Thank Goodness for Immigrants

“Immigrants! They’re buying up all the homes.” It was right after I put my Chestnut Hill, MA home on the market in 2006, and I asked my realtor Mary Ann who was likely to purchase the house I was dying to sell so that my husband Dennis and I could move to a condominium. “Really?” I pressed her, assuming that the buyers would be people like myself -- the grandchildren or great grandchildren of Eastern European Jews.

“The neighborhood has become very popular with Indian and Asian families,” she replied. “It’s in a good public school district, and they like that.” 

Good public schools were the same reason my parents purchased our 2,090 square foot row home in Forest Hills, New York, a section of Queens. And yes, Mary Ann was correct. An Indian immigrant named Shaju ended up buying my house in Chestnut Hill, eventually up-trading for a nicer home in the same neighborhood. 

Today I live in a Brookline condo complex where more of my neighbors were born in India, China, Japan, Russia or Saudi Arabia than the U.S. They were attracted by good public schools and the building’s proximity to the Longwood Medical Area. They work in information technology, medicine and academia.

The point is that the world has changed. And I like my neighbors. Okay, I think one of my Russian neighbors has rough edges. But in the overall scheme of things, that's not a capital offense.

Lately I’ve been distressed by postings I’ve seen on the Facebook page for alumni of Forest Hills High. Some say they no longer feel safe, following an influx of Central Asian or Bukharian Jews in the vicinity of 108th Street, which is right near where my family lived.

I can understand “old-timers” feeling outnumbered, especially by groups of people who speak a foreign tongue, and can come across as clannish. At the same time, real estate values haven’t suffered a bit. Judging by a 2013 discussion with a realtor who happened to be showing my parents’ old home to Russians, property prices were sky high.

“Foreign” is the word that comes to mind when I see what the Bukharians have done in the name of “home improvement,” or built after tearing down old houses on postage stamp lots. And I’m not thinking Paris. 

The brick on my parents’ 1945 row house has since been covered with a granite facade reminding me of the flooring for an office tower. The owners have added an enormous glass and chrome door hood, a bit out of scale with the size of the house, at least for my tastes. The house next door has leveled what was once a hilly front lawn, and replaced it with a patio. Some homeowners have added high brick security walls and ornate bars on the windows – despite the neighborhood’s relative safety.

Kirk Semple’s 2008 New York Times article, Questions of Size and Taste for Queens Houses highlights the tensions between new and old Forest Hills residents: 

“Critics of the new Bukharian architecture in Queens, many of whom are Jewish as well, have presented their complaints in private conversations with elected officials. . . Some have taken the view that the Bukharian community is highly insular and that the Bukharians’ tendency to build different from the rest of the neighborhood reflects that.”

“Get with the program,” I want to shout at some of my schoolmates bemoaning changes in the old neighborhood. Shall I remind them that some of our parents were immigrants who happened to be Holocaust survivors? Do I admit to hearing Grandpa, a physician born to Russian immigrants, complaining: “The German Jews think they’re better than us, and socialize only among themselves.”

The strength of our country is in its diversity, and thank goodness many immigrants have the purchasing power to buy homes – sometimes with cash – and the strength to build businesses providing needed services.