Is Gentrification a Bad Thing?

[Andy Capp]

Does gentrification promote the greater social good? I'd have to study it more in depth but my assumption is that it does. In which case I'm in favor of it

I also don't lose sleep over renters forced to rent elsewhere. I witnessed my mother lose her life savings during the housing meltdown through no fault of her own (she's a realtor who went from making ~$250k annually to less than $40k once the market was eviscerated). In the end she had to walk away from the home she'd spent her entire life working and saving for. So no, I'm not really moved by the idea of a renter who's invested nothing being asked to invest nothing somewhere else.

If you're making $250K annually, how in the fuck do you lose your life savings? By not having any? Where the fuck on this planet can you go and not be able to save 10's of thousands (or far more) every single year?

And no offense to your mom. I just don't get how that's even remotely possible unless you are totally unable to conceive that things can ever go bad for you just because you make a lot of money.

 

[faustian]

If you're making $250K annually, how in the fuck do you lose your life savings? By not having any? Where the fuck on this planet can you go and not be able to save 10's of thousands (or far more) every single year?

And no offense to your mom. I just don't get how that's even remotely possible unless you are totally unable to conceive that things can ever go bad for you just because you make a lot of money.

She wasn't making $250k her entire life. That started circa 1996 and in 2001 she purchased her dream home at just under $1 MM. By 2008 the value had dropped south of $700k and her income as a realtor was barely enough to cover the monthly utility/assessments/ins/tax. She refused to give up on it and then eventually she was underwater. So selling wasn't an option. She basically drained her savings paying the mortgage to try to keep the house. She finally had to walk away from it in 2014

 

[panamaican]

Well that's fucked. As if life weren't bad enough for poor people (of any race) to begin with. Now they have Trotsky advocating for them.

Full disclosure- I'd fucking kill myself if I ever needed a pretend lawyer charging $5 an hour to defend or advocate for me. If you're reading this and you've used Trotsky's legal services it's not OK. #YouToo.

I'd take @panamaican any day, even though he though he's move more left and left everyday.

I haven't moved. The far end of the right's spectrum is getting further and further from reality and I'm appearing to move left as a result, regardless of how consistent I remain. And of course you should hire me over pretty much any lawyer you know or can imagine...except Matlock. Definitely hire Matlock.

 

[IIIIIIII]

i don't see a difference between gentrification and prosperity. i think we'd all agree that prosperity is good. the problem, is lack of education to the poor, and the willingness to spend money on research and development to uplift the rest of society.

 

[HunterSdVa29]

no, not when it's the type that brings money INTO a community

 

[IIIIIIII]

No it’s not. Shithole neighborhoods economically improve and become safer to live in. Why do liberals hate this?

because they want to feel like saints by not forcing poor people to move, while they relax in their upscale, gentrified neighborhoods, drinking overly expensive lattes.

 

[IIIIIIII]

Good if you own. Bad if you rent.


Personally I think it's fine as long as there is reasonable rent control in place for existing residents. Oakland just started basing their rent increases on CPI this year. A landlord cannot raise rent beyond the regional CPI increase, with a few exceptions (like banking a previous years increase). Curious to see how that goes. When I lived there, my rent rose from $2,400/month to $3,000 a month over 4 years (moved just before the 5th increase). Under the new laws, that would've been just shy of $2,600 instead.

i personally don't agree with this. the reason why, is because sought-after areas will always net more money than less sought after areas. and that is how it should be. if you can't afford to live in a certain neighborhood, then you have to move. it's not like we can maintain a certain price for all rent at one number forever. that's simply unfair. poor people have to leave if they can't afford to live in certain areas. people who have money and move to an area will improve upon it, and that's how we progress. keeping things stagnant, so we can pat ourselves on the back about how much we care, isn't the right approach.

 

[irish_thug]

can you believe how much italian immigration of the early 20th century changed our national palate? how horrific it is.

Uh, yeah. Jersey shore anyone?

 

[irish_thug]

I thought Four Brothers and Higher Learning were alright.

Four brothers was a good watch. I think higher learning is criminally underrated. But his point mostly stands.

 

[irish_thug]

I noticed an interesting gentrification dynamic where my sister lives. She's in this old low-rise building in an old neighbourhood in Scarborough (east side of Toronto) where it's a bunch of these buildings and they're filled with lower-income white people. A lot of people on disability, old people, people with addiction and mental health issues, etc. Well these corporations buy up these old buildings (my sister's is owned by an infamous company from Sweden), they do up the units throw stainless steel appliances and charge like fuckin $1500 for a 1 bedroom. They can't just jack up the old white people's rent more than the legal annual amount, of course they try (sometimes successfully) to take advantage of loopholes to charge more if you did renovations even if the people didn't want it. So the units are being filled up with "racialized" people as my kid's teachers would call them. My sister is white but her boyfriend is Asian, the people across the hall from them is a young family from El Salvador, there's a young lesbian couple like 21 year old girls, the black one is HOT and the other one is Asian and dressed like a thugged out guy with tats and cornrows. There's a Brazilian family and this business looking black chick who has a little dog. And probably more and the neighbourhood is getting filled with younger upscale "marginalized" people and new shops are opening where it used to be dive bars and shit. The same old gentrification game, cycle, whatever you want to call it, just this time the racial roles are reversed in a way.

