I have traveled to many regions of the United States. One norm I see around downtown areas, big or small, is the vast amount of large “run down” houses. What caused what appears to be once nice neighborhoods to deteriorate over time? Why was the problem so widespread across the United States?
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It’s usually tied to a loss of jobs or industry in that area.
For example, a steel mill town after the mill has shut down. A river port that’s not as important as it used to be. A town where the local factory has moved production offshore. There are hundreds of variations of this theme.
Once the jobs are gone, communities that used to thrive start to struggle. People can’t afford the real estate taxes or upkeep anymore, so they move away. The area falls into blight and neglect.
As far as “downtown” areas, the indoor shopping mall had its role as well. Before the early to mid 1970s the downtown area was where all the shops were. The shopping mall concept changed that by grouping stores together in an indoor atmosphere, climate controlled with ample parking. The mall was often not downtown, but on the outskirts of town, where land was cheaper. Stores that used to be downtown moved to the malls.
I witnessed this myself in my own hometown, where Sears, JC Penny’s, Woolworth’s, and several local shops had thrived downtown. When the very first indoor mall in our area opened around ’73 or ’74, several of the smaller shops left downtown and moved to the mall. Downtown started to decline a bit, but the big stores remained. By ’79 the second mall opened, and Sears, Penny’s and Woolworth moved out. Downtown became an economic ghost town.
White Flight
Cities used to be more urban before the rise of cars, and people lived closer to the city center. Then a couple things happened… one, government began backing mortgages, but defined areas by safety/quality of investment. Basically, the more minorities, the lower the rating… green were best, yellow were marginal, red were areas that the government wouldn’t back — this is the basis of the term “red lining.” Any area with African-Americans was labeled “blighted” and it was hard to get a mortgage in those areas, or get decent interest rates, due to the red-line status. So white owners sold and fled before their property values fell.
The second thing that happened was the rise of the suburbs. In the post-WWII era, vast suburbs sprung up outside of major cities, offering single family homes with yards, driveways and garages for automobiles that were now widely affordable, and new highways made it easy to commute to jobs in the city quickly. So the middle class migrated en mass from the city out to the suburbs, wanting to enjoy the idyllic lifestyle, and getting out of the city that was becoming more diverse (more areas getting red lined, affecting property values).
And long with middle class residents went their tax dollars. As higher income earners left the cities, tax revenues fell. Concentrations of middle class home owners were replaced by lower income renters. Property values fell, property tax revenues fell, city services were cut due to a combination of budgets and racism. Concurently, many cities lost higher paying blue collar jobs in factories and such, reducing the well paying job prospects for African-Americans. Crime rose, drugs became more common, etc. and caused areas to actually fall into disrepair, caused properties to get abandoned when they became not worth the hassle. Those who could escape did, especially once fair housing laws made it easier for minorities to flee to other parts of cities or even into the suburbs.
As a result, you do have some incredible homes that were once home to upper-middle class types, that over time worked their way down the socio-economic scale, often split into multi-unit apartments, and sometimes even becoming abandoned. Areas of Chicago like Englewood were once upper middle class and are now notoriously bad areas. Lawndale was like 90% white, mostly middle class Jewish in 1950 and by 1960 was 90% African-American.
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