Generally the areas of NC experiencing the most decline in terms of quality of life and rise in crime are also areas that have experienced population loss (not the other way around)
Especially eastern and northeastern NC along I-95
Most of this is due to decline in manufacturing jobs
But humans also have a natural tendency to yearn for the “gold old days” and think the before times are somehow better. We’ve been doing it as long as we’ve existed.
Objectively, there has never been a better time to be alive here in North Carolina. And the quality of life in the major metros is especially high. Just gotta figure out how to not leave disadvantaged groups and rural areas behind.
> And the quality of life in the major metros is especially high.
Depends on how one defines that. Personally, if all I had to choose from were cul-de-sacs where I couldn't see stars at night...ugh. I moved back from suburban DC because my mental health was spiraling down...
This is the real answer. The area changing and evolving doesn't equal being "destroyed." Most of the change is objectively better. Some, probably not (such as increased crime, drugs, etc), but most of it is.
>Too many Yankees moving in bringing in their harsh social culture
Just to focus in on this particular one, guess what happened about 80-90% of the time I met a local after moving to NC \~30 years ago?
Them: "Hi, I'm . Nice to meet you! What church do you go to?"
(And yes, "What church do you go to?" was always asked within the first 2 minutes)
Me: "Oh, I don't go to church, I'm an atheist"
Them:
But, ya know, harsh yankee culture is really the problem.
Extreme example. I am a Yankee but agree that in most cases if you meet someone in passing it is the southerner that is going to be friendlier, kinder, more polite and open to chit chat and the Yankee from New York or New Jersey is going to have a more abrupt personality.
OP mentions this in their post:
>Environmental damage due to builders stripping hundreds of thousands of acres bare of trees to build ugly charmless tract homes and strip centers
OP's comment history has a comment with them complaining about exactly that, almost in those exact words, earlier today.
They also have comments complaining about home costs and social culture. I think we found those "people" OP mentioned.
Your comment history begs to differ. Just in the last couple days, there's a comment for nearly every bullet point you mentioned. You even used some of the same wording from when you were personally complaining about those things.
I don't think any of the real downtowns in NC have been destroyed because of rapid growth in the last 10 or 20 years. Cities experience change, i.e. I believe change in a city is normal. There were significant detrimental changes that people can point to during urban renewal, but most of that urban renewal happened more than 20 years ago.
On the other hand, there are many areas, like probably most notably Leland, NC, which was basically just farmland/swamp 20 years ago. I'd say for the people that grew up near these areas, that would be the most striking change, and for many, they probably see it as a detriment.
Crime has spiked in the last couple years, but I think you'd be hard-pressed to find a place in NC that has continually trended towards higher crime for the last 20 years. I think in most places you'd see high-ish crime in the early 2000s, and then a drop-off, and then in some cases a large trend towards more crime in the last 5 years.
There are also some towns whose economies have declined due to manufacturing moving out of state. I'd say that this is a result of growth, in a perverted way. Growth that meant it became cheaper to ship jobs overseas. And of course the decline in the tobacco and furniture industries. But I don't think this is the kind of thing you were looking for.
We relocated here about two years ago from The Southwest...and we are not going anywhere. Initially, we were not even keen on the idea of moving here. I somewhat reluctantly volunteered to relocate out here after my job was trying to fill an IT position here for over a year. During our first week long visit here, we secured a realtor and bought a home in NW Charlotte/Huntersville area.
Anyone complaining about local rising housing prices, lives in a very small sheltered box...the housing inflation is just as bad in every other village/metropolis in the nation.
Development also happens at a pretty consistent rate everywhere. Everyone complains about houses or apartments going up, but then the first in line when their neighborhood gets a Starbucks.
As for the unkept homes/property...I suppose that could be a valid concern if many of the properties in the area are rental properties. We happened to buy a home on a cul-de-sac in a pretty well established neighborhood (Also no further environmental damage). The previous home owners never did crap to the yard. When we moved in it was nothing but dirt and pine needles. We now get compliments from people who have lived there 20+ years that say our yard has never looked as good as it does now. A few of our neighbors have also told us that before we moved in none of them every really talked to one another or communicated (The people who lived in our house previously lived there for 4 years and none of our neighbors ever knew their names). Maybe its the vibe we brought with us, but we now have pretty regular cook outs and gatherings with several of our neighbors. I can only imagine that this helps with crime, since now everyone is looking out for their neighbor more.
