If we’re linking Onion articles, this one has been on my mind for the whole thread.
Typical scenarios
Gentrification doesn’t happen - > people ask for money because the city neglects them because of some widespread conspiracy of racism
Gentrification does happen - > people ask for money to stay in their homes because the city is neglecting their community due to racism
Mixed Housing Happens - > people say its destroying their community and it is racism trying to squeeze them out slowly or not helping enough
Mixed Housing doesn’t happen - > people say that their city is not giving them a chance and won’t help them, also due to racism
Everybody should be able to keep their homes and communities, but if they value them so much, then stop letting them become total shitboxes and take care of it, participate in neighborhood action, use city services, better yourself, cut your lawn, fix your windows, wash the outside of your homes, report gang activity anonymously. Simple steps. All free or nearly free to do these things! If everyone works together, if everyone kept their houses nice and clean and picked up after themselves and CARED about their community by reporting crimes, gentrification would not take place there. It is not a problem with gentrification, it is a problem within that community that needs to be solved and the best solutions can also be found there. Charity begins at home.
I speak of this as someone who has been through a cycle of gentrification. I’ve seen it happen when I was a little kid and to this day. Gentrification makes usually neighborhoods safer and friendly, there is absolutely no way to argue otherwise.
That is a terrible idea. The public would bear the responsibility of paying the negative effects from the rich profiting from gentrification. It’s the most “lemon-socialist” idea I can imagine, where the profits are privatized and the risks are socialized.
The only thing you would accomplish with this type of policy is to raise property prices even further by essentially incentivizing gentrification.
The amount of rent a section 8 voucher will pay is dependent on the county it is used in. As rent rises in a neighborhood but stays relatively unchanged in the rest of the county, people in the neighborhood on section 8 tend to get pushed out as their voucher will not cover the more expensive rent.
In an effort to combat this, HUD (under Obama) changed the policy so that the voucher value would be determined by the zip code it is used in. By shrinking the area, rent increases would be more likely to affect how much a voucher is worth and make it easier for people on section 8 to stay in neighborhoods that gentrify/revitalize.
The policy was to go into effect this year. Trump has suspended it.
That’s fine, I’m sympathetic with what you’re saying, but what’s your proposal? (My proposal is, indeed, one of those kind of hopeless sad economic ideas premised on the idea that rich people are going to do what they do and we have to kind of just pool together to ameliorate the effects.)
I missed that HUD lost a suit a few weeks ago and so have to actually implement the new rules:
Hmmm, I wonder if there would be negative press if city governments helped pay to move, say, poor black families out of a neighborhood so, say, rich white families could move in. I’m sure it would all go according to plan.
That middle happens when communities gentrify. It’s not like rich, white people move into the shittiest neighborhoods. You have a shitty neighborhood and starving artists start moving in there because they can’t afford anywhere else (also, I think gay people used to start the gentrification process, but I’m not sure if that’s still true or ever was). With the artist community, you start to see some interesting coffee shops, bars, and other fun places. Higher placed artists and other creative types start to move in, making it more interesting still. Only then do you start to see gentrification start in earnest.
So, you go through your excluded middle on the way from decaying neighborhood to WASP takeover.
Gentrification isn’t simply bad, or simply good, it’s a complicated process that can have major negative and positive impacts, depending on area, size, surrounding neighbourhoods, employment possibilities…
The negatives do tend to disproportionately affect the people least able to deal, especially those in unstable housing, whereas the positives work for those who were already doing well.
Anecdote time: a suburb of the city I used to live in. It’s in the UK, so development rules are different. 10 years ago this suburb was filled with derelict shops, smashed in windows used as squats by junkies. The only things doing well were the ‘massage parlours’ and booze shops. Then artists and creatives started moving in, because the housing was pretty cheap (some in what’s basically the ‘grey housing market’, squatting in office buildings with permission of the owner). The place started to get cleaned up, the largest empty building got rented by a community group, and turned into a music venue, with cheap dance and art studios. A few buildings got converted to flats, a bit higher priced than the old ones, but not drastically so. The odd resident complained about the loss of character, but almost everyone was happy about the reduced crime, and considered the changes to be overwhelmingly positive. Even most of the street guys were OK with it, the squats got mostly cleared, but the begging opportunities improved, and with more attention drawn to the area, the homeless facilities did too.
Problem is, it was too successful. In recent years, the area starting attracting investor attention; prices have sky rocketed and buildings have been largely bought up by developers, hoping for permission to turn them into more flats when the housing market gets even more strained. Shops are closing again, because the rent’s too high to be viable. The flagship venue/community project, who only rented the building, are fighting closure, because the property is now in a prime location and the owner wants to sell. The house prices are so high that it appears to make sense for investors to buy shops and offices (which are drastically lower priced), kick out the tenants (so they can argue the property is unused), then try to get permits to change the building use to residential.
