
Levittown - burlesona
https://granolashotgun.com/2019/06/03/levittown/
======
mabbo
> This was only made possible by enormous federal subsidies for returning
> soldiers and huge investments in public infrastructure by the federal
> government.

> People ... couldn’t imagine returning to the city which continued to
> decline.

I begin to wonder whether the demise of the city was really caused by the
government subsidies of the suburban lifestyle. It's not that Levittown isn't
sustainable anymore, it's that it never was, not on a long term scale. Low
density living should be expensive because it is expensive. The government
chose to invest in suburbs instead of the city. The city rotted without
investment, exacerbating the problem.

It's only the last couple decades as governments tightened their coffers that
the suburbs have had to carry their own load- and they can't.

~~~
burlesona
“It’s not that Levittown isn’t sustainable anymore, it’s that it never was.”

I think this is a key point, really well expanded upon here:
[https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-
scheme](https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme)

~~~
clarkmoody
To expand a bit more here, the Strong Towns folks argue that city
infrastructure project costs do not factor in long-term maintenance. Growth is
the driver of revenue in the short term (building permit fees, more expensive
single-family homes paying property taxes). Once growth slows or stops, the
party is over. Maintenance costs kick in, and the errors made during the boom
time are revealed in the form of broken streets, abandonment, blight, etc.

They consult with cities to target a 20-to-1 "return on investment" when
taking on infrastructure projects. That means that the costs to build street
or water pipes should result in 20x that cost in economic activity.

------
rootbear
I live in Bowie, Maryland, a Levittown suburb of Washington, DC. (We pronounce
it BOO-ee, by the way, something Alexa doesn't seem to know.) Unlike the
original Levittown, Bowie is doing well. I don't live in a Levitt home, but I
did look at quite a few of them when I moved back to the DC area in 1998. I
passed on them because I wanted a basement and Levitt houses don't usually
have basements, due to the cost. It was interesting to see all the ways in
which previous owners had enhanced and renovated these homes. The Smithsonian
is having trouble finding one that _hasn 't_ been extensively modified. (I
ended up in a townhouse, with no mad-science basement, alas, but at least I
don't have a large yard to keep up.) When Bowie was built (1964) there was no
doubt systematic discrimination against minorities but, interestingly, Prince
Georges County is now one of the wealthiest African American-majority counties
in the US.

~~~
ejcx
I don't think anything about Bowie or PG county is notable given its location.
The entire DC area is propped up by the defense industry.

Everywhere else in the country is really different. DC didn't even experience
the 2008 great recession

~~~
rootbear
I don't know why you think we didn't experience the Great Recession. Housing
prices crashed all over the DC area, except in Washington proper, which had a
lesser decline, due largely to very low inventory. In my area of Prince
Georges County, my townhouse lost about 30% of its value and the mega-mansions
down the road lost about _50%_ of their value. Several friends lost jobs and
had a hard time finding new ones. Yes, DC is a unique environment in some
ways, but we aren't immune to economic downturns.

~~~
lotsofpulp
The metropolitan areas around certain cities, such as DC, are in a much
different situation than those that experienced a structural loss in value.
Around DC, there might have been a temporary loss in value due to reduced
economic activity, but overall, the value trends upwards.

But if you look at places from the Northeast (excluding BOS/NYC/PHL) towns,
all the way to Midwest to the South that had factories close and not come
back, those are still cratered and going down. There simply isn't enough
economic activity to support populations, so reduced demand, plus whatever
demand there is can't afford to pay much.

------
AceJohnny2
The economic failings of these Boomer towns reminds me of this article in
Citylab, about how cities pay for current infrastructure by selling more land
for development. It's an unsustainable pyramid scheme.

[https://www.citylab.com/life/2011/10/suburban-sprawl-
ponzi-s...](https://www.citylab.com/life/2011/10/suburban-sprawl-ponzi-
scheme/242/)

Overall, these articles are an interesting insight into the hidden financials
of urban development. And, sadly, the failings of those financial schemes.

------
smelendez
Interesting, but I don't get a lot of the author's arguments.

> And there it is. The dreaded wig shop. Flagship of retail desperation and
> harbinger of doom. Next stop, evangelical day care centers and government
> offices to fill the void.

What's wrong with any of those businesses? Wig shops seem popular in a lot of
places, especially with black women. People willing to spend on beauty are
usually a good draw for a mall. Day cares bring in predictable revenue per
kid. I've been to mall DMVs and gone shopping afterward.

> The buses only exist because the federal government mandates them as a
> condition of continued highway funding. It’s pointless.

What's pointless? The photos show people waiting at the bus stop, so clearly
it's useful to someone.

