Also, that's BS. Basketball appeals to a lot of folks. You think my short ass wasn't out there pretending to be Muggsy Bogues from time to time?
I was a 5' 2" point guard in western US as a kid and totally wanted to be Muggsy. Remember that SI cover with him and Manute Bol who was like over 7' tall?
And damn, Bol was a chicken legged dude?!
LOL
I love this picture! And their shorts are like halfway between the shorty shorts of the 70s and the knee length we've got now.
I think I live in a bubble. Who moves because of this? I mean less than 10% and it's a "white flight" situation? Who are these a-holes?
I would say racists lol. The problem isn't as much those first few assholes as it is that the rush that begins after 10%. I mean, they're the problem because they started it, but they're not what really gets the ball rolling in a major way. Basically, the only way to get (and maintain) some true diversity is via gentrification. Unfortunately, the influx of people of color will not do this.
Wait, what - I thought gentrification ultimately ends up in less diversity? I mean for a short turnover period people are diversified, but then those who were there originally realize they can sell for WAY more to a bunch of yuppies and get a huge return on their investment and do that instead of keeping housing costs reasonable for a people who would historically live there (minorities) or sell/give to family, right?
It sucks that housing is so divided still. Is there anything that works to diversify?!
ESF - off to read that article - maybe Ms. Warren has a way to do that.
I live in PGC. I have one daughter in a charter school that is fine, and the other is in a PGC public school that is atrocious. There is rampant bullying and the principal doesn't care (my calls to her result in "we'll look into it" in a bored, dismissive tone.) I've struggled with the PGC bus system - the phone number they list on the website isn't answered and cuts off after a 59-minute wait on hold - they won't list the supervisors' phone numbers to actually talk to a person. I often travel to VA to shop, because when I go to the Target near me I get home and often find the products have been shoplifted (the 10-pack of socks has 8 pair, the gummy multivitamins were opened and some missing, I could go on and on.) In addition, I can't wheel the carts to my car because the anti-theft wheels lock up at the store entrance. Some of these things are minor, but when you add up the daily things like that, it's inhospitable and doesn't feel like a community. I do think other parts of PGC are different and they are building some nice communities, but my experience hasn't been the best. We are moving in a few months.
This is to get the principal moving, hold them accountable and give you the ammunition you need if you have to go above their head. You also would want to talk to Dr. Michael Ford if you are getting nothing from county. It is not allowed to get no response
Also, that's BS. Basketball appeals to a lot of folks. You think my short ass wasn't out there pretending to be Muggsy Bogues from time to time?
Well they are all pregant or have kids under 2 so they want stuff for babies--no matter that we ready have two nice playgrounds, a splash park and a pool with a separate baby pool that's like 2 ft deep. Apparently none of them plan to still live here when their kids are like 8.
H is Mugsy Bogues like (in stature, not talent) and makes regular use of the basketball court with some equally untalented neighbors. When they get challenged to a game by 19 year olds it is amazingly hilarious.
My white as white can be mama likes to fantasize about hanging out at her local court and being all, "granny's got next."
She feels bad keeping the kids waiting while the middle aged white ladies play, so she and her friends tend to play at off hours, but she has played a few games against the kids. She's slowed down since her glory years, but she's still got enough moves that she can raise some eyebrows.
**sorry I dd'd this section. It occurred to me that MH would be pissed I shared that since these are not public statements** Cliff notes version: the shit people say about putting in basketball courts is RIDICULOUS.
This is to get the principal moving, hold them accountable and give you the ammunition you need if you have to go above their head. You also would want to talk to Dr. Michael Ford if you are getting nothing from county. It is not allowed to get no response
I don't know what the tipping point was for PG County, but I once read that when a neighborhood gets to 7-8% black on average, that is when white flight begins. This is up from the start of integration when it was 4-5%.
I think I live in a bubble. Who moves because of this? I mean less than 10% and it's a "white flight" situation? Who are these a-holes?
The very people you work with everyday. Example, several years ago, Memphis had some plans to annex some unincorporated area of the county. First - quick history lesson, many years ago (early 1990s) Memphis and Shelby County went through what was known as the Tiny Toy/Toy Town Dispute over the ability to annex unincorporated areas. The result was a county-wide annexation map outlining which city in the county got claim to certain areas. This has been the law until just this last year (another discussion for another thread) when it was changed to give citizens a voice in the process.
Anyway - some years back, I had a discussion with some co-workers about Memphis annexing some area - again in accordance to the laws on the books. My co-worker basically said that the property values would plummet and people would start moving out because of the annexation. I pushed back by saying that there are PLENTY of areas within Memphis city limits that have fantastic property value and that an area becoming part of Memphis doesn't destroy the values. Instead, it's caused by the glut of houses on the market when people start moving out in droves.
