Is Harlem really like this?

I recently saw a DIY home improvement show that profiled three black men and their apts. I always viewed Harlem as being a poor, rundown, dangerous, black community, but the men and the houses were quite the opposite. These men were very highly educated, appeared to have alot of money, and actually spoke more sophisticated than most white people I know (I'm white, too). I apologize to the masses for having been so stereotypical about Harlem, but is Harlem really better than it's portayed, or have I just really been in the clouds? I'm not from there nor have I ever been there, but I honestly always thought it was a dump. Go ahead, bash me for whatever reasons you like, I deserve it. I'd just like to say that show really opened my eyes. They were in Sugar Hill area. Is that an upscale area?

Public Comments

1. Harlem did used to be like you described. In the early 90's there were more shootings and crackhouses...it was like a war zone. But NYC real estate prices drove investors into these "bad neighborhoods". Places like Harlem are being transformed almost by the hour. Although there are still some bad sections, Harlem is nowhere near as bad as it once was. you can see in new buildings and expensive housing, that its changing for the better.
2. Even the bad neighborhoods have some really beautiful housing. Harlem was originally developed in the early 1900s as the subway was being built up the length of Manhattan, by white developers hoping to attract wealthy white people, but there was more housing than met the demand. An enterprising black real estate agent thought it would be worthwhile to attract wealthy black residents instead, hence Harlem as we know it now. It was a rough neighborhood in the 70s and 80s, but a lot of those old houses are still beautiful, and the neighborhood has gone through a lot of development over the last 5-8 years, with lots of upscale shopping, new development, etc. Two big reasons are that Bill Clinton put his office on 125th Street and that a lot of young, white professionals moved to Harlem to escape high rents elsewhere in Manhattan. So it's gentrifying now. Some of it still looks rough, but a lot of it is nice. Incidentally, there's a block in Crown Heights -- one of Brooklyn's stereotypically bad neighborhoods -- that was just voted as the greenest in Brooklyn by the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. New York is a lot nicer than movies give it credit for.
3. No its worse !!!