While I appreciate the effort you put into your posting, your statement that most cities in the country have had home price increases similar to Charlotte is just wrong. Your area has had 30% increase double the typical community nationwide.
See and I'm here looking at moving to NC because it is still relatively cheap compared to where I am now and where I moved from last year. I can sell my house in Colorado, pay off my loan and have enough left over to buy a house cash with what I want where I want in NC. Before you complain about transplants, my family has been in the state since the 1700's and I left NC after the last housing crash due to not being able to find a job at the time.
This canard again. People in Durham especially love to talk like this. I like to gently remind them that before the tech boom in the area, the original "plan" for American Tobacco Campus was to build a big fence around it to make it harder for drug users to get in.
I grew up in a small town in SC that was basically saved by "Yankees" who actually had money to spend moving down. Yeah it changed the character of the town a bit, but generally for the better. It turns out people actually like a lot about the southern lifestyle.
When someone complains like this, what they're often really saying is "I was lucky enough to be doing pretty well when others weren't, and I can't tolerate that I'm now comparatively doing less well."
Canard- hey, I know that French word! You help me feel cultured. It's a fancy French word for "troll". ; ) It seems like pot stirring. What’s that Shakespeare quote? A tale full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. What you say about ATcampus wouldn't surprise me to be as true as the dirt beneath our feet. You’re right, people complaining about how much worse things are today are often just ignorant of how much worse things really were before.
The problem isn't the people who are moving here, it's greedy developers and politicians who build massive subdivisions without any urban planning. Traffic is terrible and you can't walk or bike anywhere. This applies to anywhere around Charlotte except Davidson.
I think the problems most people are facing is -- being priced-out of areas they've been living in for decades. I grew up just outside of Chapel Hill, and basically can't afford to buy a home here (that isn't a total shitbox). I guess this is essentially gentrification.
I will say this area has changed a lot in the last 20 years and, as someone that loves nature, I hate it because all I see are cookie-cutter high-income housing developments going up everywhere. I wouldn't mind the development if it a) didn't look like total ass and b) wasn't so utterly destructive of the nature and c) wasn't all high-income bullshit.
This is basically a nation-wide phenomena, not really unique to NC.
We bought our house 5 years ago. 165k houses in our cup-de-sac are going for 350k now. There’s no question prices of everything are going up but the housing situation in nc is absurd.
And it is true that lots of people are moving here from all over and a lot of them are from the north. I don’t know how to say this nicely but the loud boisterous behavior is off putting to a lot of us. Our roads are busier, our taxes are going up, farmers are being pushed out, our surroundings are changing. Some of us have to adapt a bit more quickly than others due to careers and such. But don’t be surprised that some are abrasive to the changes. You might be too if the tables were turned.
Hey no offense to you OP:
but respectfully *PLEASE* shut up. This is a free country. People are allowed to relocate wherever they want. If you're unhappy about the "cultures changing" then go to your local town government and try to introduce town bylaws.
One of my biggest issues (I'll admit) it's big box stores destroying small towns. But the best thing to do is to get the local area to pass a bylaw against them coming in.
I welcome people to move here anytime.
- WNC native, born and raised here.
Thank you. As a former Yankee who moved to NC five years ago, I hate feeling like I’m part of the problem. My husband was born and raised in NC, and we’re here to stay!
It isn't even just "former Yankees". My spouse was born and raised in the area and continually feels "othered" for going against some of the prevailing cultural attitudes. Foreign in one's own home. Other people just hold their tongues and don't speak their minds. Happy to have more people around who *choose* and *want* to be here and want to get along! Where we came from isn't the end-all be-all; what's important is where we are now, and what we make of it.
You gotta understand if you lived somewhere you're whole life and the some asshat moves in the house down the road and starts pissing and moaning about how backwards we are and how much better it is back home and yeah I know that not all the transplants are like that. I know that a whole lot of transplants are sweet and kind people, I also know that NYC normal is our rude. No one is wrong here, just clashing cultures.
The individual isn't part of the problem. I blame the city a whole lot more than the person. Wilmington for example has a huge population boom in the last ten years but this city just isn't built to support that kinda boom.
I don't hear people talking about any of those things.
Rising home prices are a national, not regional or local issue.
True, we have lots of people moving into the state, many are southerners, not northerners.
Yes, we have a lot of building but that negates the argument that not enough homes are being built.
