CNN Article on "The American Dream"

[Chris Padilla]

http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/06/16/suburb.city/index.html

I found this a very interesting read. For those who don't know, Elk Grove, CA, is a suburb of Sacramento, CA.

Enjoy!

[Neal Clayton]

the same thing is happening here in little rock too, has been for quite some time.

you can buy the stereotypical 3 bed 2 bath new construction in the suburbs cheaper, you pay a premium to live downtown, usually 100-150k more. people want to move back to the city.

i live about 10-15 blocks out of downtown myself.

and the suburbs are the ones hurting with the mortgage fallout here too, prices are off 20-25% in the outlying areas, but housing downtown is the same price as last year.

can't happen soon enough imo, those sprawling suburbs with mile after mile of identical houses are just shrines to poor planning and wasted space.

[Justin Leiwig]

Well around here it's still the polar opposite of that article. You can't go into the city at night except to go the the ball park and that's only because it's well lit and well patroled. They tried to revitalize the downtown area, but it was just too far gone. We as a community invested untold millions in "revitalized" buildings that sit vacant because no one wants to pay 100k for something that doesn't come with at least 1/2 acre of land attached to it.

I admit I was drawn by the allure of living in the middle of everything, until I realized that I really didn't want to be in it 24/7 and needed someplace to decompress and just sit and watch my grass grow.

Of course using anywhere in Cali is a bad idea for that article. There hasn't been anyplace in the country that I've gone to where housing prices were so over inflated and people who had no business even renting were buying homes on jumbo balloon loans of 350k for a 1 bedroom shack on a busboy salary. Things like that just don't fly in the rest of the world. No wonder that the neighborhoods are like that in that area.

[Jason Beam]

Truth be told, much of Elk Grove has been sliding down that slope for a few years now, but it certainly got accellerated this past year, for sure. At least once a month you could count on hearing of an Elk Grove pothouse bust.

The latest news has been that things in the area are starting to ... well not level off ... but the fall is slowing, so to speak. The drops are getting less and less severe each month.

Thankfully most of the people I know aren't in trouble. Everyone close to me is either retired and fully paid off, or didn't get suckered into a crappy loan. We got into our house in december, probably just about the right time given that prices haven't been dropping quite as fast and loans are getting tougher to get.

Elk Grove grew pretty fast ... maybe too fast?

[Benjamin Dahl]

Thanks Chris. I have definitely seen that down here in Atlanta and also up in Chicago. Atlanta is known for sprawl but the extended commute times have gotten to people. Now with the higher gas prices people are feeling it even more. The idea that poorer people will be pushed into the suburbs is not something I had thought of but a definite possibility, something you already see in Europe. Probably won't happen everywhere in the US but I can see it happening in some areas.

[Joe Pelonio]

I have spent some time in Elk Grove, before it became a bedroom community
for Sacramento. It was built up like some other areas such as Roseville, Tracy and Modesto with less expensive homes on cheap property to be affordable for people willing to make a 2 hour commute to the bay area, back when gas was affordable.

[David G Baker]

My son and his family live in Elk Grove California. I will have to ask him about the living conditions. He just put around $70,000 into upgrading his home. We talked on Father's Day but he didn't say anything about the deterioration in his area.

[John Shuk]

And people wonder how what used to be nice neighborhoods have crack houses in them. It isn't really anything new in America. It is just what is causing it this time that is different.

[Neal Clayton]

And people wonder how what used to be nice neighborhoods have crack houses in them. It isn't really anything new in America. It is just what is causing it this time that is different.


the funny thing is it's really the same chain of events over and over.

in the early part of the last century no one kept industrial pollution down and maintained public services, so people left the cities. then no one planned a feasible layout for the suburbs people were moving to and now they've sprawled to the point that driving back and forth from home to work isn't feasible, so people are abandoning those.

and all of this is the case because local governments and builders aren't really accountable to their customers and constituents. they represent each other, and operate under the premise of "build it and they will come". and if they leave, screw it, it's someone else's problem, just leave it to rot.

for whatever reason corporate and political america don't think their talent is in giving people what they want and need, but rather marketing to them what they don't.

[Jeffrey Makiel]

A major driving force for many new homeowners is how well the school system is. This was not mentioned in the article.

All of the larger cities in my area (Newark, Elizabeth, Camden, Irvington, Trenton, etc.) have sub-standard rated schools. If a younger folks decide to live a city life, they will either choose not to have children, or pay to send them to private schools.

On the flip side, school tax comprises about 50% of the total New Jersey resident property tax. And the school tax portion is easily $5,000/year in many middle class suburbs. This is a hard pill to swallow if you don't have kids, but is often part of the price to maintain a decent community these days. However, there are more single resident homes that contain multiple families these days to get around this cost which results in a quality of life issue anyway.

-Jeff :)

[Cliff Rohrabacher]

people want to move back to the city.

Not this buckaroo pardner. In the worlds of my childhood hero, Jeremiah Johnson: "I been to a city."

I don't even want to visit one. They ain't nuthin they got I want.

[Neal Clayton]

A major driving force for many new homeowners is how well the school system is. This was not mentioned in the article.

All of the larger cities in my area (Newark, Elizabeth, Camden, Irvington, Trenton, etc.) have sub-standard rated schools. If a younger folks decide to live a city life, they will either choose not to have children, or pay to send them to private schools.

On the flip side, school tax comprises about 50% of the total New Jersey resident property tax. And the school tax portion is easily $5,000/year in many middle class suburbs. This is a hard pill to swallow if you don't have kids, but is often part of the price to maintain a decent community these days. However, there are more single resident homes that contain multiple families these days to get around this cost which results in a quality of life issue anyway.

-Jeff :)

heh, that brings up another point about our area here. luckily we still have very good public schools, central high is consistently rated in the top ~20 in the nation.

we also have a suburb that falls within the county that, for lack of a better word, wants to secede. there's lots of posturing and fake reasons but it boils down to the fact that they're white, and central high despite being better than their high school, is not, and they think their kids should have a white school to go to, despite the fact that they live in the same county as the city.

which begs the question, why move somewhere if you don't like the people there? do people never consider this? i think people are sold a bill of goods with alot of these suburban developments, which are all built on assumptions that may or may not come to pass. just because someone decided to build a new subdivision doesn't mean that the stores, and the schools, and all of the other public services have to follow and grow up around it. with the current mortage mess hitting the suburbs the hardest, the odds of those things happening spontaneously is even less, imo.