15 Old House Features that we were wrong to abandon...

[Rodney]

So what is the difference if the local culture is changed by Somali immigrants or the upper middle class? Besides a dislike of the upper middle class? It's still change.

One difference would be the food. Incoming cultures bring their food with them. Gentrified people bring expensive restaurants and grocery stores with them. Somalis are more likely to bring grocery stores catering to Somali tastes and budgets along with Somali restaurants.
Rodney

 

[pawineguy]

One difference would be the food. Incoming cultures bring their food with them. Gentrified people bring expensive restaurants and grocery stores with them. Somalis are more likely to bring grocery stores catering to Somali tastes and budgets along with Somali restaurants.
Rodney

I understand that. Obviously both groups are going to bring changes to the area. My question is why are Somali immigrants acceptable but the upper middle class are not? Lizzie gave me her answer, and I understand her sentiment as much as I disagree with it.

 

[LizzieMaine]

What's interesting about the Somalis is that, while you do see halal meat markets on Lisbon Street, there hasn't been any overall cultural displacement. There are still plenty of "dive bars," Franco-American social clubs, and Catholic churches in downtown Lewiston, where the Somalis have concentrated. The Somalis have done much to assimilate themselves into the community -- English classes are very heavily attended, local community colleges are attracting heavy Somali enrollment, and Somali-owned businesses that cater not just to Somalis but to the general everyday public are springing up.

I might add that my doctor is in Lewiston, and I drive straight thru the downtown area on my way to his office. So I've seen a lot of this first hand.

Maine is the whitest state in the union, and we have our share of cement-headed racist reactionaries who have a problem with what's going on in Lewiston, but overall the feeling is that the Somalis have become part of the fabric of the community without overwhelming it. When the Klan tried to appeal to the Pleistocene element a few years back by announcing a rally, they were essentially laughed out of the state.

 

[pawineguy]

What's interesting about the Somalis is that, while you do see halal meat markets on Lisbon Street, there hasn't been any overall cultural displacement. There are still plenty of "dive bars," Franco-American social clubs, and Catholic churches in downtown Lewiston, where the Somalis have concentrated. The Somalis have done much to assimilate themselves into the community -- English classes are very heavily attended, local community colleges are attracting heavy Somali enrollment, and Somali-owned businesses that cater not just to Somalis but to the general everyday public are springing up.

I might add that my doctor is in Lewiston, and I drive straight thru the downtown area on my way to his office. So I've seen a lot of this first hand.

Maine is the whitest state in the union, and we have our share of cement-headed racist reactionaries who have a problem with what's going on in Lewiston, but overall the feeling is that the Somalis have become part of the fabric of the community without overwhelming it. When the Klan tried to appeal to the Pleistocene element a few years back by announcing a rally, they were essentially laughed out of the state.

Sounds like a model for other immigrant populations. Certainly any large population influx is going to cause some degree of consternation, whether racism or other factors are involved. Good for the Somalis for making the effort to assimilate. When I lived in CT, in a lily white town, we had Sudanese Lost Boys moving into the town under the sponsorship of a local refugee organization. They were very welcomed, at least partly because they went out of their way to become members of the community.

 

[LizzieMaine]

It was the same deal with the Somalis -- a local Catholic aid organization sponsored them, after they'd basically been run out of Georgia. Most of them were Bantu refugees who had been viciously persecuted as an ethnic minority during the wars in their homeland, and the last thing they needed was more of that in the US. We might be rough and grouchy up here, but if there's one thing a native Mainer believes in, its the underdog.

 

[Stearmen]

Looking around, we don't really have true Gentrification. Prices in the different communities have all risen as of late, but, it is not because of rich people moving in, it is all the people moving here, and there are only so may houses. Over half our economy is related to the military, hardly upper class! Now urban sprawl, that's a different subject, we do have that! I do dislike people that hate other people because of the lack of money or the abundance of money, it's a wasted emotion.

 

[AtomicEraTom]

I'd be standing on my head and spitting silver dollars if my taxes were that cheap. I've been house shopping and I've noticed that if you're far up north, or out of the urban sprawl in the south, property taxes re much more palatable. I'm not interested in going any farther north. Over the years, the city has pushed us out farther and farther; from Milwaukee, to the burbs, to the country, now I'm "where the North begins." I'm tired of moving that way. I wanna go where it's warm lol

I thought I was paying a lot in property tax, but you folks make me feel much better. My old house is a shade over 2,000 sq feet and sits on 5 acres. My tax is just a hair under $400 a year.

