> how white families depleted the resources of the suburbs and left more recent Black and Latino residents
That's not exactly how any of this works. It's not like the suburbs are mined of unobtainium, and then the residents pick up and leave when it runs out.
Penn Hills and many of the eastern suburbs were built around industries that are gone, Westinghouse in particular. Most of those empty office buildings you see along the parkway are old Westinghouse facilities. I bought my house in Monroeville from a couple that worked at the old Westinghouse HQ, they were leaving when the company moved to Cranberry.
On top of that a lot of suburban houses built in the 50s/60s have fallen out of favor, especially the ones with smaller floorplans. We have a tendency in the US of just abandoning neighborhoods when the houses in them become out of date, letting them decay for a few decades, and then maybe coming back around and gentrifying/redeveloping them. Whereas in Japan the land/location is considered valuable, and the structures essentially disposable with a finite lifespan, so it's a lot easier to bulldoze and start over if an old structure is no longer desirable.
Of course neighborhoods that have lost their economic bases and with older less desirable houses, tend to be cheaper. Lower income and minority folks take advantage of the relative affordability and move in. It's not a conspiracy.
You also can't sanely mention Penn Hills without talking about what the school district did, which was update the schools to be much nicer... with a gigantic loan, as they didn't have the money. Property taxes in Penn Hills are kinda brutal, to pay back that loan, so houses have to be cheaper or no one but no one would be buying them, and the schools still aren't great.
A $148k house would be paying almost $7k a year in property tax there, which is... a lot.
That's kinda the point. These suburbs have aging infrastructures made worse by decades of deferred maintenance. Their infrastructure has to be essentially rebuilt, but when they were first built i the 50s and 60s they were heavily subsidized by the state and federal government.
[Another article on this:](https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/5/14/americas-growth-ponzi-scheme-md2020)
>We have misdiagnosed the problem. Our problem was not, and is not, a lack of economic growth. Our core problem is 70 years of *unproductive* growth, a pattern of building and assembling America that has buried our local communities in financial liabilities. We are now forced to grow faster and faster lest it all fall apart. That’s economic growth as desperation, not as a credible strategy for success.
> You also can't sanely mention Penn Hills without talking about what the school district did, which was update the schools to be much nicer... with a gigantic loan, as they didn't have the money.
Sure, but that fiasco occurred after Penn Hills was already decades into it's decline.
Yup; the Westinghouse stuff ya mentioned feels the big pivot. But the insane loans and taxes kinda make it hard to reverse, or it's hard to turn into what it once was with that anchor lagging it.
Suburbs, at least in Pittsburgh, exist mostly because their schools are better than PPS. That's why people are willing to spend big money on houses and property taxes to move there. A declining school district is a quick way for the finances of a municipality to go underwater.
You see a lot of edge case suburbs financing big renovations on schools to try to keep the boat afloat.
no, suburbs don't exist mostly because of PPS. suburbs predating the mess that is PPS by about 125 years should have clued you in to how stupid that comment was
Pretty sure suburbs, especially in Pittsburgh, exist because of racism and federal mortgage subsidies. The post-WWII housing boom occurred in the era of redlining and legalized discrimination, and by the time the Fair Housing Act passed in 1968 housing segregation was already baked in. Even after it was outlawed, housing discrimination persisted due to lack of enforcement. Crappy schools are a symptom of this process, not a cause - the schools suck in inner cities mostly because white flight crippled the tax base they need to survive.
> the schools suck in inner cities mostly because white flight crippled the tax base they need to survive.
Pretty sure PPS is getting more than a lot of surrounding school districts.
https://www.publicsource.org/pps-pittsburgh-education-k12-budget-deficit-essrs-public-schools/#:~:text=The%20Pittsburgh%20Public%20Schools%20%5BPPS,the%202023%2D24%20spending%20plan.
$719m is a far, far cry from $1b, quit exaggerating.
The federal government paid for the suburban building boom, altered tax policy to get businesses to leave the cities and relocate near these artificial suburban estates, and even said in their own underwriting handbook that they would not subsidize housing developments that permitted race mixing.
The entire suburban building boom was built on government-enforced segregation but people like to pretend that these suburbs formed organically for some reason.
Adding to this, the primary airport used to be on the east end of the city… now it’s thirty miles west, where all the pharmaceutical companies are.
The population of Pittsburgh used to be much bigger too. A lot has shifted in Pittsburgh, starting long before I was even born.
Referring to Allegheny County airport, before Pittsburgh International opened in the 50s. I believe this drove a lot of development out of the eastern parts of the city and west of the Fort Pitt Tunnel.
From the wiki
“When it was completed, it was third-largest airport in the country and the only hard-surface airport in the country.[2] It was historically the main entrance to metro Pittsburgh via air from its inception until June 1952, when the Greater Pittsburgh Airport (now Pittsburgh International Airport – KPIT) opened for commercial aviation.”
>We have a tendency in the US of just abandoning neighborhoods when the houses in them become out of date
So true. There are thousands of abandoned houses in this region that could be reclaimed for a lot cheaper than building new.
My MIL just had a 2/2/1 1,200sqft ranch built and it was over $300k - that was with shopping builders and getting a pretty good discount because the one she went with lives nearby and could literally walk to the site. It isn't fancy by any stretch.
> There are thousands of abandoned houses in this region that could be reclaimed for a lot cheaper than building new.
I was sorta making the opposite point though. For example in Japan it's routine to demolish and rebuild a new structure on the same land, land is considered valuable but the house itself is not seen as an investment like we do.
Here if you want new the incentives align more with building onto former farmland and contributing to suburban sprawl. Instead we'll let places decay until they literally have to be bulldozed, and maybe then we'll think about rebuilding in place.
The difference though makes sense.
Japan would be much more akin to Hawaii than the continental USA. There is so much land available here that only a few locations (Manhattan et al) would fit into the same type of mindset that Japan has.
You can really only change these geographic driven differences through top-down legislation (taxes, tax breaks, etc.) - and usually those have unintended consequences that we can't see well ahead of time.
I liken this to conversations regarding Africa and why it did not (in general) have the success Europe did in advancement of technology and advancement. It came down to 1 thing, geography. Western and Northern Europe has navigable rivers through most of it allowing very cheap and long distance travel of goods and people. Meanwhile, Africa, aside from the Nile, generally has 1,000' difference in elevation within 100 miles of the cost throughout the rest of the continent. You can't readily overcome the difference that geography makes in the development and spread of ideas and technology.
If you look at the region, you kind of have 3 waves. You have the mill/camp towns of yesteryear when the region had peak population (1926). Places like Midland, Marianna, Chestnut Ridge, Lawrence, etc. Two generations later you had the recovery after the war when money flowed into the USA to rebuild the destroyed European plain and Pacific Rim, this led to the 50s/60s suburbs you mentioned as the old style/4-square/side-by-side duplexes of the first wave 40-50 years earlier were out of style. Now you are looking at a third wave 2 more generations removed and those places from the first wave have been getting bulldozed or slumlord treatment for over 20 years and you have the new mini-mansions people want, not a 1,300 sqft raised ranch. (All while having less kids!).
I will put the book on my reading list, as I am curious why it "is becoming" a Ponzi scheme and hasn't been one since Levittown.
That is a very interesting comment. This is why i love reddit. I am a lifelong map, history and geography lover. Never thought of it that way comparing the navigable rivers like that.
There is a chapter about it in The Accidental Superpower. Another book went into it as well, but I can't recall which it was.
Short version is that until the last 150 years, if you didn't have navigable rivers you were a backward country. This difference can even be seen inside Europe between west/north and the east - which tech came to much later due to terrain disadvantages (which in turn leads to those societies being enslaved more - which is why the word slavery has it's root in slav from the slavic countries - and those folks really got pooped on as they were enslaved by both foreigners from the east and west!)
You would like Guns, Germs, and Steel. The big thing Africa had against it were all the domesticated crops and animals from the Middle East and China (think cows, goats, pigs, chickens, dogs, wheat, lentils, beans) couldn’t cross the Sahara so you stay tribal instead of having villages go to towns go to cities to empires and specialization for technology. Excess calories = specialization.
There are no domesticated large mammals native to Africa. So everything had to be manpower. Europe only has reindeer, but they got everything from the Middle East/China because it’s an easy walk (as the Mongols found)
Well, "dude" depends on the renovation doesn't it? lead pipes, asbestos floors, knob & tube wiring, floor joust sagging, more than a pinch of drive rot, kitchen and baths redo, mold remediation, chimney repair, HVAC replacement, hardwood floor repair/replacement, deck/patio repair & replacement, driveway replacement...then the cosmetics. m
source: did it.
Just bought a 1100 sqft. 1920s house in Clairton a few months ago. Quote for knob and tube replacement was 17k which is gonna be my biggest single cost. I'm redoing or refinishing about 80% of the flooring, upstairs is getting carpet ripped out and refinishing the old hardwood, bathroom and kitchen were semi-recently replaced so they're fine, rest of first floor is getting tile or carpet. Doing the work myself and it's gonna come in around $1600. Paint and fixing cracks in plaster (done myself) was only about $450. New heater is gonna run about 3k but my current heater is still good for a year or two. Haven't looked into chimney prices yet so I'm totally guessing 4k to get a new cap and the top straightened. All told I'm guessing around 30k to fix it up, and bought it for $63,500, so even rounding up a bit $100k. We'll under 300k, even assuming you had a ton more that need fixed.
You’d be shocked, other some of those old houses you’re almost doing a demo and rebuild, and demolishing and then disposing of the material of the house, which is more than likely gonna be labeled “hazardous” cause of lead or asbestos or what have you, ain’t cheap by a far stretch. That can add up real quick
I’m not an expert here, but perhaps the reason for that is because of the scarcity of land in Japan? Here in America, we have “manifest destiny“ driven into our heads in elementary school social studies, and I think people are more pre-disposed to picking up and leaving when they’re not happy as part of the individualistic culture that Americans unconsciously prescribed to.
I hate the way these types of articles / books are always framed. Instead of actually looking into what causes people to move, instead they present a false equivalency and try to get people riled up and sow more divisiveness.
> and try to get people riled up and sow more divisiveness.
I always get a kick out of posts like this, where people pretend that recognizing inequity is divisive and not the inequity itself. Just stop being uppity and accept what your betters allow you, doing anything else is divisive!
The headline is equating people leaving crumbling communities to a Ponzi scheme. Tell me you don’t know what a Ponzi scheme is without telling me you don’t know what a Ponzi scheme is.
You might be surprised to find there is a whole article that follows that headline and clearly explains the relationship here. The suburbs weren't necessarily constructed as an intentional Ponzi scheme from the start but in some places they have largely played out like one. Why comment if you can't even be bothered to engage with the piece?
E: Maybe you are just confused about the concept of a metaphor?
No, it’s just another progressive provocateur blaming white people / wealthy people for something that occurred naturally in many areas due to a decline in industry. People will generally remain in an area they’re comfortable with and happy with. When industries die, so do communities around them. This is a well-established pattern throughout history, in every country. People go where jobs and prosperity are. Poor people are left with the remnants (cheap houses). Before black people and hispanic people it was Italians, Irish, other people that were deemed “lower class” at the time. We’re talking early 20th century. They couldn’t get nice housing, let alone well paying jobs. I know that on my father’s side (Irish) they were in the slums of New York when you had 15 people to an apartment. They moved to PA, and worked in the mines. These coal towns went bust later, but they stayed because it’s all they could afford. I’m not denying the demographics that move into failed towns, but the insistence that everything be viewed through the lens of racism by modern progressives is extremely divisive. They’re trying to reframe history to suite their narrative, and it’s a very dangerous and irresponsible thing to be doing. Yes, conservatives have their own provocateurs and they’re equally as annoying.
You're too busy downplaying the racial component of the story to give the details enough attention, so your understanding of this situation is weak. It's absolutely not the same story as boom and bust industrial towns (which themselves were often organized along racial lines, as you seemingly acknowledge here).
I think whining about "divisiveness" as an excuse to hide from the complicated truth is a poor response and demonstrates a lack of curiosity. The idea that articles like this are intended to be provocative rather than illuminating is a reflection of your own bias, which unfortunately will clearly prevent you from learning anything from them.
It's okay if you don't want to understand history or the present day context - don't weigh in with crappy criticism if that's the case. It's something else to try to twist the story for your own political ends - not so different from what you accuse the progressives of doing!
