<p>Actually, Yale has made lots of money by investing in real estate in the area. As a result of the massive influx of people and investment capital into New Haven, as I detailed in another recent post, hundreds of private developers (many from NYC and other cities on the Eastern Seaboard) are now scurrying to build condominiums and office buildings in the area, and thousands of luxury apartments and million-dollar condos have recently come on-line. A developer even recently built a massive cinema megaplex in downtown New Haven (2 blocks from Yale), above which sit dozens of apartments going for nearly $2,000 per month. None of them were subsidized by Yale. Your figures are again, incorrect. Prices have quintupled in the downtown area since 2000, much like Williamsburg, Brooklyn.</p>
<p>You simply can not compare central New Haven using its 18th-century boundaries with a small borough/suburb like Cambridge, which is just a boring little extension of Boston. New Haven is the center of a very large metropolitan area and as such must be considered on completely different terms. See below.</p>
<p>Exactly like New York City, of course New Haven is 43% white because immigrants tend to live towards the center of a city, and the demographics you’re using for the “City of New Haven” (again, with those artificial boundaries from the 1700s that don’t take the whole city into account) only consider the very innermost area. NYC has the exact same demographics - about a third white, a third black, and a third other. As far as income goes, the average income in immediate central New Haven, again, is lower because of the tens of thousands of college students who live there. New Haven is one of the best college towns in the country. In fact, Storrs, CT has the lowest income in the State - it’s home to UConn. If you take the wider area into account, like within a short 30 minute drive, again, New Haven is one of the richest cities in the entire country. Even if you just look at the central area, the ten poorest central cities in the country by the percentage of people who actually live in poverty are Brownsville, Laredo, San Bernadino, New Orleans, Providence, RI (home to Brown), Hartford, Newark, Athens, Syracuse, and Miami — New Haven is not on the list.</p>
<p>Anyhow, this is how the country as a whole is starting to look, and if you want to retreat off into a gated community of all white people, be my guest. But the fact is, most people want to live amidst diversity, which is why urban places like New York City, New Haven and the South End are now considered to be the most exciting places to live, and perhaps why Yale’s applications have increased 60% since 1999, the highest in the Ivies, while Princeton’s have stagnated going up only 17%. Yale is now the most selective undergraduate program in the United States, a trend reflected in its graduate schools as well. It’s not just because Yale has the best academics and best social and cultural life of any Ivy by a long shot - it’s also because New Haven is now easily one of the most desirable cities in the country.</p>
<p>Finally, in terms of crime, Harvard’s status as a campus in a boring, suburban, early-closing location actually makes it much more dangerous than Yale. According to the Harvard Police: <a href=“http://www.stalcommpol.org/data.html[/url]”>http://www.stalcommpol.org/data.html</a>. Any resident of Manhattan will tell you the same thing - the more active and vibrant the streetscape (e.g., the more it looks like the Champs-Elysees, Downtown New Haven, Greenwich Village or Union Square and the more bars, late-night falafel shops and 24/7 diners it has), the safer the area is.</p>