 

[sheeplady]

I'd be standing on my head and spitting silver dollars if my taxes were that cheap. I've been house shopping and I've noticed that if you're far up north, or out of the urban sprawl in the south, property taxes re much more palatable. I'm not interested in going any farther north. Over the years, the city has pushed us out farther and farther; from Milwaukee, to the burbs, to the country, now I'm "where the North begins." I'm tired of moving that way. I wanna go where it's warm lol

Don't move to NYS. I'm upstate (we don't have gentrification here, to put it bluntly) and we have a 1,500 sq. Foot home on a 50' by 150' lot accessed at $104,000. (We paid less than that bit a purchase assessmentry only holds for 5 years.). We pay $5,000 a year in combined school and property taxes. NY (not just the city) has the highest property taxes in the nation.

We do have our own police force in the township and trash and yard waste pick up.

 

[LizzieMaine]

We have a full-time police department, full-time fire department -- the only town in the county to have such -- but no trash/waste pickup, and you have to pay $95 a year for a dump sticker to take your own garbage to the dump. Commercial haulers pay only $115, which is a travesty -- a company that dumps tons a month pays just $20 a year more than I do, dumping three or four small bags a month. I'm subsidizing the businesses downtown that use the commercial haulers to carry off their restaurant waste, and I bitterly resent this.

Our school situation is even more of a mess, given the way the state's funding policy is going, but I don't want to even think about that.

The main factor driving the high property taxes is ridiculously inflated housing prices thanks to our friends from outastate, and the fact that every house in town is overassessed. My shoebox-sized house -- 953 sq ft -- is assessed by the city at $109,000, but the three times I tried to buy it it was appraised at anywhere from $73,000 to $103,000. I finally ended up buying it for $102,000.

 

[tonyb]

I understand that. Obviously both groups are going to bring changes to the area. My question is why are Somali immigrants acceptable but the upper middle class are not? Lizzie gave me her answer, and I understand her sentiment as much as I disagree with it.

And higher-income people might find it more "acceptable" that those old shop spaces be occupied by art galleries and "hip" coffee houses and pricy boutiques rather than pawn shops and blue-collar taverns and flophouses. I understand that sentiment as well, but I'm inclined to disagree with it. But, you know, I won't lose sleep over it. Things change. Some changes I can effectively resist, and some I can't.

But it does rub me wrong when I hear recent arrivals crow about how they "saved" some historic district. No, the people who "saved" the district are the people who lived and worked there, and frequented its businesses, over all those decades when the more moneyed classes wanted nothing to do with the place.

 

[HudsonHawk]

I have a 2,400 sf house on 1/4 acre, assessed at about $170,000, or about $120,000 taxable value after exemptions, and school taxes alone are almost $4,000. Add the others, and it's close to $7,000, and that's only county taxes, no city. We have the county sherrif and a volunteer fire department (for which I pay an additional $30/month). We have to pay separately for private garbabe pick up, which is about $40/month, and I have to use a private landfill, for which there is a $30/load charge each time.

 

[vitanola]

The little house, 1400 sq. ft on a 62 x 125 lot in the nicest neighborhood in the county seat is taxed at $975/ yr. Rubbish pickup is $20/ mo. The big house (5500 sq. ft, 6 bedroom 7 bath, built in 1854) is taxed at $2400/yr, on an assessment of $203,000. Taxes are rather low here in rural MI, but services provided are quite good.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I do dislike people that hate other people because of the lack of money or the abundance of money, it's a wasted emotion.

It's not the people who are the problem. I know some old-money rich people who are kind, decent human beings. I actually get along pretty well with them, and some of them I genuinely like -- as people. I don't care for the system they represent, but as human beings they're OK sorts. What I dislike -- intensely -- is the sense of swanking, entitled privilege shown by the sort of striving middle-class white parvenus who believe that because they've "arrived" all the rest of us had better bow down and then get out of their damn way. Nuts to them and everything they represent.

 

[sheeplady]

It's not the people who are the problem. I know some old-money rich people who are kind, decent human beings. I actually get along pretty well with them, and some of them I genuinely like -- as people. I don't care for the system they represent, but as human beings they're OK sorts. What I dislike -- intensely -- is the sense of swanking, entitled privilege shown by the sort of striving middle-class white parvenus who believe that because they've "arrived" all the rest of us had better bow down and then get out of their damn way. Nuts to them and everything they represent.

You see this a lot in country areas that suburbanites move into. My parents had an issue with the people who moved into the house next door. My parents pastured sheep on all three sides of the house on my parent's property. Sheep were pastured there when they purchased the house and when the house was for sale, and my parent's farm had existed for a decade before the neighbor's bought the property.

