America's Shame (Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Mount Lebanon: real estate market, refinance, selling a house)

[BrianTH]

I don't want to get into a pointless flame war, but I will just note that many things matter to children, not just school quality. It also matters, for example, how much time they get to spend with their parents, which means the nature of a working parent's commute matters. It also matters what physical safety risks they will be exposed to, and automobile accidents are the top physical safety risk to children, particularly teens. And so on.

So, it isn't possible to make simple assertions about where is the best place to live if you have children, and you certainly can't just assume the best school district you can afford is necessarily the best place overall.

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by GarlicBreath

Why not move to a burb where you know she'll receive a great education? Rather than trying to luck into a magnet? Is it that important to you to live in the city?

Yes, it is. I find suburban life unappealing for the following reasons:

1. I like old houses, brick Victorians especially, although anything up to Craftsmen style has some appeal. I hate modern McMansion construction, and I think the mid-20th century styles in most of the older suburbs are ugly as sin.

2. I don't want to live in a house where I have a front lawn. I hated mowing lawns as a child, and vowed to ensure as an adult I would never need to take care of one. I wouldn't mind a small front yard if I could landscape it not to need grass, but I don't want a big setback, suburban style house with a driveway and garage.

3. I like living in a neighborhood where I can walk to things, and, when they aren't available in my neighborhood, take a 5-15 minute drive to another walkable neighborhood. I also like being on a major bus line, and being able to bike into town for work within 30 minutes.

4. I'd like my daughter to actually have black friends growing up, as it's something I did not have in my own childhood.

I realize there are a few places in Allegheny County where you can get these outside of the city along with "good schools," including Aspinwall, Sewickley, and portions of Mount Lebanon. That said, these areas are way outside of our price range, because they are desirable to people due to their built character and walkability. If I could afford to live there anyway, I might as well move to Squirrel Hill.

The suburbs that appeal to me most are actually Millvale and Dormont, mainly due to the old built style and good access to downtown (via trail and rail respectively). That said, neither of which are really a step up in terms of schools. I actually think both are inferior, in that even though the downside is less, the upside is also considerably less.

I'm not sure I understand the whole "take the risk out" argument though. By staying in the city and applying, we lose nothing, except maybe having to make a hurried relocation in the summer two years from now. If we win out, then we can move to our dream house in the city, wherever it is. Seems like a big upside to me.

[Clint.]

I really fail to understand the "get my kid in a good school" mentality, and think it is insulting. That it keeps being raised here, along with the constant befuddlement about housing preferences, really reveals the naive ethnocentrism that seeps into all of these sorts of "discussions".

Apparently all students at Upper St. Clair, Fox Chapel, and Quaker Valley are acing AP calculus?* Also, apparently students at "inferior" districts are forced to be no better than the lowest achievers - no independent thinking or self initiative there, and no one will get too far ahead, because the teacher will be sure to keep them down, right? Is having a dad who is a software engineer and a mom who keeps an orderly house and makes dinner every night - and, say, both of whom actively encourage learning - a possible variable for success when compared to a child with no present father, a mother who smokes crack with a new guy every other week, and a common career aspiration among those in the community is to get SSI on the first application? Maybe it is having a big back yard - or a long driveway - that sets a kid on the path toward a stable life? Blaming or championing schools for a kid's success is a self-fulfilling prophecy. The BS here is getting pretty deep.

*Most of what I see about 'advanced courses and extracurricular activities and resources' references high school students. The reality is that the foundation for those sorts of ambitions are laid during preschool, elementary, and middle school years, and require values at home that encourage such goal seeking. I don't like to be presumptuous, but I'd wager that > 50% of the advocates for highly segregated (segregated in housing and social sense, not necessarily racial) suburban housing and associated school districts are politically conservative, which I find to be fairly ironic...So much for the fortitude of motivated individuals to achieve without carefully managed social environments to prop them up.

[GoatTheKing]

GarlicBreath:

I know it might be hard to believe, but a lot of us think kids learn a bunch of pretty bad things (in terms of values) in suburbs. Book-larnin' ain't the only thing you learn in a school. Obviously that's a much more subjective thing... but I think it's true, particularly for those of us having kids who already, ourselves, grew up in suburbs.

For example, I don't want my kids growing up around gangs (of course). But I also don't want them growing up feeling strange for not being an evangelical Christian (which happened in the suburb I grew up in in the south). I want them to have the freedom to figure out what sort of life works for them, even if they are strange or peculiar - in my own personal experience, cities seem to do a much better job of handling the idea of "it takes all sorts, just find your niche" than suburbs, which are really, truly more about feeling safe because everyone around you is busy working normal jobs and looking normal and being normal and dressing normal and doing normal things and.... I want them to see adults being good at jobs and running small businesses and making the world work and being exposed to the idea that the world doesn't revolve exclusively around throngs of middle schoolers being solely catered to in between their shifts at big box stores (which, again, has largely been my suburb experience).

And the thing is, if there are enough other people like me (and eschaton sounds like one), then why can't that be made to work? If enough of us believe it can work... then it can. If we don't, then it won't.

