Shifting Demographics

I've been waiting to post for a few reasons. Mainly because our super trashy neighbor is finally moving out. What does that have to do with high-speed rail, you ask? Well, bear with me, it's but one example of something happening every day in neighborhoods all over Philadelphia and in cities all over the country.

The house next door to us has been chopped up into something resembling a rooming house.  For the 4 years we've lived here there have been the same Vietnamese people living on the top two floors. There's a cute older couple that speak zero english on the 2nd floor.  We were doing some plumbing work in our house once and our cat, the Cheat, managed to climb into the hole in the wall and reappear in the ceiling of their kitchen 4 days later. Our neighbors were very gracious as we cut a hole in the ceiling of their closet. They then took good care of the Cheat when she finally decided to jump down. The guy on the 3rd floor is super friendly but he thinks he has a much better grasp of english than he actually does so talking to him is laborious to say the least.  What can I say? He goes to work really early in the morning (to a paper factory in Chester) comes home pretty late, and spends most of his evenings with a six-pack of Heineken and karaoke machine. The man certainly earns his beers.

The 1st floor in that house, on the other hand, has been a revolving circus show. At some point last spring this white guy moved in and tried to put up a great front about what a good guy he was and how the landlord had hired him to fix the place up.  I guess he was thinking that I hadn't been in there before. No one with any talent or skill and a grasp of the english language, who wasn't also a total fuck-up, would live in that hovel. A few days later I met his girlfriend "Dawn" and their two dogs. She seemed pleasant enough despite the vaguely stripperish name and general comportment.

A few days after that one of their dogs ran away. Dogs don't generally run away (and not come back) unless they're a) retarded or b) don't like their owners. This dog was not the former. That was the only drama there for a while. The dude was cleaning up the backyard, he strung some lights up, put some plastic furniture back there and acted like a normal neighbor.

Then the fighting started. The two of them, well, mostly her, would scream bloody murder for the better part of an hour. Then we saw her with a black eye. Then the fights got louder and more frequent. The cops were there a few times per week. Now the dude is in jail for battery and related domestic violence offenses. As soon as he went away we had 2-3 weeks of tranquility.

Then a whole new level of trash started hanging out there and the fighting continued but this time it was dudes fighting with each other and then with her . . .  and her screaming for people to "get the eff out of my house." But then after all the drama she would have the same dudes back there a few days later.  Last weekend we had the cops over there 3 times in one night.

I'd had enough. Finally,  I got in touch with her landlord, told him the deal and he gave her a week to vacate. He knew that her boyfriend had gone to jail but had no idea that she was still living there rent free.

Apparently she grew a pair and, feeling a certain sense of entitlement,  comes over,  knocks on my door and says, "Can I talk to you?"
 I said, "about what?"
 "David told me what you said. I just want to talk to you for a minute."
"OK. How 'bout you come back when I'm not eating?" *slams door*

First, while she's standing there I'm looking at her and am mesmerized at how absolutely filthy her glasses are. Then I notice the meth sores on her face. Then I'm back to her glasses and the fact that they're broken. No, not like she accidentally sat on them and taped the frame together, the actual lens had a crack all the way across. WTF? Eyeglasses aren't even made of glass anymore! That chick is a hot friggin' mess and I feel sorry for her new neighbors.

Don't care where you go sweetie - but you can't stay here.

What's happening in Newbold is indicative of national trends. Not the crazy-bitch-next-door trend but the not-putting-up-with-her-shit-anymore trend.  Actually, a lot of the trashier elements in the neighborhood are relatively recent arrivals. The neighborhoods just to the east of here kicked most of them out in the last 3-4 years and more than a few have landed here. So now we have to kick them out and watch what they do in the neighborhoods just west of here. Point is, the neighborhood is refining to the old-time old folks, immigrants and the young,  college educated set (american and foreign born).  

Cities are resurgent anyway but high-speed rail is a shot in the arm.  National demographic trends favor cities but even on the local level the changes are dramatic.  Some people think it's a conspiracy. Some call it the Caucasian Invasion. At the 1996 annual Conference of White People it was decided that we would all move downtown. The reality is simple economics and people wanting to be close where they work and where they hang out. So the census data will start to trickle in at the end of this year and we'll see Philly trend younger and more affluent -  as with most big cities.

The country as a whole is trending older and more "metro".  Put another way, as a percentage of the population, there are fewer young people but more of them are living in cities. To people who follow this sort of stuff it's not really news that  the automakers are on the ropes. You have an increasing number of old people who can't or don't want to drive. You have an increasing number of young people who can't afford to drive or who live in big cities and don't need to drive.

So it's all the more prescient that the White House announced today the recipients of the much awaited high-speed rail grants. If you live in a city that's getting new service it's going to make a big difference.  Somewhere along the lines of your city's airport getting a new, full-service airline.  Except, you don't have drive 30 minutes to the airport then stand around for another 90 minutes waiting to get on your plane.  I mean, people in the backwater of Merced, CA are all abuzz over what new high speed rail service will mean for their city . . . once they're within an hour commute of San Francisco.  It's going to have profound impacts on the residential real estate markets in those smaller (read:cheaper) cities and it will completely reshape office markets in bigger and smaller cities alike.

What will high speed rail will mean for you? Initially, I think you'll see increased competition from airlines trying to stay on top of the short-hop markets. You know them, the $39 r/t tickets to Pittsburgh or Providence that are always on offer at Southwest. Eventually, high speed rail will replace those short-haul flights under 500 miles.  Ed Rendell seems to agree that it's a "lofty" goal.

I guess if you already live in NYC or Philly or DC it's hard to imagine this as a game changer. It's how we live anyway. But we're in the midst of a big, paradigm shift. 1945 - 1995 was the suburban half-century. The pendulum is now swinging the other way. It's just a simple matter of energy prices, an aging population, shrinking household sizes, a rejection of the suburbs, and a desire to reduce ones carbon footprint.