Three years after moving in, the neighbors took my parents to the township to try and forcibly remove the animals from my parents farm. In other words, try to get my parents to quit farming. The land is zoned agricultural, I'm not sure what else they wanted done with it. The neighbor's proposed that the animals be removed, the fences be removed, and the town make my parents mow the 20 acre field twice a month during the months of May through October to keep it meadowland.

The town board voted only slightly in my parents favor as the board had been taken over largely by similar suburbanites.

After that, the town proposed a bill that would limit farming in the township to cow farms of not more than 100 cows and horse farms. No other farm animals would be allowed in the township. (No chickens, ducks, geese, goats, sheep, llamas, etc.) Note that for a traditional agriculture (non-organic) dairy to be profitable at the time it needed to have 250 cows. This is in a township in which 90% of the property is zoned agricultural. This bill was proposed to attract more development (i.e. new house growth) while "retaining the peaceful rural setting."

That bill did not pass when lawyers were brought in from the state level, the board dramatically changed character the next election.

These are the sorts of attitudes that I think Lizzie is complaining about. You don't move into an area that has a well-established agricultural industry and try to enact legislation to change those practices the minute you get there. A lot of communities like that will view your children as transplants if they stay when they grow up, to say nothing of you. There's a saying, "if your cat crawled into the oven and had kittens, you don't call them biscuits."

 

[LizzieMaine]

Exactly. If you like Westchester so frigging much, do us a favor and stay there.

 

[tonyb]

Add a dash of levity to the proceedings ...

http://www.theonion.com/article/decaying-city-just-wants-skip-part-where-it-gets-r-50409

 

[Fading Fast]

Add a dash of levity to the proceedings ...

http://www.theonion.com/article/decaying-city-just-wants-skip-part-where-it-gets-r-50409

Cute.

So I'm going to admit this. We bought an apartment in the part of the Upper East Side of NYC that isn't fancy and beyond-the-pale expensive. It has actually been identified as one of the last - if not affordable, then - less expensive Manhattan neighborhoods (and even cheaper than some parts of Hipster Brooklyn - which is amazing to any long-time NYC resident) in part because we think that it has "upside" potential.

Right now, to be as objective as I think I can, the neighborhood doesn't have much character or cohesive feel. There isn't a dominant ethnic culture, a clear income (low, middle, high) vibe or a "this once was a great something" feel to it. It just is. There's a McDonalds, next to a low-end nail saloon, next to a mid-level candy/food store, next to a Baskin Robbins, next to a Starbucks, next to a Dunkin Donuts, next to shelter, next to a Le Pain Quotidein, next to a high-end card store, next to a low-end sandwich shop, etc., etc., etc., - a mishmash with no clear identity.

Also, they are currently building a subway that will connect this neighborhood into the main NYC Subway system in a fews years - so plenty of disruption and construction going on now. Our reasoning for buying was (1) this is the best bang for our buck today, (2) if the neighborhood stays as is, we'll be happy and (3) if the combination of affordability and new-subway brings some kind of general improvement and better feel and we get a kick in value - good. While there is some spectacular architecture here, it is not consistent the way the rediscovered areas of Brooklyn are, so our guess is the "great next Hipster (or whatever comes after Hipster) discovery" won't be here as there is too much nondescript '60s-'70s architecture scattered in amongst the gorgeous (and, in general, not well cared for) pre-war architecture.

If there was something here to destroy - an ethnic enclave, great old stores, a functioning low or middle class structure, a general family feel - anything, I'd bypass the upside and want it preserved. But in truth, it's just blah: not horrible, not any more dangerous than most of NYC, but nothing. Stores come and go, as do most residents (it gets a lot of young post-college kids - not hipsters - who move out as they get older and get married as the schools aren't great and the atmosphere is not family). Hence, I am admitting to hoping for some sort of upside to improve the neighborhood and I don't think I'm being hypercritical to the values I've expressed in this thread - but am open to such criticism.

Now you all know way more about FF's apartment purchase logic than you wanted to.

 

[tonyb]

Sounds like you're dealing with the world as it is. No person with a lick of common sense would rather put his hard-earned money into a district in decline, given a choice.

 

[pawineguy]

Once they announce plans for the Whole Foods, you know your hood has made it.

 

[LizzieMaine]

There was a huge uproar in a neighborhood in Boston when one of those poncy supermarkets moved in -- Whole Foods, Trader Joes, whatever -- because the owner of the building bounced out an independent discount grocer that had been serving the local residents for years. The upscale la-de-dahs could afford to shop at the new place, but the old-line locals lost the only affordable grocer in their area. Classy.