Suburbs: The Next Slums

[jeffrey]

The subprime crisis is just the tip of the iceberg. Fundamental changes in American life may turn today’s McMansions into tomorrow’s tenements.

Strange days are upon the residents of many a suburban cul-de-sac. Once-tidy yards have become overgrown, as the houses they front have gone vacant. Signs of physical and social disorder are spreading.

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.”

The Next Slum?

[ScrimpAndSave]

Wow...so sad.

[JBinKC]

Interesting read : Kunstler predicts this phenomenon in his book The End of Surburbia however for different reasons.


When people were starting to use their home equity as a piggy bank that definitely was not a good sign.

Its funny how people are so ignorant of the multiple impending problems we face going forward and how the optimists bury their head in the sand denying there is a problem.


One thing that has to go is that suburban requirement of a luscious green grass yard you have to mow weekly and the homeowner association nazi police gets on your case if it isn't to their standard. It is so antiproductive IMO and which oddly enough was one of the focal points on the start of the jihadist movement. Whats wrong with creating an edible landscape?

At least I moved from that disaster waiting to happen 18 months ago.

[smileybear]

My township manager said recently he see the same trend, not so much from foreclosures, but aging owners of McMasions (we're in PA and it's the 3rd oldest population) for which there are no buyers with the $$ to buy from them and move in. it will take 2 families to buy 1 house. I fo one would not mind seeing them torn down and replaced with more eco-friendly cluster housing, which was his point, that's probably what will happen.

As for the Charlotte development, I'd question whether the lender was working with the developer to just get those homes filles, with those kinds of numbers...