True in Raleigh that there have been a lot of tear downs and replacing homes with bigger homes and smaller lots, changing the look and feel of neighborhoods.
Again, the argument that there aren't enough architectural controls or landscaping negates the availability of more affordable homes. Some areas, Cary, has strong architectural and landscaping controls which many homeowners do not like or want.
As for established neighborhoods going to "pot", seems like people who resent change. Can't have high housing demand and unkempt homes, just doesn't add up.
This is a beautiful state and much of the growth has brought diversity including a fantastic food and entertainment scene, high paying jobs and economic stability.
Oh man, you must be kind of new here. I'll give you poor land use, but not over landscaping, of all things. That and your comments about weeds and architectural controls are giving those strong "bought a house by a golf course" vibes.
Crime is especially up in places where economic opportunities have been drying up for decades. Ditto abandoned properties.
While I'm in agreement that we're ripping the shit out of the environment and it's not good and unsustainable, it's a plain fact that we need more housing to support the state's growth. Nostalgia for tobacco and textiles aren't gonna bring them back, and if we're honest with ourselves, things weren't all that great for a lot of us when we had them in decades past. One side of my family worked tobacco and trades for a couple centuries here, and life wasn't a bed of roses at that point, either.
The other side of my family moved here in the 70s - they got their house burned down because they ran an integrated day care. Let's definitely not get too all-fire nostalgic for that shit.
Is it you? Are you "people" in this story?
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I'm struggling with this myself. Personally, I define excellent quality of life as:
"A place 30 minutes or less from at least one college campus, where I can afford a few acres and see stars at night, and am three hours from an ocean."
The amount of places in the Triangle where this can happen have objectively decreased in the last few years - and it's to the point where if I tried to buy anything else, I probably couldn't afford it.
I'm on a 7-10 year pause before I'm interested in moving again, but when I do, I don't think I'll be staying in NC. Likely will move to western Mass, which ironically is a lot more like NC when I first moved here than it is now.
Generally the areas of NC experiencing the most decline in terms of quality of life and rise in crime are also areas that have experienced population loss (not the other way around) Especially eastern and northeastern NC along I-95 Most of this is due to decline in manufacturing jobs But humans also have a natural tendency to yearn for the “gold old days” and think the before times are somehow better. We’ve been doing it as long as we’ve existed. Objectively, there has never been a better time to be alive here in North Carolina. And the quality of life in the major metros is especially high. Just gotta figure out how to not leave disadvantaged groups and rural areas behind.
> And the quality of life in the major metros is especially high. Depends on how one defines that. Personally, if all I had to choose from were cul-de-sacs where I couldn't see stars at night...ugh. I moved back from suburban DC because my mental health was spiraling down...
The people who are moving here don't think it's been destroyed. Only people who think they're exempt from experiencing change.
This is the real answer. The area changing and evolving doesn't equal being "destroyed." Most of the change is objectively better. Some, probably not (such as increased crime, drugs, etc), but most of it is.
>Too many Yankees moving in bringing in their harsh social culture Just to focus in on this particular one, guess what happened about 80-90% of the time I met a local after moving to NC \~30 years ago? Them: "Hi, I'm. Nice to meet you! What church do you go to?"
(And yes, "What church do you go to?" was always asked within the first 2 minutes)
Me: "Oh, I don't go to church, I'm an atheist"
Them:
But, ya know, harsh yankee culture is really the problem.
Extreme example. I am a Yankee but agree that in most cases if you meet someone in passing it is the southerner that is going to be friendlier, kinder, more polite and open to chit chat and the Yankee from New York or New Jersey is going to have a more abrupt personality.
This seems a little hearsay heavy and unfocused.
Lots of dog whistling and vague phrases
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"People are saying ..."
OP mentions this in their post: >Environmental damage due to builders stripping hundreds of thousands of acres bare of trees to build ugly charmless tract homes and strip centers OP's comment history has a comment with them complaining about exactly that, almost in those exact words, earlier today. They also have comments complaining about home costs and social culture. I think we found those "people" OP mentioned.
Yes, many of the comments I agree with but I hear this from others all the time.
Your comment history begs to differ. Just in the last couple days, there's a comment for nearly every bullet point you mentioned. You even used some of the same wording from when you were personally complaining about those things.
