Posted on 08/02/2012 5:28:05 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
Roll back the clock to 1980 and Greater Houston looks quite a bit different.Some of the tall buildings, meandering toll roads and shiny professional sports venues aren't there, of course, but of more significance is the absence of many places that Houstonians now call home.
As the metro area's population doubled over the past three decades, extensive developments and master-planned communities popped up or expanded to serve those with the means to buy spanking new homes on the suburban fringe. As for those of little means - many of them immigrants, legal and otherwise - they increasingly crowded into older, low-income neighborhoods abandoned by residents who lost jobs or found better housing elsewhere.
The result, according to a new study released Wednesday by the Pew Research Center, is a dubious honor: Houston leads the way among the nation's 10 largest metropolitan areas when it comes to affluent folks living among others who are affluent, and poor living with poor. Pew said residential income segregation is increasing across the country and especially in Texas and the Southwest.
Of the nation's 30 top metro areas, San Antonio, Houston and Dallas command the medals podium in Pew's Residential Income Segregation Index. In Houston, the percentage of upper-income households in census tracts with a majority of upper-income households increased from 7 in 1980 to 24 in 2010. Likewise, low-income households in majority low-income tracts jumped from 25 to 37.
Income inequality
The Pew researchers stopped short of saying precisely why Texas' major cities lead what has become a national trend. Rapid growth has a lot to do with it, they said. But there are other causes they found of particular concern............
"The real challenge for the future of America is not a race divide but a class divide,"...Stephen Klineberg, a Rice University sociologist......
(Excerpt) Read more at chron.com ...
In other news..... July 26, 2012 Houston Tops Our List Of America's Coolest Cities......"The Bayou City may not be the first place you associate with being hip or trendy. But Houston has something many other major cities don’t: jobs. With the local economy humming through the recession, Houston enjoyed 2.6% job growth last year and nearly 50,000 Americans flocked there in response — particularly young professionals. In fact, the median age of a Houston resident is a youthful 33.
The result? Over the past decade, the dreary corporate cityscape has been quietly transforming. Stylish housing developments have popped up downtown, restaurants have taken up residence in former factories and art galleries like the Station Museum have been inhabiting warehouses.".....
They need to run the data looking at education, age, crime (vics and perps), IQ, etc.
Well, at the Reverend Ike used to say: the best thing you can do for poor people is to not become one of them.
Having said that, I canceled my subscription to the Chronicle rag 7 years ago. It is your typical editorial board gaggle of fetus killing, pervert loving, God mocking and ChickFiLa hating Obama voters.
So what they found out is that rich people don’t build mansions in the middle of the hood, and that poor people don’t rent shacks on the ocean.
Wow, this is groundbreaking stuff.
Well, we certainly can’t have that!
Obviously, we must all share the misery. Except, of course, for the commissars, who will get the penthouse with the view, the mansion by the beach...
What they need to do is force the rich people move into the slums and “bus” the shiftless...I mean disadvantaged into the gated communities. Problem solved.
What they want is everyone in “affordable” [state doled out housing] and using mass transit.
I think the author being a far leftist fruitcake read the following article http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2913357/posts , and wanted to contribute to the cause.
He seems to me to be scorning the natural order of GOD given liberty as is common to the Leftist mentality.
When driving thru the poor part of Tucson, I never see Tom Cruise working on his front yard, or Julia Roberts cleaning her car - the one on the cement blocks. I guess Hollywood is full of racists. Why else would the rich not live in a poor neighborhood?
Maybe the Hollywood types just hate hispanics. I’d probably see some of them if I drove thru the black parts of LA...right?
In other breaking news, it is reported the rich have more money than the poor!
Looking across the tracks at the nicer neighborhoods used to provide incentive and motivate people to work harder and smarter and pull themselves up the economic ladder.
Now the difference in economic strata just provides a reason to whine about “social justice” and clamor for more socialistic wealth redistribution.
I’m sorry...I couldn’t read much beyond the first few paragraphs when the shocking revelation that rich people liked to live in rich neighborhoods was announced.
Bill Clinton is a racist who lives in a wealthy neighborhood.
Apparently they’ve never been to Detroit, where crossing 8 Mile Road is like crossing the Mexican border.
Wonder how many of the poor were deposited in Houston from New Orleans after Katrina. Bet they’re still waiting from Uncle Sam to load them up on a bus and take them back.
Bingo, correct!
Residential Income Segregation Index ?
I guess that means they don’t have any section 8 housing in River Oaks?
Of course, there are still plenty of wealthy neighborhoods in Harris County, closer to the center city, but many folks with the means to move out of the county have done so. In all likelihood, they view declining schools, increasing property taxes, and increasing crime rates as the inevitable consequence of Houston's transformation to a minority-majority city run by liberal Democrats.
Similar population patterns are evident in many other metro areas. My home is in Union County, NC, just outside the increasingly blue Mecklenburg County (Charlotte). It is no coincidence that Union County is the fastest growing county in the state. Lower property taxes, better schools by all statistical measures, large-lot single-family residential zoning, lower crime, and solidly conservative/Republican residents (yes, even our Northern friends who have flooded in); but still convenient to the assets Charlotte has (at least for now).
The fastest growing county in Tennessee? That would be Williamson County, which adjoins Davidson County (Nashville). An almost identical dynamic applies there.
Political and business "establishment" leaders in Charlotte, in Nashville, and in many other growing Sunbelt cities are constantly talking up "regional co-operation," even suggesting multi-county tax overlay districts, multi-county school boards, and multi-county central planning. Residents of peripheral counties are justifiably skeptical.
As noted in Post #1 there is a lot of renewal in downtown Houston (and a lot of very large, long standing high-end enclaves in in metro Houston pockets uptown, downtown, etc, — there are several business centers in Harris County).
Now of course there are depressed areas - “Wards” (long standing pockets of welfare constituents) like the one Sheilia Jackson Lee nurtures and represents.
Funny thing is that they used scream about what Kipling called “The White Man's Burden”.
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