I think if you are the target demographic for suburbs, it can be hard to see that a lot of the stuff you may think are selling points actually look like giant terrible moral red flags and bad values to other people. But it's true.

[ElijahAstin]

Originally Posted by eschaton

I'm not sure I understand the whole "take the risk out" argument though. By staying in the city and applying, we lose nothing, except maybe having to make a hurried relocation in the summer two years from now. If we win out, then we can move to our dream house in the city, wherever it is. Seems like a big upside to me.

It's not much of a risk if you're renting. If you've purchased a home though, trying to sell it quickly without incurring some kind of loss is much easier said than done.

[2nd trick op]

Originally Posted by PGHPA611

As I travel the country I am almost brought to tears as I view what was once our legacy cities becoming wastelands. As a country we need to ask why in the year 2012 are so many living in deplorable housing some without water, electricity or heat ?? This problem isn't new but to me it seems like it is getting worse. Urban sprawl has allowed our core cities to be vacated and left to the very poor. By doing this crime has increased into the stratosphere and the educational system in these areas due to the lack of tax dollars is crumbling. I look at the landscape of theses cities with abandoned storefronts, crumbling streets and homes, dilapadated schools and ask myself how this was allowed to be. Would it be better to control Urban Sprawl, to tear down the wastelands and build new in the existing footprint ? America does this sprawl better than anyother country, our throw away society encourages you to pick up and move. We leave once vibrant communities due to the lack of jobs. Corporate America in many ways is responsible, building in areas of the country which make no sense. I am throwing it out for discussion, what do you think of Urban Sprawl ? I am sure this will attract the lunatic fringe and the haters , I truly hope it also attracts the thinkers and future urban planners.

If you are naive enough to beliee that further centralization of authority can "solve" a "problem" that originated from millions of original and spontanrous actions ... you are a big part of the problem.

Pittsburgh has been a central focus of the debate over "social engineering" since the steel industry's troubles burst upon the scene back in the late Seventies. At the time, I had a lot of close friends from Penn State just starting out -- many of them after delaying their careers for a few year in favor of the Security Blanket that was Happy Valley at the time.

The overwhelming majority of the people I knew turned out pretty well -- but no thanks to the clique of militants who kept claming that Big Brother/Sister had a better way. That same conflict is now being played out on a national basis, and anybody who wants to complan about supposed "exploitation" or the like during the years when Pittsbugh became the laboratory ought to take a closer look at what's happening in both Detroit and Las Vegas. -- same old same old, with Little Mikey Moore peddling his nostrums and whining all the way to the bank.

Change is inevitable, it is natural; we do have a safety net in place, and it has absorbed the shocks well -- so far. Placing more of it under local control (which is more feasible now that the racial polarization which characteized 1960-75 was been mitigted) would allow it to stretch a lot further.

But I side with figures such as Thomas Friedman and George Will in pointing out that the real casue of most of our discontent -- both economic and social -- is the simple fact that the United States can no longer draw upon the huge advantage it held after 1945, when eveybody else's industrial infrastucture was either in ruins, in chains, or both. Our sons can no longer count upon a low-stress $25/hr unionized job, our daughters already know all about the juggling of responsibilities, and there is no huge vault at some country club, somewhere, where uncaring men in three-piece suits are shielding a pile of stolen wealth.

I also agree that retro-fitting our suburbs to the post-industrial economy poses a huge challenge, But the exotic, European-modeled High Speed Rail (HSR) systems so ballyhooed by the new Administration (for a very short time) three years ago were window-dressing -- a shiny Lionel set Big Daddy can't afford. We can revive conventional systems (Pittsburgh never had much, BTW -- the concentration of heavy industry in communities and neighborhoods far from downtown, meant that what service there was was geared to shopping rather than employment -- Grandad often walked to the mill) and we can integrate them with the auto, but the private capital has long since been scared away. and the first stage of any pblic project is always a plethora of studies, done, written and published by firms linked to somebody's politically-connected brother-in-law.

And in a similar vein (I was a Transportation major and have worked in both the rail and motor-trucking fields) we have an adequate rail system, thankfully in prvate hands and in its best financial shape in nearly a century, to move much of our freight. But the interface with the public began a complete metamorphasis after 1945. the sevice has been concentrated in a smaller, more-dense network, but it has neither the flexibility, the capability or the incentive to run a delivery spur close to your local Wal-Mart or "Jint Iggl". Our incerasingly-smaller personal autos are going to have to share the highway system with 18- or greater-wheel mastodons, and it wouldn't suprise me to see that pressue, hopefully not spurred on by a MADD-type advocacy fueled by occasional tradedy, develop within the political arena.

That, my friends and neighbors, is good old American capitalism -- warts and all. It has a lot of problems to address, and a lot of critics ready to back-seat drive. But it is apparently effective enough that some of our neighbors in both the Far East and the Southern Hemisphere are embracing it and growing -- while the nay-sayers here are trying to shut it out as we stagnate. If we follow that currently-popular delusion, we are likely to paint ourselves into a corner from it won't be easy to extract ourselves.

