Moving to Memphis (transplants, crime, houses)

[Tigertate]

Originally Posted by Memphis10AC

The only thing it accomplished was spreading the crime and blight across more of the city and as opposed to keeping it in certain areas. In fact, you can even look at the statistics and see that around the time much of the public housing was being torn down, crime statistics in Memphis began to shoot through the roof. You can sing Herenton and Lipscomb's praises until the cows come home, but everything that works in Atlanta and other larger cities won't work here in Memphis. Chicago did a similar project years ago, but they had plenty of alternative places to put their Section 8 residents as opposed to just dumping them in all the good neighborhoods next door to people who choose to WORK for their homes as opposed to being given them for free. Anytime you GIVE somebody something---whether it's a house, or a car, or even a puppy---they're never going to take care of it as well as they would have had they actually had to WORK for it, especially if they're not used to having anything anyway. Like I said, once clean and decent neighborhoods like Hickory Hill, Frayser, Raleigh, etc, and as a result, Memphis as a whole, have all declined sharply due to Herenton and Lipscomb trying to implement a plan meant for a larger, much more metropolitan area than Memphis. One of the Herenton's administration's greatest failures. But that's a topic for another thread...

I have to agree with you on this. The Hope 6 program has not been good for Memphis.

[BradfromNO]

I knew it had to be job-related. It is so tough now that people would take a job
anywhere they were offered one. I know. I have a good job and I want out for a
pledge I made to myself 20 years ago to return to NC. But had my landlady not
just gone off the deep end and pissed me off, I would probably be staying. I WORK
in one of the top 2 worst neighborhoods in town, and I have been lucky. Nearly every car in
our office has had a window busted in to get at a phone or a GPS or some change in the console.
But not me, yet. I do not fear for my life when I go out for a ride at lunch for food or groceries
or things, but I can see why all the businesses closed their doors. You can't run a business
when half of your customers shoplift. Car lots have new cars with nothing in them vandalized
by unsupervised youth whose parents could care less. In fact they are shocked when the cops
bring their angels home to ask for a little supervision and help with a child on the edge so to speak.
And abandoned apartments complexes are scattered all over, and are so full of squatters and drug
users and poor old homeless, that a cop responding to a call in one abandoned complex had her throat
cut and nearly died a few months back.
WHEW, I got carried away. Like I said, if you have NO prospects and can get a decent salary,
you will do OK in Memphis LIVING, but work will be VERY tough on you. If you can make it here
you can make it anywhere. Best of luck.

[brit3218]

Originally Posted by Memphis10AC

I don't mean to scare you, but I'm just going to be honest with you:

1.) Most cities have good and bad areas of town. But the thing about Memphis is that the majority of the city qualifies as "the bad part of town." The Wonderful Dr. W.W. Herenton is responsible for this, since one of his main "accompishments" during his nearly 20 year tenure as mayor was to tear down most of Memphis' public housing projects and then scatter the residents all over the city in once decent neighborhoods like Frayser, Raleigh, and Hickory Hill and give them newly converted free homes right next door to decent, hard working people who had worked 20 or 30 years to pay their houses off. So unless you live far out in the suburbs, you better get used to living among the criminal element. ESPECIALLY on a teacher's salary. One way to partially get around that, though, is to possibly get a roommate. I'm assuming you're part of the TeachAmerica program and this is what a lot of the people in that program do when moving to a new city to teach.

2.) Try apartmentratings.com. It's a good way to get honest ratings and reviews on apartments across the country from people who have actually lived in them. I will warn you now, though, that most apartments in Memphis have a quota that they have to meet for Section 8 residents, even in the so-called "good" areas of town.

3.) Memphis City Schools are honestly probably some of the worst in the country, and definitely the worst in the state and region. There are only a handful of MCS schools that are still decent, and all the veteran teachers stay at those schools until they retire. And once some of them do finally retire, other veteran teachers are given priority for those positions over newer, less experienced teachers. That being said, most of the teachers in Memphis City Schools are young and usually burn out in 1 to 3 years (high trunover rate). So if you are a NEW teacher---especially if you're part of TeachAmerica---you will most certainly be placed at one of the worst schools that Memphis has to offer in one of it's worst neighborhoods (what MCS calls a "high risk" area). This means the administration will probably be underwhelming and probably won't be very supportive, and most of the kids sure as hell won't want to learn anything. And parentel support? Forget it. Most of the parents probably aren't too much older than you are and are so apathetic and ghetto that they say nothing at all when their children bring home F's and U's all year long, but as soon as you take their child's cellphone, they're running up to the school or the Board of Education trying to argue with you, cuss you out, and get you reprimanded when they know their child is not supposed to be playing on a cellphone in class in the first place. Also, if you're young, female, and white, I feel extra sorry for you. You'd be like "fresh fish" in a prison as far as most of those kids are concerned.

