Is the sub-prime meltdown just part of a larger more fundamental shift in the way Americans are choosing to live? Brookings Institute fellow and new urbanist cheerleader Chris Leinberger certainly seems to think so:
At Windy Ridge, a recently built starter-home development seven miles northwest of Charlotte, North Carolina, 81 of the community’s 132 small, vinyl-sided houses were in foreclosure as of late last year. Vandals have kicked in doors and stripped the copper wire from vacant houses; drug users and homeless people have furtively moved in. In December, after a stray bullet blasted through her son’s bedroom and into her own, Laurie Talbot, who’d moved to Windy Ridge from New York in 2005, told The Charlotte Observer, “I thought I’d bought a home in Pleasantville. I never imagined in my wildest dreams that stuff like this would happen.”
In the Franklin Reserve neighborhood of Elk Grove, California, south of Sacramento, the houses are nicer than those at Windy Ridge–many once sold for well over $500,000–but the phenomenon is the same. At the height of the boom, 10,000 new homes were built there in just four years. Now many are empty; renters of dubious character occupy others. Graffiti, broken windows, and other markers of decay have multiplied. Susan McDonald, president of the local residents’ association and an executive at a local bank, told the Associated Press, “There’s been gang activity. Things have really been changing, the last few years.”
In the first half of last year, residential burglaries rose by 35 percent and robberies by 58 percent in suburban Lee County, Florida, where one in four houses stands empty. Charlotte’s crime rates have stayed flat overall in recent years–but from 2003 to 2006, in the 10 suburbs of the city that have experienced the highest foreclosure rates, crime rose 33 percent. Civic organizations in some suburbs have begun to mow the lawns around empty houses to keep up the appearance of stability. Police departments are mapping foreclosures in an effort to identify emerging criminal hot spots.
The decline of places like Windy Ridge and Franklin Reserve is usually attributed to the subprime-mortgage crisis, with its wave of foreclosures. And the crisis has indeed catalyzed or intensified social problems in many communities. But the story of vacant suburban homes and declining suburban neighborhoods did not begin with the crisis, and will not end with it. A structural change is under way in the housing market–a major shift in the way many Americans want to live and work. It has shaped the current downturn, steering some of the worst problems away from the cities and toward the suburban fringes. And its effects will be felt more strongly, and more broadly, as the years pass. Its ultimate impact on the suburbs, and the cities, will be profound.
Leinberger argues that walkable cities of all sizes will weather the coming (current?) storm better than the downtown-less clusters of McMansions we’ve covered the country with in the past 8 years. Has the suburbanization of America finally exhausted itself? Leinberger argues that the preference for car-based suburban living was fueled by a society where families with children made up more than half of all households.
Things are changing:
“The Boomers themselves are becoming empty-nesters, and many have voiced a preference for urban living. By 2025, the U.S. will contain about as many single-person households as families with children.”
As affluent Americans move towards cities, Leinberger says, other suburban advantages (good schools, safe streets) may well move with them.
The Next Slum? [The Atlantic]
(Photo:Suzanne Dechillo/NYT)
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I moved to Lowell two years ago and I must say I don’t feel like I’m in Philly anymore which can and does have a double meaning. So far from what I’ve seen from other cities that I’ve been in you drive in one part and you’re like ‘whoa’, then you drive in another part and you’re like ‘whoa’.
@Snarkysnake: No flaming from me, I tend to agree. I like how I live – suburbs are a go for me. I don’t want to live where I work because it seems like an awfully crappy place to live. And with the two of us working in different areas, should we move closer to one job and the other person gets to drive an extra 15 minutes? Not fair either, so we choose to live between our two jobs and we each make an equal commute. I think it’s about balance…if you spend 98% of your earnings sustaining your home, you’ve got a problem.
@satoru: LOL, I literally watched that video and exclaimed at one point, “I know that graffiti penis!” [Not intimately though, for the record.] Yep that’s my town. So anybody wanting to see McMansionville surrounded by slums, come to Lowell!@starrion: Yep, I do live in Belvidere. I’m so glad I’ll be escaping from ths shithole city this summer.
@Snarkysnake: Actually, your attitude is just as dumb as the ones saying that the only way to live is to grow your own food in a window-box garden in your apartment in a super-dense city. UpsetPanda phrased it perfectly… “it’s about balance.”
My previous residence was a McHouse in a Centex Homes subdivision way the hell out in the boonies. It happened to be quite close to my work, which was my main motivation for building there. It was the smallest plan they sold in the neighborhood, quite comfy for 2 of us and 2 dogs. Balance, again. A reasonably-sized, efficient house near my work, though I didn’t like the dreadful sameness of all the same-plan-different-facade McHouses.
