What Happened To Hickory Hill??? (Memphis, Bartlett: apartment complex, high crime, purchase)

[Longtimelistener]

You guys buy too much into the color thing. I live in an area that is probably 60% white, 30% black and 10% other. Nobody is painting their house purple and the kids are not walking around with their pants below their crack. Gunfire is not heard except for the hunting that is a mile or two away.
When car break ins start going up along with roving gangs of obviously malcontent youths the day to move will be near.
Malcontent youths are of all colors. When they stop greeting me with a hello or nice car sir and start asking for smokes I'm gone. Witnessed it in our old neighborhood. It was 50/50 or so when we moved in. What changed was when the section 8ers were sprinkled all through. No down payment mortgages didn't help either. By 2003 my old neighborhood in Raleigh was a ghetto. Being asked for cigarettes and change quickly became the monthly car breakin and robbery.

[SippiStateBulldogs]

38141 zip code which is a part of Hickory Hill has a majority home owner versus renter population. So section 8 has nothing to with this.

[SippiStateBulldogs]

Do y'all know how many times neighborhoods in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles have changed hands. There are neighborhoods that went from German to Italian and Irish, to polish and Jewish, to Asian, to Black, To mexican and so on. In the process the neighborhoods went through many different economic changes. I grew up in such a number. You do not see me complaining or trying to reflect on the good ole days. This is a natural process of development. Memphis is a large city. These things will happen. Deal with it like people in other big cities deal with it and move on.

[Darkseid]

Originally Posted by MissStateDawg

Do y'all know how many times neighborhoods in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles have changed hands. There are neighborhoods that went from German to Italian and Irish, to polish and Jewish, to Asian, to Black, To mexican and so on. In the process the neighborhoods went through many different economic changes. I grew up in such a number. You do not see me complaining or trying to reflect on the good ole days. This is a natural process of development. Memphis is a large city. These things will happen. Deal with it like people in other big cities deal with it and move on.

I think you may have meant for this post to go in the "My memories of Hickory Hill" thread. The OP on this thread simply asked about the area and some ppl gave a brief history.

[Longtimelistener]

Originally Posted by MissStateDawg

Do y'all know how many times neighborhoods in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles have changed hands. There are neighborhoods that went from German to Italian and Irish, to polish and Jewish, to Asian, to Black, To mexican and so on. In the process the neighborhoods went through many different economic changes. I grew up in such a number. You do not see me complaining or trying to reflect on the good ole days. This is a natural process of development. Memphis is a large city. These things will happen. Deal with it like people in other big cities deal with it and move on.

Asb I said it has little to do with ethnicity that kills a neighborhood but class. Once a neighborhood turns from middle class to working poor to just plain poor the change is sad to watch.

[eastmemphisguy]

Hickory Hill is not a poor neighborhood. It's past its prime, no doubt about it. But it still is home to population who enjoys a fairly reasonable standard of living. Compared to many Memphis neighborhoods, it's positively lovely.

[jabogitlu]

Its future is less certain, though. More people will continue to populate the downtown/south main/uptown core, as well as rejuvenate Midtown, which still has many neighborhoods that can be 'flipped' (like around Lamar & Rozelle). At the same time, the 'other' side of the coin, people looking for new suburban/exurban living will continue to flock outwards to Arlington and Piperton. Hickory Hill needs some massive investment from daring entrepreneurs willing to demolish the terrible commercial strip centers and rededicate Winchester as a true boulevard... But that will not happen for the foreseeable future!

[tigerphan]

Originally Posted by Mopac1980

I'm from Washington State and I've looked at many areas of the Hickory Hill area on Google Maps and some areas seem to look better than the others, some areas looks like a clean, suburban neighborhood, some others looks really run down and in between.

It was a middle class neighborhood with an abundance of multi family apartment complexes that were once nice but now caters to mostly subsidized renters. This, combined with the annexation of the area that put Hickory Hill into the city school district, drove property values down. People left to settle in areas with better schools and ended up taking their spending power with them as the politics and culture in the neighborhood they left behind got worse.

Some of the single family areas are okay. The Clarke/Knight Arnold Area actually has some cute houses.....but the problem is that property crime is common there and the retail areas are very run down. The big box stores have moved to the 385 Winchester area (which itself has some issues with property crime but nothing serious) and left empty buildings behind. What is left is way too much retail square footage to serve the neighborhood. Winchester is very similar in development pattern to north Germantown Parkway between Wolf River and I-40. The North Germantown area has sort of replaced it as the regional shopping district.

It doesn't help that in 2008, an EF-3 tornado ripped through the area during the "super tuesday" outbreak. Some businesses have rebuilt, others have relocated.