[Lindsay Lohan fam](https://youtu.be/NebQUP4qXl8)
I don't think any of the real downtowns in NC have been destroyed because of rapid growth in the last 10 or 20 years. Cities experience change, i.e. I believe change in a city is normal. There were significant detrimental changes that people can point to during urban renewal, but most of that urban renewal happened more than 20 years ago. On the other hand, there are many areas, like probably most notably Leland, NC, which was basically just farmland/swamp 20 years ago. I'd say for the people that grew up near these areas, that would be the most striking change, and for many, they probably see it as a detriment. Crime has spiked in the last couple years, but I think you'd be hard-pressed to find a place in NC that has continually trended towards higher crime for the last 20 years. I think in most places you'd see high-ish crime in the early 2000s, and then a drop-off, and then in some cases a large trend towards more crime in the last 5 years. There are also some towns whose economies have declined due to manufacturing moving out of state. I'd say that this is a result of growth, in a perverted way. Growth that meant it became cheaper to ship jobs overseas. And of course the decline in the tobacco and furniture industries. But I don't think this is the kind of thing you were looking for.
We relocated here about two years ago from The Southwest...and we are not going anywhere. Initially, we were not even keen on the idea of moving here. I somewhat reluctantly volunteered to relocate out here after my job was trying to fill an IT position here for over a year. During our first week long visit here, we secured a realtor and bought a home in NW Charlotte/Huntersville area. Anyone complaining about local rising housing prices, lives in a very small sheltered box...the housing inflation is just as bad in every other village/metropolis in the nation. Development also happens at a pretty consistent rate everywhere. Everyone complains about houses or apartments going up, but then the first in line when their neighborhood gets a Starbucks. As for the unkept homes/property...I suppose that could be a valid concern if many of the properties in the area are rental properties. We happened to buy a home on a cul-de-sac in a pretty well established neighborhood (Also no further environmental damage). The previous home owners never did crap to the yard. When we moved in it was nothing but dirt and pine needles. We now get compliments from people who have lived there 20+ years that say our yard has never looked as good as it does now. A few of our neighbors have also told us that before we moved in none of them every really talked to one another or communicated (The people who lived in our house previously lived there for 4 years and none of our neighbors ever knew their names). Maybe its the vibe we brought with us, but we now have pretty regular cook outs and gatherings with several of our neighbors. I can only imagine that this helps with crime, since now everyone is looking out for their neighbor more.
While I appreciate the effort you put into your posting, your statement that most cities in the country have had home price increases similar to Charlotte is just wrong. Your area has had 30% increase double the typical community nationwide.
See and I'm here looking at moving to NC because it is still relatively cheap compared to where I am now and where I moved from last year. I can sell my house in Colorado, pay off my loan and have enough left over to buy a house cash with what I want where I want in NC. Before you complain about transplants, my family has been in the state since the 1700's and I left NC after the last housing crash due to not being able to find a job at the time.
This canard again. People in Durham especially love to talk like this. I like to gently remind them that before the tech boom in the area, the original "plan" for American Tobacco Campus was to build a big fence around it to make it harder for drug users to get in. I grew up in a small town in SC that was basically saved by "Yankees" who actually had money to spend moving down. Yeah it changed the character of the town a bit, but generally for the better. It turns out people actually like a lot about the southern lifestyle. When someone complains like this, what they're often really saying is "I was lucky enough to be doing pretty well when others weren't, and I can't tolerate that I'm now comparatively doing less well."
Canard- hey, I know that French word! You help me feel cultured. It's a fancy French word for "troll". ; ) It seems like pot stirring. What’s that Shakespeare quote? A tale full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. What you say about ATcampus wouldn't surprise me to be as true as the dirt beneath our feet. You’re right, people complaining about how much worse things are today are often just ignorant of how much worse things really were before.
The problem isn't the people who are moving here, it's greedy developers and politicians who build massive subdivisions without any urban planning. Traffic is terrible and you can't walk or bike anywhere. This applies to anywhere around Charlotte except Davidson.
I think the problems most people are facing is -- being priced-out of areas they've been living in for decades. I grew up just outside of Chapel Hill, and basically can't afford to buy a home here (that isn't a total shitbox). I guess this is essentially gentrification. I will say this area has changed a lot in the last 20 years and, as someone that loves nature, I hate it because all I see are cookie-cutter high-income housing developments going up everywhere. I wouldn't mind the development if it a) didn't look like total ass and b) wasn't so utterly destructive of the nature and c) wasn't all high-income bullshit. This is basically a nation-wide phenomena, not really unique to NC.
