Thursday, June 13, 2013

"I'd Buy that for a Dollar": The Price of a House in Gary, Indiana

We've talked about Gary before (Because Life is So Brief and Time is a Thief When You're Undecided: The Racial History of Gary, Indiana and the Need for Restrictive Covenants and Black Dawn: What "Black Power Gary Style" Tells us About Life in 2012 America).

Well, the great city of Gary is back in the news [Gary offering vacant homes for a dollar, Chicago Sun-Times, June 3, 2013]:
After 46 years of black political rule, homes in Gary, Indiana are going for only $1... as a policy of black elected officials
 Mayor Karen Freeman-Wilson said she’s got reason to feel nostalgic about the “dollar home” program she’s launching in her housing-ravaged city.
As a young deputy prosecutor 25 years ago, Freeman-Wilson said she purchased a dollar home in the 800 block of Fillmore Street under a popular HUD program.
“It had an overwhelming impact on my living in the city of Gary and contributing to it,” she said.
Freeman-Wilson never forgot the dollar home program and pledged to revive it during her mayoral campaign in 2011 as the city grapples with vacant houses and buildings. Today, about 25 percent of the city’s homes are abandoned.
On Monday, Freeman-Wilson said the city will run its own version of the dollar home program starting with 13 houses owned by the city in the University Park neighborhood, largely near Indiana University Northwest.
“At the end of the day, it allows us to keep those who want to stay as homeowners and keep the city vibrant,” Freeman-Wilson said at the City Hall press conference.
Community Development Director Arlene Colvin said the homes will be awarded by a lottery after the applications have been reviewed.
As for the income, Colvin said a single homeowner should have an income of $35,250 to qualify. Two people would require an income of $40,350, she said.
The new dollar homeowners must also pay the taxes on the home and insure it. Colvin said Community Development workers will visit the properties to make sure the requirements are met.
Applications will be available at the Community Development Department, 839 Broadway, beginning Friday.
Colvin said qualified applicants will be able to inspect the homes and request three preferences.
Freeman-Wilson said she plans to expand the program. “This is just the beginning. We will spread it throughout the city,” she said.
 Buying a home in Gary is like choosing a meal off of the McDonald's $1 value meal; and it's the fitting culmination of years of black migration to the city, a powerful reminder of what happens when property value falls upon a black majority to maintain.

Let's consult the book, Beyond the Ruins: The Meanings of Deindustrialization for a look at the type of world black people created in Gary:


As black workers moved north for employment and jobs began their agonizing departure, Gary’s image changed first to that of a great “black metropolis,” and then to that of an “urban wasteland.” (p.11-12)

Might it be that a black metropolis inevitably becomes a urban wasteland?

The book would continue, telling us this about Gary’s bleak (and black) future:

Between 1920 and 1930, roughly fifteen thousand migrants from the South arrived. By 1940, another 20,000 had joined them. As African Americans found steel jobs, the reputation of Gary rose within the black community. In 1956, Ebony declared Gary the top city in the United States for African Americans. By the mid-1960s, however, anxieties, aspirations, and tensions in the African American and white communities had begun to play out in the political arena. In the 1967 mayoral campaign, incumbent A. Martin Katz received the endorsement of both the Democratic Party and the United States Steelworkers, support that normally would have guaranteed him a victory. However, black voters’ support for black candidate Richard Gordon Hatcher helped to defeat Katz in a fierce primary. In the general election, despite large numbers of white voters who supported the Republican candidate, Hatcher won. He was elected just hours ahead of Cleveland’s Carl Stokes, making hi the first black mayor of a major U.S. city.



Hatcher’s election touched off a dramatic series of events for Gary. Fear of a black city run by a black mayor led to a rash of white flight in the years after the election. Interviewed in 1976, Dorothy Gale, a white woman who lived in Gary, explained the shocked response she would receive on disclosing her residence. “I was tired of getting that reception when I said that I was from Gary,” she remarked, “because people acted as if you were a leper. I have never heard anything good said about Gary, even on TV.”