Again, I'm not trying to scare you off or tell you not to come here, but since you asked what you'd be getting into, I figured you might appreciate some honest insight...

I couldn't have put it better myself.

[rockadoodle]

Originally Posted by Memphis10AC

The only thing it accomplished was spreading the crime and blight across more of the city and as opposed to keeping it in certain areas. In fact, you can even look at the statistics and see that around the time much of the public housing was being torn down, crime statistics in Memphis began to shoot through the roof.

A couple of years ago, I came across this article that explained it rather well:

American Murder Mystery - Magazine - The Atlantic

[thenuegeye]

"A few months ago, Harris went to a Sunday-afternoon picnic at Uptown Square, the development built on the site of the old Hurt Village project, to conduct a survey. The picnic’s theme was chili cook-off. The white people, mostly young couples, including little kids and pregnant wives, sat around on Eddie Bauer chairs with beer holders, chatting. The black people, mostly women with children, were standing awkwardly around the edges. Harris began asking some of the white people the questions on her survey: Do you lack health insurance? Have you ever not had enough money to buy medication? One said to her, “This is so sad. Does anyone ever answer ‘yes’ to these questions?”—Harris’s first clue that neighbors didn’t talk much across color lines. One of the developers was there that day surveying the ideal community he’d built, and he was beaming. “Isn’t this great?” he asked Harris, and she remembers thinking, Are you kidding me? They’re all sitting 20 feet away from each other!"

This paragraph on page three speaks volumes. LOL! Like I tell folks all the time, the vast majority of blacks and whites don't mix and mingle in Memphis. Culturally we're just too different. That's why the nightlife sucks so bad. We interact at work and that's it.

One of my favorite lines is "The black people, mostly women with children, were standing awkwardly around the edges." LOL!!

[kingchef]

along w/ houston and other cities, the crime rate rose considerably in both cities as a direct result of gangs, thieves, thugs, and murderers, who were shipped in from new orleans, after katrina. for some strange reason, that bit of information is rarely seen or discussed in the public realm.

nevertheless, to conclude that all parts of the city are ruined by the scattering of public housing residents is not entirely accurate. section 8 housing is usually the beginning of failing neighborhoods. the hope VI project has not brought about the regentrification of neighborhoods that had been hoped for by the federal government. it hasn't worked well in birmingham, in much of atlanta, and it is not working in new orleans.
people are not going to live where they do not feel secure---white, black, hispanic, asian, whoever.

the other post that i read w/ some interest concerns the uptown square neighborhood. my questions would be: 1. where were the black men that would have made up the black couples; 2. why does it matter that white and black mingle, in order to have night life. my friends, who are white, don't care for much of the hip hop and rap music, they don't dance, by and large, in the same manner as blacks, and the clubs are usually completely different in ambiance. too, i don't see that forcing contrived relationships are going to be significant or lasting. hispanics generally stay w/in their culture, latinos, etc. i attend a church where the majority of the communicants are white, i don't feel comfortable w/ shouting out, clapping, unfamiliar liturgical practices, etc. i just don't understand why cultural differences are a part of one's life that should be given up, if they enjoy their culture, and they seek out that particular culture.

country clubs, singles clubs, parenting organizations, and so forth have specific groups and demographics throughout memphis. it is an overstatement to say that the only time blacks and whites mingle is while they are working. if that is the reality, perhaps that is how most want it.

i know that tv shows such as the king of queens and others are constructed to show those relationships, but i believe it is totally fine if they don't exist. in fact, i believe that you will not see asians w/ blacks, blacks w/ hispanics, or latinos w/ asians more than the black/white association. to me, this is a much more interesting sociological question.

[thenuegeye]

And you prove points I made in the past even more. I'm sure most whites in Memphis feel the same way. You made some assumptions and stereotyped black people in your comments as well. Not all black people are ghetto, gangster rap music lovers. In my opinion, the city's culture is bland all around. And in real progressive cities, people of different racial groups do mix and mingle. You're pretty much saying you're fine with segregation. Unlike most whites here who pretend they don't see color, at least you're honest. This is no revelation to me. I believe this town's white citizens would rather have an all white Memphis. Also, black men being present in black families is a separate issue. It has absolutely nothing to do with this town's lack of true diversity. The article's writer made an accurate observation. U of M is another perfect example. The only thing that brings the student body together is that pathetic basketball team. Memphis is a third tier wannabe town. Bass Pro's inevitable failure will provide even more proof.

[Tigertate]

Pathetic Basketball Team. LOL, You wish.

[thenuegeye]

Originally Posted by Tigertate

Pathetic Basketball Team. LOL, You wish.

HA! You're so predictable, Tate.

[Tigertate]

, LOL