You heard it here first: Charlotte slowly becoming a city of stark haves and have-nots?
Two different bits of recent news coverage might sound a warning bell.
First was Michelle Crouch’s article Jan. 11, “Homes’ sum is greater than parts” about the Montibello Crossing neighborhood. A developer wants to buy the whole 47-acre neighborhood – all 63 homes, vintage 1970s – and tear them down so he can build much pricier houses (or, as one Eastover resident I know calls them, “arriviste mansions.”)
Last year the average sale price for Montibello Crossing houses was $257,000. Several neighboring subdivisions are much ritzier, with average sale prices last year in Gleneagles at $610,000, Quail Hollow at $690,000 and Seven Eagles at $851,300.
The second piece was the excellent series, just concluded, on the problem of foreclosures in Mecklenburg County. Did you look at the map? Since the foreclosure problem is primarily tied to entry-level (i.e., inexpensive) housing, the map shows a large band of neighborhoods, sweeping east to west across the county, generally north of downtown, are being filled with new subdivisions holding nothing but entry-level housing.
Don’t get me wrong. This city needs housing that people who aren’t wealthy can buy. We don’t want everyone who isn’t making a six-figure income to have to move to Union, Cabarrus or Gaston County. I’m not saying it’s a problem that those houses are being built (although if you read the series, you’ll see it’s a problem when mortgages are given to people who shouldn’t really get them, and foreclosure results). The problem comes when too much housing for low-income people gets concentrated, instead of being sprinkled throughout the city amid higher-income housing.
Here’s market reality: If you cluster too many subdivisions of low-cost houses, you can’t sell higher-end houses in that area. People think it isn’t a good investment – and they’re probably right. All those starter-home subdivisions may well be condemning large chunks of Charlotte to a foreseeable future of nothing but low-income residents. It’s an economic monoscape in the making, and not one that will be healthy for the city.
If there’s anything we’ve learned from the past half-century, it’s that neighborhoods housing only large concentrations of poor people are more prone to crime, drugs, social problems and joblessness.
Then, in south Charlotte you’ve got people in moderate-level housing being squeezed out by super-expensive housing.
Catch my drift? Does this not sound like a future of economic apartheid?
What will that kind of future mean for public schools? Once the courts threw out the old, court-ordered student assignment plan, the schools rapidly splintered by income and race – reflecting the way the city’s neighborhoods are segregated by income. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools is staggering from large, and unexpected, increases in low-income and immigrant students. (Yes, many do very well, and being poor shouldn’t mean any student gets a worse education. But statistics show that as a group, kids from poor homes don’t do as well as kids from wealthier ones, and they require a disproportionate amount of public money in order to give them an equitable education.)
Meanwhile, the slow attrition of affluent kids into private schools or home schools continues as the rich get richer, and the influx of poor and immigrant kids tilts formerly middle-income schools into the high-poverty category.
Can the middle class even hold on here? It’s not a comforting vision of the future.