After 1967, Gary’s image solidified as a black city with the inner-city problems of crime, violence, and drugs. “Gary has declined tremendously,” observed a white resident of East Chicago; “the crime over there is fantastic. I haven’t been to Gary in years. I wouldn’t go to Gary if I had an armored guard of marines to guard me over there.” In his study of the folklore of the Calumet region of northwest Indiana, Richard Dorson determined that every city possessed its own image within the mind of others. “Gary,” he sates, “is the black city where nobody goes anymore because of crime, particularly drug crime. (p. 225-226)


In 1956, Ebony called Gary the best city for black people to live in, in all of America; today, you buy a home for $1.

That's the fitting legacy of the black contribution to Gary, a microcosm for the black contribution to all of America.

44 comments:

Anonymous said...

I wouldn't buy a house in the armpit asshole of the world for three cents.

Anonymous said...

Nice Robocop reference. Go back and watch that movie and see how prophetic it is. Omni Consumer Products will keep you safe comrade because they love you.

Anonymous said...

Yea keepin' the city "vibrant" homey. Aww yea! Vibrancy über alles!

Jim said...

In the 1960-1970's, Baltimore started its Homestead program whereby abandoned homes were sold for one dollar. Certain rules required the buyers to stay in the home for a minimum number of years, certain requirements regarding reconstruction and so on. The buyers received low interest loans and were exempt from property taxes for a certain number of years.

The program was a great success. Some of the homes have (or had) a market value of upwards toward a million dollars. It brought in many restaurants, movie theaters, condo, etc. It is a great tax base for Baltimore.

Most of the areas are inhabited by yuppy white professionals.

Problems: What happens when the yuppies start having children. Where are they going to attend school? Certainly, not the public school system. Many of the parochial schools are closed and/or full of diversity. Crime is pretty rampant. Within 2 blocks, there is total ghetto. TNB is not at all uncommon, especially on Sunday evenings (?). There have been flash mobs and groups of whites attacked and beaten for no reason. I am sure the property crime is through the roof...naw, maybe not because you never hear about it from MSM.

I know longer visit Baltimore, if for nothing else, the police and medic sirens are a constant irritant.

So much for Baltimore's Homestead Program. It started out well, but, as always, a certain ethnic group f**ks it up.



Anonymous said...

Ex New Yorker here.....A nice house in Gary for only a dollar. Sounds a little over priced. When you fix it up and later decide to move you will only be able to sell it for 25 or 50 cents. Better to buy a house you can resell for at least $1.50. That way after a couple years you can make a nice fifty cent profit.

Anonymous said...

If you have 30,000-40,000 $$$
In income and this program is needed for Blacks. To buy a house. A you weak very weak B you are lame very lame. C you are very niggardly with money very niggardly.
Try doing some on you own with a gov tit to help.
Like buy a feed a hamster or a pet fish. Only one we don't want put a strain on your Great Social Weaknesses god know just how great and how many.

rjp said...

The problem is Gary is selling homes to blacks for $1. blacks making no capital investment in the cost of the home will treat it in the same manner they treat a Section 8 apartment. A few of them might be improved, but most will be further trashed withing a few years.

I looked the address of the pictured house up for a Google Street View. Some of your new neighbors are already in the street waiting to welcome you:

https://maps.google.com/maps?q=3573+Lincoln+St+Gary+Indiana&hl=en&ll=41.553406,-87.353459&spn=0.002805,0.004758&sll=39.739318,-89.266507&sspn=8.344187,19.489746&t=h&hnear=3573+Lincoln+St,+Gary,+Lake,+Indiana+46408&z=18&layer=c&cbll=41.553495,-87.353461&panoid=TxGnTWpvip0_JuRHoaQm6w&cbp=12,209.55,,0,9.94

D-FENS said...

