Self-Segregation in Charter Schools (Philadelphia, Willow Grove: amusement park, new house, construction)

[MarketStEl]

Originally Posted by BR Valentine

White flight in East Mt. Airy and neighboring areas like West Oak Lane occurred during my childhood. Race was without question one of the primary reasons that people engaged in panic selling. Within four years of the first black family moving onto our block (they were our next door neighbors) every white family with school age children except mine moved. Most of the empty nesters moved as well. The black thugs (sarcasm) who moved in next to us included the first black woman to earn a PharmD in Pennsylvania and her graphic artist husband. Their kids attend what was then known as Chestnut Hill Academy. What most of the white folks saw was, "there goes the neighborhood" despite the fact that our neighbors couldn't have been more typically middle-class and were better educated than many of their white neighbors. Once the true bigots sold in a panic the fence sitters felt compelled to follow suit so as to not be the last white family standing.

A term you'll see on your radar screens soon if you haven't already seen it is "middle neighborhood."

These are the stable working- to middle-middle-class neighborhoods (white, black and otherwise) that are now facing the threat of disinvestment and deterioration.

West Oak Lane is one such neighborhood, as are the northern reaches of East Mt. Airy. (Which, I might note, bears a strong resemblance to similar neighborhoods in the Northeast.)

One factor contributing to the threat is the aging population of these neighborhoods. As they often have extremely high levels of homeownership - the homeownership rates in West Oak Lane and northern East Mt. Airy are the highest in the city, topping 70 percent - the owners took pride in keeping up their homes, but now that they're retired and living on reduced income, they may not have the resources they need to continue the level of maintenance, upkeep and renewal needed to keep their homes in good shape.

The district councilwoman who represents this area has made their survival and strengthening a major concern of hers. (She also raised an objection to the city planners' attaching a new name to the East Mt. Airy neighborhood - it's now being called Cedarbrook, after the shopping center just across Cheltenham Avenue from it. "When we bought into the neighborhood, it was Mt. Airy," she said. "Now that it's beginning to show signs of problems, they're calling it something else.")

These neighborhoods will need fresh blood to buy and renovate the houses too. Where will that blood come from?

[HappyRider]

Originally Posted by BR Valentine

The bottom line is that race matters and bigotry is real. White people invariably want to deny that race influences where we live and where we send our kids to school. But the undeniable fact that race matters is evident in the enduring residential and, especially, school segregation.

An Indian(as in India) family is shown around by a real estate agent. On your left is a great, black-majority neighborhood with nice homes and a fine school. On your right is a great, white-majority neighborhood with nice homes and a fine school. Which one would they take? I am not being flippant. I really don't know the answer.

[FamousBlueRaincoat]

Originally Posted by MarketStEl

The district councilwoman who represents this area has made their survival and strengthening a major concern of hers. (She also raised an objection to the city planners' attaching a new name to the East Mt. Airy neighborhood - it's now being called Cedarbrook, after the shopping center just across Cheltenham Avenue from it. "When we bought into the neighborhood, it was Mt. Airy," she said. "Now that it's beginning to show signs of problems, they're calling it something else.")

A question maybe you or someone knows the history of: What's the history and reasoning of Cedarbrook being considered East Mount Airy?

Because it's not to the best of my knowledge a part of the historical Germantown Township - Stenton Avenue being the boundary. It's a part of the historical Bristol Township, same as West Oak Lane and much of the norternmost parts of the city.

And speaking from a development standpoint - the housing is clearly different and much more modern and automobile-forgiving than what's often just across the street on Stenton Avenue.

And its' clearly not integrated at all around the railroad or anything that happened in the I'm guessing 250+ years or so Germantown was in existence and before Cedarbrook took shape.

Yet there's a tacky sign on Cheltenham Avenue and Wadsworth that says Welcome to Mount Airy. So at some point it was obviously being pushed as Mount Airy.

I run some errands on Wadsworth Avenue from time to time, and it's really hard to think of it as the same neighborhood as mine. The top of the hill in Chestnut Hill is closer to much of Mount Airy, or Chelten Avenue in Germantown, and historically much more connected - yet also accepted to be different neighborhoods. Plus I'll walk to Germantown or Chestnut Hill from East Mount Airy - and Wadsworth has always been a bus trip.

I know a couple of people who live in the area - some of whom claim they live in Cedarbrook, and some who claim East Mount Airy.

[KansastoSouthphilly]

Originally Posted by FamousBlueRaincoat

A question maybe you or someone knows the history of: What's the history and reasoning of Cedarbrook being considered East Mount Airy?

I have wondered this as well. I have lived in EMA for 3.5 years and the only thing that seemed to tie the neighborhoods together was the sign at Cheltenham and Wadsworth. I remember a few months ago I read this article in the NYTimes:


https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/31/u...ck-voters.html


which called Cedarbrook East Mt. Airy. The article also seems to list demographic breakdowns that seem more like the Demographics of Cedarbrook vs. the Demographics of East Mt. Airy (only 6% white vs. 90.6% black).


