Originally Posted By: Drew99GT
Section 8 has destroyed very nice neighborhoods in my area. I used to clean carpets at some of those properties and I was literally afraid I was gonna get mugged or my van stolen.
I've watched it happen too in my hometown. There was an area that was always known as "The Flats" because it was a sizable chunk of very flat land by the river... but high enough banks that it has never flooded.
That area was mostly white back when my grandparents were my age and they lived down there for about 15 years back in the late 1950s to mid '60s. It was all blue collar. Around the late 1970s some of the folks down there started to move out... not because they didn't like the area but because two of the big meat packing plants closed up shop so they left for better economic opportunity.
In came the slum lords with and HUD/section 8 housing. Fast forward to when I was in high school in the late 1990s. By then the area was 100% black and consisted of about 95% rentals most of which were HUD. The only non-rental houses were those of the remaining black folks who had lived there back in the 1970s prior to the HUD invasion.
The area is an absolute hole now. The houses are falling apart. If you're white you stay out of that area at night even if you're just passing through (as it is a short cut that bypasses a large portion of town). I was shot at in my car cutting through that area one late night during my senior year in high school. Even in broad daylight its sketchy if you're white to be in that area on foot. In front of dilapidated houses set late 90s to early 2000's Caddy's (Escalades included) with $5k worth of stereo equipment rolling on $5k worth of "dubs".
The cops were sent down there a couple of years ago to break up what ostensibly was a huge block party that had turned into a mob/riot. 3 officers were injured. They threw a brick through the drivers side window of the squad car striking the cop in the head. The two others were pulled from their squad car after the windshield was smashed out with rocks/bricks and beaten for a while until one of them managed to pull his sidearm and fire blindly into the swarm of people around him.
Some of the more "prominent" (aka notorious) members of that neighborhood shot up the local community college's dorms back in the early 2000's and two were responsible for putting a bullet in the head of a gal I was friends with when she was leaving a hotel after a concert/party.
It is like some sort of penultimate culmination of every possible stereotype under the sun... and this is in a small town in the middle of Iowa with less than 27,000 residents.
I read water meters one summer during college and had a knife and a gun pulled on me until the resident figured out I was just "the water man" and not 5-O. Before I was dropped off by the guy in the water department at 7:30AM, he said "Try to get as much done as you can by 10. Once 10 comes around everyone will be out on the streets and its not going to be a fun time for you."
I had an elderly black couple invite me up into their porch for some lemonade and after a few minutes I said, I had to be going. The lady told me, "Hon, you better just wait here for a bit. We had you come up in here because if you look down that way you'll see a group of 7 thugs that started following you about a block back. They're going to do something to you. Just stay here for now and if you can use your radio to call the city and have them pick you up, you should probably do that." which I promptly did.
Section 8 has destroyed very nice neighborhoods in my area. I used to clean carpets at some of those properties and I was literally afraid I was gonna get mugged or my van stolen.
I've watched it happen too in my hometown. There was an area that was always known as "The Flats" because it was a sizable chunk of very flat land by the river... but high enough banks that it has never flooded.
That area was mostly white back when my grandparents were my age and they lived down there for about 15 years back in the late 1950s to mid '60s. It was all blue collar. Around the late 1970s some of the folks down there started to move out... not because they didn't like the area but because two of the big meat packing plants closed up shop so they left for better economic opportunity.
In came the slum lords with and HUD/section 8 housing. Fast forward to when I was in high school in the late 1990s. By then the area was 100% black and consisted of about 95% rentals most of which were HUD. The only non-rental houses were those of the remaining black folks who had lived there back in the 1970s prior to the HUD invasion.
The area is an absolute hole now. The houses are falling apart. If you're white you stay out of that area at night even if you're just passing through (as it is a short cut that bypasses a large portion of town). I was shot at in my car cutting through that area one late night during my senior year in high school. Even in broad daylight its sketchy if you're white to be in that area on foot. In front of dilapidated houses set late 90s to early 2000's Caddy's (Escalades included) with $5k worth of stereo equipment rolling on $5k worth of "dubs".
The cops were sent down there a couple of years ago to break up what ostensibly was a huge block party that had turned into a mob/riot. 3 officers were injured. They threw a brick through the drivers side window of the squad car striking the cop in the head. The two others were pulled from their squad car after the windshield was smashed out with rocks/bricks and beaten for a while until one of them managed to pull his sidearm and fire blindly into the swarm of people around him.
Some of the more "prominent" (aka notorious) members of that neighborhood shot up the local community college's dorms back in the early 2000's and two were responsible for putting a bullet in the head of a gal I was friends with when she was leaving a hotel after a concert/party.
It is like some sort of penultimate culmination of every possible stereotype under the sun... and this is in a small town in the middle of Iowa with less than 27,000 residents.
I read water meters one summer during college and had a knife and a gun pulled on me until the resident figured out I was just "the water man" and not 5-O. Before I was dropped off by the guy in the water department at 7:30AM, he said "Try to get as much done as you can by 10. Once 10 comes around everyone will be out on the streets and its not going to be a fun time for you."
I had an elderly black couple invite me up into their porch for some lemonade and after a few minutes I said, I had to be going. The lady told me, "Hon, you better just wait here for a bit. We had you come up in here because if you look down that way you'll see a group of 7 thugs that started following you about a block back. They're going to do something to you. Just stay here for now and if you can use your radio to call the city and have them pick you up, you should probably do that." which I promptly did.