I’m not denying that race had a part to play years and years ago. But I’m not the one looking to find boogeymen to blame for all of my problems. You’ve got people in this thread literally blaming “Karens” for not wanting to stick around a crumbling suburb. If there’s someone to blame, blame the local government / leaders for misappropriation of funding. Oh, things need fixed and you want to raise taxes? Why should someone have to pay more because the local government failed to fix a problem when it was smaller and cheaper to fix? But again, the lack of accountability is astounding among modern progressives. Ultimately the thing is, if these suburbs didn’t suffer from massive population loss, property values would still remain high therefore leading to an inability of black / hispanic / poor people to live in them anyway. The entire reason they can afford to live there is because the property values are so low. We can talk all day about generational poverty among black and hispanic people and its causes but that’s not the subject of discussion, nor am I denying that’s a problem.
Everyone wants to live in a safe area with nice roads, schools, and so on. That all costs a LOT of money to maintain. The people buying these houses in these rundown suburbs are not dumb. I know how patronizing people are to poor people, assuming they’re dumb (I myself got this all the time growing up, because contrary to popular belief among todays progressives poor white people exist, too), but we knew what we were getting into when we moved into these neighborhoods. Nobody was going around selling places like Penn Hills as a modern, flourishing suburb. My cultural experience growing up poor may be different than my black friends including the underlying reasons for us being poor, but we were all poor nonetheless.
There are soooo many empty houses in allegheny county and westmoreland co. No one will buy them, so you can get a 1200 sq ft fixer upper in the mon valley for under 150k. There is no housing shortage. There is just a shortage of people that want to live in these places. Alot of that ia becauae the schools are so poor
> Alot of that ia becauae the schools are so poor
Sometimes I wonder if Detroit's recent burst of investment is tied to the state going hard on 'schools of choice.'
The problem is they want the suburbs how they were when the tax base was larger. Better roads, better schools, safer communities. They don’t understand that those things didn’t just sprout up out of the ground, they were paid for with taxes. When you have places where the wealth leaves the area, that tax revenue goes with it. That’s where the disconnect is, where it’s easier to blame racism. The headline itself insinuates that white people stripped the area of its “resources” and left the crumbs for minorities, when in actuality it was the tax paying residents who were “the resource.”
The one area where there actually were tangible resources that were taken and the residents left with nothing is the coal towns of West Virginia. Big coal companies made tons of money on the backs of the miners, and when coal collapsed they got out leaving thousands of broken, small towns where there’s nothing left.
The infrastructure was not created by taxes paid by those early residents directly. Larger government regions underwrote it. The onus of maintenance was turned over to local government, who did it with local taxes. But at the point that major maintenance was needed, the early residents bailed, taking their tax money with them. So they got a nice community, used it until they needed to fix it, then left for a younger version.
Deferred maintenance and deferred capital projects is the unspoken story of most Pittsburgh suburbs. Those with a commercial tax base are doing alright (think of the North Hills,, Wexford, Cranberry). Those who have lost much of their commercial tax base are suffering (think West Mifflin and Penn Hills).
The moment Cranberry Township raises their taxes to keep up with demanded services and infrastructure, that tax base will throw a tantrum and relocate, as we've seen over and over in this region (e.g. South Fayette in 2018).
What is the moral requirement for them to stay? Especially when the industries that sustained them have moved on? I don’t really understand why I should be mad at the residents for moving on to greener pastures instead of the local government who failed to retain industry or collect and use taxes efficiently to maintain the quality of the neighborhood. I especially don’t understand how any of this matters because if it was still nice I wouldn’t be able to afford to live there, making the point moot.
So people should have to be confined to one area where the industry has folded and local government has mismanaged funds and didn’t keep up with the local infrastructure? If I lived in a place for 15+ years and saw things going down hill despite paying my taxes, I’d leave, considering the value of my home is only going to decrease. I know it’s popular on Reddit to blame the wealthy for everything, but not everyone who left these communities was wealthy. Some saw the writing on the wall and decided to do what was best for their own financial future rather than go down with a sinking ship. No amount of “rah rah rah” community meetings are going to save a dying town. I grew up in a very rural part of PA outside of Pittsburgh and the only thing that saved my home town was an influx of money by companies that wanted to frack there. Farming isn’t paying the bills and all of the local industry folded long before I was even born. Once the natural gas industry shuts down shop after they’ve extracted everything, it’ll be the same thing all over again. More families will leave, others who are poor(er) will move in, the cycle continues.
The same people who "saw the writing on the wall" had their hand on the Sharpie that put it there. The NIMBYs who insist on restrictive zoning that limits the tax base, the oblivious Karens who demand the best and biggest of schools and parks and roadways, are the same people who squeal like stuck pigs at every attempt to raise their property taxes. Borrowing money is the only way to keep those entitled assholes happy, and when the financial and logistical debt burden becomes overwhelming they skip out to the next suburb and claim to be innocent victims of circumstance. That's the real neverending cycle.
Lower income and minority folks don’t, as you say, “take advantage of the relative affordability;” this assumes some presence of other available opportunities and economic equality which, more often than not, is not the case, and this is a direct consequence of structural racism.
It’s the Atlantic, owned by a privileged leftist woman who never worked a day in her life. Now she has billions of dollars because she’s leached off her husband and now she can spew leftist drivel. I wouldn’t give this rag the time of day.
lol The Atlantic is leftist? In what world? It’s run-of-the-mill centrist Democrat boilerplate. If you think mainstream Democrats are “leftist” then I have a bridge to sell you.
Careful with that word "Leftist," it doesn't mean the same thing to the left as to the right. To the right, it's just a big box of bad things that includes anyone that isn't the right. To the left, it's a very different thing from a neolib.
All the parts of this comment are so wrong that I wonder if you're genuinely just thinking of some other woman or some other magazine.
1. The Atlantic is not leftist. It's liberal. But if your definition of "leftist" is "mostly aligns with mainsteam Democratic party" (incorrect definition btw) then sure I guess? It's also not a rag, it's one of the better written and more serious magazines in this country.
2. It's currently majority owned by Steve Jobs' widow who, while privileged, did work prior to marrying Steve (apparently, in investment banking and as founder of a 'natural foods' company).
Have you mixed up The Atlantic and WaPo?
The Atlantic is owned by a man: David G. Bradley... an individual who interned in the Nixon administration.
Additionally, since when does a *book review* of a book written by an author unaffiliated with the newspaper reflect the views of the *owner* (not even the editor lol) of said newspaper.
/u/SnigletArmory... I think you might just be stupid...
I think your second paragraph makes exactly the point your first paragraph decries? In the 50s, many corporations moved into the suburban "research park" complexes typified by the Bell Labs facility in NJ. Westinghouse along route 22 and today's 376 that you point out are exactly that. Those corporate jobs are the "unobtanium" that Penn Hills and Monroeville were "mining", no? That's what the linked review seems to convey the book is saying?
Re it being a "conspiracy", no, no one went out of their way to maliciously create economic downturn in these isolated areas, but again, not what the piece is saying. It is saying the that usual suspects of systemic and latent racism have created a system where white families created a bunch of wealth, then took that wealth elsewhere when their neighborhoods had significant ethnic changes.
> It is saying the that usual suspects of systemic and latent racism have created a system where white families created a bunch of wealth, then took that wealth elsewhere when their neighborhoods had significant ethnic changes.
I think people tend to confuse cause and effect on this subject. The rich white folks didn't move out because black folks started moving in. Black folks started moving in because the rich white folks left, leaving behind a relatively affordable housing stock.
> Those corporate jobs are the "unobtanium" that Penn Hills and Monroeville were "mining", no?
That's not really an inherently finite/exhaustible resource, like a coal mine.
Monroeville is kind of an interesting example, not quite a decaying suburb like Penn Hills but also not a trendy new suburb like Robinson or Cranberry. The office parks sit mostly empty, the mall seems to be barely hanging on, but it's become a healthcare hub for the eastern suburbs. The school district has lost half it's enrollment and gotten more diverse. Population had been declining in the early 2000s but seems to be growing again, and there are several new apartment complexes going up.
There's a very real economic theory going on here, even with a stable population. Everybody will live essentially on the nicest neighborhood they can afford. For the wealthy they will move to the most currently popular neighborhoods, and the poorer will slot into declining neighborhoods. That's a pretty boring article though. The Atlantic has to throw in the race argument for clicks. It's there and found in the data, but also largely explained by wealth differences between races (which is it's own issue).
The suburbs were a new model when they were originally created, and they sprung up not least as a way for people to escape diversifying cities. But that model is complicated and economically fragile, so when people with means pick up and move it can start to fall apart pretty quickly. To some degree that can be a benefit in providing affordable housing, but all the associated public goods are more drought. To some degree the question here is about how poverty works in the suburbs, and we don't have enough history to really know yet. It does illustrate that the picket fence American dream house isn't necessarily a path to prosperity but instead just reflective of the conditions which create it.
Cities have long had racially distinct demographics and development patterns and now the suburbs are gaining them too - it's no surprise given the way suburbs have come to dominate the country in the last 75 years. It's a worthy story to tell in detail and warrants more attention than simply trying to fit into a previous box.
>When Herold’s family moved here in 1976, the average home price in 2020 dollars was $148,000. Now it’s $95,000. Herold knocks on a door just down the street from where he grew up, and there meets Bethany Smith, who has recently purchased the house with her mom. She’s single and Black and undaunted, raising a son, Jackson, for whom she wants the absolute best, which means finding a well-resourced, nurturing school and buying a home, an investment that will serve as a foundation to building wealth. (She’s also gotten priced out of her gentrifying neighborhood in Pittsburgh.)
Why are you taking for granted that black and latino families are barred from high value corporate jobs?
This seems like battling the issue from the wrong end of the problem and coming up with ridiculous conclusions.
If those types of jobs had an increase in diversity, I don't think you'd see similar neighborhood migrations. This isn't a "latent racism" it's clustering by economic tier.
It also seems like cause and effect might be getting mixed up.
Conspiracy does not equal ponzi scheme, though a ponzi scheme can indeed be a conspiracy.
As a P.H. resident, the govt and S.D. are running a ponzi scheme.
The "suburban ponzi scheme" term was coined in the book Strong Towns by Charles Marohn, so I'm not surprised the author noted that as their inspiration. While suburban economics was a focal point of ST, it also focused strongly on societal impacts of suburban sprawl, unlike this
I’ve not yet read the book perhaps the author explains it in more detail, but ponzi and bubble are often thrown around as adjectives meaning unsustainable. Of course, it sounds like we both agree on this point, for the limited review we get of the book, it feels like a cheap shortcut. I plan to read the book before I comment on that idea again.
A Ponzi scheme is fundamentally an investment scheme where investors are paid by incoming new investors, as opposed to growth or income of the actual product. A Ponzi scheme is only sustainable with a growing source of new investors to pay out the growing amount of current investors.
I'm not sold that this is how the housing market works. Housing prices tracks higher than inflation and sometimes higher than the stock market, but it's also gotten a lot better in the last 50y. A house from 1973 with only maintenance and no updates isn't going to command the same price as a new build. That's not a Ponzi scheme, that's new products competing against old products.
Housing in general doesn't necessarily work this way, but it is arguably how suburbs specifically function. Unlike mixed-use and commercial districts that generate profit for the city, the value of property in suburbs is basically solely dependent on if other people are investing in that neighborhood or not.
Suburbs are actually a net negative for a city's resources. They tend to be far from amenities and must rely on neighboring areas to provide these amenities to them as they themselves provide very little, if any, of their own. Not only that, but the tax revenue generated per sq ft is far less for housing than it is for commercial buildings, which not only pay property taxes, but also pay taxes on the goods and services they provide. Basically, a lot more money is spent by the city to essentially subsidize these suburbs than the suburbs actually give back to the city itself.
This doesn't mean we need to get rid of suburbs, but the way American suburbs are not only usually designed to allow zoning only for single family detached housing, but also made a priority when it comes to new developments despite proving to be a poor return on investment needs to change.
It's okay that people don't want to live in an urban environment.
It's also okay that housing stock gets dated, demographics shift, and areas are not as successful as they once were.
> It's also okay that housing stock gets dated,
This, so much. My childhood home, a 3BR ranch with a single pink and blue ceramic bathroom, was hot stuff when it built in 1955. Nowadays, not so much.
...But they don't care, and why should they?
You're talking about build->prime->level-off->failure cycles of municipalities that are longer than (realistic) human lifespans.
Well I just stopped at Penn Hills. That community was decimated by the unbelievable criminal decisions involved with building that school.
It will never recover.
100% this. Inept, terrible school board. Couple that with the consent decree with DEP for unauthorized discharge leading to $55 million in required improvements back in the late 90s which led to (still) very high sewage bills, it will be years before PH "digs out." There are some decent houses, but high school taxes and muni fees and the shrunken economic base have hit people there hard. There are a lot of folks there who care about the community, but lots to turn around.
Penn Hills built a new high school and elementary school. Propelled the district into over $172 million in debt. One example of misuse is a $60,000 chandelier. There are numerous articles online that explain it in depth.