~~~
michaelt
Google tells me there aren't a lot of wig stores, so customers will usually
seek out stores - meaning they can often be put in low-traffic low-rent areas.

------
spennant
Typically pieces about the Levittowns (there were many such towns) contain at
least a cursory acknowledgement of the racism and redlining that surrounded
the sales of these homes. A generation of non-minority boomers were able to
take advantage of, and build wealth from government subsidies.

~~~
googlemike
Why does that matter? Why do we have to inject race into everything?

~~~
noonespecial
_Levitt & Sons would not sell homes to African Americans... the Federal
Housing Administration (FHA) conditioned essential financing for this and
similar projects on the restriction of home sales to those of "the Caucasian
race", as stipulated in housing rent and sales agreements and deed covenants._

If you had dark colored skin you couldn't live there. That's as starkly about
race as it can possibly get.

~~~
StanislavPetrov
Yes, 67 years ago in 1952. Anyone can live there now if they have the money.
Unfortunately, the problem in Levittown, like the problem with the rest of
Long Island (and many other areas of the country) are that housing prices are
massively inflated and taxes are insanely out of proportion of the services
you get back for paying them.

For the honor of living in an average small house in this economically
depressed area you can look forward to shelling out ~$500,000 and paying
$8,000+ a year in property taxes. That's the real obstacle for working people
to come move to places like Levittown. A few decades ago young, working people
looking to start a family could buy a house in a place like Levittown for 2-3x
their annual income. Now its more like 8-10x of their annual income. It isn't
economically sustainable, like much of the rest of our economic system, and it
has absolutely nothing to do with racism.

[https://www.zillow.com/levittown-ny/](https://www.zillow.com/levittown-ny/)

~~~
roywiggins
White people got loan guarantees from the government in 1967 to move there.
The whole thing was directly subsidized. People moving in _today_ are not
subsidized.

This amounted to a big transfer of wealth to white Americans, that black
Americans couldn't participate in. They were stuck paying rent for 67 years
while their white "peers" were able to build equity, as they had access to
cheap credit.

[https://www.npr.org/2017/05/03/526655831/a-forgotten-
history...](https://www.npr.org/2017/05/03/526655831/a-forgotten-history-of-
how-the-u-s-government-segregated-america)

~~~
StanislavPetrov
Which is all relevant to when this happened 60 years ago and not to working
people today who were born generations after that happened. Talking about,
"white America" like its some sort of monolith is idiotically reductionist.
The generational disparity in wealth is magnitudes of order greater than the
racial disparity. Start crying about the old people if you want a group to
blame.

~~~
roywiggins
You can't blame the old black people, because they _don 't own homes_. The
rate of home ownership among whites is far and away greater than that for
blacks. The average white person has _some_ home equity. The average black
person has _next to none_. The old people you're thinking about blaming are
the old white people who took advantage of the whites-only, government
sponsored, subsidized housing projects in the pre and post war years. The
reason why all those old people in homes are white is because they were the
only ones allowed to buy in the '50s!

The median white family is worth $100k (almost entirely home equity). The
average black family is worth $7,000. You don't think massive subsidies for
white home ownership during the first half of the 20th century might have
_something_.to do with it? Black people _couldn 't get mortgages_. White
people had theirs guaranteed by the Feds. It was a sweet deal. That equity
didn't just evaporate.

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurashin/2015/03/26/the-
racial...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurashin/2015/03/26/the-racial-
wealth-gap-why-a-typical-white-household-has-16-times-the-wealth-of-a-black-
one/#3a9ff9501f45)

~~~
taneq
> The median white family is worth $100k (almost entirely home equity). The
> average black family is worth $7,000.

Did you intend to jump between median and mean here? I'd guess that using
median for both would make your case even stronger.

~~~
faceplanted
He didn't jump between them, looking at the article, they're both the median,
I think he just said average because in a surprising number of places
"average" isn't always synonymous with "mean", it's more synonymous with
"measure of central tendency", so the mean, median, and mode can all be called
the average as long as you've established which one you're talking about
first.

