WEST VALLEY CITY — In 1978, the people who lived in the split-entry tract homes that line West Valley City's Woodledge Drive were just as cookie cutter as the architecture: young, white and Mormon.
Aside from a few renovations, some bangs and stains, the homes haven't changed much over the years. The residents, though, now hail from more than five countries, including El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Chile and Russia.
"There aren't many of us originals left," said Kent Buckner, 58, who's watched Woodledge Drive transform from his front porch. "Seems like everyone's moved on and moved out."
When immigrants move in, native residents of a neighborhood are more likely to move out, according to a study released this week by the American Sociological Association. As a result, the residential segregation of Hispanics — which represent the lion's share of Utah's immigrants — is on the rise.
"There's been a lot of talk about the progression of racial attitudes and the idea that we live in a color blind society, but people's behavior seems to indicate otherwise," said Kyle Crowder, the study's author and a professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "Whites are still pretty resistant to sharing neighborhoods with non-whites."
U.S. Census data indicates Salt Lake City is the fifth most integrated metropolitan area in the country, but because the state has relatively few minorities, the data is deceiving, said Pam Perlich, a senior research economist at the University of Utah Bureau of Economic and Business Research. Statisticians measure residential segregation on a scale from 0 to 1. A score of 0.6 or above is considered "high segregation." Latinos in Salt Lake City score a 0.587. African Americans score a 0.623. Pacific Islanders score a 0.8.
When Buckner purchased his home, a boxy four bedroom with white aluminum siding, for $36,000 in 1978, his neighbors were Caucasians — like him — who were just starting out their families. For the first decade, Buckner spent summer evenings chatting it up with his baby boomer neighbors. "We had kids everywhere," he said. They served macaroni and cheese at neighborhood parties and swapped parenting advice.
As the children got taller, though, people began to move. They wanted bigger houses, nicer yards, more upscale neighborhoods.
"They just outgrew us, I guess," Buckner said.
In their place came immigrants — people of all ages and colors. Neighborhood block parties are now played out to the tune of merengue music. Buckner takes his Mexican neighbors plates of cookies. They give him fish, rice, beans and other "colorful, flavorful, wonderful stuff" in return, he said.
West Valley City is 45 percent minority. Thirty-one percent of residents speak a language other than English at home.
"I like the diversity," Buckner said. "It's fun."
But other neighbors whisper.
Many of the newcomers don't speak English, they complain. Or they don't understand city ordinances that prohibit things like adding tin-roofed shanties to the side of one's house. Yards have fallen into disrepair. Three or four families sometimes cram into one house, their cars overflowing from driveways to dead lawns.
"It's depressing how things have gone downhill," said Cindy Wilkey, 53, who lives around the corner from Buckner. "It has definitely gotten to the point where we've talked about moving."
According to Crowder's research, native resident's attitudes towards immigrants haven't changed since the 1960s and 1970s.
"People today are just as reactive to a high concentration of immigrants as they were back then," Crowder said.
For west side of the Salt Lake valley, residential segregation has almost become the norm, said Armando Solorzano, a professor of ethnic studies at the University of Utah who has studied Hispanic culture in Utah for 15 years. In some areas, schools are 92 and 94 percent Latino.
When immigrants arrive in the United States, they look for cheap real estate, he said. On average, immigrants make 37 percent less than native born workers with the same educational experience, according to the Congressional Research Service. They are more likely than their white neighbors to rent instead of buy.
"They cannot afford to live on the east side of town," Solorzano said.
The native residents of the neighborhood, mostly working class Caucasians, leave because they associate the immigrants with crowded housing and poor real estate upkeep — both of which lead to lower property values, he said. Studies show, however, that areas with high rates of immigration tend to see a boost in housing prices.
The city's evolution hasn't gone unnoticed by city government.
"We are losing a lot of good families," said West Valley City Mayor Mike Winder. "But, in the immigrants, we're gaining a lot of good families."
Winder is fighting hard to both retain native residents and welcome immigrants.
In the past two years, he has doubled the size of his residential code enforcement team. The crime rate is the lowest it's been in nearly half a decade.
"We're really trying to crack down, keep neighborhoods nice," he said.
The city is also in the process of forming a diversity council, a group of people who will devote their time to community outreach. Last month, he announced a citywide initiative to learn English.
"We want a united community," he said. "We don't want everyone separated into groups by race."
Alexis Valdivia, who moved to the U.S. from Chile 10 years ago with her family and lives near Buckner and Wilkey, said her white neighbors often make the mistake of lumping all Hispanics into one category, not recognizing the cultural differences between people from Honduras and Mexico and Chile.
It is true, she said, that some neighbors don't take care of their yards. She doesn't think, however, it's fair to place sole blame on immigrants.
"People usually expect the Hispanics to be like that, but there are some people who are not Hispanic and their yards are dying," she said. "I guess it just depends on the person."
She does her best to educate her neighbors. Every Sept. 18, Chile's independence day, she invites everyone to her backyard for a barbecue.
"You learn a lot about different cultures," Valdivia says. "You can't get that in Chile."
For his part, Buckner plans to stick around.
"I think as native residents we think we've got the world by the tail," he said. "We think we have the only culture that's worth living. But if you take the time to meet people, there are lots of things other cultures do better than we do."
e-mail: estuart@desnews.com
— Contributing: Kassi Cox