Arghhhhh! I am the guy that is considering relocating from southern CA. One of the locations that I could potentially work at is in extreme southwestern Michigan. Someone suggested living in NW Indiana as the taxes would be lower. Plus it looks close enough to ChiCongo so my wife might be able to commute to the suburbs.

Is there no place that the Black Plague has NOT reached?

Anonymous said...

ahh $1 - the eventual price of "vibrancy"

So CAL Snowman said...

Anonymous 3:00 said :

"Nice Robocop reference. Go back and watch that movie and see how prophetic it is. Omni Consumer Products will keep you safe comrade because they love you."

Indeed, RoboCop is nothing more than a vehicle for blatant predictive programming. Predictive programming is basically "the power of suggestion using the media of fiction to create a desired outcome." Things or ideas that would otherwise seem strange, vulgar, undesirable, or impossible are made the central focus in Hollywood films. When an individual watches these films his or her mind is left often to suggestion and the conditioning process begins.

Take RoboCop for example, a movie made in 1987. The movie is set in the "near future" but no specific date is ever given. Detroit is on the verge of collapse due to financial ruin and rampant crime. Police officers are being killed left and right, suggesting the public at large is out of control and dangerous. The police officers in RoboCop all wear heavy duty body armor like this suggesting a future in which ALL cops will one day be required to wear body armor as a normal part of their job. I do not believe that police in full body armor was commonplace in 1987 in most places. Then we have the creation of the RoboCop, when Alex Murphy is nearly killed by thugs and brought to the hospital in a vegetative state (no doubt saved by his body armor). So Alex Murphy is reborn as RoboCop, but WITHOUT free will. His free will has been replaced by three prime directives : serve the public trust, protect the innocent, and UPHOLD THE LAW.

The last directive effectively makes RoboCop the ultimate tool of a totalitarian state. His directive is to uphold the law, even if the "law" has been corrupted to be used against the people. RoboCop is shown to have infrared vision that can see through walls. He uses this tool (a massive invasion of privacy) to successfully apprehend a suspect with a gun, thus conditioning the public that invasions of our personal privacy are necessary for our own safety.

Near the end of the movie RoboCop takes on the main gang in their drug factory. There he easily dispatches a dozen or so thugs with the precision and cool efficiency of a modern killing machine which helps to lend moral legitimacy to the RoboCop character and increased militarization of our police forces. RoboCop destroys the drug factory which again is symbolic and allows for more conditioning. The viewer is open to the suggestion that we NEED a police force with RoboCops to crush the evil drug lords in our cities.

Basically RoboCop serves the purpose of advertising for a new type of police force. The depiction of a dystopian city with out of control, vicious criminals justifies the need for a new type of police force that can meet these extreme conditions with equal force. RoboCop embodies such a police force, in which human emotions and decision making have been replaced by cold, calculated, ruthless efficiency. Although in today's world RoboCop does not exist, one can see the shift in our police forces from caring for the welfare of the public to a sort of para-military force designed to keep the public in check. A random internet search for "police armor" turned up this gem from Cobb County Atlanta : Cobb Police Get Heavy Armor

The fact that RoboCop was released in 1987 means that MANY of the street cops active today were kids back when RoboCop came out, and younger people are more susceptible to TV and media propaganda. RoboCop is one of many movies that pushed for, through predictive programming, a police state mentality for America.

D-FENS said...

RJP@3:57 - I looked at your link. Oh my effin GOD!!!!!!

Anonymous said...

Yes there is a place the Black Plague has not reached nor will it ever. Alas I cannot divulge the secret lest they find out about it.

rjp said...

D-FENS said...

Arghhhhh! ....One of the locations that I could potentially work at is in extreme southwestern Michigan

Nice beaches, but I think you might want to do some more research.

From Wiki:

The demographics of Benton Harbor contrast sharply with those across the river in St. Joseph.
City White Black Median
Income
Benton Harbor 7.0% 89.2% $17,301
St. Joseph 88.1% 5.3% $49,982

Benton Harbor could only be described as a fucking shithole.

