Calumet City (Chicago, Chicago Heights, Harvey: living, club, shopping center)

[Avengerfire]

Originally Posted by deechee

GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR! How long will this debate continue? Not everyone wants to live in INDIANA! My goodness!

Speaking of "better or more house for the money," how about those subpar materials used to build those crappy white flight homes?

It is quite possible you live in one of "those crappy white flight homes" built with "subpar materials." Except you live in Illinois in a town where the white flight to it happened a long time ago and now the town itself has been fled.

[Humboldt1]

How long before areas like Dyer and Lowell in Indiana are affected as former residents of areas like Lansing push further and further out, displacing existing residents?

Given the cheap housing in outlying areas, I think these areas are vulnerable, maybe not today, but in a decade or two.

Frankfort will stay nice for awhile given its good schools and relatively expensive homes.

Ultimately, the key to keeping areas nice is to price out riff raff. Affordable housing is often the reason for areas ultimately going downhill, as it allows all sorts to move in.

[svillechris]

Originally Posted by Humboldt1

How long before areas like Dyer and Lowell in Indiana are affected as former residents of areas like Lansing push further and further out, displacing existing residents?

Given the cheap housing in outlying areas, I think these areas are vulnerable, maybe not today, but in a decade or two.

Frankfort will stay nice for awhile given its good schools and relatively expensive homes.

Ultimately, the key to keeping areas nice is to price out riff raff. Affordable housing is often the reason for areas ultimately going downhill, as it allows all sorts to move in.

It's a really good question and one that's been discussed on the NWI boards to some extent. Although your question includes Dyer and Lowell, for argument's sake you can include St. John and Munster into that question as well, since they all essentially border Illinois. I think these towns will stave off a big downturn that you're suggesting due to Southern Chicago residents pushing south/east.

There's a few reasons I have for thinking this way. First, the property values really aren't that low in these areas. They may be low compared to a similar area of Chicagoland suburbs, but compared to towns like Lansing, Ford Heights, Chicago Heights, Sauk Village, etc they aren't low. Also, there's an interesting barrier between Illinois and Indiana. Part of it may be because there is a Forest Preserve at the state border, but in actuality much of the riff raff from the aforementioned Illinois towns aren't seen much in these Indiana towns. They generally seem to stay in Illinois. Lastly, and this is kind of sad to admit, but the white flight in NWI has basically resulted in a highly concentrated area of desirable towns that middle to upper class people in NWI want to live in. People have been pushed south away from East Chicago and Hammond, and south/west to get away from Gary. This has resulted in Munster, Dyer, St. John, Schererville, and Crown Point (you may toss in Lowell too - but thats' pretty far south) being basically the towns where the educated people with good jobs reside. Essentially what I'm saying is that, there's no place else for them to "flee" to if they want to stay in NWI and near Chicago. This therefore will keep property values at respectable levels and keep riff raff out of the nicer NWI towns. It'll be interesting to monitor this in the coming years and decades though.

[Humboldt1]

SvilleChris,

You are right to point out that not all the riff raff is coming from Chicago. Some of it is coming from areas like Gary, Hammond and Michigan City.

Even areas as far south as Lafayette are being infected (not just affected) as residents from housing projects are relocated to large apartment complexes. We are seeing the same thing in Illinois in areas like Bloomington and Kankakee. Large apartment complexes will attract low income people and unfortunately riff raff.

Again, the key to keeping riff raff out is to make housing not affordable to the masses.

You are right that areas such as Munster and Merriville are relatively expensive to their Illinois neighbors of Lansing and Calumet City, so I agree with you that this will help keep the riff raff out. 20 years from now is a long time. A lot can change between now and then.

There used to be a Hickey Freeman (high end Hart Schaffner brand) store in Merriville (close to Gary side) that recently went out. It was in a rough area surrounded by Aldis and Dollar stores and fast food and the stores had bars on its windows. I am sure when they built the store there 20-30 years ago they had no idea that the area would go downhill as much as it did.

[deechee]

Originally Posted by Avengerfire

It is quite possible you live in one of "those crappy white flight homes" built with "subpar materials." Except you live in Illinois in a town where the white flight to it happened a long time ago and now the town itself has been fled.

*Sigh*

[Chuckity]

Originally Posted by Humboldt1

You are right that areas such as Munster and Merriville are relatively expensive to their Illinois neighbors of Lansing and Calumet City, so I agree with you that this will help keep the riff raff out. 20 years from now is a long time. A lot can change between now and then.