Our lives changed. I work for the same company but from home, in a smaller 56-year-old house in a city. We’re a 10-minute walk from the medical school my partner attends. There were good “green” reasons for the location, but it’s mostly about convenience being near the med school, and the fact that we like the character of this neighborhood much more than the suburban wasteland. We drive less between us in a month now than either of us did in a week before, which with the current stupid price of fuel is a blessing.
Go ahead, live where you want. No one has suggested that you be required to move into a commune, and I’m certainly not about to move into one either. If you want to maintain and pay for a big McMansion and a long commute to work, that’s how you want to spend your money and it’s fine with me, just don’t present it as an economical alternative.
The guy that wrote this though obviously is a lousy journalist. He cribbed the paragraph about Windy Ridge from an earlier observer piece and totally biffed the quote. See the original article below.
[www.charlotte.com]
What can I say, I watch the wire and it always starts out with something true.
“As affluent Americans move towards cities, Leinberger says, other suburban advantages (good schools, safe streets) may well move with them.”
So if all the empty-nester boomers are moving back to the cities (seems reasonable to me) why would schools follow them? They don’t need schools – look at San Fran, the ultimate urbanite, hipster, greenie city – not many kids, schools being closed every year. Now San Fran is certainly the extreme example, but retirees don’t need schools (and probably don’t want to pay for them) and even urbanite familes will have fewer kids given the cost of space and other things in the city. Meanwhile, if the suburbs go slummy, the schools there will also crap out – leaving middle class folks to mortgage themselves to send their kids to private school.
The next bubble will be in private education.
@UpsetPanda: It already has, in some places. Chicago Public Schools’ charter schools now have lower acceptance rates than Harvard (Harvard takes like 16% of applicants; CPS charters take 9%) because so many middle and upper-middle class families are moving back into the city … and FAMILIES aren’t the major city-seeking demographic! Obviously not every city will improve, nor every part of cities that do improve, but if housing prices go way UP in cities, and fall drastically in suburbs, poor people are going to live in suburbs and wealthy people are going to move back into city centers.
@oakie: “mainly because large urban areas arent going to suddenly knock out their financial district to accommodate a subdivision full of new, single family homes for when they’re ready to start a family.”
But for a long time, young families didn’t live in single-family homes, and there’s no rule that says they have to. Perhaps more to the point, most cities HAVE starter-home sections — townhouses, two-flats, tiny little houses on lots with yards. *I* live in a city on a 50×150 lot w/ about 2000 sq. feet in my home (around 1800 finished, I think? Can’t ever remember.) The family that lived here before us had three children in this house. My grandmother raised five in a house no larger than this. There’s thousands of little houses like this in my city … and plenty of larger, grander homes as well. All walkable, all urban, all with grass.
@GearheadGeek:
I don’t think snarkysnake was advocating that you or anyone else live like he. He was just defending his right to live as he wishes. I too live in a fairly large 40yo house, I work from my home and my wife commutes about 5 miles each way to work. To a lot of people, a long commute is worthwile to ensure that their children go to a good school in a safe neighborhood. To each his own is all we are saying.
@ClayS: He was basically saying he expects Chris Leinberger to show up with a bulldozer any day now. He said: “It’s not a very big jump from desiring that we all move back to the ‘hood to requiring same.”
If no one is talking about the fact that cities don’t have to be slums, and the only residential investment that takes place is building houses that are 10 miles from the nearest grocery store, there just won’t be enough options. I think it’s a good thing that there’s more development taking place in cities, but as long as people want to buy McHouses in the boonies they’re welcome to spend their own money as they like.
@GearheadGeek:
No one is saying cities have to be slums. There are sections of cities that are far more upscale than most any suburbs. People are free to live where they wish and there is no need for anyone to overly advocate any venue over another. In my town, for example, there are Cape Cod homes around 1500 sf, medium to large houses about 2500 sf, and McMansions that are much larger even. Plus condos and townshouses.
In Manhattan, you can find everything from studio rentals to multifloor condos and houses. The problem is, real estate prices are super-high in premium city locations.
@MoCo: In windy areas, shingle roofs need repairs after 10 years or less. Last year after a windstorm, I found somebody’s asphalt shingles blown into my yard. On their backside was printed “8-year guarantee.”
@Eyebrows McGee: City I’m in, Sacramento, doesn’t have affordable urban starter homes like the ones you mention — we make (slightly) more than the median income here, and 1800 feet of downtown home is way out of our price range. The burbs here are ground zero for subprime meltdown, but downtown property values remain insane.
Leinberger’s suggestion is already being seen here. Elk Grove (a classic suburban wasteland and the region’s biggest boom burb of the bubble — great place for foreclosure bus tours now) is rapidly becoming the ghetto. Meanwhile, downtown has become heavily gentrified — filled with bland progressive yuppie types who throw around words like “localvore” a lot as they munch panini’s and chat idly about what it will take to make Sacramento’s film scene as hip and edgy as San Francisco’s.
