When Shaun Yandell proposed to his long-time girlfriend Gina Marasco on the doorstep of their new home in the sunny suburb of Elk Grove, California, four years ago, he never imagined things would get this bad. But they did, and it happened almost overnight.
Yandell’s marriage isn’t falling apart: his neighborhood is.
Devastated by the subprime mortgage crisis, hundreds of homes have been foreclosed and thousands of residents have been forced to move, leaving in their wake a not-so-pleasant path of empty houses, unkempt lawns, vacant strip malls, graffiti-sprayed desolate sidewalks and even increased crime.
In Elk Grove, some homeowners not only cut their own grass but also trim the yards of vacant homes on their streets, hoping to deter gangs and criminals from moving in…
While the foreclosure epidemic has left communities across the United States overrun with unoccupied houses and overgrown grass, underneath the chaos another trend is quietly emerging that, over the next several decades, could change the face of suburban American life as we know it.This change can be witnessed in places like Atlanta, Georgia, Detroit, Michigan, and Dallas, Texas, said Leinberger, where once rundown downtowns are being revitalized by well-educated, young professionals who have no desire to live in a detached single family home typical of a suburbia where life is often centered around long commutes and cars.
Instead, they are looking for what Leinberger calls “walkable urbanism” — both small communities and big cities characterized by efficient mass transit systems and high density developments enabling residents to walk virtually everywhere for everything — from home to work to restaurants to movie theaters.
The so-called New Urbanism movement emerged in the mid-90s and has been steadily gaining momentum, especially with rising energy costs, environmental concerns and health problems associated with what Leinberger calls “drivable sub-urbanism” — a low-density built environment plan that emerged around the end of the Second World War and has been the dominant design in the U.S. ever since.
Changing demographics are also fueling new demands as the number of households with children continues to decline. By the end of the next decade, the number of single-person households in the United States will amost equal those with kids.
Most Western nations never got round to aping exurbanite Levittown. They never destroyed rail systems. Trashing inner city communities in the name of Urban Renewal never achieved a political mandate.
More than ever before, the cost of energy and transport may begin to govern living trends in the United States – again.
#20 – Your worship is noted. Please, continue to worship me, as I’m the most interesting thing around here.
For years the press had articles about the pending bust of the California market due to the exploding prices. The sub-prime issue was the pin the popped the bubble.
No big surprise and not a serious issue for the rest of the folks who don’t live in over-heated markets.
#19–JamesHill==can you clue us in as to “why” #17 was a bad post? Seems to me the post is saying we would be better off if we/Bush had pushed for energy independence. And if we had, the housing crises might have been softened?
So, on point and accurate. Your complaint is what?
#12 – Lyin’ Mike
>>The real threat to the suburban dream is
>>environmentalist policies
Yeah, man! Drill ANWR! Despoil Nature! Save the McMansions!!
This will mean the death of the American Dream. Doesn’t it say something in the Constitution about the “Right to Own Ostentatious $700,000 Homes in East Bumfuck”???
The reason for the mortgage crisis was a general fraud perpetrated on home buyers by housing developers. I purchased a house in December of 2005. The builder offered to pay all closing costs if I used their mortgage company. I did. I did not realize that gave the builder an excellent opportunity for the builder’s mortgage company to establish an inflated price for the property. If I used the builders mortgage company they avoided the possibility of my being turned down by an independent mortgage company because the appraised value did not meet the sale price. It appears that many homes in my neighborhood were sold at inflated prices. Shortly after I closed my mortgage was sold to a major national mortgage company. The builders mortgage company walked away with a bag of money and the national mortgage company was left holding my paper. I am not having a problem paying my mortgage but there are many foreclosures in my neighborhood because of the way the mortgages were issued to unqualified buyers.
Couple of problems with this:
1) It is still way cheaper and faster and more convenient for me to go to the NYC from 45 miles away in my car alone than to use public transportation. Unless something magically happens, public transportation as-is is incapable of satisfying normal commuting needs as efficiently as personal transportation.
2) At least in the suburbs where I live (average working class mechanics, teachers,…) there are no foreclosures for the people who bought their houses to live in… Every single one (and I look over some 30 miles of my preferred biking route) was a house purchased for “turnover”, now stuck half way into “renovation”. Same as with the oil, speculators are the villains. At least in the housing bubble they have already paid their dues. Hopefully the same will happen with the oil.
3) Finally, the quality of life. I wouldn’t exchange my 1500 sq ft house with the yard 45 miles from NYC for McMillions worth of abode in the NYC with all of its problems, nevermind something of the “equal value”.
#22 jbenson2 wrote, “No big surprise and not a serious issue for the rest of the folks who don’t live in over-heated markets.”
It seems like maybe you’re living in some sort of bubble of your own. This situation is affecting not only Americans but governments and investors half a world away, because they invested in packaged securities that bore ludicrously generous AAA credit ratings that had been handed out like Halloween candy by heretofore credible credit rating agencies.
By many accounts, Bernanke narrowly averted the kind of panic that could have resulted in long lines at the bank to withdraw money. The Fed worked feverishly on a Sunday (the Lord’s day, so stone them) to put together a deal for Bear Stearns, create a brand new federal credit facility, and lower interest rates, all so that Monday morning’s news could carry some semblance of confidence to financial markets that were on the verge of a meltdown.