I always assumed calling Cedarbrook Mt. Airy was something being pushed by Cherelle Parker to try to bring up Cedarbrook instead of the other way around.

[MarketStEl]

Originally Posted by KansastoSouthphilly

I have wondered this as well. I have lived in EMA for 3.5 years and the only thing that seemed to tie the neighborhoods together was the sign at Cheltenham and Wadsworth. I remember a few months ago I read this article in the NYTimes:


https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/31/u...ck-voters.html


which called Cedarbrook East Mt. Airy. The article also seems to list demographic breakdowns that seem more like the Demographics of Cedarbrook vs. the Demographics of East Mt. Airy (only 6% white vs. 90.6% black).


I always assumed calling Cedarbrook Mt. Airy was something being pushed by Cherelle Parker to try to bring up Cedarbrook instead of the other way around.

Random stuff:

I'm supposed to be getting a tour of the Kitchen of Love as part of a long-form feature I'm working on.

Ms. Solomon is waiting for her bus at the East Germantown intersection where I catch the buses I take to work every day. My house is actually visible in the photo, in blurred focus. If I catch the 18 home, I get off right where she's standing; it continues on to Cedarbrook and Cedarbrook Plaza. It's the second-most-heavily-used surface route in the SEPTA system, and it may have risen to the No. 1 spot after Route 23 was split in two.

When I first set foot in the neighborhood a few years before I moved up this way, I thought I was in East Mt. Airy too. It was, however, built out after everything below Stenton Avenue. I don't think it's just Councilwoman Parker who attaches this area onto Mt. Airy; after all, it's geographically contiguous and it's not WOL.

I haven't the foggiest idea what area the Times is measuring with those stats, but I can tell you it's larger than all of Mt. Airy, including Mt. Airy and Cedarbrook together. The total population of the ZIP code that encompasses all of Mt. Airy (19119) and the one that includes Cedarbrook plus West Oak Lane's westernmost blocks (19150) is 53,242 as of the 2010 Census, and there's no freakin' way on Earth an additional 16,891 people were born in or moved to the area in the five years after that.

As of the 2010 Census, ZIP code 19119's racial split was 58/32 black/white, while 19150's was 95/2.

You can get city-level MHI figures because Philadelphia is a city and a county; I'm surprised the folks at the Times didn't drill down that far.

[ApartmentNomad]

When an area is 30% black, you start to run into things like this:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7B9iKpirx8s

I don't know what to say any more. It's an unfortunate situation, but non-blacks aren't just fleeing something imaginary when they flee neighborhoods that tip black.

[Clark Park]

Originally Posted by BK_PHL_DEL

People that share interests in culture/food/language/ethnicity/values want to be near one another is not surprising. Look at Chinatowns across the country. Or Jewish neighborhoods on the Main Line and NYC.Or Brighton Beach (all Russian/Eastern European) in Brooklyn right by where I grew up.

You have to understand observant Conservative and Orthodox Jews will not operate or ride in any kind of vehicle on the sabbath. They have to live within walking distance of a synagogue. Also the proximity of kosher restaurants and groceries contribute to where these Jews will live.

[ElijahAstin]

Originally Posted by Clark Park

You have to understand observant Conservative and Orthodox Jews will not operate or ride in any kind of vehicle on the sabbath. They have to live within walking distance of a synagogue. Also the proximity of kosher restaurants and groceries contribute to where these Jews will live.

But I'm sure you'll also agree that non-Conservadox Conservative, Reform, and secular Jews flock to places like the Eastern Main Line, as they did for decades before the Eruvin were extended to Lower Merion, in order to replicate the strength in numbers and camaraderie that they enjoyed in City neighborhoods. And that's just fine! It's also disingenuous to portray an area that's ~30% Jewish as ethnically monolithic. Even Bala-Cynwyd, Merion, Penn Valley, and Penn Wynne are ~50% at most.

[Phillyfinest]

Originally Posted by ApartmentNomad

When an area is 30% black, you start to run into things like this:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7B9iKpirx8s

I don't know what to say any more. It's an unfortunate situation, but non-blacks aren't just fleeing something imaginary when they flee neighborhoods that tip black.

This post is just stupid. Every race fight not only us

[MarketStEl]

Originally Posted by ApartmentNomad

When an area is 30% black, you start to run into things like this:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7B9iKpirx8s

I don't know what to say any more. It's an unfortunate situation, but non-blacks aren't just fleeing something imaginary when they flee neighborhoods that tip black.

Because we're all lower class. I get it.

That didn't happen in Cedarbrook.

Nor in Oak Park in Kansas City.

Nor at the school I attended on the other side of the city once students from the grade school I would have attended were bused into it because it was overcrowded.

Sorry, doesn't jibe with what I've seen, and yes, I heard about the fight at Cheltenham High.

Still, this is an example of the same sort of lumping everything together at the bottom that I object to when other African-Americans do it, so I'm definitely not going to accept it from white people.