NASHVILLE — When Ashley Broadnax thinks of the East Nashville neighborhood where she grew up in the 1990s, the images that come to mind have a humble, middle-class undertone.
After school, she and other neighborhood kids would buy snacks at the corner store and throw balls down the street as their parents returned home, some in blue work uniforms, others from jobs as teachers or office workers. Neighbors talked on the porches and lawns of nondescript one-story houses. There were a few poor families and a few rich ones, but more than a third of her neighbors made between $40,000 and $75,000 in today’s dollars—enough to live comfortably.
But by 2020, the income distribution had shifted so that half of families made $100,000 or more, census data show. Throughout the neighborhood, the modest houses of Ms. Broadnax’s youth have been replaced by high-end townhouses, known informally as “tall skinnies,” that tower over the older homes that remain.
So when it was Ms. Broadnax’s turn to pay the rent using her own middle-income teacher salary, the price was unaffordable.
Like many other Americans, Nashville residents are increasingly buffeted by economic waves that push them into neighborhoods that are either much wealthier or much poorer than regional norms, a New York Times analysis found. A smaller share of families live in middle-class neighborhoods, places where incomes are typically within 25 percent of the regional median.
In Nashville, the share of families living in middle-class neighborhoods fell 15 percentage points between 1990 and 2020. But the share of families in affluent ones jumped 11 points, and the segment living in poor neighborhoods grew by four points.
In some ways, the pattern reflects how rich Americans choose to live near other rich people and how poorer Americans struggle to get by.
But the model also shows a broader trend of income inequality in the economy, as the population of families earning over $100,000 grew much faster than other groups, even after adjusting for inflation, and the number of families earning under $40,000, has increased at twice the rate of families in the middle.
Ms. Broadnax became part of a major national drive for affordable housing. The city’s high rents initially sent her to the more affordable Antioch neighborhood in 2011. But home prices there have nearly doubled since 2018, so buying a home meant moving further away to a suburban community called La Vergne.
“The same people who work in their city can’t afford to live in their city,” Ms. Broadnax said of Nashville.
Nationally, only half of American families living in metropolitan areas can say their neighborhood income level is within 25 percent of the regional median. A generation ago, 62 percent of families lived in these middle-income neighborhoods.
“People are being pushed out, and it’s destroying some historic working-class neighborhoods,” said Marybeth Shinn, a professor at Vanderbilt University who studies homelessness and social exclusion. “You gradually turn a neighborhood from a fairly humble kind of neighborhood where a lot of people can live, to one where only people who have a little more means can live.”
This evolution has mixed consequences for people who see their neighborhoods change.
When Jim Polk bought his home in East Nashville in 1979, the community left some amenities to be desired. The park near his house was deserted, and the neighborhood had few sidewalks or streetlights.
As the neighborhood’s firefighters, nurses and local government workers were replaced by tech workers, engineers and lawyers, Mr. Polk mourned the loss of their old, familiar neighborhood where his four daughters had learned to accept people from different backgrounds .
”So many families have moved out over time,” said Mr. Polk, who worked for decades as a public education coordinator in the city’s public schools. “It didn’t remind them of where they lived, and it was so expensive to stay.”
But Mr. Polk and his wife were able to cope with property tax increases on their city pensions and couldn’t ignore neighborhood improvements: New sidewalks and streetlights were installed and the long-neglected park was cleaned up. When his church was destroyed by a tornado in 2020, his new neighbors had the resources to help the congregation buy a new building.
Even more significant is the rapid increase in housing prices in the neighborhood. Mr. Polk bought his home for $36,000. A home across the street sold for more than $1.5 million in February, according to Zillow.
“There are improvements in services available to people living in the neighborhood,” he said. “But who can participate?”
Experts say the changes in housing patterns represent a form of economic segregation, as Americans are less likely to live in neighborhoods with people from other socioeconomic classes. Economic segregation exacerbates the problems often associated with income inequality. There are what researchers call “neighborhood effects,” with studies finding that poor children have a better chance of moving up the socioeconomic ladder if they grow up outside of concentrated poverty.
And wealthy neighborhoods tend to have a disproportionate share of resources, such as better schools, more parks, and greater access to health care professionals.
This economic segregation not only “concentrates low-income families into high-poverty neighborhoods, but it concentrates wealthy families into wealthy neighborhoods, where they can engage in a kind of opportunity accumulation,” said Shawn F. Riordan, a sociologist at Stanford University. He and another sociologist, Kendra Bischoff of Cornell University, have written several articles on economic segregation.
Consider Durham, North Carolina
Since the 1990s, there has been an influx of wealth and investment pouring into the city centre. At the same time, the percentage of families living in lower-income neighborhoods has doubled.
Turquoise LeJeune Parker, an elementary school technology instructor, said dividing reality into rich and poor neighborhoods didn’t benefit her low-income students. Describing what she sees as the prevailing mindset of people flocking to prosperous parts of the city, she said: “We’re not going to push for resources for our schools, we’re not going to push for any of that because ‘I’ve got what I need. on my side of town so i’m fine.
To some extent, economic segregation goes hand in hand with the emptying of the middle class as a whole.
At the same time, local governments across the country have done little to maintain or expand affordable housing, instead investing in attracting high-wage workers, which drives up prices and displaces lower-income residents.
And exclusionary zoning laws often prevent denser, lower-cost housing from being built in high-end enclaves—Tennessee has even barred cities from enacting zoning laws that would protect affordability. Property taxes on many homes have risen, forcing longtime residents to sell to investors.
But whatever the reason, similar trends can be seen across the country.
The Boston metropolitan area has seen middle-class neighborhoods shift in both directions. In the 1990s and 2000s, many fell behind economically. Over the past decade, due to widespread gentrification in the city, many modest neighborhoods have been transformed into much more affluent ones.
A generation ago, Seattle’s tech industry was starting to boom, but the area was also a major manufacturing hub, and seven out of 10 families lived in middle-class neighborhoods. Today, only five out of 10 do. Nearly a third live in wealthy enclaves.
In the Midwest, the share of families living in middle-class neighborhoods has declined by 13 percentage points in Columbus, Ohio, since 1990, by 12 in Chicago and by nine in Indianapolis.
And in Orlando, nearly 70 percent of area residents lived in “average” neighborhoods in 1990, according to census data. In 2020, the same is true for only 46 percent.
This leaves many people feeling like they are on the outside looking in.
Michael Street is a union electrician who moved from Nashville to Goodlettsville, about 25 minutes away. He said he spent his days driving around Nashville working on houses that had been renovated, remodeled or rendered unrecognizable in neighborhoods he could no longer afford.
“You’re either poor or you’re rich,” he said. “The middle class is gradually disappearing. Either you have a lot of money or you’re barely getting by.’
Methodology
To measure the growing level of economic segregation in the United States, The New York Times used census data to compare the median household income of each census tract to the median for the surrounding metropolitan area for the years 1990, 2000, 2010, and 2020. The analysis counted how many families live in middle-class areas where the median family income is within 25 percent of the regional median, and how many live in areas where the income level is 25 percent or more above or below the regional median. All figures are adjusted for inflation to 2020 values.
Source data and maps were from socialexplorer.com and nhgis.org.
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