* White Gays are the shock troops of gentrification (i.e., flipping a neighborhood from NAM to Anglo White).
* In 1977, just five years after Oak Park rolled out the ban on real estate signs, a similar sign ban in Willingboro, New Jersey, was challenged and taken all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, where the justices voted unanimously that such bans violate the First Amendment.
And you can see how well that worked out for Willingboro. In 2012 The racial makeup of the township was 17.31% (5,475) White, 72.74% (23,007) Black or African American, 0.37% (117) Native American, 2.01% (635) Asian, 0.03% (10) Pacific Islander, 3.12% (988) from other races, and 4.42% (1,397) from two or more races. Hispanics or Latinos of any race were 8.65% (2,737) of the population.
* Seems like maybe this approach could enlighten HUD’s Section 8 approach. Maybe if there were limits on how many Section 8 vouchers per block, the burden on the neighborhood would be lesser and those using the voucher would have a better chance of integrating?
* Oak Park must have very small blocks because the 2010 census says its now over a fifth Black:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oak_Park,_Illinois
which is higher than the cities of Evanston, Des Plaines, and Oak Forest, (Oak Park is classified as a village) which didn’t have a Black-a-Block system
Maybe the Black-a-Block system slowed things down (at the most).
* Most of the time “diverse” neighborhood is code word for high crime neighborhood, because 9 times out of 10 they are not talking about a neighborhood where the majority of Nonwhites look like Rupert Murdoch’s ex-wife Wendi Deng and Mr. Miyagi from The Karate Kid.
* Speaking of Gays, have you noticed that Right Wing Homosexuals tend to be almost exclusively White males? I have never heard of cases of Nonwhite Gays or Lesbians regardless of race being Right Wingers.
I bet even Lesbians in MMA and the military vote monolithically for The Democratic Party. Where is the Lesbian or Nonwhite version of Milo Yiannopoulos?
* There is a better scheme available, put Section 8 housing in neighborhood where the most enlightened people live and the more the merrier. Talk to any liberal and he’ll tell you that he’s one of the most enlightened of human beings so clearly he will be the most inviting, most accommodating and most eager to enjoy the diversity that Section 8 will bring to his immediate environs, after all, liberals love talking about how they love diversity and that society needs more diversity, so once the ice has been broken with the first section 8 housing, it would make sense to add more and more to such neighborhoods while sparing the neighborhoods of neanderthal conservatives who are not so enlightened on the appeal of glorious diversity.
This is what Trump needs to implement. Give liberal congressional districts what they say they want, good and hard.
* Chicago is a nexus of left-wing terror and corruption. Why would anyone want to live near it?
* Another article on Chicago real estate and race. It seems a problem is that blacks buy into mixed areas and the whites eventually move out and prices fall dramatically, leaving blacks with underwater houses.
* The first group of black homeowners in Willingboro were very respectable and proud of their new homes. Married couples with middle class jobs. Their grandchildren and great grandchildren don’t share their sentiments and want to live on a rap video set. Willingboro now has urban crime problems in what should be a stereotypical suburban setting.
* Funny how they mention some of the neighboring towns but not River Forest. As I mentioned before, River Forest is a very wealthy and non-diverse place. But the reason it did not diversify in the 60s and 70s is that it was the home of Tony Accardo and other top members of the Chicago Outfit. If you sold to a black in River Forest as a real estate agent you would get your business burned down, at a minimum.
Elmwood Park, Cicero and Melrose Park also had a lot of Outfit foot soldiers.
* A good friend of mine and his wife moved to Oak Park 22 years ago. At the time, I would have called them mildly liberal in their outlook. After 20+ years in Oak Park they have become total Social Justice Warriors. Their greatest joy in life seems to be calling other people “racist, sexist, or homophobic.” Their Facebook posts are just so completely sanctimonious and full of contempt for any person who isn’t 100% onboard the “progressive” agenda. Oak Park seems to be a cocoon of left-wing lunacy, so they have no idea how bizarre they sound to someone who doesn’t live in their “community.”
You hate to lose a friend of over 40 years, but good grief, there is only so many times you can be lectured to about how great Barack Obama, gays, blacks, immigrants, etc. are.
* In my experience, all big cities have neighborhoods like this. For example, Kansas City has an older neighborhood to the northeast of downtown, of Victorian houses. It is a drug-ridden ghetto. It also has a slightly less old neighborhood (Ward Parkway) which is pretty much like your Oak Park neighborhood-stayed white, stayed valuable.
The difference between the two appears to be that Ward Parkway houses have big lawns and are very expensive (and the Victorian neighborhood is probably 1-4 generations older).
In other words: expensive neighborhoods with big lawns stay white. Perhaps big lawns = expensive = not being overrun by poor people. Big houses on small lawns (dense housing), 50 years older than that, are condominiumized, and don’t (and Victorian era houses were often boarding houses anyway).
* Section 8 carries a high criminal content, and spreading them out exposes the criminal element to a broader array of victims. Crime goes up.
* The article is pretty much is an admission that blacks are toxic in any numbers and that they have to be watered down to be palatable. Also, it pretty much reiterates the very old concept of dividing blacks into two groups, the ‘good’ ones and the ‘bad’ ones. Oak Park has managed to keep this balancing act going on for so long so that’s good for them but can it be replicated elsewhere? Also, over 20% black seems rather high. Usually anyplace that goes over 7% black starts tipping over, slowly at first but then quickly towards the end.
* We had the same system in Park Forest, about 30 miles south of Oak Park, back in the 60s. It worked very well, but eventually there was interference from the Feds, and new surrounding suburbs that were very heavily black…
* It’s not all Frank Lloyd Wright. The point is that the housing stock and location of Oak Park put it in real danger of becoming just an extension of the West Side of Chicago (which is exactly what happened to nearby Maywood). That Oak Park managed to deftly sidestep this and still maintain every appearance of progressivism (very important if you know the type of people who live there) is pretty remarkable. Steve has it exactly right: they snatched up well-socialized middle-class blacks and shut out the lumpens, all in the name of diversity. Nobody cares because Oak Park is where the diversity commissars (black and white) live or would like to live, and they don’t want black lumpenproles for neighbors anymore than you do.