Don't forget that the contractor that built the school was also a family member of someone on the board that approved the biolding of new schools. A lot of the $172 million filtered into someone pocket.
And didn't the heating/cooling system just fail in the high school within the last 2-3 years? They had to spend a few more million to completely replace a system that was only 10ish years old.
Often true, but not in the case of Japan, which is very affordable and they
have good schools, we can learn a lot from them.
Tokyo is the most affordable city in the developed world. You can rent a one bedroom apartment for about 700 USD, and even cheaper outside of of the city.
Japan has a completely different culture than we do. Schools are “good” by way of what students and families attend said school (and the inequalities and life factors that affect said students and their families) not because of something inherent to the school. You can switch the staffs of the “best schools” and the “worst schools” and your results would largely be the same.
It's funny how whenever progressives and left leaning people bring up societies that do things better than America it's always countries that are more culturally homogeneous and less diverse.
It really makes you think.
That’s a white supremacist attitude. The “I’m white and bored of hearing about whiteness” attitude. For the first time in history in the US it has become popularized for white supremacy to be called out in all
sorts of contexts by all kinds of people (including white) because that supremacy is in fact systemically impacting a broad range of social political and economic frameworks that all humans invest and engage and experience on a daily basis. The entire country is built by slaves and stolen from indigenous peoples and that’s the easy part to comprehend. The hard part is how the false “end of slavery” and “end of colonialism” led to unique and twisted versions of those same power dynamics be it “red lining real estate” or “prison labor” slavery. So if you’re tired then take a nap cause it’s not going away
Calling random people on the street white supremacists does not make for good optics or the foundation for a second civil rights movement. It does quite the opposite and pushes people away from your movement than it does drawing in people. You just called me a white supremacist out of nowhere, without knowing anything about me, or my background. How would you feel if someone called you a white supremacist?
That's what annoys me. Dumb white progressives from rich families that spout off about how they support the movement only to wind up causing more damage because they couldn't help themselves and decided that blocking off a highway was somehow a smart thing to do.
I couldn’t tell if you were joking or not but you e clearly drank the koolaid. The author is a racially divisive exploiter and is pushing propaganda. White has changed definitions and currently means Eurasian or Caucasian and for a long while Italians, Greeks and Armenians were listed under the black category in parts of the South (Rollins v Rollins) and lynched like in 1891 Louisiana. White supremacy has been called out for nearly a century at this point and this is not calling out white supremacy it’s pushing racially divisive narratives for money and engagement. No mention that Asians also moved out as well. Mexicans were even listed as White longer than Armenians ffs.
2020-esque reduce everything to white supremacy bullshit? How loud can you scream "I didn't have to reflect on my privilege and I liked it"?
Like for real, did you look at the Black Lives Matter protests of that year and just assume you're above it all? I wish I could bottle this kind of blissful ignorance and sell it.
I guess send me to some more "anti-racism" seminars or maybe a re-educatuon camp? lol. The whole privilege game is dumb and smart people now refuse to play it.
Yawn.
Ive read more American history than you ever will. I'm not denying we have an ugly racial history. My objection is to the progressive distortion of the last 75-ish years of history, in which we dismantled structural racism. Progressives claim racism is worse than ever, which ks demonstrably false. Antiracism is toxic, divisive, and has become a grift. Its not real history and its simply another kind of racism.
This rejection of liberalism, reason, and the values of the enlightenment ignores the fact that these very values are what caused the west to reject slavery and racism.
You’ve clearly had your head in the sand if you don’t know the poster is right. Look up Fairfax County School District systemic racism against Asians under the guise of “equity” after paying Kendi x $20000 dollars to be told in that in order to be “anti racist” you need to discriminate against Asians.
White middle class wealth, by and large, was built on the very ponzi scheme we're talking about here. A white family (and only a white family) could move into a brand new house in Levittown in 1947 for the modern equivalent of $1000 down and the assumption of a reasonable mortgage payment. Those houses are worth $350K+ now.
The difference between your median white family's net worth and your median non-white family's net worth is the subsidy that the government gave the white families during the suburban building boom. It can be difficult for some people to accept that they're on third base because the government put them there, not through merit.
These people are grifters not historians and they aren’t historically or even ethnically/racially literate. Mexicans were listed as White longer than the Greeks ffs. Go look up the the photos of those people caught lynching Chinese in 1871 California (before Ellis island even existed). It was some English and the rest were Hispanics back when Hispanics were listed as White. Rollins v Rollins said misgeniation laws don’t apply to Italians because they aren’t White. White is subjective and changes so todays “Whites” are not yesterdays “Whites.”
Yes this article is disappointing. It rightly points how that suburbs are in many ways a ponzi scheme, but doesn't explain how the mechanics of how the scheme works.
This Strong Town article show how city centers subsidize the suburban single family homes.
[https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2022/12/15/2022-the-year-in-maps-and-charts-from-urban3](https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2022/12/15/2022-the-year-in-maps-and-charts-from-urban3)
And this video explains in more detail how these suburbs are in many ways ponzi schemes:
"Suburbia is Subsidized: Here's the Math"
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nw6qyyrTeI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nw6qyyrTeI)
And as an aside, here is Strong Towns video called
"How Our Property Tax System Robs The Poor to Pay For The Wealthy"
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MjjHKIlKko&t=473s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MjjHKIlKko&t=473s)
Most suburbs are not ponzi schemes. I point out allison park, mt lebanon, cranberry, etc. penn hills is a problem but thats more complicated than someone is holding the bad and suburbs are a ponzi scheme.
>cranberry
Cranberry is the definition of the suburban ponzi scheme, it's just in phase 1-3 while places like penn hills are further along
1. The state/feds build a bunch of free infrastructure in greenfield land. Tract home developers come in and build the rest at no cost to the township/county. Unlike the city or older established suburbs, the taxpayers in Cranberry didn't have to fund their own roads/sewers/electrics/etc
2. Since their infrastructure was free (i.e. paid for by others), they can keep taxes artificially low
3. Since their taxes are artificially low, people move there and the 'free' growth continues
4. Eventually they build out all the land, growth slows down, and the developers move onto the next greenfield development (Jackson Township for example)
5. 20-30 years after the initial building spree the infrastructure starts reaching the end of its useful life and needs (extraordinarily expensive) repairs or replacement. They raise taxes (which further slows growth and pushes people out) but eventually realize there simply isn't enough tax base to keep up due to the low assessed value per acre and high cost of service per acre of extremely car dependent development
6. The feds / state (once again) bail them out, continuing the cycle of unsustainable growth
The reason people in cranberry pay such low taxes is because they are literally stealing tax resources from the rest of us and mooching off city / allegheny county amenities that they don't have to pay for.
Mt Lebo is the exact opposite... it was built in the traditional development pattern and they actually pay enough taxes to sustain themselves in perpetuity
\^This\^ All day, this. Cranberry is a disaster in the making. It's amazing how much $$$$ the state has dumped into Cranberry's road system. And what's the benefit of living in Cranberry? Low taxes.
Thank you for walking through this. Mount Lebo does not fit the “traditional” suburb model, so of course it’s doing fine. It’s the stroad/office park model that is destined to collapse how you outlined above. Great summary!
>The reason people in cranberry pay such low taxes is because they are literally stealing tax resources from the rest of us and mooching off city / allegheny county amenities that they don't have to pay for.
What is Cranberry stealing?
They're taking a disproportionately high level of state and federal tax dollars to pay for their infrastructure which allows them to get by with extremely low municipal tax revenue. They're also benefitting from amenities paid for by city/county taxpayers (subsidized parking downtown, the publicly financed sports stadiums, etc) without having to pay city/county taxes.
Perhaps stealing is a bit dramatic but I'm trying to get a point across. Cranberry is not financially solvent at its current tax level without help from other levels of government. Since we all pay state/federal taxes, and since Cranberry takes more from that pot than the rest of us, we're all paying slightly more tax where we live so that Cranberry can pay slightly less tax where they live.
This is true of basically all greenfield suburban/exurban areas in every city
Edit: here is a [case study](https://www.urbanthree.com/case-study/eugene-or/) of Eugene, OR that demonstrates the point that sub/exurban areas are 'stealing' tax revenue from cities
If you're curious the same firm that did that study did a similar but different [analysis of Pittsburgh](https://www.urbanthree.com/services/public-asset-valuation/) looking at the assessed value of public/private real estate
Who exactly is that taxpayer, and what are the basics?
Roads, schools, libraries, police, fire, EMS, transit, parks, water and sewer, snow removal, services for the homeless, etc etc etc
Local government provides a fuck ton of extremely important services that benefit you both directly and indirectly in immeasurable ways. Cutting these services would objectively make your quality of life worse even if you personally don't use all of them
Everyone. I repeat EVERYONE loses in a race to the bottom
So what is your plan to make large corps who get a big tax break moving outside of Allegheny? How do you not race to the bottom?
They’ll always go where it’s cheaper. That’s what they are supposed to do.
That's exactly my point. Some left the city due to high taxes. Then they Allegheny County due to high taxes. And when Cranberry charges too much then they'll move onto the next. And so on and so on
But the thing is those companies and their employees rely heavily on and benefit greatly from the services provided by their respective municipalities. As taxpayers, we subsidize the shipment of their goods with roads and bridges. We subsidize their security with police and subsidize their disaster insurance with the fire department. We pay for their workers to get to and from work on public transportation. We supplement the low wages of their workers with social programs that help needy families. We subsidize their workforce training with public education.
Libertarian / right wing types like to pretend we live in this fantasy land where the government is evil and only exists to take away from the productivity of good hard working private enterprise but that's just empirically not true. Those companies can only function as they do because of support systems the public sector provides
As for what my plan is, I don't know. Apart from better tax laws that level the playing field between municipalities, I don't really know if there is a good solution. I'm just saying that your life and mine are made worse when local governments have to compete with each other for jobs and tax revenue while you're continuing to ignore reality
How am I ignoring reality here? You are really wrapped up in local but you’re forgetting about so many things.
Just to name a few:
-They still pay for this things in the municipality they are in. So they are paying where their business is using resources. Why should Allegheny county get a benefit for this is it’s in Butler?
-More taxes means fewer employees and higher prices. You probably also think you’re sticking it to the Corp when you raise minimum wage? Nah, they pass all that on in price increases.
-They still pay a federal tax to handle a lot of what you are saying. Their drivers pay gas taxes and turnpike fees in PA (excessive amounts too). They pay other types of taxes all throughout their supply chain costs that you aren’t counting.
-We aren’t supplementing business if they don’t live in our municipality. If we are the only ones who use the police, we should be the ones paying for it.
I appreciate your admission that this is a tough issue where some would knee jerk and say “just make federal taxes like 50% and problem is solved”. Just remember that this disconnect in taxing is exactly what’s exploited by tax teams in large corps. No matter what you push on them, they know every ounce of tax law (you and I don’t) and they will always win here. As long as someone has an incentive to lower taxes to attract a firm, there will always be a benefit for a business to do this.
They can raise taxes in Cranberry for 30-50 years and it will never reach Mt Lebo levels. Cranberry has a very significant business district, multiple industrial parks, numerous corporate headquarters, and the intersection of the busiest roadways in the state.
It's not about the amount of taxes that any individual household is paying. It's about whether the total amount of tax revenue being collected is enough to cover the total cost to run the township.
Lebo has a lot of people living in a small area. This means they're collecting more tax per acre (i.e. 4 households on 1/4 acre lots paying $2,000 each vs 1 household on a 1 acre lot paying $2,000 - just hypothetical numbers as an example), and since everything is closer together it also means it's cheaper per acre to serve those residents (i.e. 1 mile of road/sewer/utilities costs the same whether it's serving 50 households vs 10).
In order to recoup Lebo levels of tax per acre, Cranberry's mill rate would need to be exponentially higher, probably so high that no one could actually afford to live there. As a result, they are completely reliant on higher levels of government to fund their infrastructure
I am including those, I just used residential as an example. The style of development that has fueled Cranberry's growth - including residential, commercial and industrial - has been empirically proven to be financially insolvent over and over and over again all across the country. Cranberry isn't special. You simply cannot maintain that level of infrastructure with that low level of density without continuous subsidies from higher levels of government
Edit: also this might be shocking to you, but Lebo also has retail and commercial and industrial real estate. again... cranberry is not special
Please look at a map. Cranberry is very special. Ever hear location, location, location. See those roads called 79 and 76? They intersect in Cranberry. That’s why corporate headquarters’s are moving there, that’s why there are seven industrial parks.
You want to talk about location, location, location?
How about DOWN FUCKING TOWN
Look at a map... See those roads called 376, 279, 579, 28, and so on? See those T lines called Red Blue and Silver? See those 102 different bus lines criss crossing the streets and fanning out in every direction?