I guess you’re only entitled to a nice eco-friendly walkable community if you make 100K+ a year working as a lobbyist buying favors from state government. For those of us who don’t spend all day sucking the lifeblood from American democracy, the god forsaken suburbs it is..
@Canoehead: That’s already happening in DC, their public school system is completely in the toilet and only getting worse because of the parents who send their kids to $25K a year private school, or they form charter schools.
@loganmo: I live in Greenbelt (suburb in PG County) and from what I have seen, a lot of apartment complexes these days are full and staying full because of the folks who realize it’s not worth a 45 minute commute to their jobs when gas is creeping towards $4 a gallon.
The only exception is Springhell Lake, whose reputation precedes it.
@MoCo: You are definitely right about all the problems of older homes, although lead paint is easily encapsulated, and I’ve never seen asbestos siding that friable, although I know it can happen. Other sources of asbestos are problematic.
But new homes aren’t all rosy either. Those shingles would last 25 years, if they were installed correctly. And immigrant labor or just locals, the guys up on these roofs aren’t reading the installation instructions. Add all the complicated hips and valleys on a modern McMansion, and, well, it only takes one leak to get things started. Inside, drywall, OSB, carpet, laminate flooring, cabinetry will all disintegrate if it gets wet. A humid summer with the AC off is enough to get things started. And mold is a lot harder to deal with than lead or asbestos.
Thats just your roof. Around here OSB or plywood is only required on the corner of the structure to give wind resistance. The rest of your walls are vinyl siding, blueboard, stud, drywall, paint. Not much to offer any resistance. I can kick my way through it. A good plaster and lathe wall can take all day to take down with sledgehammers and sawzalls. A tightly sealed and insulated house is great to live in, but leave it abandoned for a year or so and you have a permanent rot box.
I’m already seeing it. Suddenly the downtown is being “gentrified” left and right because all the houses are cheaper than the McMansions and people who’ve lived downtown for decades are being displaced because the city is aiding and abetting by raising land taxes enough to push people out, but keeping them cheaper than out in the ‘burbs.
I desperately want there to be a growth of walkable cities–especially ones that are designed to go hand in hand with public transport. Buses and trains are well and good, but what I would love best are more cities with trams. They’re the more convenient than trains (run in the streets with cars, so they’re able to go more places) and better environmentally and probably financially than busses (Melbourne trams are all electric). Being able to walk to reliable, safe public transport that everyone used–and it really was everyone, from the college students to the businessmen to kids coming home from school to grandmothers going to the market–would also benefit individuals: the small amount of walking necessary could make a huge health difference for people, as opposed to the sedintary car rides of today.
A yearly public transport ticket for an adult in Melbourne ran $1000 for unlimited travel; if you wanted to go to the furthest reaches of the system (well outside of the city itself) it ran $1600. That covered any form of transport you wanted (buses, trams, and trains) and was cheaper than just the insurance to drive for many people–let alone the cost of the car itself. Best thousand I ever spent.
Never noticed this being a huge issue where I’m from. Yes, some houses seem to be worth a bit less, but there are still plenty of higher-end ($3 mil+) homes for sale which do end up selling.
Maybe it’s because generally problems in the economy affect the wealthy the least. I still see just as many Mercedes on the road as I did 10 years ago, and the high-end stores downtown seem to be doing just as well as ever.
Something to point out, however, is that I see fewer new constructions. Even as few as 2 years ago, I could think of at least 10 mini-mansions going up. Now, maybe there are a few, a couple of which are extensions to existing homes.
I’m all for anything that might result in the death of the suburb. Perhaps it’s not just all this talk of empty nesters and it’s more that people are learning just how idiotic that entire method of urban planning was in the first place.
New urbanism for the win.
@guevera: Move out here to flyover country. We’re very nice and property values are much lower. And all your neighbors will bring casseroles when you move in.
My 1950 brick house around 2000 sq. feet in a stable urban neighborhood with two schools (Catholic and public) within a 5-minute walk on a 50×150 lot with super-nice neighbors cost me $116,500. 2-car garage, even. And a hot garbage man.
Not nearly enough articles on the tabs: ARCHITECTURE, CITY PLANNING, SUBURBIA. I can’t be the only one who finds all that fascinating. There ought to have enough interest for its own Gawker Media linky.
@SinA: There is definitely a group of people who are interested, but it’s fairly obvious that there’s a huge crowd who really aren’t, they’re largely the ones who bought the developer cookiecutters over the last decade. Hell, *I* was guilty of buying one out of convenience, because my office was out in the boonies and I wanted to live close to work.
Worse than the soul-sucking sameness of the “designs” is the awful busybody boorishness of deed-mandated homeowners’ associations with too much power and too little rational thought.