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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   4023 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for April 30, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

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Cheap is relative. In the really bad neighborhoods of St. Louis you're looking at much less than that for a house, maybe $30k-$100k.

Other reasons I can think of:

  • Some people don't mind it as much if they're from the neighborhood. I worked with a girl who grew up in the hood and still lived and there and she said that people have each others backs. You might get shot but it's going to be somebody from another street, not your street. That doesn't sound very comforting to me but I guess it's different if you grew up that way.

  • A lot of these people are on Section 8, which not all landlords accept and can't be used to buy a house. Of the ones who aren't on section 8 directly a lot live with a girlfriend/mom/grandma who is so they aren't mobile.

  • Black people are only 13% of the population so there can't be many of them everywhere.

As one example among many, why is Columbus, IN (pop. 50k, 45 miles south of Indianapolis) 24% nonwhite despite median home values ($185k) that are higher than many of the 90+ percent white suburbs of Indianapolis (e.g., Franklin, Mooresville, Greenfield)?

Columbus is a college town, it's not going to be comparable to other small towns or to a big city like Indianapolis. There are more Asians than blacks there which is definitely not true of St. Louis.

Well, I'm also wondering why immigrants don't seem to go to these suburbs. I imagine a hard-working Hispanic immigrant working a decent trade could afford these places, not to mention skilled immigrants. Yet they don't seem to want to move there...

Columbus is a college town, it's not going to be comparable to other small towns or to a big city like Indianapolis. There are more Asians than blacks there which is definitely not true of St. Louis.

Maybe you're thinking of Bloomington, but Columbus is not a college town. Only 3% of its population is enrolled in undergraduate studies, which is pretty close to the base rate for everywhere. By comparison, true college towns like Bloomington are 30+ percent enrolled in undergraduate studies.

Suburbs in places that get lots of immigrants(eg, Texas) have lots of immigrants. Suburbs in places that get few immigrants(eg, Wisconsin) have no immigrants.

There’s certainly heavily Hispanic neighborhoods with a similar income level to nearby white neighborhoods, but that’s because of wanting to have the same first language as the neighbors.

Yeah, I derped and mixed it up with Bloomington

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