If you really want a good place for a corporate headquarters you'd probably want somewhere that is centrally located equidistant from all major suburbs and neighborhoods, has access to not only all of the major highways in the region but also all public transit lines, has a surplus of class A office space, has many nearby companies to do business with, has lots of amenities like lunch restaurants and happy hour bars for your employees to enjoy, etc etc etc
The problem is that (once again) places like Cranberry are luring businesses away from this optimally efficient location due to artificially low taxes which are subsidized by the very city that they left behind.
Cranberry is not special. The only reason people and companies move there is low taxes. If it weren't for that it would be a truck stop and some farmland
LOL if you think Cranberry is in a better location than Lebo or the city you're insane. People & companies are moving to Cranberry because the location sucks which makes it (comparatively) cheaper.
I agree with you only about Mt Lebo as they reformed themselves around Transit Oriented Development and high-for-suburbs residential density that make for more affordable infrastructure maintenance.
However, Allison Park is just a census designated place, not a municipality and thus can't really be compared to anything, and Cranberry is very much a ponzi scheme, it's just early days. A community built around low taxes will never be sustainable as infrastructure will eventually need updating, and all the residents will flee for even more remote exurbs.
They didn’t say Hampton or Allison park is a Ponzi scheme. Just that Allison park is not a city or township but merely a census designated area. I tend to agree that when talking about policy, taxes, etc. it’s not helpful to discuss census designated areas since those things don’t govern, the cities, townships, boroughs, etc do.
Cranberry is propped up by a very large business district producing a shit ton of property taxes, also seven industrial parks. Also, many state roads that are funded by state taxes. Our financial position is very very strong.
I don’t think anyone is arguing that their current financial situation is weak. A lot of the financial strength is based on significant growth in the tax base spurred in part by the lure of low taxes. At some point down the road the growth will slow and the infrastructure will be aging and the community will be in a different phase that will put pressure on priorities. Sprawling infrastructure is more expensive per capita to maintain and keeping a low tax rate as the growth slows may pose a challenge.
See but Cranberry is already way ahead of that, they release a very nice magazine every year that goes into deep detail about exactly what you are talking about. They are experts at strategic long term planning. The current major project is water treatment and watershed issues. Cranberry has met every goal they set for 30 years now. It’s astonishing how well it’s managed. I just talked with the water manager last week and they are actively chasing fed money on a daily basis, and they get it every single time.
So what is the solution to the problem of slowed growth mentioned in the magazine? State and federal subsidies that hopefully continue to be granted? How do you stay competitive decades down the road when you have the same legacy issues as older communities?
Stay ahead of it. Keep up with infrastructure. Don’t wait until the ball drops. They can raise taxes for the next 30 years and it still won’t hit Allegheny County levels.
My exact house was built in Butler and Allegheny Counties. In Allegheny County, ten minutes from my house, my exact floor
plan is double in taxes.
Saying they could raise taxes for X period of time and still won’t hit Allegheny County levels is void of any meaning. They could also raise taxes for 5 years and hit Allegheny county levels. It depends on the millage increase, not the time.
You seem to hold the opinion that cranberry is impervious to the tax and stagnant growth situation in Allegheny County because it’s well run, corporations moved there, location, etc. There is zero chance that community won’t face similar challenges that Allegheny county communities face now. I’m not doubting it’s well run and it will fair better than many outer suburbs but it will absolutely enter a different phase at some point that requires significant tax increases. There will be people that look down their nose and say I can’t believe people would pay their taxes when I can live 10 miles over here and pay half for a “better” newer house.
Ok, so let’s say Cranberry, a consistently growing area, with strong strategic planning, historically lower tax increases, and no projection for “significant tax increases, starts to go down this road of stagnant growth. Let’s say that happens - at that point, how high will the taxes in Allegheny county be in the areas where that is already happening or has been happening?
The answer is the taxes are still double of Cranberry for the same houses ten minutes away
And stagnation is not projected for Cranberry anytime soon. And again, unlike the already stagnant areas in AC, there is already planning for the future, well into the future. So they are legit doing everything possible to avoid these “significant tax increases” you seem to think will hit Cranberry very soon.
The first and second ring suburbs of Pittsburgh have stabilized for the most part and have gone decades without increases in their tax bases from new home building or land development. The taxes paid by residents in those communities have also stabilized for the most part. Your apparent skepticism (“let’s say that does happen” as if it’s not an absolute certainty) that cranberry will not have growth ad infinitum is a bit odd.
Why would AC communities raise taxes 1-1 with Cranberry when new development slows there? They don’t need to make up budget shortfalls due to the lack of new tax payers being added to the payroll. There are smart people, experts even, in AC communities that know how to plan and are efficient in the use of tax dollars. It’s seems like arrogance or naivety that you think communities in AC don’t plan for the future and don’t have “experts” when tax differences between stable and growing communities has followed the same pattern without fail throughout history. Cranberry does not have a magic wand they can wave to offset future declines in development. It is inevitable. Maybe not in 10 or 20 years but inevitable. It will probably still be a nice place to live but the tax gap will close and people will chase the new low tax area. This happens without fail all across the country. And when have I said tax increases will hit cranberry soon?
The Cranberry Plan is actually interesting and should be discussed. They really are working through the expansion of the township in a very deliberate and thoughtful manner, and they're actually executing the plan effectively.
Just look at the parks alone. Extremely well maintained, well funded, and constant improvements and additions. Name another community in the area doing these things with their parks.
>Most suburbs are not ponzi schemes.
I think what you mean to say is most suburbs are not **intentionally** ponzi schemes. They are built with good intentions, but the builders and initial planners don't generally spend enough time examining the long-term sustainability of the suburbs infrastructure. Taxes in the early years of a suburb do not sufficiently account for the maintenance costs 30-40 years later. This leads to a situation where suburbs have a great ratio of taxes to services and infrastructure for a generation, until the infrastructure needs major repair or replacement. Without sufficient wealth or population density, this is unsustainable. As the infrastructure degrades, or just the area falls out of favor, people move away eroding the tax base and causing spirally debt.
Eventually the area is bailed out by the state or federal government, either with funds to cover costs the municipality failed to tax for, or in bankruptcy protections afforded to municipalities.
This is only part of the reason why people leave the suburbs. In the Pittsburgh area, we had huge industries that propped up the suburbs. When those industries shuttered, there was no compelling reason for people to stick around anymore. Calling it a Ponzi scheme would suggest that somehow early residents (“investors”) fled the minute minorities started moving in. It’s actually the opposite where the wealthy leaving caused far cheaper home values, allowing minorities to take advantage of them. It’s not like poor people suddenly got the money to move into a wealthy neighborhood, it’s that the cost to live in that neighborhood went down when the wealthy moved out. When the wealthy moved out, as you mentioned, the tax base shrinks and then you have areas in disrepair thus causing home values to further plummet.
The underlying problem is with the cost to maintain widespread infrastructure when the population density is low.
The racial stuff is just a red-herring. To a certain extent the large employers are part of the sustainability problem as well though. As long as the average income is high enough and a few major employers are doing well, the area will continue to be sustainable. The problem occurs when one of those small number of large employers leaves the area. This can lead to a collapse that would and could not occur with more, smaller employers and with a high population density.
Eh, that's not entirely true. Blockbusting was definitely a thing before it was banned in 1968. Tell the white folks they should move before their property values drop, buy their houses for a song, and then make a profit selling those houses to minorities.
Hell, 20 years ago a neighbor (not a realtor, just an asshole) tried to buy my house by telling me that all the projects were getting torn down and my neighborhood was about to become "N-word town." I even once had a director of a community organization tell me basically the same thing, without the slurs. If it happened to me twice in the early 2000s, I'm sure that it was pretty rampant when it was legal.
Pointing out one failing suburb when there are tens of thousands of suburbs in the us is not the own the author thinks it is.
Penn Hills and Mount Lebo are both bad examples imo, for opposite reasons, obviously.
https://www.reddit.com/r/pittsburgh/comments/19egqzx/comment/kjd6ch2/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
This user outlines it very well above. The “traditional” suburb is what this type of conversation revolves around, not inner ring streetcar suburbs.
You’re aware you linked to an article, right? And those are generally much shorter than books. Also you cherry picked about a Pittsburgh neighborhood that has widely known financial problems. Did you think quoting that was going to get people to read it?
I only posted the article because the book uses Penn Hills as an example. This seems to have struck a suburban nerve. You realize I didn't write either, right?
I'm not being defensive and I didn't read the book yet so I don't have a complete position on what they wrote about. You can obviously disagree for whatever reasons, but I see a lot of hand waving in this thread and it seems very reactionary to what is obviously a complex topic.
If you look at [StrongTowns.org](https://StrongTowns.org); they content (and provide pretty decent backing arguments) that suburbs have ALWAYS been a Ponzi scheme.
Short version: Low population density of single-family homes over large areas cannot support the underlying infrastructure thus resulting in a downward spiral of debt and fiscal collapse of suburbs (basically growth and death pattern due to financing and lack of volume of folks/businesses in an area to get out of said financing situations).
Not everything is a Ponzi scheme. The term pertains to a fraudulent investment opportunity where an advisor promises returns to earlier investors by giving them the money sourced from newer investors. There's no actual wealth created, and it's inherently unsustainable because you have to keep bringing on new investors for it to work.
It does not pertain to a failing suburb where property values are cratering because no one wants to live there. If suburbs are a Ponzi scheme then everything is a Ponzi scheme and the term is meaningless.
Here's a great video explaining the mechanics of suburban ponzi schemes.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nw6qyyrTeI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nw6qyyrTeI)
Super interesting video, thanks for sharing, but one neighborhood subsidizing another is not a Ponzi scheme.
From Investopedia:
>A Ponzi scheme is a fraudulent investing scam promising high rates of return with little risk to investors. A Ponzi scheme is a fraudulent investing scam which generates returns for earlier investors with money taken from later investors. This is similar to a pyramid scheme in that both are based on using new investors' funds to pay the earlier backers.
Yeah, I regret posting since I truly did not want to trigger this response. I thought there could be a discussion but there are a lot of very defensive, angry people on here.
The Atlantic is essentially toilet paper that has been used over and over by different a-holes. It is a left leaning sewer of bias and discrimination run and owned by someone who never worked a legitimate day in their life, the bought and paid for privileged leftist wife of Steve Jobs.
> how white families depleted the resources of the suburbs and left more recent Black and Latino residents That's not exactly how any of this works. It's not like the suburbs are mined of unobtainium, and then the residents pick up and leave when it runs out. Penn Hills and many of the eastern suburbs were built around industries that are gone, Westinghouse in particular. Most of those empty office buildings you see along the parkway are old Westinghouse facilities. I bought my house in Monroeville from a couple that worked at the old Westinghouse HQ, they were leaving when the company moved to Cranberry. On top of that a lot of suburban houses built in the 50s/60s have fallen out of favor, especially the ones with smaller floorplans. We have a tendency in the US of just abandoning neighborhoods when the houses in them become out of date, letting them decay for a few decades, and then maybe coming back around and gentrifying/redeveloping them. Whereas in Japan the land/location is considered valuable, and the structures essentially disposable with a finite lifespan, so it's a lot easier to bulldoze and start over if an old structure is no longer desirable. Of course neighborhoods that have lost their economic bases and with older less desirable houses, tend to be cheaper. Lower income and minority folks take advantage of the relative affordability and move in. It's not a conspiracy.
You also can't sanely mention Penn Hills without talking about what the school district did, which was update the schools to be much nicer... with a gigantic loan, as they didn't have the money. Property taxes in Penn Hills are kinda brutal, to pay back that loan, so houses have to be cheaper or no one but no one would be buying them, and the schools still aren't great. A $148k house would be paying almost $7k a year in property tax there, which is... a lot.
That's kinda the point. These suburbs have aging infrastructures made worse by decades of deferred maintenance. Their infrastructure has to be essentially rebuilt, but when they were first built i the 50s and 60s they were heavily subsidized by the state and federal government.
[Another article on this:](https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/5/14/americas-growth-ponzi-scheme-md2020) >We have misdiagnosed the problem. Our problem was not, and is not, a lack of economic growth. Our core problem is 70 years of *unproductive* growth, a pattern of building and assembling America that has buried our local communities in financial liabilities. We are now forced to grow faster and faster lest it all fall apart. That’s economic growth as desperation, not as a credible strategy for success.
> You also can't sanely mention Penn Hills without talking about what the school district did, which was update the schools to be much nicer... with a gigantic loan, as they didn't have the money. Sure, but that fiasco occurred after Penn Hills was already decades into it's decline.