The housing market and rental market has been fuckin nuts in Toronto for a while and a huge problem is these corporations, especially foreign ones, buying up properties and causing the market to go way up. Situations like this are obvious side effects of capitalism, trade and foreign investment agreements etc I guess but we need to be able to figure out a way to put the needs of the people before moneyed interests. But governments never really do that because they only need your vote once every few years but they need money all year round.

I'm so glad I don't live in Scarborough any more. The small pockets of suburb are rapidly disappearing.

 

[gannima]

Understood. And while I would concede that this can potentially be a painful process that dissolves those types of tight-knit communities, particularly in the short term, would it not at the same time be a process of cultural integration that facilitates the long-term success of those same populations? From a cultural perspective, it's not to say that all of their culture will be lost. We experience the influence of Latin American culture virtually every day in music, food, and through some of the sharing of customs. It's currently Black History Month, and the effects of black American culture are omnipresent in our system, as evidenced by how often the 14th Amendment is cited in Supreme Court rulings and shapes our national laws and rights. Asian culture, to include the cultures of the Indian subcontinent, has become synonymous with the thought leaders that are driving scientific and medical advancement in the United States. One could easily argue that this is the beauty of the melting pot in America: breaking up those communities is not the destruction of those cultures, but the proliferation of their best components into the larger American collective.

On the much more individual level, the integration process is helpful as those kids apply to universities and get jobs in a largely English-speaking work force, creating opportunities for those immigrants and their progeny to be successful. Successful people create avenues for their ideas and the ideas that they champion to enter the public consciousness, and that is invariably a good thing when we talk about accepting new practices and ideas.

If the break up of these communities led to actual integration then you might have a point. However many people who are forced to leave their communities just end up in other poor communities of a similar culture and racial background. Gentrification, like the practice of redlining, reinforces segregation while at the same time fracturing communal bonds of those at the wrong of those processes.

 

[irish_thug]

My wife pointed out to me there was a story about Toronto where there are 450 sq. ft. (Only about 40 sq. m) condos going for $500,000.

This is why I had to leave Toronto. Our only options for home ownership were towns houses right next door to government housing projects, or cubicle sized condos. Our first house was an hour North of the city, little 2 bedroom bungalow with a mortgage that was half what we paying in rent for a one bedroom apartment in an 80 year old low rise.

 

[irish_thug]

If the break up of these communities led to actual integration then you might have a point. However many people who are forced to leave their communities just end up in other poor communities of a similar culture and racial background. Gentrification, like the practice of redlining, reinforces segregation while at the same time fracturing communal bonds of those at the wrong of those processes.

If that's the case then the communities aren't being broken up at all. And that those that aspect of the argument out the window.

 

[Gregolian]

The Villas at the Lofts at Kenny's House.

 

[sub_thug]

If the break up of these communities led to actual integration then you might have a point. However many people who are forced to leave their communities just end up in other poor communities of a similar culture and racial background. Gentrification, like the practice of redlining, reinforces segregation while at the same time fracturing communal bonds of those at the wrong of those processes.

Well, it does happen. If you're saying that it doesn't, you're implicitly placing a time constraint on the matter. That's a separate issue. However, if you leave the timeline as an indefinite period, then it absolutely happens. What you actually want is for it to happen faster, or else you pull your support from the matter, no?

Really, the idea that it moves people into other poor communities of similar culture and racial background is only true in certain areas. It would also tend to vary group by group. What you have described is most common among blacks who have at least three generations living in the United States, whereas it is significantly less true for Indians (as in people from India), Europeans, and most Southeast Asians.

 

[MaureenCretis]

Making slums nicer places? Awful idea.

 

[Gregolian]

Making slums nicer places? Awful idea.

Doing that often prices people out of said places and then they just move to another slum.

 

[livingdeadmoose]

Doing that often prices people out of said places and then they just move to another slum.

You can’t save everyone when working for the greater good. This process helps ensure that future generations won’t be born into slums.

 

[JudoThrowFiasco]

obviously dense urban areas are going to be desirable to a ride range of class status. It's also obvious land owners are going to maximize profit out of that -- so, they jazz up areas, bring in the affluent and push out the bottom rungs.

Government for some reason feel they need to cope with that and implement gross policy like "poor door" rental properties in nice buildings and rent control. I'm not for that but I can see why bleeding hearts would be

 

[Gregolian]

You can’t save everyone when working for the greater good. This process helps ensure that future generations won’t be born into slums.

The thing for me those with gentrification is quite often these places even price out the lower end of the middle class. You know, the people that are renting, paying their bills, but struggling to truly save money for the future on their own.

Like, case in point from the clip I posted. Randy Marsh leads South Park in the Sodo-Sopa shit and the Shi-te-Pa-Town shit to get a Whole Foods... 2 episodes later he says to Sharon:
"We need to move Sharon?"
"Why, you finally go the Whole Foods and everything else you wanted"
"We can't afford to live here anymore"

This is one of the few instances I think I identify a TAD more with the left than the right but also view the left as going a bit nuts with it.

Someone like me that has a full time above minimum wage job could not afford to live in one of these newer affluent areas... BUT, at the same time, in WA I do not qualify for low income housing so I am... well frankly, jammed up with where to live.

For my state, and the King County area especially in order to find a place to live you best be rich as fuck or dirt fucking poor.