See, in her mind - this isn't about just black folks living there, because she didn't say it. It's the implied racial bias that a majority black city is bad for your property values. So, going back to my earlier statement - here are the tale of two houses one inside Memphis and one in a neighboring suburban city. There is no difference in the two neighborhoods because BOTH areas are predominately white.
Post by thejackpot on Jan 26, 2015 12:43:36 GMT -5
Another PG county homeowner checking in. I didn't realize so many of you all live nearby. I agree that schools are an issue but it seems like you can find good elem & middle but hs is less of an option. My family needs to move because we have outgrown our space, I would love to stay in PG but I do worry about finding the rt community with good schools.
I think I live in a bubble. Who moves because of this? I mean less than 10% and it's a "white flight" situation? Who are these a-holes?
People who have bought into the black = bad. It's probably an ingrained thing, it's not like these people say "I hate black people! I need to move!" It's much more subtle than that.
I hear it a LOT about Howard county, which is in between DC and baltimore, particularly columbia which is a wealthy planned community but was designed to have people from all socioeconomic levels. So what you hear is "that's a bad area" and what they mean is it "it has a lot of minorities" (these are more Hispanic areas).
Yup. I was thinking about Columbia. I also hear it about where not to live in HoCo (i.e. Jessup or Laurel, the HoCo part).
I think I live in a bubble. Who moves because of this? I mean less than 10% and it's a "white flight" situation? Who are these a-holes?
People who have bought into the black = bad. It's probably an ingrained thing, it's not like these people say "I hate black people! I need to move!" It's much more subtle than that.
I hear it a LOT about Howard county, which is in between DC and baltimore, particularly columbia which is a wealthy planned community but was designed to have people from all socioeconomic levels. So what you hear is "that's a bad area" and what they mean is it "it has a lot of minorities" (these are more Hispanic areas).
I'll go so far to say in the area of HoCo I live people are starting to move because it's becoming "too Indian". I've even heard this from people of Indian descent! Which I find strange because for the past 15-20 years this area has been overrun with Korean and people haven't moved because "it's too Korean".
People who have bought into the black = bad. It's probably an ingrained thing, it's not like these people say "I hate black people! I need to move!" It's much more subtle than that.
I hear it a LOT about Howard county, which is in between DC and baltimore, particularly columbia which is a wealthy planned community but was designed to have people from all socioeconomic levels. So what you hear is "that's a bad area" and what they mean is it "it has a lot of minorities" (these are more Hispanic areas).
I'll go so far to say in the area of HoCo I live people are starting to move because it's becoming "too Indian". I've even heard this from people of Indian descent! Which I find strange because for the past 15-20 years this area has been overrun with Korean and people haven't moved because "it's too Korean".
Ah yes, the Asian example. Man, I can't say I miss that area (not that my current is a bastion of diversity, but I haven't heard much....yet...so I will just pretend we are diverse).
People who have bought into the black = bad. It's probably an ingrained thing, it's not like these people say "I hate black people! I need to move!" It's much more subtle than that.
I hear it a LOT about Howard county, which is in between DC and baltimore, particularly columbia which is a wealthy planned community but was designed to have people from all socioeconomic levels. So what you hear is "that's a bad area" and what they mean is it "it has a lot of minorities" (these are more Hispanic areas).
Yup. I was thinking about Columbia. I also hear it about where not to live in HoCo (i.e. Jessup or Laurel, the HoCo part).
When we were buying, my in-laws kept saying to avoid the entire eastern part of HoCo. They pushed Clarksville and north. We ended up near one of those two towns you mentioned, and I believe they are convinced we are going to be murdered in our sleep or something.
Yup. I was thinking about Columbia. I also hear it about where not to live in HoCo (i.e. Jessup or Laurel, the HoCo part).
When we were buying, my in-laws kept saying to avoid the entire eastern part of HoCo. They pushed Clarksville and north. We ended up near one of those two towns you mentioned, and I believe they are convinced we are going to be murdered in our sleep or something.
You're in my hood! I love it down here in my little corner of "bad HoCo." I can hit up the awesome Asian and Hispanic grocery stores in Laurel, easy access to 32 and 95 for commuting in many directions, MARC if I ever get a job in DC, and Clarksville can frankly suck it because the trail and park network through Columbia and adjacent is AMAZING and stretches to literally my backyard.
" ... It begs the hypothetical yet sociological question: Would the same magnitude of predatory lending have taken place in Fairwood if it were a predominantly white middle-class area?” We already know the answer to this question. That answer is NO. See Wells Fargo. What pisses me off is that the majority of people gloss over these stories and solely blame the buyer. Damn it. It's not ALL their fault. When companies prey on people and give them fucked up ass loans, how are they supposed to know when there is such a dismal record of people being educated about loan products? Like folks just woke up understanding points, 1st and 2nd mortgages, ARMS and balloon payments. Most folks have no damn clue and were being led to slaughter by lenders.