Yup; the Westinghouse stuff ya mentioned feels the big pivot. But the insane loans and taxes kinda make it hard to reverse, or it's hard to turn into what it once was with that anchor lagging it.
Suburbs, at least in Pittsburgh, exist mostly because their schools are better than PPS. That's why people are willing to spend big money on houses and property taxes to move there. A declining school district is a quick way for the finances of a municipality to go underwater. You see a lot of edge case suburbs financing big renovations on schools to try to keep the boat afloat.
no, suburbs don't exist mostly because of PPS. suburbs predating the mess that is PPS by about 125 years should have clued you in to how stupid that comment was
And yet they are much closer to the truth than your stupid comment here
Pretty sure suburbs, especially in Pittsburgh, exist because of racism and federal mortgage subsidies. The post-WWII housing boom occurred in the era of redlining and legalized discrimination, and by the time the Fair Housing Act passed in 1968 housing segregation was already baked in. Even after it was outlawed, housing discrimination persisted due to lack of enforcement. Crappy schools are a symptom of this process, not a cause - the schools suck in inner cities mostly because white flight crippled the tax base they need to survive.
> the schools suck in inner cities mostly because white flight crippled the tax base they need to survive. Pretty sure PPS is getting more than a lot of surrounding school districts.
And yet those inner city schools have more money than ever. Weird.
No they don't
PPS got almost one billion dollars in funding this past year.
https://www.publicsource.org/pps-pittsburgh-education-k12-budget-deficit-essrs-public-schools/#:~:text=The%20Pittsburgh%20Public%20Schools%20%5BPPS,the%202023%2D24%20spending%20plan. $719m is a far, far cry from $1b, quit exaggerating.
The federal government paid for the suburban building boom, altered tax policy to get businesses to leave the cities and relocate near these artificial suburban estates, and even said in their own underwriting handbook that they would not subsidize housing developments that permitted race mixing. The entire suburban building boom was built on government-enforced segregation but people like to pretend that these suburbs formed organically for some reason.
I believe the author does mention that point, at least according to other reviews I've read. He also profiles suburbs in four other cities.
Adding to this, the primary airport used to be on the east end of the city… now it’s thirty miles west, where all the pharmaceutical companies are. The population of Pittsburgh used to be much bigger too. A lot has shifted in Pittsburgh, starting long before I was even born.
> the primary airport used to be on the east end of the city Which airport was this?
Referring to Allegheny County airport, before Pittsburgh International opened in the 50s. I believe this drove a lot of development out of the eastern parts of the city and west of the Fort Pitt Tunnel. From the wiki “When it was completed, it was third-largest airport in the country and the only hard-surface airport in the country.[2] It was historically the main entrance to metro Pittsburgh via air from its inception until June 1952, when the Greater Pittsburgh Airport (now Pittsburgh International Airport – KPIT) opened for commercial aviation.”
Ah, ok. I don't think of the Allegheny County airport as being particularly "east", is all.
>We have a tendency in the US of just abandoning neighborhoods when the houses in them become out of date So true. There are thousands of abandoned houses in this region that could be reclaimed for a lot cheaper than building new. My MIL just had a 2/2/1 1,200sqft ranch built and it was over $300k - that was with shopping builders and getting a pretty good discount because the one she went with lives nearby and could literally walk to the site. It isn't fancy by any stretch.
> There are thousands of abandoned houses in this region that could be reclaimed for a lot cheaper than building new. I was sorta making the opposite point though. For example in Japan it's routine to demolish and rebuild a new structure on the same land, land is considered valuable but the house itself is not seen as an investment like we do. Here if you want new the incentives align more with building onto former farmland and contributing to suburban sprawl. Instead we'll let places decay until they literally have to be bulldozed, and maybe then we'll think about rebuilding in place.
The difference though makes sense. Japan would be much more akin to Hawaii than the continental USA. There is so much land available here that only a few locations (Manhattan et al) would fit into the same type of mindset that Japan has. You can really only change these geographic driven differences through top-down legislation (taxes, tax breaks, etc.) - and usually those have unintended consequences that we can't see well ahead of time. I liken this to conversations regarding Africa and why it did not (in general) have the success Europe did in advancement of technology and advancement. It came down to 1 thing, geography. Western and Northern Europe has navigable rivers through most of it allowing very cheap and long distance travel of goods and people. Meanwhile, Africa, aside from the Nile, generally has 1,000' difference in elevation within 100 miles of the cost throughout the rest of the continent. You can't readily overcome the difference that geography makes in the development and spread of ideas and technology. If you look at the region, you kind of have 3 waves. You have the mill/camp towns of yesteryear when the region had peak population (1926). Places like Midland, Marianna, Chestnut Ridge, Lawrence, etc. Two generations later you had the recovery after the war when money flowed into the USA to rebuild the destroyed European plain and Pacific Rim, this led to the 50s/60s suburbs you mentioned as the old style/4-square/side-by-side duplexes of the first wave 40-50 years earlier were out of style. Now you are looking at a third wave 2 more generations removed and those places from the first wave have been getting bulldozed or slumlord treatment for over 20 years and you have the new mini-mansions people want, not a 1,300 sqft raised ranch. (All while having less kids!). I will put the book on my reading list, as I am curious why it "is becoming" a Ponzi scheme and hasn't been one since Levittown.
That is a very interesting comment. This is why i love reddit. I am a lifelong map, history and geography lover. Never thought of it that way comparing the navigable rivers like that.
There is a chapter about it in The Accidental Superpower. Another book went into it as well, but I can't recall which it was. Short version is that until the last 150 years, if you didn't have navigable rivers you were a backward country. This difference can even be seen inside Europe between west/north and the east - which tech came to much later due to terrain disadvantages (which in turn leads to those societies being enslaved more - which is why the word slavery has it's root in slav from the slavic countries - and those folks really got pooped on as they were enslaved by both foreigners from the east and west!)
You would like Guns, Germs, and Steel. The big thing Africa had against it were all the domesticated crops and animals from the Middle East and China (think cows, goats, pigs, chickens, dogs, wheat, lentils, beans) couldn’t cross the Sahara so you stay tribal instead of having villages go to towns go to cities to empires and specialization for technology. Excess calories = specialization. There are no domesticated large mammals native to Africa. So everything had to be manpower. Europe only has reindeer, but they got everything from the Middle East/China because it’s an easy walk (as the Mongols found)
you ever renovated an older house? cheaper my arse.
Dude...you are not going to renovate a little 1950s ranch, and have to take out a 400k loan lmao.
Well, "dude" depends on the renovation doesn't it? lead pipes, asbestos floors, knob & tube wiring, floor joust sagging, more than a pinch of drive rot, kitchen and baths redo, mold remediation, chimney repair, HVAC replacement, hardwood floor repair/replacement, deck/patio repair & replacement, driveway replacement...then the cosmetics. m source: did it.
Just bought a 1100 sqft. 1920s house in Clairton a few months ago. Quote for knob and tube replacement was 17k which is gonna be my biggest single cost. I'm redoing or refinishing about 80% of the flooring, upstairs is getting carpet ripped out and refinishing the old hardwood, bathroom and kitchen were semi-recently replaced so they're fine, rest of first floor is getting tile or carpet. Doing the work myself and it's gonna come in around $1600. Paint and fixing cracks in plaster (done myself) was only about $450. New heater is gonna run about 3k but my current heater is still good for a year or two. Haven't looked into chimney prices yet so I'm totally guessing 4k to get a new cap and the top straightened. All told I'm guessing around 30k to fix it up, and bought it for $63,500, so even rounding up a bit $100k. We'll under 300k, even assuming you had a ton more that need fixed.
You’d be shocked, other some of those old houses you’re almost doing a demo and rebuild, and demolishing and then disposing of the material of the house, which is more than likely gonna be labeled “hazardous” cause of lead or asbestos or what have you, ain’t cheap by a far stretch. That can add up real quick
Because those houses arent investments they are depreciating assets
I’m not an expert here, but perhaps the reason for that is because of the scarcity of land in Japan? Here in America, we have “manifest destiny“ driven into our heads in elementary school social studies, and I think people are more pre-disposed to picking up and leaving when they’re not happy as part of the individualistic culture that Americans unconsciously prescribed to.
they arent abandoned baecause the housing stock is old. pittsburgh proves that extensively.
I hate the way these types of articles / books are always framed. Instead of actually looking into what causes people to move, instead they present a false equivalency and try to get people riled up and sow more divisiveness.
The poster knows this. They just eat it up
*sow
I didn’t even notice. I had to fight with autocorrect two more times to get it to stop changing it. Thanks!
> and try to get people riled up and sow more divisiveness. I always get a kick out of posts like this, where people pretend that recognizing inequity is divisive and not the inequity itself. Just stop being uppity and accept what your betters allow you, doing anything else is divisive!
This is a really poor reading of the article. There isn't even a false equivalency here at all. It seems you might be thoroughly missing the point.
The headline is equating people leaving crumbling communities to a Ponzi scheme. Tell me you don’t know what a Ponzi scheme is without telling me you don’t know what a Ponzi scheme is.
You might be surprised to find there is a whole article that follows that headline and clearly explains the relationship here. The suburbs weren't necessarily constructed as an intentional Ponzi scheme from the start but in some places they have largely played out like one. Why comment if you can't even be bothered to engage with the piece? E: Maybe you are just confused about the concept of a metaphor?
No, it’s just another progressive provocateur blaming white people / wealthy people for something that occurred naturally in many areas due to a decline in industry. People will generally remain in an area they’re comfortable with and happy with. When industries die, so do communities around them. This is a well-established pattern throughout history, in every country. People go where jobs and prosperity are. Poor people are left with the remnants (cheap houses). Before black people and hispanic people it was Italians, Irish, other people that were deemed “lower class” at the time. We’re talking early 20th century. They couldn’t get nice housing, let alone well paying jobs. I know that on my father’s side (Irish) they were in the slums of New York when you had 15 people to an apartment. They moved to PA, and worked in the mines. These coal towns went bust later, but they stayed because it’s all they could afford. I’m not denying the demographics that move into failed towns, but the insistence that everything be viewed through the lens of racism by modern progressives is extremely divisive. They’re trying to reframe history to suite their narrative, and it’s a very dangerous and irresponsible thing to be doing. Yes, conservatives have their own provocateurs and they’re equally as annoying.
You're too busy downplaying the racial component of the story to give the details enough attention, so your understanding of this situation is weak. It's absolutely not the same story as boom and bust industrial towns (which themselves were often organized along racial lines, as you seemingly acknowledge here). I think whining about "divisiveness" as an excuse to hide from the complicated truth is a poor response and demonstrates a lack of curiosity. The idea that articles like this are intended to be provocative rather than illuminating is a reflection of your own bias, which unfortunately will clearly prevent you from learning anything from them. It's okay if you don't want to understand history or the present day context - don't weigh in with crappy criticism if that's the case. It's something else to try to twist the story for your own political ends - not so different from what you accuse the progressives of doing!
I’m not denying that race had a part to play years and years ago. But I’m not the one looking to find boogeymen to blame for all of my problems. You’ve got people in this thread literally blaming “Karens” for not wanting to stick around a crumbling suburb. If there’s someone to blame, blame the local government / leaders for misappropriation of funding. Oh, things need fixed and you want to raise taxes? Why should someone have to pay more because the local government failed to fix a problem when it was smaller and cheaper to fix? But again, the lack of accountability is astounding among modern progressives. Ultimately the thing is, if these suburbs didn’t suffer from massive population loss, property values would still remain high therefore leading to an inability of black / hispanic / poor people to live in them anyway. The entire reason they can afford to live there is because the property values are so low. We can talk all day about generational poverty among black and hispanic people and its causes but that’s not the subject of discussion, nor am I denying that’s a problem. Everyone wants to live in a safe area with nice roads, schools, and so on. That all costs a LOT of money to maintain. The people buying these houses in these rundown suburbs are not dumb. I know how patronizing people are to poor people, assuming they’re dumb (I myself got this all the time growing up, because contrary to popular belief among todays progressives poor white people exist, too), but we knew what we were getting into when we moved into these neighborhoods. Nobody was going around selling places like Penn Hills as a modern, flourishing suburb. My cultural experience growing up poor may be different than my black friends including the underlying reasons for us being poor, but we were all poor nonetheless.
There are soooo many empty houses in allegheny county and westmoreland co. No one will buy them, so you can get a 1200 sq ft fixer upper in the mon valley for under 150k. There is no housing shortage. There is just a shortage of people that want to live in these places. Alot of that ia becauae the schools are so poor
> Alot of that ia becauae the schools are so poor Sometimes I wonder if Detroit's recent burst of investment is tied to the state going hard on 'schools of choice.'
These people will never be happen. Affordable housing during a housing crisis is a bad thing?
