Urbanities,
Vol. 4
·
No 2
·
November 2014
© 2014
Urbanities
10
him] getting to the point where my wife wants to have children and I just would not know
about raising them here’.
Quite a few residents also complained about the closing down of ‘good’ local
restaurants that had become neighbourhood fixtures over the years. ‘I remember a place called
Dino’s,’ said Ray a 76-year-old Caucasian male. ‘My wife and I had our first date [there] in
’62 [1962]. You could really get the best Italian food in town. Now it’s closed down like
everything else I suppose’.
When asked about the economic realities of NIMBY battles, most residents feel that
the placement of halfway houses near their homes is coincident with lower property values.
Although there is no proof of this being the case as of yet, the residents are convinced
otherwise. There were at least six people we interviewed who were willing to sell their homes
below market value if they could get rid of them. ‘I’d move in a heartbeat if I could’, said
Ray, ‘but who the heck is going to buy a house in this area?’
The reality is that low property values often coincide with poor tax bases, but also
coincide with the effective delivery of public assistance in service to many people in an area.
Eventually, this may translate into refurbishment in local economies. However, and with good
reason, people seemed more concerned with the perceptions of everyday life and less with the
larger long run social and economic issues.
As far as residents are concerned, the things that presented themselves as most
important in life (that is, good schools, expensive homes, good restaurants, good medical care,
and so on) are simply not to be found on Chestnut Lane anymore. One of the more interesting
observations that was perhaps linked indirectly with the economy was that many residents felt
the school system was failing. Despite having a high ranking on state placement tests, this
theme resounded among residents. ‘I told my son to leave town as soon as he graduated from
college. He has his degree in education,’ said Rodney, a local Caucasian man of 55. ‘The
local public school was swarming with Puerto Ricans’ he continued, ‘I told him if that’s what
you want to teach then go ahead and teach them, but if I were you I’d like to work in another
town that treats the teachers better’. Here, the perpetual cycle of neighbourhood decay can be
viewed as intergenerational. A young college graduate who might have otherwise been a
valuable contributor to the local economy was encouraged to leave rather than have to
contend with issues in a dilapidated environment.
Of course, the root of the local hardship truly lies at the closing of the town’s main
textile mills during the 1970s, and the halfway houses on Chestnut Lane represent a last-ditch
effort by local government to stimulate a dying economy. But the residents do not see it that
way. The most prominent perception among residents was that Chestnut Lane went from an
affluent, upper-middle class suburban area to a decaying lower-middle class area when the
halfway houses appeared on the scene, not before. ‘As soon as they moved those halfway
houses in, it was like the straw that broke the camel’s back,’ said Hugo. ‘First the mill closes
down, a couple years later your favourite stores are closing, your friends start moving out to
different places . . . then the criminals come along. You just know the rest your life you’re not
going anywhere . . .’