" ... It begs the hypothetical yet sociological question: Would the same magnitude of predatory lending have taken place in Fairwood if it were a predominantly white middle-class area?” We already know the answer to this question. That answer is NO. See Wells Fargo. What pisses me off is that the majority of people gloss over these stories and solely blame the buyer. Damn it. It's not ALL their fault. When companies prey on people and give them fucked up ass loans, how are they supposed to know when there is such a dismal record of people being educated about loan products? Like folks just woke up understanding points, 1st and 2nd mortgages, ARMS and balloon payments. Most folks have no damn clue and were being led to slaughter by lenders.
I will never understand people who are all caveat emptor about home buying. I challenge any one of those people to tell me they actually READ all their loan documents. You know, BEFORE they had to state all the terms in plain English on the front page. When you get handed a stack of papers 4 inches deep on closing and have a room full ofo people staring at you waiting for you to finish signing everything. My closing agent started tapping her fingers on the table any time I paused to glance over a page to see what the hell i was signing - let alone actually READ it. When we were first looking to get prequal'd I met with a mortgage broker who with a straight face suggested we look at interest only. In 2009. Uhhhh...wut? If I wasn't a well educated consumer with a cautious as hell husband - maybe I'd have followed his advice. I mmean...he's the professional, right. And he's got all these charts and graphs explaining why it's a great idea. What the fuck do I know? I think this all the time with the financial dude we use to coordinate our retirement savings. He could be fleecing us for all we're worth - I HAVE NO IDEA. I try to research some of this crap - but really I just have to trust the professionals to an extent. And in 2005, 2006 - all the real estate and mortgage professionals were still saying that renting is just throwing money away, real estate is a great investment and housing prices are going nowhere but up. How was anybody who isn't actually in the profession or just a general pessimist supposed to know they were all wrong? And not just a little wrong. Like....WRONG.
This stat made my eyebrows crawl up into my hair:
In the lead-up to the crisis, borrowers in Prince George’s earning more than $200,000 per year received subprime loans 31 percent of the time, the highest rate in the nation for a county where 750 or more subprime loans were made.
WHAT THE FUCK? I mean, clearly CLEARLY we aren't talking about people who can't afford their house here. So, we're talking about people who got scammed into shitty loans plain and simple, right?. What other explanation is there for this? Why in the WORLD would those people be in a subprime loan if not for predatory lending? How can you look at that and say, "well they should have known better!" Fuck you! Like you knew better! You didn't know! You just trusted bob at Your Bank and Bob at Your Bank didn't FUCK YOU like these people got fucked. Or your daddy knew better and steered you right. Or you had a friend in banking who explained it to you. But all these people who maybe don't have those connections? Those people just should have magically known, huh? Fuck that. Fuck all of that. Maybe the professionals shouldn't be a bunch of lying sacks of shit, maybe that should be our baseline.
total tangent - that playground looks awesome. I wanna go climb around in that dodecahedron spiderweb looking thing.
Lol. I am surprised it actually was finished. Many developments like fairwood that didn't have the amenities finished before the bust were SOL. Like in the first article where promises of pools/ schools/ golf course etc were scrapped. People probably paid a premium to live in those communities for the amenities and now that is gone too
These people in the comments! These people are killing me. "And failing to read a contract before signing it is not an excuse." Fuck you man. I'll believe you actually read your entire lending documents when pigs fly out of my ASS.
And this one: This is very sad for everyone, but I'm mystified how a family with a $200,000-per-year income couldn't shop elsewhere for a regular market-rate loan. Were they deemed too much of a credit risk? Were they already deeply in debt? There's more to this than simply race
Is it really that hard to believe that when the builder suggested a lender, and the lender was like, "this is what I can offer you. Housing prices are going nowhere but up, you'll make money on this, etc etc" that people just....believed them? This is how scams work. It's not like the lender presented this loan package and was like, "look, I can't offer you anything decent. You should really shop this around."
These people in the comments! These people are killing me. "And failing to read a contract before signing it is not an excuse." Fuck you man. I'll believe you actually read your entire lending documents when pigs fly out of my ASS.
And this one: This is very sad for everyone, but I'm mystified how a family with a $200,000-per-year income couldn't shop elsewhere for a regular market-rate loan. Were they deemed too much of a credit risk? Were they already deeply in debt? There's more to this than simply race
Is it really that hard to believe that when the builder suggested a lender, and the lender was like, "this is what I can offer you. Housing prices are going nowhere but up, you'll make money on this, etc etc" that people just....believed them? This is how scams work. It's not like the lender presented this loan package and was like, "look, I can't offer you anything decent. You should really shop this around."
