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Notes -
Conventional wisdom is that whites and Asians in the US insulate themselves from inner city blacks by pricing them out of homes. But in the process of researching where in the Midwest I want to move to, I've found that most Midwest metros have suburbs/exurbs in the eminently affordable $150-250k median home value range and yet remain 90+ percent white. Can anyone help me understand this?
For example, here's a racial dot map of St. Louis and its southern suburbs/exurbs, with some of the individual cities and their white % and median home value labeled. The same pattern exists for most other Midwest metros I've looked at, too. Certainly most metros have some suburbs that are very expensive. In the St. Louis example, that would be the western suburbs (you can tell because of the red Asian dots). But not all the suburbs are expensive like that.
So, why aren't African Americans moving to these cheap white suburbs to get away from the awful inner city black neighborhoods? It's not like these places are full of "white trash" - poverty rates are low and incomes are high compared to outside of metros. Certainly a good many inner city blacks really can't afford a $100k-150k home, but surely enough can that it'd drive these places well down from 90+ percent white?
And what about immigrants - why aren't there substantial numbers of immigrants who move to these places? High-SES Asians tend to move to richer suburbs because they can afford it, but surely many working class immigrants would appreciate being in a cheap white suburb with easy commuting to the city core?
A related question I have is why smaller-tier cities (say, in the 50k-100k population range) tend to be so much more diverse than metro suburbs. There are only 2 cities in the entire country that are >50k population and >90% white (Ankeny, IA and The Villages, FL), yet 90+ percent white suburbs of metros are common.
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)? Certainly some black families moved there generations ago and the current inhabitants want to remain near family. But that can't be the whole explanation, because many of these places are substantially foreign-born (e.g., Columbus IN is 15% foreign-born). Surely a newcomer's job prospects are better in a cheaper commutable suburb of Indianapolis than in a more expensive isolated small city like Columbus.
Demographic data for this post come from the Census's 2019 American Community Survey 5-year estimates. Housing values are from policymap.com, which uses the 2021 ACS 5-year estimate. Racial dot map is from Dave's Redistricting App.
Perhaps only a few inner city neighborhoods are that bad. That is usually the case
If those areas are cheap, there is probably something wrong with them. Perhaps there are few jobs, or poor transportation options to where the jobs are.
Perhaps your premise is wrong. According to this, there are 1364 homes for sale in areas of St Louis where the current average asking price is under $250K. Of those, 800 are in St Claire County, IL, which is 59.6% White and 29.7% black. Of the places listed on your map that are not in that realtor list, on realtor.com there are 28 current home listings for High Ridge, 10 in Murphy, 22 in Valley Park, 80 in Oakville but only 20 under 250K.
Note also that your map says that the median home value in Arnold is 168K, while the realtor link above says the average asking price is 401K. Some of that might be a difference between mean and median, but perhaps not all of it.
Some are certainly worse than others, but I wager the majority are going to be substantially worse than the sort of suburbs I mentioned, on almost any metric that's universally cared about (e.g., crime, income, jobs, stable families, etc.), and casually browsing ACS data on policymap.com will certainly back that up.
It's possible I'm missing something (and it's one of the reasons I'm here asking), but I haven't been able to find it despite a wealth of ACS data to go off of. And given how social ills tend to correlate with each other, I would expect it to be noticeable somewhere.
A few things:
ACS data on median home values lags present data. The most recently published ACS data is an average of 2016-2021. But the home value increases since then apply across cities, not just to these suburbs. So to the extent these white suburbs have gotten more expensive, so has everywhere else. And even if that wasn't the case (and Zillow's graphs of home values over time indicates it is), it doesn't explain why so few non-whites moved to these cities before the most recent ACS data.
Your source includes only current listings, which may not be representative and/or have small sample sizes.
Zillow data is pretty consistent with ACS data.
I'm not sure where you're from, but I live in Pittsburgh and a lot of areas in the Rust Belt just have an ineffable shittiness about them that isn't necessarily reflected by statistics, other than, of course, property values. A lot of these are technically suburbs but were built out prewar due to some local industry that isn't there anymore and had little to offer during postwar suburbanization, with more attractive alternatives nearby. Now they just sort of exist, with no hope of gentrification or investment. Mediocre housing stock, lack of local amenities, and distance from major employment centers often aren't enough to make up for relative safety and low housing costs. These places are also filled with white trash, though that hasn't necessarily stopped black people from moving into other places with low housing costs. It's also worth noting that a lot of urban violence, isn't as widespread as it can seem by crude zip code maps. I can only speak for Pittsburgh, but the areas with the most random pedestrian violence tend to be the ones with the most pedestrians, not the ones that are the most violent. Downtown and the South Side (the biggest nightlife district) take the cake when it comes to crime stats, even though no one really thinks of them as high crime areas. That perception is changing somewhat as Downtown has a problem with homeless addicts and the South Side has had a few prominent incidents, but these were the highest crime areas by volume long before such perceptions existed, and they are both still high-value areas as far as housing is concerned. In the actual poor areas, most of the violence is relegated to bad housing projects or areas with high drug activity, and is usually limited to those in gangs. These places aren't great but grandma probably doesn't have much to worry about walking down the street in the daytime. Leaving a place like Homewood to move to a place like Whitaker is probably going to be a step down in quality of life for someone with connections to the former but not the latter.
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