In the United States, your social class is one of the first things people judge most about you. Typically, if you make more money than average, you’re considered a hard worker and smart. However, if you’re middle class or below, you may be considered the opposite– not a hard worker and unintelligent. In this photo essay, I took photos of upper class, middle class, and lower class homes in various different locations in order to show the difference between classes. For this first photo, I went into a wealthier neighborhood in Rochester Hills, MI. This house is a two-story home with 4 bedrooms and 3.5 baths. I researched the estimated home value– $2.4 million. Not pictured are the multiple cars in their driveway ranging from a Mercedes all the way to a Bentley. I believe that it’s evident that the family that lives here is aware of their good finances. This home is one of the nicest homes I’ve seen; it represents the higher class. Personally, growing up, I had always wanted a house like this one– but my single mother was never able to afford it. I was definitely jealous of the people that lived in homes like this one. In my eyes, if you had a kitchen with an island in the middle and more than one car, you were royalty. And I’m sure that I wasn’t the only child that thought this.
This photo was taken in the exact same neighborhood as the previous house, just a few streets over. We can see that this house is older. The porch light is similar to those from the 90’s and 2000’s. The car is also an older model. I researched this house and found out that it is worth less than the previous: $1.5 million. Although the outside looks a bit older (and has more character than the previous), the inside of the home was renovated in 2022. Both of these houses were found in the same neighborhood, but in some ways they’re drastically different. This house is more ‘lived in.’ I can tell that a family lives here, whereas the other one, I can only assume a family lives there. Although I have a family, we didn’t live in a house this big because we couldn’t afford it. Even if it’s in the same neighborhood as the house shown before, it was still out of our price range. I had friends that lived in houses like this one, and although they had more money than I did, they were more down-to-earth than the other kids who lived in even nicer and more lavish homes. The richer people are, the more things they own. They try to prove their dominance by buying expensive things in excess. This house shows the social class line beginning to blur into the upper middle class instead of the upper class. The neighborhood embodies the hierarchical social category regarding social class, and it’s evident by the divide that is beginning to form.
Every street in this neighborhood has their own street sign. This neighborhood’s street signs, to me, are fancy. In most places in the United States, street signs are blue or green in color, they’re usually reflective, and their lettering is not gold. Upon closer inspection with this sign, it was hard metal, whereas in middle/lower class neighborhoods, the street signs are simply sheet metal. Street signs have never been used to prove the point of someone’s socioeconomic status, but in this case, it’s safe to assume that these nicer, aesthetically pleasing, and eye-catching street signs are associated with a nicer neighborhood. I grew up in a lower-middle class neighborhood. Our street signs would regularly fall over if someone dinged it with their car. Or, teenagers would steal some street signs. I grew up in a neighborhood where our street signs’ names were ridiculous (the street I grew up on was named Twitty). Whereas, while I was driving around this neighborhood, I didn’t find any issues with their sign The upper class are known to be wealthy, have large amounts of property or a big property, and they pull a lot of weight regarding economic policy. Something as miniscule as a street sign can indicate a person’s social status. For this photo, I drove to a new neighborhood to see upper-middle class homes. This neighborhood was only a three minute drive from the previous neighborhood, yet there are already so many differences. First, we can see that the house is smaller. It’s not a two story, what seems to be some sort of ‘cloth’ barrier in the front, and signs of construction. The neighborhood before had no signs of open construction or any signs of maintenance. But in this neighborhood, I saw many construction workers working on pipelines outside.
Currently, construction projects in neighborhoods are talked about more than the average person would think– government wise. A German sociologist, Max Weber, questioned the importance of the theory of social class in political contexts.
After perusing the last neighborhood, I decided to move onto a neighborhood nearby– this was only down the road. You can see the vast difference between upper class, middle class, and lower class. I researched this house and found that the home value is $300,000. This is still a very expensive house, but with the current economy, anything is expensive. This house was built in 1962. Whereas the other houses were built in 1994 or later. With this house, it’s evident that the windows are more rundown, the door is a screen door, not glass or wood like the previous houses shown. Even the mailbox on the front lawn is old, wooden, and made of sheet metal. From the first neighborhood I went to all the way to this one, people may assume different things. For example, someone may presume that the owners of this home don’t work hard and that they may be uneducated. Whereas in the first neighborhood, the owners of those homes may be seen as the opposite: hard workers and highly educated. Whereas in the middle class neighborhood, the inhabitants of the home can be called a worker and “probably educated.” But what I see when it comes to all of these homes/neighborhoods is varying factors. This home is obviously lived in, and there is most likely more than one person living here. Maybe one of the people that live here is currently in high school– there is a high school only five minutes from this neighborhood. Or maybe it’s a family home and whoever currently lives there is just trying to save their money. There are a multitude of reasons as to why someone may live where they do, but making assumptions of their social class won’t always be accurate. In the town I grew up in, the majority of the neighborhoods looked like this one. Anytime I would drive home, I would always see kids outside, whereas in nicer neighborhoods, I never saw kids outside. Maybe it was because they could afford video game consoles and I couldn’t. But I had friends from my neighborhood, not just from school. We would play outside from morning to night, and I wouldn’t trade that for anything. When I drove through this neighborhood more, I saw toy cars, toy shovels, and more. This is, evidently, a family neighborhood– and it was the most familiar to me.
This house is extremely similar yet different from the last one. The key difference is the color. Houses in nicer and more expensive neighborhoods are vastly different. The first two houses used in this photo essay don’t look alike at all– they have many differences that distinguish one from the other.
When I was younger, any time I invited someone to come to my house, I would tell them that “it’s the white one at the very end,” (I lived at the very end of the street in a light beige-white house). I genuinely don’t know how people in more developed neighborhoods describe where they live. In many nice neighborhoods, I have seen wrap around driveways– so is that how people describe the home they live in? A fancy driveway? The difference between me describing my home by the color of it, and someone else describing they’re home by their driveway, I feel, shows our different social class. Not all homes in a fancy neighborhood have a wrap around driveway. Instead, they may have a wrap-around porch– or even a bigger house. From my experience, I have heard many people from nicer neighborhoods describe their homes as “the one with the four door garage” or “the one next to the lake.” Whereas in middle-lower class homes, we describe it by color, not size or specific quality.
Earlier in this photo essay, I used a photo of a street sign in a “proper” neighborhood compared to more traditional street signs. The street sign in this photo perfectly captures what an average street sign is– well, at least to me. I grew up with street signs that looked exactly like this one. But, if I grew up in the fancier neighborhood, my standards for a street sign would be different. In the background of this photo, we can see three different houses. Two of them look extremely similar, but the one on the left is a 2-story– to me, two stories mean that you have more money. However, when I drove past this house, I saw a “For Sale” sign. I looked up the house online and found out that it is the only 2-story in the neighborhood and that it’s been on the market for nearly one year. The asking price for this home is $785,000. This neighborhood primarily consists of lower-middle class. No one wants to live in a $785,000 home when they can find another house that suits their needs for cheaper. Plus, not everyone can afford to live in this house– I certainly can’t– and I grew up in this social class.