All of northern Indiana is the same, dotted in the same way as SW Mich, black town white town black town white town.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berrien_County,_Michigan

Richie Daley has a beach house over there. My ex-boss has one. A lady that did some work for us has one. But you literally have to drive through some crime filled 95% black slums to get to these places.

When TSHTF, St Joseph will not be safe from Benton Harbor.

D-FENS said...

"...serve the public trust, protect the innocent, and UPHOLD THE LAW. "

It appears that these objectives are mutually contradictory. Further, they violate Asimov's First Law of Robotics: "A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm."

Anonymous said...

no shit Sherlock

"St. Louis has long struggled with urban violence, but the last week has seen a troublesome uptick in bloodshed. Police scrambled late Monday and early Tuesday to respond to five different shootings on the city's north side that left 15 people wounded."

"Elmi said as a cab driver he sees too much violence in the city and he's concerned about the recent shootings. "I feel the same as I did when I left Somalia," he said, referring to the war-torn African country."

Andri said...

The three Laws of Robotics do not apply to a cyborg. Robocop was part human, part machine killing tool.

Anonymous said...

BWahaha! Ex New Yorker thank you. I needed a good laugh today.

Anonymous said...

Anyone with the sense God gave a goat can see that any majority-black population area will inevitably have a wrecked real estate market.

D-FENS said...

One of the reasons BRA is so effective as a means of control is the chaos that it creates. The violent crime. The red herrings of racism, discrimination etc. The financial burden that forces us to run ever faster on the financial treadmill just to keep up.

Of course, the other fill-in-the-blank Run America memes also work this way - Green Run America, Gay Run America, Feminist Run America, Terrorist Run America. Like strings controlling a puppet. And WE are the puppet.

Now we see that Obama has decided to arm the "moderate" Syrian rebels. Various unnamed "officials" and "analysts" and "advisors" have determined that the Syrian government forces have used Sarin gas and have crossed a "red line." This after we learn that 100,000 Syrian refugees are being considered for resettlement in the CONUS.

Who benefits from our intervention? Is it possible that a very hostile but fractious, incompetent and weak radical Islamist Syria is less of a threat to a certain middle eastern democracy than a competent, stronger non-secular government?

The string may be different but it seems to be controlled by the same pupeteer.

Haywire Dude said...

I cannot imagine anyone doing this. I'm aware people scored some dirt cheap property 30 years ago with similar programs, but wherever you go now, it's social decay everywhere.

Mr. Rational said...

Benton Harbor could only be described as a fucking shithole.

Benton Harbor was a fucking shithole a decade ago and more.  Driving through it (I did), much of it looked as if it was bombed out.  Compared to St. Joseph across the river or Benton Township to the north, it was obvious that its state was due to its residents:  Blacks.

If Blacks had the mental wherewithal to appreciate irony, they would be committing suicide over their pathetic performance in life.  Sadly, they are too dumb to take the blame for what they've done, while White people are bright (and appreciative of consequences) enough to be deceived that they are responsible for Black failure.

In a just world, every inhabitant of Benton Harbor, Detroit and Flint with an out-of-wedlock child or without a full-time job at age 25 would be sterilized.  That would quickly turn Michigan from one of the most dysfunctional states to one of the most productive.

When TSHTF, St Joseph will not be safe from Benton Harbor.

Au contraire.  There are few bridges across the St. Joseph river (easily defended), and we all know about "rockfish".

Anonymous said...

"At the end of the day, it allows us to keep those who want to stay as homeowners and keep the city vibrant"

Using it to describe the color black, is about the most ignorant use of the word "vibrant". Nobody raves about goth kids for their "vibrant" clothing. It is fitting though, that "vibrant" sounds very much like "violent". Vibrant, violent, vibrant, violent.

Personally, I would buy one of those homes for $1; then demolish it, and sell the scrap for $1.01.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous said...I wouldn't buy a house in the armpit asshole of the world for three cents.

