Is Gentrification Really Bad?

[kevin lee]

This conversation got weird quick. That's what I get for clicking on old people's posts.

[d-usa]

Gentrification doesn’t really have an inherently racial component, so the comments about race and stuff don’t do much other than show the racial stereotypes held by various posters.

In a nutshell all it means is “changing a neighborhood so that it caters to people with a higher income level”. This can happen in many ways: improving housing, removing multi-unit rental and converting it into single-unit rental stock, converting rental housing into owning housing, converting affordable shopping into upscale shopping, removing a grocery store and turning it into other businesses, removing affordable dining options in favor of upscale dining options, changing the type of workforce needed in the neighborhood, and so forth. It ends up driving up the cost to rent or own, and/or driving up the cost of living there by increasing the costs of groceries or removing opportunities for employment and now requiring transportation instead of having what you need in the neighborhood. This changes the demographic that can afford to live in the neighborhood based on income (poor people come in many colors) because the affordable housing stock gets depleted.

The other side of the coin is that doing nothing in a neighborhood is also bad and even poor neighborhoods are in need of attention. Sometimes the line between gentrification and improving neighborhoods for the people already living there ends up getting pretty blurry.

I think the difference between neighborhood vitalization and gentrification comes down to the attitude of the people making the changes. If developers or plans don’t care about the people already there and are not concerned about impacting them, it’s Gentrification. If people move into the neighborhood complaining about the poor people living in “their” new neighborhood and wanting them gone, it’s Gentrification. If developers add needed services, make needed improvements to infrastructure, and in the process make the neighborhood friendlier to people living there, it’s not gentrification even if it brings in new people and increases the cost a bit.

Intent is the main factor IMO. We shouldn’t encourage gentrification, but we also shouldn’t ignore revitalization because we fear gentrification either. It’s a balancing act.

[Plutonic Panda]

This conversation got weird quick. That's what I get for clicking on old people's posts.

I'm in 25 and live in one of the most liberal neighborhoods in the country. Nice try.

Gentrification doesn’t really have an inherently racial component, so the comments about race and stuff don’t do much other than show the racial stereotypes held by various posters.

I completely agree.

[kevin lee]

Well I guess you're weird for another reason and thank you.

[Plutonic Panda]

Well I guess you're weird for another reason and thank you.

I am very weird but that isn't because I disagree with you. If you truly believe those that disagree with you are weird than I'd suggest looking in mirror and rethinking that concept.

[kevin lee]

Well I did say for another reason. Everyone that disagrees with me isnt weird though. If that were the case then I would be weird too lol..

[mugofbeer]

Why make some elaborate comment to a trash statement. Is urban re-development good? It can be. Is beautification and streetscaping good? also can be. But gentrification is specifically a term used to describe wealthier blocks of people moving capital and themselves in to working class or lower income neighborhoods to specifically increase property values to generate wealth. It breaks up cultures and forces out long time residents. No, it isn't "good" you might as well just say "being rich and white is good". The study in this article has it's points, but yes gentrification DOES force out residents that can't afford the neighborhood anymore, and YES it happens here which is why many of my close friends are being pushed further and further west and away from their service jobs in the urban core, and YES it is caused by blockbusting real estate developers. Is it good for the city at large? perhaps, but to say "I like gentrification" is just a tone deaf insensitive thing that only a wealthier white man could say, and it's stupid.

You make certain points which are valid but its rare for developers to be able to assemble large tracts of "blockbuster" properties in an area where there are many, if not dozens of property owners. The cause, here, is high inflow of new 20 - 40s who have good salaries. It's not neferious and it's not racist. It's a natural progression.

The larger developments have primarily been redevelopment of rail yards, warehouses or blocks of crap retail. Occasional residential has gone down for larger scale development but those are generally on major traffic arteries where single-family residential isn't really appropriate.

Here in Denver, the demand for inner city residential has been so high for so long, tear-downs and pop-tops are common. This does displace some less -wealthy residents. Denver has hundreds of small, older lower-rent apartment buildings in which rents have risen significantly. This definitely displaces lower-income folks.

As far as trying to inject race into this equation, grow up. There are a decent number of Asian, African American and Hispanic folks in this business and they are part of the process, too. Flips, rehabs and renovations are multi-racial.

In cities such as Denver, the answer is to require lower rent units in any large scale development. As far as single family homes, there is no good market derived answer because property values can't be controlled and property values dictate sales prices and rents. Only government can provide such a solution on a large scale and that has nearly always been a disaster.

Just as l have done twice in my life, people sometimes have to move away for economic reasons.

If you are talking about OKC, I'd like to see examples because housing is cheap and there is plenty of it available if someone is forced to move.

[BDP]

Gentrification doesnÂ’t really have an inherently racial component, so the comments about race and stuff donÂ’t do much other than show the racial stereotypes held by various posters.

I just want to say that I do not think the OP, Platunic Panda, had any racial motivations in his original post, nor did he/she state any racially malignant ideas or even telegraph any, by stating his/her support for gentrification, even if I do think that's a weird thing to declare .

Also, I agree with you that the concept of gentrification is not inherently racially motivated. It's motivated by money, obviously. To be specific, real estate money and/or equity in that real estate. Buy low / sell, rent high. It's a simple... numbly simple, concept. The kind of BS you get in a microeconomics 101 class.

In general, though, the simple mechanism of gentrification is motivated by the idea that a neighborhood that has long been undesirable for investment, by time or circumstance, eventually becomes one worthy of investment, either by geography, or, most likely, by scarcity.