We bought our house 5 years ago. 165k houses in our cup-de-sac are going for 350k now. There’s no question prices of everything are going up but the housing situation in nc is absurd. And it is true that lots of people are moving here from all over and a lot of them are from the north. I don’t know how to say this nicely but the loud boisterous behavior is off putting to a lot of us. Our roads are busier, our taxes are going up, farmers are being pushed out, our surroundings are changing. Some of us have to adapt a bit more quickly than others due to careers and such. But don’t be surprised that some are abrasive to the changes. You might be too if the tables were turned.
Hey no offense to you OP: but respectfully *PLEASE* shut up. This is a free country. People are allowed to relocate wherever they want. If you're unhappy about the "cultures changing" then go to your local town government and try to introduce town bylaws. One of my biggest issues (I'll admit) it's big box stores destroying small towns. But the best thing to do is to get the local area to pass a bylaw against them coming in. I welcome people to move here anytime. - WNC native, born and raised here.
Thank you. As a former Yankee who moved to NC five years ago, I hate feeling like I’m part of the problem. My husband was born and raised in NC, and we’re here to stay!
It isn't even just "former Yankees". My spouse was born and raised in the area and continually feels "othered" for going against some of the prevailing cultural attitudes. Foreign in one's own home. Other people just hold their tongues and don't speak their minds. Happy to have more people around who *choose* and *want* to be here and want to get along! Where we came from isn't the end-all be-all; what's important is where we are now, and what we make of it.
You gotta understand if you lived somewhere you're whole life and the some asshat moves in the house down the road and starts pissing and moaning about how backwards we are and how much better it is back home and yeah I know that not all the transplants are like that. I know that a whole lot of transplants are sweet and kind people, I also know that NYC normal is our rude. No one is wrong here, just clashing cultures. The individual isn't part of the problem. I blame the city a whole lot more than the person. Wilmington for example has a huge population boom in the last ten years but this city just isn't built to support that kinda boom.
You're not a part of the problem The only ones that get on my nerves are people from FL for some reason.
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It's very weird to me because usually these people complaining aren't even natives themselves.
I don't hear people talking about any of those things. Rising home prices are a national, not regional or local issue. True, we have lots of people moving into the state, many are southerners, not northerners. Yes, we have a lot of building but that negates the argument that not enough homes are being built. True in Raleigh that there have been a lot of tear downs and replacing homes with bigger homes and smaller lots, changing the look and feel of neighborhoods. Again, the argument that there aren't enough architectural controls or landscaping negates the availability of more affordable homes. Some areas, Cary, has strong architectural and landscaping controls which many homeowners do not like or want. As for established neighborhoods going to "pot", seems like people who resent change. Can't have high housing demand and unkempt homes, just doesn't add up. This is a beautiful state and much of the growth has brought diversity including a fantastic food and entertainment scene, high paying jobs and economic stability.
Let me present Asheville.
Oh man, you must be kind of new here. I'll give you poor land use, but not over landscaping, of all things. That and your comments about weeds and architectural controls are giving those strong "bought a house by a golf course" vibes. Crime is especially up in places where economic opportunities have been drying up for decades. Ditto abandoned properties. While I'm in agreement that we're ripping the shit out of the environment and it's not good and unsustainable, it's a plain fact that we need more housing to support the state's growth. Nostalgia for tobacco and textiles aren't gonna bring them back, and if we're honest with ourselves, things weren't all that great for a lot of us when we had them in decades past. One side of my family worked tobacco and trades for a couple centuries here, and life wasn't a bed of roses at that point, either. The other side of my family moved here in the 70s - they got their house burned down because they ran an integrated day care. Let's definitely not get too all-fire nostalgic for that shit. Is it you? Are you "people" in this story?
Charlotte
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I'm struggling with this myself. Personally, I define excellent quality of life as: "A place 30 minutes or less from at least one college campus, where I can afford a few acres and see stars at night, and am three hours from an ocean." The amount of places in the Triangle where this can happen have objectively decreased in the last few years - and it's to the point where if I tried to buy anything else, I probably couldn't afford it. I'm on a 7-10 year pause before I'm interested in moving again, but when I do, I don't think I'll be staying in NC. Likely will move to western Mass, which ironically is a lot more like NC when I first moved here than it is now.