Moving to get away from the poor

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Augustine777

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Considering Catholic Social Justice teachings, do we have any obligation to not participate in the “big sort” of households? I’m referring to the trend of upper income families buying into exclusive suburbs while low-income households become more concentrated in the left-behind neighborhoods.

We currently live in a working-class neighborhood in a low-income central city. We have four young kids, and we need to move to a larger home. My wife and I see the attraction to moving out to a suburb where everyone is well-off and everything is clean and comfortable.

Our neighborhood isn’t dangerous, and we have decent Catholic schools. We do have to be vigilant, and we have to put up with things we could get away from in the suburbs. We double check all our locks and hide valuables in our cars. We put up with people playing profanity-filled music from their cars. Graffiti. Landlords neglecting nearby houses. We could afford to move where the people who choose these things are out-of-sight and out-of-mind.

However, I have this feeling that if we move to a suburb, we are essentially using the blessings God has given our family to abandon the disadvantaged. We have watched neighborhoods around us decline. When middle class families leave, the retail and local service jobs drop off. City services have to be cut back. The children in the neighborhood don’t cross paths with any married-parent families or people who got ahead by staying in school.

We know as suburbanites we could donate to charities and volunteer at a food pantry (we do these things already). Is that good enough? Can we go relax among the people who are “just like us,” with a clear conscience?
 
Hi Augustine77,

I think the Proverbs say to gather the advice of many wise people, and that will help your plans go better. Here are my two cents:

Do your best. This is what I heard a holy priest say many, many times in his homilies. In my opinion, doing your best means doing well for yourself and for your family. That might mean moving to a better neighborhood, if you can.

As for the people you leave behind, I’d say you can’t know for sure what’s best for them. Maybe someone else needs to “move up” from an even worse neighborhood into the house that you will vacate.

I think that exercising common sense is a way of praising God. Yes, the cross shows us that the world’s wisdom is foolish in God’s eyes, but look at Joseph and Mary. They fled what they knew was going to be a bad time for their baby boy and headed to a safer place, which turned out to be Egypt. And then Jesus didn’t hang around after his resurrection to get picked on some more. He ascended into heaven!

I think you can still serve those in the neighborhood you’re leaving behind. You’ll be able to serve those in your new neighborhood, too. I’m sure you will get your crosses in your new neighborhood, so don’t worry about that.

I’ll pray for you and your family. May they be blessed beyond imagining!
n
 
Also, by “better” and “worse” I don’t necessarily mean “rich” and “poor”. From what you’re describing I think your neighborhood is a “bad” neighborhood in the sense of graffiti, profanity, theft, etc. You will receive your poverty, don’t worry. Blessed are the poor in spirit.
 
MY family moved from the worst part of
the city where we rented an old house
to the upscale suburbs, I sometimes feel
guilty about that. But do what’s best for
your family, and THEN you can do good
works to help OTHERS.
 
Since you have children you should do what is best for them, not the neighborhood. If it were just you, or you and your wife and wanted to stay if you could really do some good, I think that would be fine, but to stay out of a false sense of guilt, not so much. Of course, you don’t have to move into a McMansion, either. A sensible home in an area that is good for your children would be the right thing to do, IMO. You can teach them that they don’t need every new thing that comes along nor the fanciest clothes, etc. to be happy. If you bring them up with good values, then they will pass them along. That’s all you can do when staying in a bad area would mean keeping your children in that bad area, being influenced by it, or, heaven forbid, put in danger because of it. 🙂
 
Your situation sounds a lot like mine. My wife and I have already decided to move away as soon as our finances allow, hopefully in the next year or two. I do not feel bad about wanting to move away and neither should you. You have no obligation to your neighborhood to live there. Good luck finding a new home.
 
You have no obligation to the poor to live in a poor area; it’s not like you were providing for them financially.