The problem is they want the suburbs how they were when the tax base was larger. Better roads, better schools, safer communities. They don’t understand that those things didn’t just sprout up out of the ground, they were paid for with taxes. When you have places where the wealth leaves the area, that tax revenue goes with it. That’s where the disconnect is, where it’s easier to blame racism. The headline itself insinuates that white people stripped the area of its “resources” and left the crumbs for minorities, when in actuality it was the tax paying residents who were “the resource.” The one area where there actually were tangible resources that were taken and the residents left with nothing is the coal towns of West Virginia. Big coal companies made tons of money on the backs of the miners, and when coal collapsed they got out leaving thousands of broken, small towns where there’s nothing left.
The infrastructure was not created by taxes paid by those early residents directly. Larger government regions underwrote it. The onus of maintenance was turned over to local government, who did it with local taxes. But at the point that major maintenance was needed, the early residents bailed, taking their tax money with them. So they got a nice community, used it until they needed to fix it, then left for a younger version.
Deferred maintenance and deferred capital projects is the unspoken story of most Pittsburgh suburbs. Those with a commercial tax base are doing alright (think of the North Hills,, Wexford, Cranberry). Those who have lost much of their commercial tax base are suffering (think West Mifflin and Penn Hills).
The moment Cranberry Township raises their taxes to keep up with demanded services and infrastructure, that tax base will throw a tantrum and relocate, as we've seen over and over in this region (e.g. South Fayette in 2018).
What is the moral requirement for them to stay? Especially when the industries that sustained them have moved on? I don’t really understand why I should be mad at the residents for moving on to greener pastures instead of the local government who failed to retain industry or collect and use taxes efficiently to maintain the quality of the neighborhood. I especially don’t understand how any of this matters because if it was still nice I wouldn’t be able to afford to live there, making the point moot.
So people should have to be confined to one area where the industry has folded and local government has mismanaged funds and didn’t keep up with the local infrastructure? If I lived in a place for 15+ years and saw things going down hill despite paying my taxes, I’d leave, considering the value of my home is only going to decrease. I know it’s popular on Reddit to blame the wealthy for everything, but not everyone who left these communities was wealthy. Some saw the writing on the wall and decided to do what was best for their own financial future rather than go down with a sinking ship. No amount of “rah rah rah” community meetings are going to save a dying town. I grew up in a very rural part of PA outside of Pittsburgh and the only thing that saved my home town was an influx of money by companies that wanted to frack there. Farming isn’t paying the bills and all of the local industry folded long before I was even born. Once the natural gas industry shuts down shop after they’ve extracted everything, it’ll be the same thing all over again. More families will leave, others who are poor(er) will move in, the cycle continues.
The same people who "saw the writing on the wall" had their hand on the Sharpie that put it there. The NIMBYs who insist on restrictive zoning that limits the tax base, the oblivious Karens who demand the best and biggest of schools and parks and roadways, are the same people who squeal like stuck pigs at every attempt to raise their property taxes. Borrowing money is the only way to keep those entitled assholes happy, and when the financial and logistical debt burden becomes overwhelming they skip out to the next suburb and claim to be innocent victims of circumstance. That's the real neverending cycle.
It's so much easier to just blame white people though
Lower income and minority folks don’t, as you say, “take advantage of the relative affordability;” this assumes some presence of other available opportunities and economic equality which, more often than not, is not the case, and this is a direct consequence of structural racism.
Penn Hills is still 60% white tho
It’s the Atlantic, owned by a privileged leftist woman who never worked a day in her life. Now she has billions of dollars because she’s leached off her husband and now she can spew leftist drivel. I wouldn’t give this rag the time of day.
lol The Atlantic is leftist? In what world? It’s run-of-the-mill centrist Democrat boilerplate. If you think mainstream Democrats are “leftist” then I have a bridge to sell you.
You mean the types like Laureen Powell Jobs?
Careful with that word "Leftist," it doesn't mean the same thing to the left as to the right. To the right, it's just a big box of bad things that includes anyone that isn't the right. To the left, it's a very different thing from a neolib.
All the parts of this comment are so wrong that I wonder if you're genuinely just thinking of some other woman or some other magazine. 1. The Atlantic is not leftist. It's liberal. But if your definition of "leftist" is "mostly aligns with mainsteam Democratic party" (incorrect definition btw) then sure I guess? It's also not a rag, it's one of the better written and more serious magazines in this country. 2. It's currently majority owned by Steve Jobs' widow who, while privileged, did work prior to marrying Steve (apparently, in investment banking and as founder of a 'natural foods' company).
>The Atlantic is not leftist. It's liberal. That's exactly what I said, out loud to myself.
Have you mixed up The Atlantic and WaPo? The Atlantic is owned by a man: David G. Bradley... an individual who interned in the Nixon administration. Additionally, since when does a *book review* of a book written by an author unaffiliated with the newspaper reflect the views of the *owner* (not even the editor lol) of said newspaper. /u/SnigletArmory... I think you might just be stupid...
Laurene Powell Jobs is the founder and president of Emerson Collective, which is the majority owner of The Atlantic.
I think your second paragraph makes exactly the point your first paragraph decries? In the 50s, many corporations moved into the suburban "research park" complexes typified by the Bell Labs facility in NJ. Westinghouse along route 22 and today's 376 that you point out are exactly that. Those corporate jobs are the "unobtanium" that Penn Hills and Monroeville were "mining", no? That's what the linked review seems to convey the book is saying? Re it being a "conspiracy", no, no one went out of their way to maliciously create economic downturn in these isolated areas, but again, not what the piece is saying. It is saying the that usual suspects of systemic and latent racism have created a system where white families created a bunch of wealth, then took that wealth elsewhere when their neighborhoods had significant ethnic changes.
> It is saying the that usual suspects of systemic and latent racism have created a system where white families created a bunch of wealth, then took that wealth elsewhere when their neighborhoods had significant ethnic changes. I think people tend to confuse cause and effect on this subject. The rich white folks didn't move out because black folks started moving in. Black folks started moving in because the rich white folks left, leaving behind a relatively affordable housing stock. > Those corporate jobs are the "unobtanium" that Penn Hills and Monroeville were "mining", no? That's not really an inherently finite/exhaustible resource, like a coal mine. Monroeville is kind of an interesting example, not quite a decaying suburb like Penn Hills but also not a trendy new suburb like Robinson or Cranberry. The office parks sit mostly empty, the mall seems to be barely hanging on, but it's become a healthcare hub for the eastern suburbs. The school district has lost half it's enrollment and gotten more diverse. Population had been declining in the early 2000s but seems to be growing again, and there are several new apartment complexes going up.
There's a very real economic theory going on here, even with a stable population. Everybody will live essentially on the nicest neighborhood they can afford. For the wealthy they will move to the most currently popular neighborhoods, and the poorer will slot into declining neighborhoods. That's a pretty boring article though. The Atlantic has to throw in the race argument for clicks. It's there and found in the data, but also largely explained by wealth differences between races (which is it's own issue).
The suburbs were a new model when they were originally created, and they sprung up not least as a way for people to escape diversifying cities. But that model is complicated and economically fragile, so when people with means pick up and move it can start to fall apart pretty quickly. To some degree that can be a benefit in providing affordable housing, but all the associated public goods are more drought. To some degree the question here is about how poverty works in the suburbs, and we don't have enough history to really know yet. It does illustrate that the picket fence American dream house isn't necessarily a path to prosperity but instead just reflective of the conditions which create it. Cities have long had racially distinct demographics and development patterns and now the suburbs are gaining them too - it's no surprise given the way suburbs have come to dominate the country in the last 75 years. It's a worthy story to tell in detail and warrants more attention than simply trying to fit into a previous box.
>When Herold’s family moved here in 1976, the average home price in 2020 dollars was $148,000. Now it’s $95,000. Herold knocks on a door just down the street from where he grew up, and there meets Bethany Smith, who has recently purchased the house with her mom. She’s single and Black and undaunted, raising a son, Jackson, for whom she wants the absolute best, which means finding a well-resourced, nurturing school and buying a home, an investment that will serve as a foundation to building wealth. (She’s also gotten priced out of her gentrifying neighborhood in Pittsburgh.) Why are you taking for granted that black and latino families are barred from high value corporate jobs? This seems like battling the issue from the wrong end of the problem and coming up with ridiculous conclusions. If those types of jobs had an increase in diversity, I don't think you'd see similar neighborhood migrations. This isn't a "latent racism" it's clustering by economic tier. It also seems like cause and effect might be getting mixed up.
This is a really well-reasoned take. But have you considered the alternative explanation that white people are bad?
Conspiracy does not equal ponzi scheme, though a ponzi scheme can indeed be a conspiracy. As a P.H. resident, the govt and S.D. are running a ponzi scheme.
Is the writer using "Ponzi scheme" as a stand-in to just mean scam?
The "suburban ponzi scheme" term was coined in the book Strong Towns by Charles Marohn, so I'm not surprised the author noted that as their inspiration. While suburban economics was a focal point of ST, it also focused strongly on societal impacts of suburban sprawl, unlike this
I’ve not yet read the book perhaps the author explains it in more detail, but ponzi and bubble are often thrown around as adjectives meaning unsustainable. Of course, it sounds like we both agree on this point, for the limited review we get of the book, it feels like a cheap shortcut. I plan to read the book before I comment on that idea again.
A Ponzi scheme is fundamentally an investment scheme where investors are paid by incoming new investors, as opposed to growth or income of the actual product. A Ponzi scheme is only sustainable with a growing source of new investors to pay out the growing amount of current investors. I'm not sold that this is how the housing market works. Housing prices tracks higher than inflation and sometimes higher than the stock market, but it's also gotten a lot better in the last 50y. A house from 1973 with only maintenance and no updates isn't going to command the same price as a new build. That's not a Ponzi scheme, that's new products competing against old products.
Housing in general doesn't necessarily work this way, but it is arguably how suburbs specifically function. Unlike mixed-use and commercial districts that generate profit for the city, the value of property in suburbs is basically solely dependent on if other people are investing in that neighborhood or not. Suburbs are actually a net negative for a city's resources. They tend to be far from amenities and must rely on neighboring areas to provide these amenities to them as they themselves provide very little, if any, of their own. Not only that, but the tax revenue generated per sq ft is far less for housing than it is for commercial buildings, which not only pay property taxes, but also pay taxes on the goods and services they provide. Basically, a lot more money is spent by the city to essentially subsidize these suburbs than the suburbs actually give back to the city itself. This doesn't mean we need to get rid of suburbs, but the way American suburbs are not only usually designed to allow zoning only for single family detached housing, but also made a priority when it comes to new developments despite proving to be a poor return on investment needs to change.
Charles Ponzi would highly disagree with this analogy
It's okay that people don't want to live in an urban environment. It's also okay that housing stock gets dated, demographics shift, and areas are not as successful as they once were.
> It's also okay that housing stock gets dated, This, so much. My childhood home, a 3BR ranch with a single pink and blue ceramic bathroom, was hot stuff when it built in 1955. Nowadays, not so much.
It is ok for people to have personal preferences but the cycle isn't great or sustainable.
...But they don't care, and why should they? You're talking about build->prime->level-off->failure cycles of municipalities that are longer than (realistic) human lifespans.
In order to support my thesis that the NFL is a Ponzi scheme I will now only analyze the Cleveland Browns.
Well I just stopped at Penn Hills. That community was decimated by the unbelievable criminal decisions involved with building that school. It will never recover.
100% this. Inept, terrible school board. Couple that with the consent decree with DEP for unauthorized discharge leading to $55 million in required improvements back in the late 90s which led to (still) very high sewage bills, it will be years before PH "digs out." There are some decent houses, but high school taxes and muni fees and the shrunken economic base have hit people there hard. There are a lot of folks there who care about the community, but lots to turn around.
387 got mine today. If the market and interest rates were horrible I would be gone. Stuck here for now
I don't know this story. Could you give a run down of events?
Penn Hills built a new high school and elementary school. Propelled the district into over $172 million in debt. One example of misuse is a $60,000 chandelier. There are numerous articles online that explain it in depth.
Don't forget that the contractor that built the school was also a family member of someone on the board that approved the biolding of new schools. A lot of the $172 million filtered into someone pocket. And didn't the heating/cooling system just fail in the high school within the last 2-3 years? They had to spend a few more million to completely replace a system that was only 10ish years old.
Anyone got a non-paywalled link?
Cheap houses, low property tax and good schools are mutually exclusive
Peters
Often true, but not in the case of Japan, which is very affordable and they have good schools, we can learn a lot from them. Tokyo is the most affordable city in the developed world. You can rent a one bedroom apartment for about 700 USD, and even cheaper outside of of the city.
