huge numbers of people living off the government? You might want to turn off FoxNews for a few minutes each day. Remember, too, that the elitist coastal Dems you hate are funding (through the tax dollars their high-income jobs generate) many government programs. Also remember that many largely white counties in PA have higher than average %'s of people on government assistance. It's not just a race thing, or a NJ/NYC thing.
You make a couple of decent points but your hatred of those who supposedly take from the government teat (and those who feel sorry for them) is a little overblown. Do you actually know huge numbers of people living off the government? You might want to turn off FoxNews for a few minutes each day. Remember, too, that the elitist coastal Dems you hate are funding (through the tax dollars their high-income jobs generate) many government programs. Also remember that many largely white counties in PA have higher than average %'s of people on government assistance. It's not just a race thing, or a NJ/NYC thing.
How would you feel after coming home from a 3 hour work commute, going to the grocery store, buying an anemic amount of groceries because the rent is coming up, only to get stuck in line behind someone buying $300 of foods like lobster, shrimp, chips, and soda with EBT? I've lived it.
How would you like it if you had no choice but to work some awful retail job where you immediately know who the EBT customers are by how much random **** they just pile on the counter? How would you like being stuck there, working for people who are literally stuffing their faces in front of you and living off your dime when they are perfectly capable of working themselves? Have you ever seen a burnout buy $40 in whipped cream and then use their EBT cash benefits to buy cigarettes, blunts, and lottery tickets? No? I have and I pray I never have to again.
You don't see this **** at Whole Foods and the farmer's markets. The gentry would never be caught dead mixing with the people they so passionately champion.
The people I single out here know damn well who they are. They take what they don't need nor deserve and their only ace in the hole is playing the victim or coming up with some sob story to justify being lazy.
You can make it a racial thing, include people from NY/NJ who do it, or claim that forcing everyone to pay for incentiveless free **** in the form of bloated government programs ripe for corruption are the key to solving world hunger at your leisure.
Meanwhile, those few that genuinely need assistance are frequently used to cloak hordes of others who don't. They don't deserve it.
>>>> Way off. The drug traffickers from Philly and NYC are already here as well as locals. What the people DON'T want are more commuters working in Philly( or NYC) but living here driving up housing prices, raising taxes to pay for new schools and upgraded sewer and roads, electrical utilities, more housing developments and subsequent loss of green space.
Yup. In my area they are remodeling apartments that were affordable for locals and turning them into expensive luxury units that only those commuting from NYC/Philly can afford. The locals who earn relatively low wages find themselves priced out of their own home towns.
Remember, too, that the elitist coastal Dems you hate are funding (through the tax dollars their high-income jobs generate) many government programs.
Yeah, I think he knows it and sees the results of it--and doesn't like what he sees. As he said, they do it from their comfortable neighborhoods and don't see/don't want to see the real results it has.
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I'm actually pretty impressed with Reading's population density. It has one of the higher population densities in PA. However, its location has certain advantages and disadvantages. Its proximity to major employers centers in Malvern, KOP, Exton, West Chester, and the Greater Philadelphia Metro Area enable it to be a bedroom community of sorts with a larger-than-expected commuter population.
However, at the same time, the city is heavily overshadowed by Philadelphia and its many sprawling suburbs, and satellite cities (of which Reading may belong anyway), and will most certainly always struggle with communicating its own identity within the region, let alone outside the state of PA. Many PA cities in South-eastern quadrant of PA struggle with identity for this very reason, and Reading perhaps is the worst since it is the closest in proximity with Philadelphia.
The city also struggles with having one of the highest poverty rates in the nation, with some estimates showing over 41 percent of its population living at or below the poverty line. I imagine there is a hefty "brain drain" of college graduates who end up gravitating toward the employment centers closer to Philadelphia and the Lehigh Valley as well. That being said, Reading should have a lot of potential given its location, history, and demographics. But it must address some of its endemic problems such as high poverty rates, high gainful unemployment, and its highly-elevated crime rates first. I imagine some problems also exist with the local school district system as well as far as performance is concerned. Reading's major advantage would be in low housing costs, hence the large commuter population.
Okay, I've been thinking about this thread for a while but I've held my piece. Here's what I think.
The city of Reading has a pretty good density. I'd rather have that than the coal regions towns that are half empty. The city IS the county seat, so you have all the wheels of county government turning here: lawyers offices, title searchers, county (and city) worker bees humming.
The city of Reading is poor, really poor. Well, we hit bottom a few years back and are now coming back but Reading is a city where you can afford to rent a house for what you paid for a 2-bedroom apartment in NYC or Philly. So the poor come where they can afford a better standard of living.
The schools are not too good. There is a glimmer of hope here - after a series of bad superintendents and a grossly incompetent school board we have a winner in Superintendent Mumin and a school board that can make a statement at a meeting without shouting or name-calling; also, the Red Knights' boys basketball team was a winner last year and they engendered such a marvelous good feeling about the team (great players of good character) that the city just GLOWED with pride. (And, Superintendent Mumin was recently headhunted by a large midwestern city's school district, but he eventually turned them down, causing the whole district to exhale in relief.)
The basic problem as I see it is schools, actually. I lurk on city-data a lot and it's the same old tune everywhere: How are the school districts? It's hard to get people invested in a city long-term if the schools are bad. Sure, you may rent for a while (my husband and I did) but when you are planning a family you move out to the good school districts or send the kids to private schools.
With iffy schools, the only people who stay either have no kids or else they are too poor to go anywhere else. The population of the city of Reading is about half renters. Think about that. Of course, there are lots of senior citizen apartments, true. And there are apartments that take advantage of college student needs (Albright University, Alvernia University, and Penn State/Berks). But the other renters if they have families are poor - usually Hispanic.
Now here's the catch 22 - We need to get people to buy into the city. If the schools are good they will come. The schools will only be good if people buy into the city.
Much of the city is REALLY beautiful. I want the city to turn around. Change is coming but it is so slow.
<Sigh>
The basic problem as I see it is schools, actually. I lurk on city-data a lot and it's the same old tune everywhere: How are the school districts? It's hard to get people invested in a city long-term if the schools are bad. Sure, you may rent for a while (my husband and I did) but when you are planning a family you move out to the good school districts or send the kids to private schools.
With iffy schools, the only people who stay either have no kids or else they are too poor to go anywhere else. The population of the city of Reading is about half renters. Think about that. Of course, there are lots of senior citizen apartments, true. And there are apartments that take advantage of college student needs (Albright University, Alvernia University, and Penn State/Berks). But the other renters if they have families are poor - usually Hispanic.
Now here's the catch 22 - We need to get people to buy into the city. If the schools are good they will come. The schools will only be good if people buy into the city.
Much of the city is REALLY beautiful. I want the city to turn around. Change is coming but it is so slow.
<Sigh>
I agree that the city is beautiful. The architecture is astounding. Most of it is intact and maintained to a degree. There isn't a lot of abandonment in the city, as in other depressed cities. The urban core has much potential to be beautiful and vibrant again.
Yes, schools are an issue in cities everywhere. The cities that have stabilized have managed to attract young, single professionals and gays, who do not have families, or do not plan on having them. My guess is Reading has had difficulty attracting this population due to the proximity to Philadelphia. I think most of the singles, artists, and gays would rather live in Philly. That leaves people priced out of Philly to buy into Reading. The problem is that Philly isn't very expensive, so there isn't much incentive to move an hour out.
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My two cents