ICXC NIKA
 
Della said:
Since you have children you should do what is best for them, not the neighborhood. If it were just you, or you and your wife and wanted to stay if you could really do some good, I think that would be fine, but to stay out of a false sense of guilt, not so much. Of course, you don’t have to move into a McMansion, either. A sensible home in an area that is good for your children would be the right thing to do, IMO. You can teach them that they don’t need every new thing that comes along nor the fanciest clothes, etc. to be happy. If you bring them up with good values, then they will pass them along. That’s all you can do when staying in a bad area would mean keeping your children in that bad area, being influenced by it, or, heaven forbid, put in danger because of it. 🙂
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👍
 
Your responsibility is to your family first, not your neighborhood. You have young kids, and while your morals may be unassailable, your kids will be exposed to a class of kids and adults with poor morals, and are much more likely to be influenced in a negative way. Kids tend to go bad in bad neighborhoods, period.
 
Properly caring for your family’s well being is not necessarily placing God secondary. God did entrust their lives only to you and your wife. 🙂
 
I actually think this can be sinful, depending on your attitude. There can be lots of good reasons to move to a suburban neighborhood. Safety. Better schools. Proximity to work. A better investment of your money. A preferred aesthetic. Etc. getting away from poor people is not in that category. Not wanting your kids around the kids of single mothers is likewise an immoral reason to move. You could actually end up doing more spiritual harm to your kids by teaching them that kind of mindset than they would have received from the influence of a fatherless neighbor.
 
Allegra said:
I actually think this can be sinful, depending on your attitude. There can be lots of good reasons to move to a suburban neighborhood. Safety. Better schools. Proximity to work. A better investment of your money. A preferred aesthetic. Etc. getting away from poor people is not in that category. Not wanting your kids around the kids of single mothers is likewise an immoral reason to move. You could actually end up doing more spiritual harm to your kids by teaching them that kind of mindset than they would have received from the influence of a fatherless neighbor.
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There are plenty of single mother families in suburbia these days, as well, not just in “poor” neighborhoods. Children’s safety, education, and the influences of their peers are the more important things to consider for the children’s well-being. It isn’t that the neighborhood is a poor one as much as it is one, as the OP described it, where they “have to be vigilant, and we have to put up with things we could get away from in the suburbs. We double check all our locks and hide valuables in our cars. We put up with people playing profanity-filled music from their cars. Graffiti. Landlords neglecting nearby houses.” Sounds like good reasons to move no matter how rich or poor the neighborhood.
 
Augustine777 said:
Considering Catholic Social Justice teachings, do we have any obligation to not participate in the “big sort” of households? I’m referring to the trend of upper income families buying into exclusive suburbs while low-income households become more concentrated in the left-behind neighborhoods.

We currently live in a working-class neighborhood in a low-income central city. We have four young kids, and we need to move to a larger home. My wife and I see the attraction to moving out to a suburb where everyone is well-off and everything is clean and comfortable.

Our neighborhood isn’t dangerous, and we have decent Catholic schools. We do have to be vigilant, and we have to put up with things we could get away from in the suburbs. We double check all our locks and hide valuables in our cars. We put up with people playing profanity-filled music from their cars. Graffiti. Landlords neglecting nearby houses. We could afford to move where the people who choose these things are out-of-sight and out-of-mind.

However, I have this feeling that if we move to a suburb, we are essentially using the blessings God has given our family to abandon the disadvantaged. We have watched neighborhoods around us decline. When middle class families leave, the retail and local service jobs drop off. City services have to be cut back. The children in the neighborhood don’t cross paths with any married-parent families or people who got ahead by staying in school.

We know as suburbanites we could donate to charities and volunteer at a food pantry (we do these things already). Is that good enough? Can we go relax among the people who are “just like us,” with a clear conscience?
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Get to know the people in the place you want to move to. I can appreciate wanting to get the kids out of an environment of foul language, petty theft, scandal, and squalor - make sure where you’re going isn’t just more of the same except with money. Appearances can be deceiving. I’m in favour of getting out; I’m just worried that “middle class” is being equated with “morally good.”

I grew up in a Viper’s nest that had all of the outward appearances of a nice middle class environment.
 
Della said:
There are plenty of single mother families in suburbia these days, as well, not just in “poor” neighborhoods. Children’s safety, education, and the influences of their peers are the more important things to consider for the children’s well-being. It isn’t that the neighborhood is a poor one as much as it is one, as the OP described it, where they “have to be vigilant, and we have to put up with things we could get away from in the suburbs. We double check all our locks and hide valuables in our cars. We put up with people playing profanity-filled music from their cars. Graffiti. Landlords neglecting nearby houses.” Sounds like good reasons to move no matter how rich or poor the neighborhood.
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Actually, in most suburbs you have to use locks and hide valuables in your car too. Abs every now and then an entitled middle class teenager is given a car with a loud stereo and picks up his friends to go out with cans of spray paint. That isn’t the point. the point is that one has to be careful not to teach their children that money is equivalent to morality and privilege isn’t synonymous with superiority.
 