------
apo
> This was only made possible by enormous federal subsidies for returning
> soldiers and huge investments in public infrastructure by the federal
> government. ...

Today's government subsidies are creating artificial booms of their own.
Credit, higher education, housing. The busts, like the one described in this
article, should come as a surprise to nobody, but they will. Mixed in with
that surprise may be an interest in finding a scapegoat - and a leader willing
to deliver it.

------
milkytron
Population booms and recessions make me wonder how my current town will
survive after the influx of new residents. I grew up not too far from
Levittown, PA, and now live in Lakewood, CO.

Population here has been exploding and new housing has been on the rise for
the past five years. There is currently a ballot to slow new housing projects
to 1% growth per year. On one hand, I wonder if it’s just artificial
restriction of supply to help property values. On the other hand, I do see
reason to limit growth to provide the infrastructure needed as growth
continues. I’m not sure how to feel about it. Does anyone have any insight
into whether artificial housing restrictions could benefit a municipality in
the long term?

~~~
RobertoG
>>"Does anyone have any insight into whether artificial housing restrictions
could benefit a municipality in the long term?"

I think you can't answer that question without defining what is the intended
outcome: what it's a 'benefit'?.

If you define the optimal result, in a tautological way, as "whatever the
market decide", then, by definition, any restriction is going to be bad.

Otherwise, you need to decide what do you want to accomplish (by 'you' I mean
the residents of the area) and choose a policy that makes sense.

------
kissickas
The houses that I've seen in Levittown and the nearby towns don't seem
particularly empty - is the residential market dying as well or is it actually
just the commercial properties?

Hicksville, for one, seems to be livelier than ever and full of South Asian
families and businesses that have given it a new life (although it looks
slightly lower-class than I remember).

~~~
s17n
The article is about Levittown PA

------
YeahSureWhyNot
there is a Levittown on Long Island, New York and its doing just fine
economically even though you can tell that the children of the boomers who
enjoyed the previous decades aren't so comfortable. Most youth still lives
with their parents and drives shit cars.

~~~
spennant
Wikipedia has list of Levittowns

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levittown#Places](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levittown#Places)

------
jdlyga
Levittown, NY is a pretty interesting place. It was designed for your typical
1950s family with a single car. Nowadays, most people have two cars so you see
a ton of cars parked in the street. Also, it's outrageously expensive to buy
on Long Island.

~~~
StanislavPetrov
You also have way more people living at home into their 20s and 30s, so you
get 4-5 cars per house. When cops and prison guards are making $200,000 a year
someone has to pay for it.

------
eanzenberg
And yet we get constantly told that there’s no space for homes and that it’s
too expensive to live anywhere. There are plenty of opportunities out there
but when everyone wants to live in only the most desirable areas it creates
local shortages.

------
mc32
Do those Levitt houses have the same cachet as Eichler houses do in the Bay
Area? They were both post war answers to demand for quick cookie cutter houses
that people would like to live in.

Seems Eichler took cues from Lloyd-Wright and hired disciples, so the
architecture looks nicer (although his didn’t have to contend with more
continental climates), but from a usability and livability PoV, wonder if they
deliver equally when it comes to providing a “home “

------
rhizome
>This was only made possible by enormous federal subsidies for returning
soldiers

 _White_ soldiers, both via black soldiers being excluded from the GI Bill,
and Levittown's own restrictive whites-only covenant. These racist limitations
greatly reduced the necessary subsidies.

~~~
googlemike
From wikipedia:

From December 1942 until VJ-day there were relatively few enlistments into the
armed forces as restrictions against the direct recruiting of men in the age
group acceptable for service (18-37) were in effect. There were, however,
483,605 other enlistments into the Army and Navy during the period July 1,
1944, to June 30, 1945, but only 1.3 percent were African Americans. Although
African Americans constitute approximately 11 percent of the population, aged
18 through 37, only 0.8 percent of Army enlistees and 1.4 percent of Navy
enlistees during the period July 1, 1944, to June 30, 1945, were of that race.

So, sounds like the white part doesn't matter too much? Yes it was terrible
that they were excluded from the GI bill, but only a very small fraction of
soldiers in ww2 were black. It was very unlikely they would have made a
difference in the outcome of such suburbs.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
You say it doesn’t matter, and then immediately say it was terrible. Which is
it?

May have had an impact on those 6,286 African Americans who were excluded.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
Of course. And it's an just just as unjust if it only excludes one. And yet,
it's a _smaller_ injustice if it's only 0.8% than if it's 11%. _As unjust_ ,
but _a smaller injustice_.

