From bucolic bliss to 'gated ghetto'

[Liberal_in_LA]

From bucolic bliss to 'gated ghetto'
Hemet's Willowalk tract was family-friendly. Then the recession hit.


"We loved how everything was family-oriented," said Willowalk resident Eddie Lopez, left, with wife Maria and six of their children. They bought their 5,000-square-foot house for $440,000 in 2006. It's probably worth about $170,000 now

Reporting from Hemet - The gated community in Hemet doesn't seem like the best place for Eddie and Maria Lopez to raise their family anymore.

Vandals knocked out the streetlight in front of the Lopezes' five-bedroom home and then took advantage of the darkness to try to steal a van. Cars are parked four deep in the driveway next door, where a handful of men rent rooms. And up and down their block of handsome single-family homes are padlocked doors, orange "no trespassing signs" and broken front windows.

It wasn't what the Lopezes pictured when they agreed to pay $440,000 for their 5,000-square-foot house in 2006.

The 427-home Willowalk tract, built by developer D.R. Horton, featured eight distinct "villages" within its block walls. Along with spacious homes, Willowalk boasted four lakes, a community pool and clubhouse. Fanciful street names such as Pink Savory Way and Bee Balm Road added to the bucolic image.

Young families seemed to occupy every house, throwing block parties and holiday get-togethers, and distributing a newsletter about the neighborhood, Eddie Lopez recalled.

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Home foreclosures have devastated neighborhoods throughout the country, but the transformation from suburban paradise to blighted community has been especially stark in places like Willowalk -- isolated developments on the far fringes of metropolitan areas that found ready buyers when home prices were soaring but then saw an exodus as values crashed.

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There are dozens of places like Willowalk, and they are turning into America's newest slums, says Christopher Leinberger, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution. With home values at a fraction of their peak, he said, it no longer makes sense to live so far from the commercial centers where jobs are concentrated.

"We built too much of the wrong product in the wrong locations," Leinberger said.

Thanks to overbuilding, demographic changes and shifts in preferences, by 2030 there could be 25 million more suburban homes on large lots than are needed, said Arthur C. Nelson of the University of Utah. Nelson believes that as baby boomers age and as younger generations buy real estate, the population will abandon remote McMansions for smaller homes closer to shops, jobs and the other necessities of life.

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hemet30-2010mar30,0,7301923.story

[FarCenter]

1. There's no there there...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemet,_California

According the the California Economic Development Department, in 2005 the economy of Hemet was based on four main industries: retail trade, health and educational services, and government. These industries provide 4,734, 4,441, and 3,946 jobs respectively. Other major industries in the city include leisure and hospitality, financial services, professional and business services, construction, and manufacturing. The amount of wage and salary positions in Hemet is 22,769, with a further 1,479 people were self-employed, adding up to a total of 24,248 jobs in the city.

[Liberal_in_LA]

2. Many areas in So California are bedroom communities for LA...if u can stand the soul crushing drive

[FarCenter]

3. Google maps says an hour in traffic to Riverside or San Bernadino

Plus, you're not going to get great gas mileage rolling along with the air conditioner combatting the 98 degree average daily high temperature in July and August.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

4. Vandalism? Renting rooms? Unkept houses?

My god. The travesty.

[girl gone mad]

5. Developers overbuilt..

everywhere, not just in remote suburbs, though the problem is exacerbated by a lack of infrastructure and businesses in these newer communities.

[Liberal_in_LA]

6. Yep, It's interesting how fast Americans are rejecting these McMansions

4 years ago, they could live without the marble countered, 5 bedroom, monstrosities

[Lance_Boyle]

7. More than six kids? These folks should have a TV show.

Damn those duggars and the octomarm for beating them to the TV-deal punch!