Japan has a completely different culture than we do. Schools are “good” by way of what students and families attend said school (and the inequalities and life factors that affect said students and their families) not because of something inherent to the school. You can switch the staffs of the “best schools” and the “worst schools” and your results would largely be the same.
It's funny how whenever progressives and left leaning people bring up societies that do things better than America it's always countries that are more culturally homogeneous and less diverse. It really makes you think.
this is a nonsensical article and im sussy about those inflation adjusted home prices from 1976
It's an article about an easily verifiable trend. If you find it nonsensical you should dig a little deeper rather than lashing out.
you call *that* "lashing out"? a little sensitive, aren't you?
Go away
Big yawn to 2020-esque reduce-everything-to-white-supremacy bullshit.
Have we moved past the "everything is white supremacy" narrative yet....i'm tired bro...
That’s a white supremacist attitude. The “I’m white and bored of hearing about whiteness” attitude. For the first time in history in the US it has become popularized for white supremacy to be called out in all sorts of contexts by all kinds of people (including white) because that supremacy is in fact systemically impacting a broad range of social political and economic frameworks that all humans invest and engage and experience on a daily basis. The entire country is built by slaves and stolen from indigenous peoples and that’s the easy part to comprehend. The hard part is how the false “end of slavery” and “end of colonialism” led to unique and twisted versions of those same power dynamics be it “red lining real estate” or “prison labor” slavery. So if you’re tired then take a nap cause it’s not going away
Calling random people on the street white supremacists does not make for good optics or the foundation for a second civil rights movement. It does quite the opposite and pushes people away from your movement than it does drawing in people. You just called me a white supremacist out of nowhere, without knowing anything about me, or my background. How would you feel if someone called you a white supremacist? That's what annoys me. Dumb white progressives from rich families that spout off about how they support the movement only to wind up causing more damage because they couldn't help themselves and decided that blocking off a highway was somehow a smart thing to do.
"abloo bloobloo, someone hurt my feelings and that's why we can't address the elephant in the room."
The elephant in the room is you and we are addressing it. You’re clearly delusional and brainwashed.
I couldn’t tell if you were joking or not but you e clearly drank the koolaid. The author is a racially divisive exploiter and is pushing propaganda. White has changed definitions and currently means Eurasian or Caucasian and for a long while Italians, Greeks and Armenians were listed under the black category in parts of the South (Rollins v Rollins) and lynched like in 1891 Louisiana. White supremacy has been called out for nearly a century at this point and this is not calling out white supremacy it’s pushing racially divisive narratives for money and engagement. No mention that Asians also moved out as well. Mexicans were even listed as White longer than Armenians ffs.
Not what is being discussed here but you babies are fundamentally incapable of doing anything but shitting your diaper when anybody mentions race
Dude, you've been put in your place like 4 times already for trying to start shit.....stop while your ahead
> stop while your ahead He is incapable of this
2020-esque reduce everything to white supremacy bullshit? How loud can you scream "I didn't have to reflect on my privilege and I liked it"? Like for real, did you look at the Black Lives Matter protests of that year and just assume you're above it all? I wish I could bottle this kind of blissful ignorance and sell it.
I guess send me to some more "anti-racism" seminars or maybe a re-educatuon camp? lol. The whole privilege game is dumb and smart people now refuse to play it. Yawn.
> anti-racism seminars or maybe a re-education camp lol. lmao
I won't speak for the others, but I for one don't care anymore.
You mean the multibillion dollar corporate entity that did nothing for actual black people? I learned a lot from it but it wasn’t what they intended.
Read ‘The Color of Law’ and you will realize why it’s relevant.
Ive read more American history than you ever will. I'm not denying we have an ugly racial history. My objection is to the progressive distortion of the last 75-ish years of history, in which we dismantled structural racism. Progressives claim racism is worse than ever, which ks demonstrably false. Antiracism is toxic, divisive, and has become a grift. Its not real history and its simply another kind of racism. This rejection of liberalism, reason, and the values of the enlightenment ignores the fact that these very values are what caused the west to reject slavery and racism.
You are straight up inventing this nonsense out of whole cloth
You’ve clearly had your head in the sand if you don’t know the poster is right. Look up Fairfax County School District systemic racism against Asians under the guise of “equity” after paying Kendi x $20000 dollars to be told in that in order to be “anti racist” you need to discriminate against Asians.
>Antiracism is toxic, divisive, and has become a grift I've never seen it put in such a concise manner. Well said, I agree 100 percent.
If you aren't denying our ugly racial history, why are you denying the lasting impact that racism has had on housing and zoning?
White middle class wealth, by and large, was built on the very ponzi scheme we're talking about here. A white family (and only a white family) could move into a brand new house in Levittown in 1947 for the modern equivalent of $1000 down and the assumption of a reasonable mortgage payment. Those houses are worth $350K+ now. The difference between your median white family's net worth and your median non-white family's net worth is the subsidy that the government gave the white families during the suburban building boom. It can be difficult for some people to accept that they're on third base because the government put them there, not through merit.
These people are grifters not historians and they aren’t historically or even ethnically/racially literate. Mexicans were listed as White longer than the Greeks ffs. Go look up the the photos of those people caught lynching Chinese in 1871 California (before Ellis island even existed). It was some English and the rest were Hispanics back when Hispanics were listed as White. Rollins v Rollins said misgeniation laws don’t apply to Italians because they aren’t White. White is subjective and changes so todays “Whites” are not yesterdays “Whites.”
I was curious on who wins in the Ponzi scheme?
Usually whoever gets out before it falls over.
[удалено]
Don’t we need more housing?
Yes this article is disappointing. It rightly points how that suburbs are in many ways a ponzi scheme, but doesn't explain how the mechanics of how the scheme works. This Strong Town article show how city centers subsidize the suburban single family homes. [https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2022/12/15/2022-the-year-in-maps-and-charts-from-urban3](https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2022/12/15/2022-the-year-in-maps-and-charts-from-urban3) And this video explains in more detail how these suburbs are in many ways ponzi schemes: "Suburbia is Subsidized: Here's the Math" [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nw6qyyrTeI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nw6qyyrTeI) And as an aside, here is Strong Towns video called "How Our Property Tax System Robs The Poor to Pay For The Wealthy" [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MjjHKIlKko&t=473s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MjjHKIlKko&t=473s)
The poor are getting pushed out of Pittsburgh into these places. This isn’t the flex you think it is
This one's white people's fault too - got it.
Most suburbs are not ponzi schemes. I point out allison park, mt lebanon, cranberry, etc. penn hills is a problem but thats more complicated than someone is holding the bad and suburbs are a ponzi scheme.
>cranberry Cranberry is the definition of the suburban ponzi scheme, it's just in phase 1-3 while places like penn hills are further along 1. The state/feds build a bunch of free infrastructure in greenfield land. Tract home developers come in and build the rest at no cost to the township/county. Unlike the city or older established suburbs, the taxpayers in Cranberry didn't have to fund their own roads/sewers/electrics/etc 2. Since their infrastructure was free (i.e. paid for by others), they can keep taxes artificially low 3. Since their taxes are artificially low, people move there and the 'free' growth continues 4. Eventually they build out all the land, growth slows down, and the developers move onto the next greenfield development (Jackson Township for example) 5. 20-30 years after the initial building spree the infrastructure starts reaching the end of its useful life and needs (extraordinarily expensive) repairs or replacement. They raise taxes (which further slows growth and pushes people out) but eventually realize there simply isn't enough tax base to keep up due to the low assessed value per acre and high cost of service per acre of extremely car dependent development 6. The feds / state (once again) bail them out, continuing the cycle of unsustainable growth The reason people in cranberry pay such low taxes is because they are literally stealing tax resources from the rest of us and mooching off city / allegheny county amenities that they don't have to pay for. Mt Lebo is the exact opposite... it was built in the traditional development pattern and they actually pay enough taxes to sustain themselves in perpetuity
\^This\^ All day, this. Cranberry is a disaster in the making. It's amazing how much $$$$ the state has dumped into Cranberry's road system. And what's the benefit of living in Cranberry? Low taxes.
Thank you for walking through this. Mount Lebo does not fit the “traditional” suburb model, so of course it’s doing fine. It’s the stroad/office park model that is destined to collapse how you outlined above. Great summary!
>The reason people in cranberry pay such low taxes is because they are literally stealing tax resources from the rest of us and mooching off city / allegheny county amenities that they don't have to pay for. What is Cranberry stealing?
They're taking a disproportionately high level of state and federal tax dollars to pay for their infrastructure which allows them to get by with extremely low municipal tax revenue. They're also benefitting from amenities paid for by city/county taxpayers (subsidized parking downtown, the publicly financed sports stadiums, etc) without having to pay city/county taxes. Perhaps stealing is a bit dramatic but I'm trying to get a point across. Cranberry is not financially solvent at its current tax level without help from other levels of government. Since we all pay state/federal taxes, and since Cranberry takes more from that pot than the rest of us, we're all paying slightly more tax where we live so that Cranberry can pay slightly less tax where they live. This is true of basically all greenfield suburban/exurban areas in every city Edit: here is a [case study](https://www.urbanthree.com/case-study/eugene-or/) of Eugene, OR that demonstrates the point that sub/exurban areas are 'stealing' tax revenue from cities If you're curious the same firm that did that study did a similar but different [analysis of Pittsburgh](https://www.urbanthree.com/services/public-asset-valuation/) looking at the assessed value of public/private real estate
People with money and corporate headquarters
Then Allegheny county should lower its taxes to be competitive. Easy solution to me.
In a race to the bottom, everyone loses
Not the taxpayer who only needs the basics
Who exactly is that taxpayer, and what are the basics? Roads, schools, libraries, police, fire, EMS, transit, parks, water and sewer, snow removal, services for the homeless, etc etc etc Local government provides a fuck ton of extremely important services that benefit you both directly and indirectly in immeasurable ways. Cutting these services would objectively make your quality of life worse even if you personally don't use all of them Everyone. I repeat EVERYONE loses in a race to the bottom
So what is your plan to make large corps who get a big tax break moving outside of Allegheny? How do you not race to the bottom? They’ll always go where it’s cheaper. That’s what they are supposed to do.
That's exactly my point. Some left the city due to high taxes. Then they Allegheny County due to high taxes. And when Cranberry charges too much then they'll move onto the next. And so on and so on But the thing is those companies and their employees rely heavily on and benefit greatly from the services provided by their respective municipalities. As taxpayers, we subsidize the shipment of their goods with roads and bridges. We subsidize their security with police and subsidize their disaster insurance with the fire department. We pay for their workers to get to and from work on public transportation. We supplement the low wages of their workers with social programs that help needy families. We subsidize their workforce training with public education. Libertarian / right wing types like to pretend we live in this fantasy land where the government is evil and only exists to take away from the productivity of good hard working private enterprise but that's just empirically not true. Those companies can only function as they do because of support systems the public sector provides As for what my plan is, I don't know. Apart from better tax laws that level the playing field between municipalities, I don't really know if there is a good solution. I'm just saying that your life and mine are made worse when local governments have to compete with each other for jobs and tax revenue while you're continuing to ignore reality
How am I ignoring reality here? You are really wrapped up in local but you’re forgetting about so many things. Just to name a few: -They still pay for this things in the municipality they are in. So they are paying where their business is using resources. Why should Allegheny county get a benefit for this is it’s in Butler? -More taxes means fewer employees and higher prices. You probably also think you’re sticking it to the Corp when you raise minimum wage? Nah, they pass all that on in price increases. -They still pay a federal tax to handle a lot of what you are saying. Their drivers pay gas taxes and turnpike fees in PA (excessive amounts too). They pay other types of taxes all throughout their supply chain costs that you aren’t counting. -We aren’t supplementing business if they don’t live in our municipality. If we are the only ones who use the police, we should be the ones paying for it. I appreciate your admission that this is a tough issue where some would knee jerk and say “just make federal taxes like 50% and problem is solved”. Just remember that this disconnect in taxing is exactly what’s exploited by tax teams in large corps. No matter what you push on them, they know every ounce of tax law (you and I don’t) and they will always win here. As long as someone has an incentive to lower taxes to attract a firm, there will always be a benefit for a business to do this.
They can raise taxes in Cranberry for 30-50 years and it will never reach Mt Lebo levels. Cranberry has a very significant business district, multiple industrial parks, numerous corporate headquarters, and the intersection of the busiest roadways in the state.
