New analysis shows influx of white residents into largely black Savannah neighborhoods (Montgomery: apartment complexes)

[Airforceguy]

While this isn't unique to Savannah, it still fascinating to see the changes that are happening in Savannah. I really surprised by how white the areas along the Waters Avenue corridor north of Victory Drive are becoming. I'm not surprised though by the changes happening on the west side where the new arena is going. With all of the recent apartment complexes being built for SCAD students, this area was bound to change. I believe we will see even more investment in the area once the arena is built and the canal district plans takeoff. Either way, the city of Savannah is changing and the 2020 census numbers will certainly reflect that.

Consider the Census tract where I live, which is bounded by Price Street, 34th Street, Park Avenue and Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard.


Majority African-American for decades, the tract was 53 percent white in 2012 and could now be 60 percent white. About 90 percent of home loans in the tract are going to white buyers, according to the Times’ analysis.

In the African-American majority Census tract bordered generally by Price, 34th, Paulsen and Bolton streets, white buyers account for about 80 percent of home loans and have average incomes more than twice as high as existing residents.

We are seeing similar changes in Census tracts north of West Gwinnett Street in West Savannah, north of East President Street, in the Waters Avenue corridor north of Victory Drive and in the Montgomery Street corridor between Park Avenue and 60th Street.

https://www.savannahnow.com/business...-neighborhoods

Link to NY Times article:https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/...ification.html

[masonbauknight]

African American neighborhoods like that one were white until the late 1960s. Much of Savannah's Greatest Generation grew up there and attended the old Savannah High (their parents often born in the 1890s and moved to raise families there in the 1930s). A racial/ethnic map I saw of Savannah shocked me, because neighborhoods to the south and east of the Historic District are all indicated as AA. They were largely white before the 1970s. Likewise the southside neighborhoods I grew up in: many were white until the late 1980s, are mostly black and Hispanic now.

Yes, NYC is similar: Bushwick/Bedford Stuyvesant (Brooklyn) was Italian/Irish, then became "signature" NYC black neighborhoods, now becoming young and white. Spanish Harlem, north of black Harlem, was very Italian before it became Puerto Rican. Both Harlems are now, increasingly, gentrifying. The millennials have upended urban living in America.

[JayHey]

Yeah, White Flight was a very real phenomenon. Now it's flipped on its head and called gentrification.