I know when I purchased my home the lender presented me with various options. So, while certainly you can shop around, the thing becomes how do you know ALL the options the lender has? And a lot of the articles pointed to minorities being steered to less favorable loans. Or the interest rates presented were just higher making the loan bad for the buyer.
Question for those in the know - do recent immigrants often have limited credit history? In the same way that 17 year old me had no credit history so I couldn't get my own cell phone? Not that I'd done anything wrong - just didn't have anything on the books for them to look at.
Don't they always have tornados there? I think that is all I know of Waldorf.
And, I will admit, some areas of PG scare me, but this is not just PG County. I lived in Bmore for goodness sake. And, no, it is not all like The Wire. I also blame some of NOVA (Alexandria specifically) and their police department who I have heard at many conferences, etc saying all their crime comes over the bridge from PG. Now, some probably, but ALL? I know it is code for the blah people from MD. You know, wink wink.
LOL at the Alexandria crime being caused by PG county. I rent in Alexandria and am pretty sure it wasn't PG people going around stealing airbags out of cars in my complex.
This has been a really interesting thread. I really appreciate the knowledgeable folks here- I haven't lived in the area long and had no idea about some of this stuff. And I find it insane that people move because of their neighbors' race.
total tangent - that playground looks awesome. I wanna go climb around in that dodecahedron spiderweb looking thing.
Lol. I am surprised it actually was finished. Many developments like fairwood that didn't have the amenities finished before the bust were SOL. Like in the first article where promises of pools/ schools/ golf course etc were scrapped. People probably paid a premium to live in those communities for the amenities and now that is gone too
I think because it's not actually a community amenity maintained by an HOA like a pool or little tot lot. It's run by MNCPPC - probably on land ceded to the county by the developer as part of the initial zoning/concept plan application mitigation process.
These people in the comments! These people are killing me. "And failing to read a contract before signing it is not an excuse." Fuck you man. I'll believe you actually read your entire lending documents when pigs fly out of my ASS.
And this one: This is very sad for everyone, but I'm mystified how a family with a $200,000-per-year income couldn't shop elsewhere for a regular market-rate loan. Were they deemed too much of a credit risk? Were they already deeply in debt? There's more to this than simply race
Is it really that hard to believe that when the builder suggested a lender, and the lender was like, "this is what I can offer you. Housing prices are going nowhere but up, you'll make money on this, etc etc" that people just....believed them? This is how scams work. It's not like the lender presented this loan package and was like, "look, I can't offer you anything decent. You should really shop this around."
It's not like there weren't tons and tons of white people who got fleeced, either, with 80/20 loans and interest-only mortgages and ARMs because they were so scared of waiting a few years to buy and thinking they'd be priced out of owning a home. So hey, what's the excuse for that?!
Stockton, CA, which was one of the worst foreclosure areas in the US in 2008/9/10, is actually pretty diverse. It's 37% white, 20% Asian, 12% black. So hey, ANYONE can get involved in something like this. It's not an individual moral failing, it's systemic!
Post by cookiemdough on Jan 26, 2015 16:42:54 GMT -5
I also thought that if you used the lender recommended by the builder you received additional incentives. So "use our financing and get a basement" kind of thing.
Question for those in the know - do recent immigrants often have limited credit history? In the same way that 17 year old me had no credit history so I couldn't get my own cell phone? Not that I'd done anything wrong - just didn't have anything on the books for them to look at.
Not a lender - but I on a non-profit housing board, so I know a little of this stuff. In Memphis we have a large Latino immigrant population, what we saw was that immigrants could take some of their documentation and buy a home. The name of the form fails me - but lenders were using those quite a bit to qualify people with limited credit history. During the height of the housing boom, we spent a great deal of time at board meetings discussing predatory lending legislation because we were losing clients to shady ass lenders.
total tangent - that playground looks awesome. I wanna go climb around in that dodecahedron spiderweb looking thing.
We take DD to that playground even though we don't live in the neighborhood. She loves it. They actually built a really nice playground down the street from me, but it is too old for her. It also looks like they are building a skate part. See the white people are coming. Ha.
I also thought that if you used the lender recommended by the builder you received additional incentives. So "use our financing and get a basement" kind of thing.
This is true, and we did, but our lender was M&t and interest rate was same as others around. Not sure if true for all builders.
Post by LoveTrains on Jan 26, 2015 20:52:22 GMT -5
And I'll just add that my condo that I referred to earlier was an 80/20 loan. There was a mother effing balloon payment on the 20 part, too, so it was interest only for 10 years with the balance due at the end. I questioned it, and the broker told me "no big deal, you refi in two years and ditch the 20 part".
Of course that didn't happen. When we moved out, because I'm spoiled and fortunate, I got a loan from my parents for the balloon payment and paid them back (with interest) over the course of 3 years. But there is no way in hell I should have taken that loan package but I did, because it was before my MM days and I was caught up in the frenzy of home buying and I was 25.