.03 Once bought 3 pieces of penny candy.
Why buy a 'headache' at any price?

10mm AUTO said...

Richard Dorson determined that every city possessed its own image within the mind of others. “Gary,” he sates, “is the black city where nobody goes anymore because of crime, particularly drug crime. (p. 225-226)

Humans don't go to Gary anymore. Only Orcs live there.

Anonymous said...


Problems: What happens when the yuppies start having children. Where are they going to attend school?

Earth to blogger, thats why Gays and Ultra weirdos are the first 'colonizers' of blakified amerika.

No kids and dont give a dang about publik skoolz.

Anonymous said...

off top:
i was listening to NPR [negro public radio] They were just so surprised.
Their 'Black America' report.
[thats their term..so blacks self segregated?].
So surprised that 50 years of LBJ stuff ' deys still poor'.
DUH.
Then they talked to a gal in Africa [no joke, over GMO cassava].
'She had 11 children'...well connect the dots....
poor wimmen with huge families generation after....

Jay Santos said...

rjp said...

All of northern Indiana is the same, dotted in the same way as SW Mich, black town white town black town white town.


As I've said a bunch of times now, observations like this one and the total urban chaos throughout the country, suggests this total negro population of some 14% is just not at all accurate. There's a lot more of them floating around than the census reports. Secondary evidence; Obama's reelection and the advertising dollars spent trying to attract negroes to this or that product. This and the number of illegals are my particular conspiracy theories.

Anonymous said...

Firstly, we've had dollar homes in the city of Detroit for decades now and, while such programs may have had an impact in other cities, trust me when I say that these programs have *cough* not done much to keep the D-town prosperous or even vaguely civilized.

From the perspective of any potential buyer into such a program, putting capital improvements into the property make very little sense, as any such potential buyer is de facto in a state of awareness over the distinct possibility that they may have to bail on said property at a moment's notice due to the effects of the surrounding *ahem* urban blight.

Secondly, and I would be very curious to know if the situation in Gary parallels that of Detroit, even if a property owner is foolish enough to sink tens of thousands of dollars into renovating one of these dollar homes (which are in notoriously bad shape), he or she will then face the grim prospect of the positively ridiculous Detroit taxation levels, which are, buck for buck, about triple of what they are in the surrounding white suburban communities.

Owning a genuinely nice home in an even semi-decent area of Detroit is an extremely onerous task, to put it mildly; a home that would sell for, say, 150k in Detroit can easily stick one in the unenviable position of paying upwards of ten thousand dollars a year in property taxes, let alone the costs of trying to insure a home located within the city.

And all this for the privilege of receiving virtually non-existent city services, being part and parcel of a school system that is so bad that (despite the oceans of money being poured into it) produces an adult population that is roughly 50% illiterate, and living within an area where being a victim of violent crime is almost passe.

Speaking a a resident of one of those surrounding suburban communities, thanks but no thanks; I'd rather live where I do, pay a comparatively meager tax rate, and enjoy the privilege of not having to carry a firearm just to take the trash out to the curb every week.

Californian said...

A random internet search for "police armor" turned up this gem from Cobb County Atlanta : Cobb Police Get Heavy Armor

And again, here we are three generations after Brown vs Board of Education, two generations after the war on poverty, one generation after the war on drugs...and the police are deploying armored fighting vehicles to the streets.

Shouldn't all these government programs have reduced crime to manageable levels by now? But every year the situation degenerates even more.

The reason is that whose name can not be spoken by the mainstream: BRA!

Californian said...

From "The Music Man:"

Gary, Indiana!
What a wonderful name,
Named for Elbert Gary of judiciary fame.
Gary, Indiana, as a Shakespeare would say,
Trips along softly on the tongue this way--
Gary, Indiana, Gary Indiana, Gary, Indiana,
Let me say it once again.
Gary, Indiana, Gary, Indiana, Gary, Indiana,
That's the town that "knew me when."
If you'd like to have a logical explanation
How I happened on this elegant syncopation,
I will say without a moment of hesitation
There is just one place
That can light my face.
Gary, Indiana,
Gary Indiana,
Not Louisiana, Paris, France, New York, or Rome, but--
Gary, Indiana,
Gary, Indiana,
Gary Indiana,
My home sweet home.


