Originally Posted by Reba

In Charleston, most of the division is income based. Poor people live in poor areas. The poor part of residential downtown Charleston is mostly black, not because they are forced to stay there but because they have lived there for generations and don't want to leave. They actually occupy some valuable property that high-price developers want but they refuse to leave. It's part of the gentrification controversy. So there is never any vacancy for poor white people to move into except for Section 8 housing. Some of what used to be mostly black poor areas in the North Charleston area has become almost completely Hispanic. There is culture clash in those areas. In the middle and upper middle class areas there is a good racial and ethnic mix. In the high price areas, there are mostly (but not all) white because they are either old-money Southern gentility, new-money Yankee carpetbaqgers, or wealthy Euros buying vacation mansions.