The "Bad" Neighborhood

I pre-viewed a house that we were interested in viewing. Well, the neighborhood was labeled "bad" ... but what makes it "bad"? Where do we come up with these stereotypes? What are the visual signs of "bad" that steer the middle class to other white picket fences?

I've served in many low-income neighborhoods before... I've offered plenty of band-aid solutions to a set of economic, physical, social, environmental, and racial factors that arrive at the doorstep of the labeled neighborhood. I've replaced roofing, siding, porches, windows, drywall, etc. This neighborhood showed the common characteristics that perhaps I've overlooked in the past, or simply failed to assess.

What physical characteristics make up the label "bad" or "poor" or (PC) "low-income" neighborhood?
I don't mean just one house, or that section of town, or that alley no one goes down at night. I do mean an area of residential housing that, when a house goes up for $100,000 less than the market value, scares potential buyers away.

- fences... more specifically, rusted, dilapidated, half-fences
- barred screen doors
- barred windows (but there were no barred windows in the place I drove today)
- dry dust and dirt instead of grass
- tires and other various piles of appliances in the yard
- serious water damage
- tilting porches, roofs or water damage (The funny thing is, when I looked at the house on the realtor's page, I immediately assumed there'd be water damage. There were no specific signs, just an unpainted, poorly slanted set of 2x4's nailed together holding up the porch roof.)
- broken windows (but the windows on this street weren't broken, they were just unfinished with paint still on them, and without shutters)
- no landscape, or poor landscape (weeds become shrubs or trees and are sparse)
- moss green or brown siding

Sometimes it's almost shocking to acknowledge the difference is also cultural. In my college sociology and social justice classes, we could not turn our eyes away from this reality: certain cultures end up being pushed into these places.

To the reader: These are observations... not judgments... I am offering some thoughts based on a rather superficial observation... I personally think it worth questioning the things that we easily overlook and doing something about it, talking about it, or just blogging about it.

Painting the Scene
I turn down one street, and a large, rusted, chrome-wheel SUV blasts through a stop sign. The driver has a black t-shirt underneath a wife-beater hanging only over his right shoulder, as though he hadn't had the time to put his other arm through this morning. My gut reaction is a bit of trepidation... maybe I didn't want to come down this street.

When I was a child, I'd look up these very streets as my family car drove by, and think, "Oh, that's a poor neighborhood," without knowing exactly why.

Maybe it's that there are fewer trees on these streets. Perhaps the city is to blame - they didn't even bother putting sidewalks down. But really wealthy neighborhoods don't have sidewalks. I'm curious. Many of the cosmetic clues of "low-income" are present in wealthy neighborhoods. What collection stamps them with the label "bad" or "poor"?