It's like that mechanic in the oil-filter ads said four decades ago -- we can plan slowly and sensibly, working with the realists rather than the Politically Correct, or we can indulge our fantasies via the Nanny-State, and pay a lot more later.

[ferraris]

Originally Posted by Kippy

For those of you who live in walkable neighborhoods, how many miles do you put on your car annually?

My past two inspections have shown 5,000 and 7,000 miles. I don't even live in all that walkable of a neighborhood (Mexican War Streets). I try to take the bus to work and even when I drive it is only a 10 mile round trip commute. The bulk of my miles are out of state road trips and visiting people in the suburbs. The only necessities that I drive for are groceries and big box retail. Gas is not a big factor in my budget, I usually spend less than $1,000 a year on gas (again, mostly on road trips) and I am totally out of touch when my coworkers talk about current gas prices and how it is so greatly effecting their finances. All I know is that it's between $3 and $4, and it's not a big deal to me personally where exactly in that spectrum that the price falls on the day I'm at the pump.

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by HeavenWood

It's not much of a risk if you're renting. If you've purchased a home though, trying to sell it quickly without incurring some kind of loss is much easier said than done.

We bought our house for $53,000 in Lawrenceville in 2007. While we might not make back all of the money we put into it (we haven't kept close track of most of our home improvements), we're certain to sell it for a great deal more than we bought it for.

[Goinback2011]

Eschaton, it's the statist desire to impose that lifestyle on those who don't want it that people object to, not the fact that you or Brianth have chosen to embrace it.

Would you be choosing it if you hadn't encountered propaganda from academia and government favoring it? I think not. But no one really cares what you choose for yourself or your family.

[ditchdigger]

Originally Posted by BrianTH

I don't recall saying anything precisely like that.

You may not have said precisely that in any given post, but in the aggregate, continued references to artificial constrants, and ILLEGAL forms of development, which are things that would originate from public policy, deliver that message.

Originally Posted by BrianTH

As we discussed above, the way we have structured the governance of most of the relevant land-use policies, incumbent residents determine the policies, and prospective residents have no say. So some interested people have input, others do not, and that has predictable ill effects.

We also have had a problem with certain coalitions of political and economic elites making other sorts of policy decisions with only limited public input and accountability. I don't want to get on a complete tangent, but policy in the relevant areas is rarely subject to direct referendum, and the sorts of planning that has occurred has not necessarily been what people would have voted for if given a chance. But rarely, if ever, do these wonky policy issues determine elections at higher levels of government.

Here, abridged, is an exchange you shared with Jimmy:

Originally Posted by BrianTH

You cited developers in Cranberry. I-279 was a very expensive and very valuable public gift to developers in Cranberry.

Originally Posted by jimmyev

I-279 was not a gift to developers in Cranberry. It was a gift to politicians in Lawrence, Beaver, Mercer, Butler, Venango, Crawford and Erie counties,

Originally Posted by BrianTH

It was both, of course. Indeed, developers are often prominent supporters of the relevant politicians.

Unless you can demonstrate that developers develop without self interest, but with only the interest of incumbent residents in mind, I'd say that right there you suggested that developers themselves exert influence in favor of prospective residents--their prospective customers.

Gotta get back to one other thing that's been bugging me...

Again, I think you are grossly underestimating the degree to which not only was this development form "encouraged", but also the alternatives were ILLEGAL. That's not to deny that a substantial portion of the market more or less wanted this form of development, but the fact that the alternatives were made ILLEGAL in so many places is proof that there is another substantial portion of the market that would have wanted the alternatives, but were thwarted by the legal system. You don't need such a widespread prohibition if there isn't any demand for what you are prohibiting....

....To the extent there is an "agenda-driven" argument, it is on the part of people who want to defend all the laws making it illegal for developers to supply this potential market, on the internally-inconsistent theory that people really prefer it that way anyway.

I know it's nuanced, and that technically "illegal" is a valid term, but I'm sensitive to shades of meaning in the words we use to communicate our ideas.

Parking on the side of the street designated for street sweeping on the second Thursday of the fair weather months is "illegal", but if the Public Works Department rearranges their sweeper routes, changing that to "legal" is as simple as changing the signs.

Stealing is "illegal", because it's criminal.

One is a matter of right and wrong, and the other is a matter of regulation.

There's a market for marijuana, and while it was long considered criminal, it's been supplied "illegally" for decades. Marijuana has been decriminalized in some localities, and is in some circumstances available "legally", subject to regulation, in others. That's a change in public policy that's come about through our lawmakers consideration of the opinions of the populace. A widespread prohibition, as you say above, that's been eroded by public demand, and changing attitudes.

Again, shades of meaning of the word, but on the continuum of what's legal and illegal, zoning regulations are a whole lot closer to parking restrictions than they are to stealing or smoking dope. To repeatedly and continually refer to zoning restrictions as illegal, PARTICULARLY WHEN YOU SCREAM IT IN CAPS, is hyperbole.

Just sayin...