Trip Down My Memory Lane

Post is 2 years old (2019) and that makes it Black History!! 🥰🥰 It went with an article from MSNBC about Gentrification.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Listen and learn.

Yes this happens about every 50 years. My grandparents purchased a house on Bloodworth street from a white couple when they moved in the 1940's...when many African Americans were living in the county or Oberlin or Smoky Hollow. I came home from St. Agnes to Washington Terrace apartments about 8 years after they were built. Madonna Acres and Golden Acres, Biltmore Hills and Rochester Heights were built for middle class African Americans in the 1950s and 1960s.

Desegregation of the Raleigh communities wasn't an easy thing. There were streets that became dividing lines of race and class. Streets like New Bern Avenue and Person Street. There were areas that the white middle class didn't want to live in and that the African American middle class didn't want to live in.

In the 1960s, when "Urban Renewal" was ushered in, much of the African American community in South Raleigh was demolished. Many people today don't know that there was a thriving area (African American community) from the old Sir Walter Chevrolet (where the Red Hat Amphitheatre sits today) back behind Washington School, which is now the McDowell Street Connector. There was no Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. That was houses, churches, businesses, that were moved, closed up, in some fashion...by the government, with promises to rebuild the area. If people owned the land, eminent domain was used to take the property. If someone else owned the land, I assume the property was appraised and a price was agreed upon. (I do know that was how it happened in Durham and all over the country). And, so African Americans moved further south, off of Rock Quarry Road and towards Garner. Areas like College Park were already full from those who were working at St. Augustine's College.

I remember African American families trying to move into white neighborhoods during the mid to late 1960s and the difficulties that they faced. Some families were able to get loans and purchase the kinds of homes they wanted only to have crosses burned in their yards. Others, like my parents, searched for years, only to be told time and time again after making appointments to view properties, that they were sold when they showed their black faces at said appointments. My parents even arrived at their attorney's office to close on a house and the seller backed out because he was afraid to leave his wife and child in Raleigh during a transfer because of death threats against his family if he sold.

When African Americans began moving into white neighborhoods (like Worthdale and Brentwood), the phenomenon called "White Flight" began. White people suddenly moved out to the county - you couldn't call it suburbs then! Then, African Americans began to be able to purchase homes in those areas.

As a further aside, because of "white flight", and the absence of African Americans on the Wake County Board of Commissioners, the amount of funds (property taxes) raised outside of the city limits increased while what was raised inside the city limits decreased. At that time, there were 2 school systems, the Raleigh City School System and the Wake County School System. As they do now, the County Commissioners allocated funding for both systems. As a result of "White Flight", the City schools began getting less money. This was also the time that school systems (North Carolina's Charlotte and Mecklenburg in particular) were being pressured to desegregate. After the lawsuit in Mecklenburg, a hard fought yet losing referendum in Wake County for desegregation, the Raleigh City and Wake County school boards made request to the Wake County legislative delegation for merger of the 2 systems so finances would be available for all students. This, too, helped for those who wanted diversity in all neighborhoods to occur.

Economically, as we began to see more industry arrive in our area (like IBM and pharmaceutical companies in RTP) our area began to change. However, some portions of the economic base remained the same.

Some of what didn't change was systemic racism in banking and lending. And that has caused much of what we still see today.

As you can see now, there was no reinvestment in the neighborhoods of the inner city. There was only building of highway.

Some families were able to keep up family homes because of education and business. However, not all people have had the same opportunities. If you were fortunate enough to have worked as an educator or for the state, on retirement you had some income, and could receive social security benefits. However, if you worked as a domestic or had been a farmer, those occupations were written OUT of the law. So, that manner of providing for oneself in old age was not valid. Even if you found other work that allowed you to draw social security, it wasn't based on full time income. And so, it wouldn't equate to much.

If then your taxes suddenly begin to increase at the same time as your health needs like medicine and doctors bills increase in old age, the taxes are probably the last thing you pay. And for those who qualify/qualified for the homestead tax exemption, they may not have known about it.

And why this diatribe/history lesson today? 2 reasons. When I drive my father downtown to the area that he grew up in, the changes are huge. He doesn't recognize much of anything. I love to tell him the stories of the places where he grew up; left for college and returned to; to start a family and grow a business, much like the business that his father ran before him. His business was set right at the edge of South Raleigh. The building is still there. His dad's building is gone.

As I drive the streets, I see readily what the NY Times article refers to. The homes that I grew up with or around, when I was delivering prescriptions, are gone. There are very modern homes in their places. I recognize those kinds of changes because I live and have lived in the Oberlin community for 28 of my 29 married years. If my husband and I hadn't been able to purchase our home in 2000 (and even though it was a good price, it was a struggle then for us), we couldn't afford anything in our neighborhood now. The purchase prices are unimaginable to me. We paid about 10% of the cost of the houses around us. We recently were able to remodel our home, but it cost us almost what we had originally paid for it. Our property taxes doubled immediately when we purchased our home. That increased the mortgage payment because of escrow (and I am so thankful that it is included).

And for people who say that those who don't keep the lawn cut or make repairs in timely fashion should be happy to sell their homes, make some money and move to another neighborhood evidently haven't looked at purchase prices elsewhere. People who purchase houses to remodel or gut or flip are not paying the prices you see homes selling for. They are out to make a profit.

So, when the homeowner gets the $100 000 check on the house that will eventually sell for $350-600,000 or more, what are they able to afford? I just checked Zillow. The only thing that I found was vacant lots. There was a $65000 house in Fuquay Varina.
I think our entire community needs to think about affordable housing and housing for the elderly/disabled.

Just my 2 cents worth.