is sacramento ghetto? (Davis, Elk Grove, Oak Park: how much, home, living in)

[thing2]

Attached is a list of chapters of the National Black MBA Association. Sacramento does not have a chapter of this organization, but there are lot of cities on this list that are much smaller than Sacramento, which do have chapters. Notice Birmingham, Charlotte, Cincinnati, Columbus, Dayton, Memphis, Kansas City, Louisville, and Richmond.

National Black MBA Association - NBMBAA chapters is providing opportunities

In the Sacramento region, you have fewer and smaller ethnic affiliation professional organizations than other cities of comparable size. The nature of diversity in Sacramento is very different than the nature of diversity in the bay area.

In the bay area, you have immigrant communties comprised of people with college and graduate degrees. Its fairly common to find Chinese engineers from Taiwan or graduates of India's prestigious Indian Institute of Technology. The bay area is able to attract the best brightest from around the world. Because these immigrants communties are very highly educated, they also insist that there children are educated. The children of these immigrants do very well in school and themselves manage to attain high levels of education attainment. The diversity in the bay area is adding to the livability of the region and making the place a more livable community for everyone. In the bay area, ethnicity is a poor proxy for class.

The bay area is an expensive enough place to live, where if you are poor and/or poorly educated, you can't afford to live there. As a result, even the immigrant populations have very high levels of educational attainment.

Sacramento is the home to the Campbell Soup Factory and the Blue Diamond Almond Growers plan as well as lot of work in the trucking and warehousing industry. The cost of living is much cheaper, and most communities in the region have mixed income ordinances. The result is that you have a demand for unskilled labor and programs that subsidize the cost of living to ensure that low wage, low value employment can afford to stay in the region.

Sacramento is home to one of the nations largest concentrations of Hmong populations in the country. In South East Asia, the Hmong never developed a written language. The Hmong are often the footsoldiers in Sacramento's Asian gangs. Sacramento also has a fairly large and growing population of immigrants from the rural regions of Mexico and Central America. The immgrant communties in this region are doing a much poorer job of enculturating themselves here. Hence the large social problems in those communties.

Parental education attainment predicts educational attainment for immigrants and the domestic population as well. But the pool of immigrants in Sacramento is much less educated than the Bay Area, Canada or some of the other areas that are seeing much greater benefits from immigration.

In other communities outside of Sacramento, you are seeing middle income and upper income communities with ethnic minorities majorities.

But that is not really happening yet in the Sacramento region. If you are an educated minority member in Sacramento you have to choose between living among people with a common ancestry or living in a predominately anglo community with people with similiar levels of educational attainment.

In the Sacramento region, race is a much better proxy for class than the bay area. Race and poverty are much more tightly linked. In this area, the wealthy areas are much whiter than the region as a whole and poor areas are disportionately ethnic minorities. In this region, you don't find many minority members in Granite Bay, El Dorado Hills, Folsom, Rancho Murrieta or Fair Oaks.

But the ghettos of the region do have lots of immigrants and minorities. Thus the diversity of Oak Park, Del Paso Heights, South Sac, Meadowview and West Sac.

But unless and until this region starts creating communties for the educated minorities, those folks are going to keep leaving the area for better opportunties in the bay area or elsewhere. Moreover until that process starts occuring, the region isn't really seeing much benefit yet from its diversity.

In the bay area, I think its diversity is a strength, but in this region, its probably more of a weakness.

[romanceisdead]

Thing2, I think you hit it pretty close to the truth. Although, here in Folsom, we actually do have a pretty large group of East Indian (all of our doctors in our family are Indian-- ped, family and dentist. And they come for work at Intel..) We also have a pretty big group of Persian and Arabics. BUT, they are all upper-middle class people, all well educated for sure. As you say. I would actually say they are more on the upper than the middle class side. I live in a solid middle class 'hood, and I only see whites, some blacks, and some mexicans here.

I am a white woman who grew up on welfare. My father was a highschool grad only, and my mom didn't make it through 7th grade (in oakland). I am a university grad, now going to grad-school, while my husband works and my kids are in school... Lack of education is what keeps people down, imo, far more than race alone. I think you are so right in your point that things in Sacramento may have more to do with uneducated minority groups, more than just what race they happen to be...As you go farther north to Marysville, etc, you will see just as many poor, uneducated white people with just as many problems-- gangs, drugs, ghetto-life, abuse and troubled kids. You will kind very little in the way of incentive to change, either.

Education, and the true support and encouragement of it is the key. No matter what color we are.

[hellaslover]

I wouldn't describe sacramento as ghetto but it does have its bad parts. West sacramento, rio linda, citrus heights, broadway, downtown i think are "bad". I prefer to live in a city where i feel safe walking at night but it doesn't feel really safe in sacramento. I used to live in college greens, a pretty good neighborhood, but it's been a couple years that crime has gone up. I would keep hearing police helicopters searching for criminals and police sirens at least once a week. There is no good and bad side of the city, it's all mixed. You may live in a good area and then walk two blocks and it becomes ghetto. For example there is this area between watt and howe avenue where there's million dollar homes but it is surrounded in the "bad" areas..