There used to be a Hickey Freeman (high end Hart Schaffner brand) store in Merriville (close to Gary side) that recently went out. It was in a rough area surrounded by Aldis and Dollar stores and fast food and the stores had bars on its windows. I am sure when they built the store there 20-30 years ago they had no idea that the area would go downhill as much as it did.

I think you misspoke when you mentioned Merrillville the first time ... there is no price barrier in Merrillville. You can pick up a nicely rehabbed 3 bed/1.5 bath for $100K. The school suck though and the town is headed downhill fairly quickly.

[allen2323]

Originally Posted by Humboldt1

How long before areas like Dyer and Lowell in Indiana are affected as former residents of areas like Lansing push further and further out, displacing existing residents?

Given the cheap housing in outlying areas, I think these areas are vulnerable, maybe not today, but in a decade or two.

Frankfort will stay nice for awhile given its good schools and relatively expensive homes.

Ultimately, the key to keeping areas nice is to price out riff raff. Affordable housing is often the reason for areas ultimately going downhill, as it allows all sorts to move in.

Home prices in the most affluent Northwest indiana suburbs like saint john are in most cases more affordable than home prices and propety taxes in comparable southern suburbs like flossmoor or olympia fields. Home prices in the more middle class areas like merrillville are comparable to home prices in middle class suburbs like lansing and south holland. Home prices in working class hammond are comparable to home prices in harvey. I think the real differences are distance, it's more of a rural setting in indiana, the two areas are in entirely different states, and indiana has far fewer middle class african americans but probably just as many poor and working class african americans. As far as your question about african americans from middle class areas like lansing moving to indiana, I don't think so. I see more lower income african americans moving to indiana for the better section 8 housing options that are available there. Most middle class african americans who live in the southern suburbs prefer the middle class southern suburbs over indiana for a number of reasons. That is not likely to change in the near future unless the more desirable middle class southern suburbs like homewood, matteson, south holland, flossmoor, olympia fields, lynwood, etc become too overpriced or something.

[BRU67]

Originally Posted by Humboldt1

How long before areas like Dyer and Lowell in Indiana are affected as former residents of areas like Lansing push further and further out, displacing existing residents?

Given the cheap housing in outlying areas, I think these areas are vulnerable, maybe not today, but in a decade or two.

Frankfort will stay nice for awhile given its good schools and relatively expensive homes.

Ultimately, the key to keeping areas nice is to price out riff raff. Affordable housing is often the reason for areas ultimately going downhill, as it allows all sorts to move in.

Flight is often only a temporary measure, as the old saying goes. Humbolt raises some good points here I think. Often times, the newer exburbs do feature affordable housing, which is a big part of their draw. And that makes sense as most are not aimed at the high end of the market. Some, like Frankfort, focus on higher end product. But most are aimed at the middle class, and prices are in the mid-100s to high-200s.

And to make matters worse, a sizeable influx into a newer area with a lot of cheap land to build on often leads to an overestimation of demand and overbuilding results, thereby driving prices down even more. And the quality of homes can go down too if the growth happens fast, which means prices are more likely to fall down the road as they age. So if the population of the lowest income groups is growing faster than the middle class, logic would hold that there is a probability of an eventual influx of those groups that the "pioneering" group left in their former areas, particularly if those areas are in relatively close proximity.

This discussion has been had at length in other threads (e.g. "Suburbia -- the Next Slum") so no need to say much more than that here. You get the idea.

[Northwest Indiana]

I actually first saw that a store in Indianapolis was closing...then when I saw that "two Illinois stores were closing", I just knew that at least one of them had to be in the south suburbs...

Target closing two Chicago-area stores

[prairiestate]

It's fascinating to see the shifting retail landscape in the south suburbs as population and income continues to decline. Cal City-Lansing and Matteson were the two big retail centers. Now, though, there's a long and growing list of big retailers shutting down there and consolidating in Homewood. Homewood used to be a secondary market, but is now becoming dominant.

This isn't surprising. Homewood- Flossmoor is the most solidly middle to upper-middle class area in the south suburbs and it's centrally located. I mean, it's right in the center of south Cook County. Matteson is a little farther away, but they're also close to the Brookhaven shopping center in Tinley, which has also drawn a lot of retail out of Matteson.