Well, for $1 Gary, Indiana can be your home sweet home.

Anonymous said...

Those mysterious youths are at it again!

http://isteve.blogspot.com/2013/06/mysterious-attack-leaves-washington.html

Anonymous said...

A dollar (dolla dolla beel?) for a house? Tell you what. I'll take it...if you throw in a half-dozen fully functional firearms, three or four sets of full body armor, 25,000 rounds of ammo, two years worth of survival food and clean water, and a license to clean up my neighborhood as I see fit...hey, where are you going?

Pat Boyle said...

It wasn't always that way.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjP2O9Qe4Ek

Albertosaurus

Anonymous said...

So 13 houses will be available for a lottery-like drawing of pre-approved vibrant people. If you "win" you get to move in for $1 down, you owe all back taxes and don't own the house until you've been there 5 years! and have brought it up to code.

I translate this as 13 buddies of the people running Gary get to squat in a rundown house for $1 until they get tired of it and move on.

Love you link rjp - it's the vibrant Gary, Ind. Welcome Wagon :)

CENTURION said...

Roosevelt forced the steel and munitions factories, around 1944, to hire Negroes or get no Federal war money.

So we fight our own White brothers in Europe with munitions built by Africans who go on to destroy the White nation our sons died for.

America, or what is left of it, needs to die and burn.

CENTURION said...

Will somebody define "vibrant" for me:

VIBRANT; origin Latin for sloth, lazy, ugly, loud. Also in Old Eglish meaning revolting, smelly, violent. As in: "Gary Indiana is a VIBRANT city full of AIDS infected felons who drive by $1 homes and fire bullets into the doors for murder revenge?

rjp said...

Nobody complained, but I apologize to all for the length of that link.

Trayboon just don't know what to think of the Google Street View vehicle? He thinkin' he should be stealin' what be on top but he gots no idea what it be.

The PDK Herald/Crier Project said...

The America I was born into is no more. As a culture and a gene pool/race, I believe we are doomed.

Perhaps, before it is to late, we non-liberal whites will secede.

I for one hope so. Thanks.

Anonymous said...

off topic

Breitbart:

Nine year-old twins Zea and Luna introduce President Barack Obama at the White House's LGBT Pride Month celebration Thursday, June 13

Anonymous said...

If you could buy 1000 of them, contiguous with one another, and use the remnants of the destroyed houses to build a wall around your farm...

You'd need a steel and bulletproof window for your produce stand though...

And you'd have to accept EBT...

Anonymous said...

I like that laugh ! Sounds like Arnold on Happy Days!

Anonymous said...

If you made 32k a year why would you go through all the rigamarole to get the Dollar house? Mostly toads will get them,do nothing in upkeep (let alone improvements),turn the neighborhood into a dopehouse/brothel/thug area with a revolving door of fuckheads moving in and out 24-7.The white old woman watering her flowers (in the yard she worked on herself to improve) gets run over by a toad drinking a 4-tay at noon.

Anonymous said...

LOL - Check out Google's Father's Day doodle!

Up is down, white is black, left is right ...

William said...

I looked at a couple of the houses via the link that rjp posted. The neighborhood actually looks nice and well kept compared to many of the neighborhoods in Gary. The houses are in good shape and the lawns are mowed. Might be worth a dollar. Then again, I would rather invest in the Miller neighborhood in Gary above any other. Miller is Gary's best kept secret and many are unaware of the rising property values of this unassuming integrated neighborhood. And... to those who seem to be spouting out racist comments that this is a black problem. Take a look at pictures of Black Oak (a mostly white neighborhood) and the hell hole that place is.