Why did Jess think that the people in the old Perkins place wouldn't last there?

The answer to this question can be found at the end of chapter 1.
Jess is picking beans when May Belle comes to him and tells him that there are some new people "moving into the Old Perkins place." Jess wipes the hair from his eyes and looks over to the Old Perkins place to see a large moving truck parked outside—with (what he assumes is) "a lot of junk" in it.
Jess thinks that these people won't last very long at the Old Perkins place because the Old Perkins place was "one of those ratty old country houses you moved into because you had no decent place to go and moved out of as quickly as you could." Jess doesn't think much more about who these people might be; instead, he drops his beans into the basket, swats away the flies, and heads home to help his mother put the beans into cans.
What he of course doesn't know at this point is that one of the people who has moved into the Old Perkins place is Leslie Burke, who, thankfully for him, does stay around for longer than he initially expects.