I have to take issue with your “not a serious issue” diagnosis. It falls a bit short of reality.
Hydrogen would have been as big of a boondoggle as “The War”, but this is about housing, not energy.
Now that old urban centres have fallen to the bottom…it is time for gentrification to happen. Especially since manufacturing and shipping has gone from many old cities to newer grounds.
It comes down to every generation undoing what their parents generation did and re-doing what their grandparents did (more or less, urban changes happen at a slower rate).
Or this would just be a good way to trick all the hipsters to move to Detroit. Who is up for forming The Next Big Thing, Detroit’s North by North East?
#17, water vapor is a greenhouse gas, bigger than CO2, so hydrogen cars should be banned too shouldn’t they?
There are a few houses in my neighborhood that have been foreclosed and sold at auction. We also have houses that have not been taken care of and look horrible. Not to mention the increase in drug dealers and gangs driving around. This used to be a nice neighborhood and it still is better than most places but things are getting tough.
It’s overpopulation. Pure and simple. More people = more problems. I was watching a show on HGTV and some lady in Hong Kong was looking to buy a home, the AVERAGE price per square foot…$1000!!! Hopefully we don’t see this happening here any time soon but as population grows so does price. I agree with the user above, people are fleeing to the city, rent is going up. I drive a hybrid so 30 miles or less is ok by me although I’d prefer a closer proximity, I can live with the commute from hell.
Doesn’t it say something in the Constitution about the “Right to Own Ostentatious $700,000 Homes in East Bumfuck”???
That would be under the “persuit of happiness clause”
Mustard is enjoying the wave of home foreclosures, because he and his hard envirocrazy friends want to force people into cities. Apparently he hates suburbs because he once had bad food at Olive Garden.
#33 Lyin’ Mike
>>Apparently he hates suburbs because
>>he once had bad food at Olive Garden.
Naw, my experiences at Olive Garden (few though they may be) haven’t been all that bad.
I dislike suburbs because they have turned our nation into a seething cauldron of parasitic leeches, guzzling gas, destroying the environment, and for what? The ability to live in a $700,000 house that looks exactly like all the other $700,000 houses in the subdivision.
If those dummies didn’t have to pay $100 to fill up each of their 3 gas tanks a couple of times a week to drive everywhere they go, maybe they could pay the mortgage, and wouldn’t be getting foreclosed on.
Sheesh.
#34–Mustard, while what you say is true, in America for quite some time with only rare exceptions, “downtown” was not an attractive place to be. Bad schools, noise, fumes, no parks etc. So, there has long been a pull from the suburbs, and a push from the cities.
Sure seems to me that if cities were planned to be lived in there would be green beltways, jogging and bike trails, adequate grocery shopping and all the rest–as well as larger sized living quarters?
Like so much in america, “someone” decides suburbs are the future and then cities are let go to rot.
Good regional planning would provide a mix of all choices all working together well. That can’t be done with Standard Oil buying up mass transit, trashing it, and forcing people into cars==etc.
#35 Bobbo
>>Sure seems to me that if cities were planned
>>to be lived in there would be green beltways,
>>jogging and bike trails, adequate grocery
>>shopping and all the rest–as well as larger
>>sized living quarters?
Check out Minneapolis sometime, Bobster.
>>That can’t be done with Standard Oil buying
>>up mass transit, trashing it, and forcing
>>people into cars
Well, it couldn’t happen with $1.59 gas. But now maybe with the soccer moms and hockey dads having to pay $100 a pop to fill up their SUVs, enough pressure can be brought to bear. You never know.
No subways here but we have a few buses and shuttles. I use a motorbike and spend about $15 a week for the 150mile weekly commute. Recently we’ve seen empty houses and unkempt lawns, but to tell the truth we knew a lot of these folks would be leaving because they could never afford the payments and moved into these houses because it was cheaper than renting in the sub standard area. Add to that a lot of the vacants are due to people being allow to buy 3,4 or even 5 houses during the cheap loan spell and are now losing all of them since even renters have moved on. Living in Elk Grove myself I’ve hardly seen an increase in graffiti-sprayed desolate sidewalks or even an increased crime, that I believe is all media bullshit. Honestly more of the “graffiti-sprayed desolate sidewalks” I’ve seen are still downtown Sac or in the South area, just as with the increased crime since a lot of the folks that have been displaced from Elk Grove have moved back to the poor South areas of the city.
#21, James,
I’m the most interesting thing around here.
Sort of on the same level as the Elephant man or the Fat Lady at the circus.
What is even better is to do what my daughter is doing – going from an apartment in Alexandria, VA with no easy transit access to a condo further out for less than 1/2 the appraised value that sits one mile from the rail station (not Metro). So her payment is well under her rent, her gas bill disappears and the gov’t subsidizes her transit and her parking bill goes way down. Only downside is having to mow a yard.
I saw this article on CNN’s site, and my read was it was dealing with neighborhoods that were mostly these people. Not established ones that had a healthy turnover of houses/families. But certainly something to watch.