re: #24 Love-Child of Cassandra and Sisyphus

“…there were massive government efforts…” - that makes it sound as if there was some secret program hatched from the top.

But that is just a way to blame shift from those who created the decline of inner cities: the people who wanted to move.

There was a lot more to it than that. When I was born in Gary, there were distinct and segregated black and white neighborhoods. No real estate agent could think of selling a home to black in a white neighborhood without fear of being run out of the business, nor would banks even grant a mortgage.

But then things changed, and those white neighborhoods were full of homes that the families had paid off and had no plan to move out of.

But they just ripe for being flipped, so real estate agencies then raised the specter of hordes of blacks overrunning them, which encouraged the whites to sell out quickly and cheaply and then to re-sell them to blacks at a premium because it was a “mostly white neighborhood”…

My mom was a widow and could not afford to move at first. I saw how quickly the neighborhoods changed their ethic character.

That happened to us twice in Gary before my mom finally gave up and joined the white exodus to the suburbs.