I am in Hickory Hill 3 times a week for work. It's not Bagdad, but it's not any place I'd want to live. It's declining. Some areas are better than others.

On the other hand, the area has a good road network (as bumpy as the pavement is), and in some cases local "mom and pop" businesses have taken over space vacated by big chain stores. There's still millions of empty sq ft, but it's a start. There is a large church in the area that invests in the neighborhood and several decent restaurants that are good lunch destinations.

Unfortunately, Auto Nation Honda looks like the latest business to move from Hickory Hill to Hacks Cross. They are building their new location soon. Most of the housing is still too modern to have the charm and appeal that the older Craftsman homes have in mid town, although there is good single family stock there. Who knows what the future holds, but right now HH is having some serious trouble.

[eastmemphisguy]

People in Memphis have a habit of grossly overestimating the number of Section 8 tenants in formerly white and middle class neighborhoods like Hickory Hill and Raleigh. They're a very small percentage of the population, many of whom are elderly and disabled. I'm not saying these folks aren't out there, but it isn't like a majority of people at the average Hickory Hill complex are getting government help with their rent. I'm not accusing any particular poster of this stance, but I think a lot of white people, and not just in Memphis or the South, sincerely believe that most black people don't work and are just living off the government, which ism frankly, an asinine belief. And at the same time, I wish more black people would understand that crime rates are much higher and school performance is much lower in predominantly black neighborhoods, and that is a legitimate concern for white residents of neighborhoods like Hickory Hill. The politics of race isn't as neat and tidy as "They don't like us because we look different." There's plenty of blame to go around for all the racial stuff. And it's a shame because most people of both races are generally good people who get up in the morning, go to work, and wouldn't think of causing any trouble for their neighbors.

[tigerphan]

Originally Posted by eastmemphisguy

People in Memphis have a habit of grossly overestimating the number of Section 8 tenants in formerly white and middle class neighborhoods like Hickory Hill and Raleigh.

They're a very small percentage of the population, many of whom are elderly and disabled. I'm not saying these folks aren't out there, but it isn't like a majority of people at the average Hickory Hill complex are getting government help with their rent.

There is currently no public database available to track section 8 renters that I'm aware of....that information is private. There is a good article on the subject here:

American Murder Mystery - Hanna Rosin - The Atlantic

On the other hand (I'm not proud of this), my extended family owns a good bit of rental housing in the Memphis metro. None of the units that they (not me) have in Hickory Hill would be filled if they didn't accept subsidized renters.....and they have very nice units and are rennovated frequently. They have an assortment of condo/townhomes in the area near Kirby/Winchester.

Originally Posted by eastmemphisguy

I'm not accusing any particular poster of this stance, but I think a lot of white people, and not just in Memphis or the South, sincerely believe that most black people don't work and are just living off the government, which ism frankly, an asinine belief. And at the same time, I wish more black people would understand that crime rates are much higher and school performance is much lower in predominantly black neighborhoods, and that is a legitimate concern for white residents of neighborhoods like Hickory Hill. The politics of race isn't as neat and tidy as "They don't like us because we look different." There's plenty of blame to go around for all the racial stuff. And it's a shame because most people of both races are generally good people who get up in the morning, go to work, and wouldn't think of causing any trouble for their neighbors.

Since I grew up in another part of the country and moved here several years ago, I'm shocked at how everyone here is considered racist just for looking after their own best interests in Memphis. That used to be a powerful word, but now it's thrown around so casually to describe people who may not be liked or agreed with.

Simply put....the political stance and culture of the people that moved into those areas recently are so vastly different from the middle class people that are moving out. Just because in Memphis, most of the poor happen to be black. The dependency politics and culture isn't restricted to just one race....it just appears that way in Memphis because of the demographics. Middle class blacks are leaving places like Hickory Hill and Raleigh because they don't want their kids growing up around all of that. It most certainly is far deeper than the way people look.

Go to Philadelphia or Boston and you'd see plenty of people of all races that fit the description above. Those are more diverse cities than Memphis in every way, but the same exact thing happens there. The difference is that the crime is following the poor who happen to be people of all races up there.

The politics of race isn't as neat and tidy as "They don't like us because we look different."

You hit the nail on the head with this statement, in particular.

I don't think the "you look different so I'm leaving" excuse is valid in the overwhelming majority of cases involving people leaving places like Hickory Hill. That's a cop out argument for someone who doesn't want to explore the root causes of sprawl because it would involve questioning their own politics and what they value in life....and possibly even probe their own deep hatred of other people. It's the same type of attitude that blames the achievement gap on racism and nothing else.