[AuburnJack]

I've been hearing West Sacramento listed as "bad" since before I moved to the area, and now that I live in West Sac, I'm forced to wonder how many people who avoid it have actually ever been there.

Granted, I live in Southport, which is the new part of town. However, I routinely drive up through Broderick/Bryte, which I believe is what most people equate West Sacramento with, and I can say with certainty that even the rough part of West Sac doesn't hold a candle to Meadowview/South Sac. I felt uncomfortable even driving through Meadowview. I feel perfectly safe where I live now.

What, exactly, makes West Sac a "bad area?" Because W. Capitol was rough 15 years ago (they are now redeveloping it)? Because it's an industrial/blue collar area (what's bad about that)? Because there's a gang injunction (isn't that a good thing, that the city is proactive about addressing gang activity)? I'm confused.

[wburg]

AuburnJack: A lot of people consider a neighborhood "bad" if they see someone who doesn't meet their socioeconomic criteria. A lot of people do consider a blue-collar neighborhood "bad" because they are so used to the idea that middle-class people and working-class people shouldn't live in the same neighborhoods, or that the presence of blue-collar employment sites (in other words, good-paying jobs) somehow poison a neighborhood. It's an unavoidable side effect of the growth of gated, semi-private communities: people are literally so unused to dealing with people outside of their social class that it's really uncomfortable and unsettling to do so.

[AuburnJack]

Originally Posted by wburg

AuburnJack: A lot of people consider a neighborhood "bad" if they see someone who doesn't meet their socioeconomic criteria. A lot of people do consider a blue-collar neighborhood "bad" because they are so used to the idea that middle-class people and working-class people shouldn't live in the same neighborhoods, or that the presence of blue-collar employment sites (in other words, good-paying jobs) somehow poison a neighborhood. It's an unavoidable side effect of the growth of gated, semi-private communities: people are literally so unused to dealing with people outside of their social class that it's really uncomfortable and unsettling to do so.

That's the only conclusion I can come to, as well. West Sac certainly isn't the Hamptons, but I've found myself surprisingly content here, after all of the worrying I did about moving to the new part of a "bad area" before we bought our house.

The "bad part" of West Sac isn't all that bad. And the "good part" compares very favorably to the suburbs that many on this board advocate that all law-abiding, hard-working, safety-loving (all code words for middle-class white, naturally) Sacramento residents move to... with the bonus of having a small town/suburb feel while being 10 minutes from downtown Sac.

We'll see how all of the new development in West Sac turns out in 10 years, of course, but I have a good feeling about the area in which we chose to settle.

[wburg]

AuburnJack: It sounds like you found the right mix. I know a bunch of folks who have a slogan: "West Sac is the Best Sac!" There are a lot of little treasures on the west bank of the Sacramento, like some great taquerias and little grocery stores, the bowling alley, and other charms. West Sacramento is also planning a streetcar line from their City Hall to downtown Sacramento, and given the level of energy coming from their city staff, I'm willing to bet it will happen in 4-5 years. And some of the new developments in the "bad part" of town are some of the most groundbreaking ideas in the region (like LJ Urban's "Good" project, a sustainable/green housing development that is selling like hotcakes even in this market.)

[edwardius]

On West Capitol Avenue, you still have streetwalkers walking the stroll especially during the summertime. You don't find that in Citrus Heights. You also have the gang injunction in West Sac.

I agree that there is an attempt to clean up West Sac and that are positive developments in the area, like Raley Field. But there still does seem to be a high level of social break down in those older areas of West Sac.

In another 10 or 15 years, I hope that area is cleaned up, but right now, outside of Southport, I would be reluctant to live in West Sac.

[wburg]

Citrus Heights has gangs, they're just mostly white gangs (like the Peckerwoods) so people don't notice them as much.

[unhookt]

I used to commute by bike from Sacramento to Davis through West Sac and I must confess that the parts of town I had to ride through - including the area around Raley Field - were extremely seedy. Lots of sketchy motels, prostitutes, homeless, beggars and trashy folks everywhere - in broad daylight on weekdays. The meth problem hit West Sac hard. Coupled with the existing, long-term gang problem, crime has always been a serious issue.

West Sac was the scariest part of my commute - people in cars driving by would shout profanities and swerve at me on a regular basis. With the Port of Sacramento, FedEx and UPS located there, it is heavily industrial. Lots of truck traffic during the day and empty lots at night.

I have several friends who have purchased homes in the new communities in West Sac. These developments starkly contrast the surrounding areas and are targets for break-ins. Three of my friends in these upscale communities have had their homes broken into recently - one of them three times!

I would definitely not consider living in West Sac. It may be improving, but given its current condition, it will be a long time before it is the kind of place that I would consider acceptable for raising a family.