Racial Segregation in the Washington DC area

[JayQueer]

JayQueer, I see a central, devastating flaw to your logic.

•Black people who live in the county in question aren't trying to ban whites.
•White people who try to live in X country definitely have tried to ban blacks.

So your argument is specious.

That wasn't my point, or argument at all.

Racial discrimination for housing has been illegal in the U.S. since 1965.

Nobody is banning any race of people from living in their neighborhood, not in 21st century.

The article made the point that while previously all-White neighborhoods are becoming more diverse, with more Asian-American & Latino residents, neighborhoods that have been majority African-American are NOT growing more diverse, in fact, they have become even more African-American. And they used the case of Prince George's County to illustrate that this trend is not limited to low-income African-Americans either.

 

[JayQueer]

But if an African-American family ever managed to move into an all-white blue-collar neighborhood, the next day there would be a For Sale sign on every white family's lawn. (That's in the North -- in the South it would be a burning cross on the black family's lawn.)

If you asked any of these people why they were in such a hurry to sell, they'd probably say "I have nothing against black people myself. But I have to protect the value of my home. The longer I wait to sell, the less I'll be able to get for it." Of course this was just thinly disguised bigotry.

Well a lot of that was also due to White realtors. They called it "blockbusting," a practice which later became illegal. It happened throughout cities like Detroit. Detroit changed from a blue-collar, mostly White city in the late 1940s by a predominantly African-American city by the late 1960s.

White realtors would purposely sell (or just show) a house to African-American buyers, and then the White realtor would let other people on the street know that a Black family might be moving in, and let them know that their home values might go down if they didn't sell. The other white families would list their homes with that realtor, and then that (White) realtor would sell the houses to African-Americans, and repeat the cycle, as they demographically changed the neighborhood, block-by-block, reaping profits for themselves in the process.

 

[JayQueer]

It's also interesting to note that while Prince George's County is known as an "affluent African-American county," real estate prices are much lower in Prince George's than in other Washington DC areas where Whites are the majority.

To recap, Prince George's County is to the east of Washington DC, and is majority Black (65%), with Whites being 19%, Latinos 15%, and Asian-Americans 4%. The median household income is $81,908.

In comparison, Fairfax County, Virginia, is to the west of Washington DC, and is majority White (63%), with Asian-Americans comprising 18%, Latinos 16%, and Blacks 9%. The median household income is $92,146.

Yet, there is a HUGE difference in the real estate prices in both areas.

$500,000 will get you a new large house in Prince George's County. But it will only get you a new condo or a townhouse in Fairfax County (or a fixer upper).

As an example, I found a new home builder who is building essentially the same houses in both areas (PG and Fairfax) and I compared the selling price for a new home with the same floorplan & size. I kept the distances about the same from Washington DC.

NV Homes is building new homes in Prince Georges County (Upper Marlboro; 18 miles east of Washington DC), and in Fairfax County (Vienna; 17 miles west of Washington DC).

The "Wynterhall" floorplan is priced from $520,000 at their Beechtree community in Upper Marlboro -- PG County.

http://www.nvhomes.com/community/beechtree

But the same "Wynterhall" floorplan is priced from $1.03 million (twice the amount) at their Cedar Lane community in Vienna -- Fairfax County.

http://www.nvhomes.com/community/cedar-lane


I find it interesting (& maybe a little curious) that real estate in Fairfax County (a majority White county) is significantly more expensive than in Prince George's County (a majority Black county) when the median household income and distance from Washington DC is very similar.