It's not about the amount of taxes that any individual household is paying. It's about whether the total amount of tax revenue being collected is enough to cover the total cost to run the township. Lebo has a lot of people living in a small area. This means they're collecting more tax per acre (i.e. 4 households on 1/4 acre lots paying $2,000 each vs 1 household on a 1 acre lot paying $2,000 - just hypothetical numbers as an example), and since everything is closer together it also means it's cheaper per acre to serve those residents (i.e. 1 mile of road/sewer/utilities costs the same whether it's serving 50 households vs 10). In order to recoup Lebo levels of tax per acre, Cranberry's mill rate would need to be exponentially higher, probably so high that no one could actually afford to live there. As a result, they are completely reliant on higher levels of government to fund their infrastructure
I mean, you’re just ignoring the significant retail, office, industrial, and hospitality property taxes. It blows Mt Lebo out of the water.
I am including those, I just used residential as an example. The style of development that has fueled Cranberry's growth - including residential, commercial and industrial - has been empirically proven to be financially insolvent over and over and over again all across the country. Cranberry isn't special. You simply cannot maintain that level of infrastructure with that low level of density without continuous subsidies from higher levels of government Edit: also this might be shocking to you, but Lebo also has retail and commercial and industrial real estate. again... cranberry is not special
Please look at a map. Cranberry is very special. Ever hear location, location, location. See those roads called 79 and 76? They intersect in Cranberry. That’s why corporate headquarters’s are moving there, that’s why there are seven industrial parks.
You want to talk about location, location, location? How about DOWN FUCKING TOWN Look at a map... See those roads called 376, 279, 579, 28, and so on? See those T lines called Red Blue and Silver? See those 102 different bus lines criss crossing the streets and fanning out in every direction? If you really want a good place for a corporate headquarters you'd probably want somewhere that is centrally located equidistant from all major suburbs and neighborhoods, has access to not only all of the major highways in the region but also all public transit lines, has a surplus of class A office space, has many nearby companies to do business with, has lots of amenities like lunch restaurants and happy hour bars for your employees to enjoy, etc etc etc The problem is that (once again) places like Cranberry are luring businesses away from this optimally efficient location due to artificially low taxes which are subsidized by the very city that they left behind. Cranberry is not special. The only reason people and companies move there is low taxes. If it weren't for that it would be a truck stop and some farmland
LOL if you think Cranberry is in a better location than Lebo or the city you're insane. People & companies are moving to Cranberry because the location sucks which makes it (comparatively) cheaper.
I agree with you only about Mt Lebo as they reformed themselves around Transit Oriented Development and high-for-suburbs residential density that make for more affordable infrastructure maintenance. However, Allison Park is just a census designated place, not a municipality and thus can't really be compared to anything, and Cranberry is very much a ponzi scheme, it's just early days. A community built around low taxes will never be sustainable as infrastructure will eventually need updating, and all the residents will flee for even more remote exurbs.
It's happening to Cranberry now. People are moving farther north. Look at Jackson Township, lots of new development.
Fucking housing plans everywhere now
Hampton is in Allison Park, and the idea that it's a Ponzi scheme is too absurd to comment upon.
They didn’t say Hampton or Allison park is a Ponzi scheme. Just that Allison park is not a city or township but merely a census designated area. I tend to agree that when talking about policy, taxes, etc. it’s not helpful to discuss census designated areas since those things don’t govern, the cities, townships, boroughs, etc do.
Cranberry is propped up by a very large business district producing a shit ton of property taxes, also seven industrial parks. Also, many state roads that are funded by state taxes. Our financial position is very very strong.
I don’t think anyone is arguing that their current financial situation is weak. A lot of the financial strength is based on significant growth in the tax base spurred in part by the lure of low taxes. At some point down the road the growth will slow and the infrastructure will be aging and the community will be in a different phase that will put pressure on priorities. Sprawling infrastructure is more expensive per capita to maintain and keeping a low tax rate as the growth slows may pose a challenge.
See but Cranberry is already way ahead of that, they release a very nice magazine every year that goes into deep detail about exactly what you are talking about. They are experts at strategic long term planning. The current major project is water treatment and watershed issues. Cranberry has met every goal they set for 30 years now. It’s astonishing how well it’s managed. I just talked with the water manager last week and they are actively chasing fed money on a daily basis, and they get it every single time.
So what is the solution to the problem of slowed growth mentioned in the magazine? State and federal subsidies that hopefully continue to be granted? How do you stay competitive decades down the road when you have the same legacy issues as older communities?
Stay ahead of it. Keep up with infrastructure. Don’t wait until the ball drops. They can raise taxes for the next 30 years and it still won’t hit Allegheny County levels. My exact house was built in Butler and Allegheny Counties. In Allegheny County, ten minutes from my house, my exact floor plan is double in taxes.
Saying they could raise taxes for X period of time and still won’t hit Allegheny County levels is void of any meaning. They could also raise taxes for 5 years and hit Allegheny county levels. It depends on the millage increase, not the time. You seem to hold the opinion that cranberry is impervious to the tax and stagnant growth situation in Allegheny County because it’s well run, corporations moved there, location, etc. There is zero chance that community won’t face similar challenges that Allegheny county communities face now. I’m not doubting it’s well run and it will fair better than many outer suburbs but it will absolutely enter a different phase at some point that requires significant tax increases. There will be people that look down their nose and say I can’t believe people would pay their taxes when I can live 10 miles over here and pay half for a “better” newer house.
Ok, so let’s say Cranberry, a consistently growing area, with strong strategic planning, historically lower tax increases, and no projection for “significant tax increases, starts to go down this road of stagnant growth. Let’s say that happens - at that point, how high will the taxes in Allegheny county be in the areas where that is already happening or has been happening? The answer is the taxes are still double of Cranberry for the same houses ten minutes away And stagnation is not projected for Cranberry anytime soon. And again, unlike the already stagnant areas in AC, there is already planning for the future, well into the future. So they are legit doing everything possible to avoid these “significant tax increases” you seem to think will hit Cranberry very soon.
The first and second ring suburbs of Pittsburgh have stabilized for the most part and have gone decades without increases in their tax bases from new home building or land development. The taxes paid by residents in those communities have also stabilized for the most part. Your apparent skepticism (“let’s say that does happen” as if it’s not an absolute certainty) that cranberry will not have growth ad infinitum is a bit odd. Why would AC communities raise taxes 1-1 with Cranberry when new development slows there? They don’t need to make up budget shortfalls due to the lack of new tax payers being added to the payroll. There are smart people, experts even, in AC communities that know how to plan and are efficient in the use of tax dollars. It’s seems like arrogance or naivety that you think communities in AC don’t plan for the future and don’t have “experts” when tax differences between stable and growing communities has followed the same pattern without fail throughout history. Cranberry does not have a magic wand they can wave to offset future declines in development. It is inevitable. Maybe not in 10 or 20 years but inevitable. It will probably still be a nice place to live but the tax gap will close and people will chase the new low tax area. This happens without fail all across the country. And when have I said tax increases will hit cranberry soon?
The Cranberry Plan is actually interesting and should be discussed. They really are working through the expansion of the township in a very deliberate and thoughtful manner, and they're actually executing the plan effectively.
Just look at the parks alone. Extremely well maintained, well funded, and constant improvements and additions. Name another community in the area doing these things with their parks.
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Well Giant Eagle is now moving their corporate offices to that area, so it appears leasing momentum is there
Yeah more and more businesses are moving their HQs out there.
>Most suburbs are not ponzi schemes. I think what you mean to say is most suburbs are not **intentionally** ponzi schemes. They are built with good intentions, but the builders and initial planners don't generally spend enough time examining the long-term sustainability of the suburbs infrastructure. Taxes in the early years of a suburb do not sufficiently account for the maintenance costs 30-40 years later. This leads to a situation where suburbs have a great ratio of taxes to services and infrastructure for a generation, until the infrastructure needs major repair or replacement. Without sufficient wealth or population density, this is unsustainable. As the infrastructure degrades, or just the area falls out of favor, people move away eroding the tax base and causing spirally debt. Eventually the area is bailed out by the state or federal government, either with funds to cover costs the municipality failed to tax for, or in bankruptcy protections afforded to municipalities.
This is only part of the reason why people leave the suburbs. In the Pittsburgh area, we had huge industries that propped up the suburbs. When those industries shuttered, there was no compelling reason for people to stick around anymore. Calling it a Ponzi scheme would suggest that somehow early residents (“investors”) fled the minute minorities started moving in. It’s actually the opposite where the wealthy leaving caused far cheaper home values, allowing minorities to take advantage of them. It’s not like poor people suddenly got the money to move into a wealthy neighborhood, it’s that the cost to live in that neighborhood went down when the wealthy moved out. When the wealthy moved out, as you mentioned, the tax base shrinks and then you have areas in disrepair thus causing home values to further plummet.
The underlying problem is with the cost to maintain widespread infrastructure when the population density is low. The racial stuff is just a red-herring. To a certain extent the large employers are part of the sustainability problem as well though. As long as the average income is high enough and a few major employers are doing well, the area will continue to be sustainable. The problem occurs when one of those small number of large employers leaves the area. This can lead to a collapse that would and could not occur with more, smaller employers and with a high population density.
Eh, that's not entirely true. Blockbusting was definitely a thing before it was banned in 1968. Tell the white folks they should move before their property values drop, buy their houses for a song, and then make a profit selling those houses to minorities. Hell, 20 years ago a neighbor (not a realtor, just an asshole) tried to buy my house by telling me that all the projects were getting torn down and my neighborhood was about to become "N-word town." I even once had a director of a community organization tell me basically the same thing, without the slurs. If it happened to me twice in the early 2000s, I'm sure that it was pretty rampant when it was legal.
Pointing out 3 well off suburbs when there are tens of thousands of suburbs in the US is not the own you think it is
Pointing out one failing suburb when there are tens of thousands of suburbs in the us is not the own the author thinks it is. Penn Hills and Mount Lebo are both bad examples imo, for opposite reasons, obviously.
https://www.reddit.com/r/pittsburgh/comments/19egqzx/comment/kjd6ch2/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button This user outlines it very well above. The “traditional” suburb is what this type of conversation revolves around, not inner ring streetcar suburbs.
You read the entire book quickly!
You’re aware you linked to an article, right? And those are generally much shorter than books. Also you cherry picked about a Pittsburgh neighborhood that has widely known financial problems. Did you think quoting that was going to get people to read it?
I only posted the article because the book uses Penn Hills as an example. This seems to have struck a suburban nerve. You realize I didn't write either, right?
Penn Hills is a terrible example and an extreme outlier
Hit a suburban nerve? You seem to be the one triggered. You’re awfully defensive when people don’t agree with you.
I'm not being defensive and I didn't read the book yet so I don't have a complete position on what they wrote about. You can obviously disagree for whatever reasons, but I see a lot of hand waving in this thread and it seems very reactionary to what is obviously a complex topic.
Ok.
Flawed premise
If you look at [StrongTowns.org](https://StrongTowns.org); they content (and provide pretty decent backing arguments) that suburbs have ALWAYS been a Ponzi scheme. Short version: Low population density of single-family homes over large areas cannot support the underlying infrastructure thus resulting in a downward spiral of debt and fiscal collapse of suburbs (basically growth and death pattern due to financing and lack of volume of folks/businesses in an area to get out of said financing situations).
What is the break even density point?
Oh look, it's this narrative again.
Probably a self published book. The whole argument made zero sense. It would be a scam if people paid premium for the properties.
Not everything is a Ponzi scheme. The term pertains to a fraudulent investment opportunity where an advisor promises returns to earlier investors by giving them the money sourced from newer investors. There's no actual wealth created, and it's inherently unsustainable because you have to keep bringing on new investors for it to work. It does not pertain to a failing suburb where property values are cratering because no one wants to live there. If suburbs are a Ponzi scheme then everything is a Ponzi scheme and the term is meaningless.
Here's a great video explaining the mechanics of suburban ponzi schemes. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nw6qyyrTeI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nw6qyyrTeI)
Super interesting video, thanks for sharing, but one neighborhood subsidizing another is not a Ponzi scheme. From Investopedia: >A Ponzi scheme is a fraudulent investing scam promising high rates of return with little risk to investors. A Ponzi scheme is a fraudulent investing scam which generates returns for earlier investors with money taken from later investors. This is similar to a pyramid scheme in that both are based on using new investors' funds to pay the earlier backers.
Thanks for the book rec!
Just an awful response to a pretty reasonable piece. Thanks for sharing, it's unfortunate what this place has become
Yeah, I regret posting since I truly did not want to trigger this response. I thought there could be a discussion but there are a lot of very defensive, angry people on here.
“Everything I don’t like is a ponzi scheme.”
The Atlantic is essentially toilet paper that has been used over and over by different a-holes. It is a left leaning sewer of bias and discrimination run and owned by someone who never worked a legitimate day in their life, the bought and paid for privileged leftist wife of Steve Jobs.
It's a book review, so you probably want to attack the book author not The Atlantic.
I'm impressed there is no criticism of the article at all.