Whatever you decide to do, here’s a suggestion - make a habit of praying regularly for the single people, especially women, who have not been able to “make it” very well on a single income or on disability (yes, I mean me) and who may never realize the dream of home ownership at all. Even having savings or an emergency fund for car repairs, etc., is often hard to do. Many of us are not that many years from retirement either. I tried the living in a low income apartment and there was a gang murder 5 blocks away and cockroaches in my apartment. I have since stayed with two different friends, but if the one I’m with now loses her job and has to sell out and move somewhere with family, I’m up the proverbial creek. Okay, sorry for the Debbie Downer :o - all I’m asking is just remember folks like me in prayer. Thanks and God bless and I hope you find the perfect home for all of you. :grouphug:
 
Allegra said:
Actually, in most suburbs you have to use locks and hide valuables in your car too. Abs every now and then an entitled middle class teenager is given a car with a loud stereo and picks up his friends to go out with cans of spray paint. That isn’t the point. the point is that one has to be careful not to teach their children that money is equivalent to morality and privilege isn’t synonymous with superiority.
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I was just going to say this. A well kept housing addition in our suburb just had 15 mailboxes knocked down last night, packages are routinely stolen from porches, and every summer night, someone in the general area has there car broken into / riffled through.

Not major crime but definitely irritating and annoying - and because we are out in the suburbs the police presence is spread very, very thin with most of the coverage in the city proper. 🤷

So don’t assume things will be as picture perfect as the lawns 😃

On the other hand, there’s nothing wrong with moving to a new home that better fits your needs (additional space inside and out, schools, location, investment value for future resale, etc.). Just don’t assume you will automatically get away from “poverty” related problems. (Landlords renting out houses and not vetting the tenants - drug use - so forth - all very, very present in even the high end suburbs.)
 
To think that doing right by your family in their particular circumstance is somehow making light of the poor is really a stretch.
:confused:
 
CradleJourney said:
I was just going to say this. A well kept housing addition in our suburb just had 15 mailboxes knocked down last night, packages are routinely stolen from porches, and every summer night, someone in the general area has there car broken into / riffled through.

Not major crime but definitely irritating and annoying - and because we are out in the suburbs the police presence is spread very, very thin with most of the coverage in the city proper. 🤷

So don’t assume things will be as picture perfect as the lawns 😃

On the other hand, there’s nothing wrong with moving to a new home that better fits your needs (additional space inside and out, schools, location, investment value for future resale, etc.). Just don’t assume you will automatically get away from “poverty” related problems. (Landlords renting out houses and not vetting the tenants - drug use - so forth - all very, very present in even the high end suburbs.)
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You must live in a horrible region.
 
Deus_tecum said:
You must live in a horrible region.
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LOL - not really. More like a region where there’s an active chat room and everything (from dandelion infestations to coyote sightings) gets reported and discussed. I live in a large suburban area with over 500 homes in my subdivision alone and there are dozens of other similar sized additions all around us. So percentage wise it’s actually quite a small number that have issues - but it certainly is upsetting and a big issue to those it happens to and thanks to social media we hear about every instance.

Personally we’ve lived here for 19 years and not had a single issue at all during that entire time. Reported crime is the lowest in our area compared to surrounding areas and we have top ranked schools. I’ve lived where it was much, much worse.

Like most things, it’s all about perception - I was simply pointing out that the perception of a quiet, crime-free life is not guaranteed by location.
 
Don’t sacrifice your children to your Catholic social values. I kept my kids in a school that wasn’t the best, and they were influenced in a negative way.

What you can do, is talk to your priest about helping out a single mother by taking her kids on outings-- fishing, picnics, etc. A couple offered to do that for us (about 30 years ago) but were never able to follow through. It was disappointing, as it’s so important to have male role models, and healthy family models, for kids who don’t live with their fathers.

.
 
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