But the thing is, what makes a neighborhood ripe for this type of gentrification in America? It didn't happen yesterday, and it didn't happen in a vacuum. Laws, that is statutes, helped to create it. And, I hate to say it, but, in a lot of cases, they did so on a racial basis...

So, yeah, at face value in 2019, it definitely does not seem racial. But only if you know nothing about American history and who could own real estate and when.

Whether you know it or not, who could own real estate in America was, in fact, statutorily based on race for most of America's existence (you can look up the statutes).

So, yeah, the fundamental idea of gentrification, that is, investing in a down trodden neighborhood to elevate your return on that investment does not in any way sound like racism or make you a racist... but the history behind it says the practice of gentrification, as we know it today, is, in fact, the result of long standing racism.

And not the kind of racism you might see on YouTube today with people yelling at each other at Starbucks, but the systemic kind that actually matters. The kind that says you are no longer a slave, but you can not own property or accumulate wealth for decades... the same decades in which we can, because, well, why not?... well, that's rhetorical, except to those that understand the discussion.

That's basically how property statutes were written for over 200 years in this country. You can disagree with them, as I do, but that's how it is.

Gentrification can be a boon to some of these neighborhoods and it would be awesome if it played out that way. But gentrification is wholly driven by property owners.

Which is why gentrification is not racial, until you learn the racial qualifications long embedded in property ownership in this jurisdiction of the United States of America...

[Plutonic Panda]

^^^ Thank you BDP. The point behind my post was to provide a report made contrary to popular opinion in major cities that gentrification is the devil and oddly enough I've noticed those living in gentrified areas like Highland and Echo Park love to hate on it. I have noticed especially in LA that the gentrified neighborhoods are ethnically diverse. I wanted no conversation about race as it affects all of us and there is no need to make divisive statements(referring to a few other posters).

[mugofbeer]

In Denver, it's become a racial issue because an Ink Coffee shop putvout a sidewalk sign that read "proudly gentrifying the neighborhood." This angered all the usual race personalities - even the Mayor. Demands were being made that the coffee shop be closed and turned into a community center. The shop was picketed, calls for boycotts came, commissions were set up, programs were started. Redevelopment continues. As has been said, it's a simple buy low sell high equation. You can't stop it unless government buys the property and thats what Denver's Mayor is proposing.

[checkthat]

Great post BDP. It was recently reported that Texas still has race based deed restrictions, although they are currently unenforceable. The below article, from three weeks ago, has a good bit of history:

Decades-Old Deed Restrictions on Race Still Found in Texas

Though they have been unenforceable for generations, the impact of racial restrictions is still felt today. Nearly all communities protected by deed restrictions in the early 20th century excluded minorities, pushing black and Hispanic residents into neighborhoods without restrictions. As a result, many of the uses banned in a deed-restricted community -- industrial sites, liquor stores, multifamily homes -- could pop up at any time in the communities where minorities settled, often destabilizing the neighborhood or prompting sudden price swings -- in both directions.

While it may seem funny to say something like "hurr durr, white flight bad, but white gentrification bad too??" That betrays an ignorance of history and the reasons things are the way they are today. The government subsidized "white flight" to the suburbs while preventing others from taking advantage of similar opportunities through policies such as redlining and deed restrictions. It is no surprise that those who were allowed to generate wealth through home ownership are now able to use that wealth to gentrify the areas they once abandoned.

Here is a good read on the way official policies have led to our current environment:

The Color of Law
A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America
By Richard Rothstein

In The Color of Law (published by Liveright in May 2017), Richard Rothstein argues with exacting precision and fascinating insight how segregation in America—the incessant kind that continues to dog our major cities and has contributed to so much recent social strife—is the byproduct of explicit government policies at the local, state, and federal levels.

[Plutonic Panda]

It must be impossible for some people to not bring up race. Once again the post above me basically makes an argument the white man is bad and damned if he does and damned if he doesn't. It isn't funny and racism isn't funny. Though comments like that may be made in jest, there is a serious underlying tone. This isn't about denying history or ignoring it. This is about moving forward and not making every single issue known to man about race. Cars, cities, developments, wealth, global warming, transportation, government, technology, etc. it's all racist. Everything is racist. If you disagree you are racist.

PS, that post isn't directed at Check That as I don't know this person but rather the general underlying theme those who share sentiments in the post above seem to have based on my anecdotal accounts. The logic and rationalism seems to be thrown out the window at the drop of any probabilities that yesterdays racism problems are disappearing and today's issues,though absolutely influenced by the past, might be a result of something else other than racism.

[mugofbeer]

The above posts you refer to bring up thoughts of recent history but the white flight of the 1960s is hardly ancient history and resulting changes have hardly become so entrenched as to become culturally significant.

Three generations after white flight, demographic changes are the cause of gentrification with the 20 - 50 year olds wanting to live close to "the action" and maybe get by without a car. Other influences in some cities are the gay community doing remodels, the TV craze of remodeling and a desire to NOT live in ticky-tacky houses that all look just the same. People desire the urban life which is a 180 degree change from the 1960s.

The exodus of whites from some areas or what caused liquor stores to be bunched in black neighborhoods in Texas in the 60s is irrelevant to gentrification. It is a problem of the 2010s and going forward and ITS a problem mostly in certain high cost cities. I don't think the issue is of much relevance in OKC due to low housing costs and an abundance of available land. The answer, in effected areas, is to require developers to include significant numbers of affordable housing units when redeveloping. You can't stop a natural migration without socialistic government intervention.