~~~
rhizome
It's a greater injustice that a minority had even the meager crumbs offered by
the system stolen by white people kicking them while they're down.

You're focusing only on the raw numbers of people rather than the the effect
on _everybody_ of that community. You can bet if 10% of white people had the
same discrimination visited upon them that police, lawyers, and legislation
would be involved tout suite.

Read up on mortgage redlining during the most prosperous period of the 20th
century keeping people out of the progress enjoyed by the majority. Injustice
is not zero sum, don't use arguments from proportion when there is a fraught
history and politics that makes continuing the discrimination much, much worse
than if it was one white person against another white person.

------
ryjm
Nice Try! just released a great episode about Levittown in Concord Park:

[https://www.curbed.com/2019/6/13/18662753/nice-try-
podcast-l...](https://www.curbed.com/2019/6/13/18662753/nice-try-podcast-
levittown-concord-park)

------
ethnt
There was a great Dollop podcast episode about this:
[https://thedollop.libsyn.com/310-levittown-the-whitest-
subur...](https://thedollop.libsyn.com/310-levittown-the-whitest-suburb)

------
unnamed76ri
Maybe not relevant to the piece but something not mentioned is that not only
would the builders of Levittown only sell to whites but home buyers had to
sign a contract not to sell their house to any poc

------
philjohn
Referenced in the musical Little Shop of Horrors in Somewhere That's Green
with the words "Not fancy, like Levittown"

------
jdlyga
Levittown, NY is a pretty interesting place. It was designed for your typical
1950s family with a single car. Nowadays, most people have two cars so you see
a ton of cars parked in the street.

------
0x54D5
I grew up 15 minutes from Levittown, PA. I even had to do an undergrad
research project on it. The development is boring and pointless but packed
with lower middle class families. A place where there's only a driveway for
one or two cars but there's always 3 or 4 per house and parked all in the
street. The houses themselves are all full. The area just west and north of
Levittown is actually one of the oldest rich suburbs in America containing
Newtown, PA and Washington's Crossing with estates from the 16th century and
acres of land.

Oxford Valley Mall is far from dead. The food court is always pretty lively on
Fridays and Saturdays. The Forever 21 next to the food court is constantly
packed with teenagers. I literally went there not long ago with my girlfriend
and we had to stand in line at the register. Not exactly dead.

The guy just went on a random Tuesday instead of a Saturday. Of course it's
going to be dead. The parking lot also has a really good theater seating style
movie theater. Both Oxford Valley Mall and Neshaminy Mall are on Route 1 going
north out of Philadelphia and also have I-95 going by. Also the Mall has
Sesame Street Theme Park right outside it's parking lot and across the street
is a whole other plaza containing a Best Buy, A Home Depot, a Lowes, and a
bunch of other stuff. Honestly the only reason the mall can't keep full is
cause of all the competitions nearby. The area itself is actually super nice
just to the west of the mall with lots of properties rising in value.

I used to run a Gaming LAN Center in 2005 in Neshaminy Mall. The area is
served by FIOS and Comcast.

As to why buses come to the mall? Really? Old people like to walk around
during the day in the mall just for fun. People also use the bus to get to and
from work. Most of the routes are going to and from Philly with a few
connecting the various regional rail stations. Growing up we all wished there
was just one bus from the center of Newtown to the mall so we wouldn't have to
ask our parents to take us.

If you actually stay just around Levittown there's a lot of old crap from the
60s in a clearly abandoned and/or ruined state but that's not really
indicative of the area.

~~~
aeontech
Off topic: by the way, this your comment (and some earlier ones) are showing
up as dead. I vouched for this one to unhide it, but you may want to email the
mods to see why your account is flagged.

------
westmeal
Live near Levittown and have talked to residents about it. The entire rust
belt is going to shit itself soon and who knows how it'll play out.

~~~
vips7L
Most of the article is about Levittown, PA. Its no where near the rust belt.

~~~
grayed-down
The "rust belt" and it's socio-economic realities meander quite a bit
throughout the NE

~~~
vips7L
Except this particular area isn't the "rust belt".