The early gentrification effects were great, turning a dodgy area into an interesting vibrant and involved community, but now? Prices are crazy, everything that made the area desirable is starting to go, and the empty buildings are on the increase again. I don’t think anyone’s benefiting. Maybe some investors, but most of them seem to be just holding out for the payout right now.
If it was simply ‘more well off people moving in’, there wouldn’t be so much of a problem, but it can get way more complicated than that.
How can you stop gentrification? As far as I can tell, it mostly happens when some group realizes that houses/rent in Neighborhood A are less expensive than those in more desirable Neighborhood B. So they buy/rent in Neighborhood A even though they aren’t part of the same demographic group that is living there already ( maybe there’s a racial difference, or they are wealthier, or more educated or more artsy - all sorts of differences are possible.) Once there’s a critical mass of the new group, businesses start catering to them, and you end up with stores selling $4 lattes rather than a $1 coffee in a cup that says “We are happy to serve you” in some sort of fake Greek font.
I can totally understand why the existing community doesn't want to be priced out of the neighborhood- but what right does my neighbor have to demand that I sell my house for tens (or hundreds) of thousands less than I could get to keep the neighborhood affordable? Or that I should accept hundreds of dollars less in rent than I could get when the non-stabilized second apartment in my two-family house is vacant? Especially when I've seen the very same people who cry "The neighborhood is getting too expensive , my kids can't afford to stay here" sell their houses for the same high prices when they retire and decide to move. And that's usually where it starts - not with developers putting up huge buildings with luxury apartments/condos , but with rents in non-regulated apartments in small buildings going up and then the prices for 1-4 family buildings go up. The developers and their luxury apartments come later.Depends on the framing–if it’s a program available to all renters who are evicted due to sale of the home they’re in, such criticisms will not hit as hard.
Aside from framing, if the money for the program is paid for by an increase on taxes in home sales, that might also help with perceptions.
I think it wouldn’t take much for people to figure out that you’re paying black families to move out so white families can move in (or, poor families…rich families, etc.).
Anyway, I want to say that I actually really like this thread. Gentrification is a tricky problem, but there’s really not much that can be done to prevent it. Economically, it makes total sense, but there are cultural side effects that can be troubling. And I’m gratified that all the lefties and righties on this board generally agree – it’s so unusual for that to happen (other than anti-vax and CT threads). So, thank you, OP, for bringing this board together!
I agree, and I don’t think that the people who complain about the evils of ‘white flight’ and ‘gentrification’ would hesitate to criticize ‘black eviction’, so this doesn’t seem like it actually solves the problem.
It makes areas more safe, more stable, and it provides a stronger tax base for schools.
All good things.
Think of the children.
In NYC? The tax base for all schools is the whole city, so it doesn’t make any difference. And even if it did, the poorer families are getting pushed out, so they don’t benefit.
Safer? Certainly. A more affluent constituency will always get better services from the city.
More stable? Not if you’re the poor schmuck who’s rent just became unaffordable.
Stability, safety and better schools are indeed good things. But they are not equally distributed.
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And places where that has long been the standard also get gentrified, both by updating existing buildings and by tearing them down to build a new one in its place (usually, taller than the old one). See: any Spanish town over 10K inhabitants.
You could give each family a voucher that are torn off the bottom of a letterhead and given to the moving company, right there on the curb. They show up, you tear it off, all expenses are paid. Families would take that offer so fast, the road out of the neighborhood would be filled with the sound or ripping paper, like one big trail of tears.
I mean of course many people will reframe it as you have. And others will not. Thus is political discourse…
Certain framings would have the virtue, as opposed to yours, of actually being true. For example framing it as “requiring landowners to pay the cost of finding new housing when they evict tenants.”
(Yours isn’t true because the black families aren’t being paid to move out, they’re being paid after having already been forced to move out.)
Ha! Nicely done.
There’s a missing step here, between “more desirable condition” and “remains affordable”, where you explain how, in economic terms, something becomes substantially more desirable while supply and price remain exactly the same. If people will pay 85 freakin’ bucks for crappy plastic figurines that retail for $15 just because supply doesn’t meet demand, I fail to see why this wouldn’t apply in the far more crucial realm of housing.
Then move to Detroit or Flint. (Jeez, Michigan, get your shit together.) This statement is just straight-up nonsensical - have you thought about this at all?
That… or they want to make money. When in doubt, let’s go with the explanation that explains their actions perfectly and doesn’t imply that they’re villains for a saturday morning cartoon.
Things change. There aren’t too many people making buggy whips any more, and the people who are (for the sake of novelty) are generally doing so in parts of the world where paying your workers a dollar a day counts as a step up for them. You can’t blame this on gentrification.
…Wut…
Whaaaaaaat?
Well okay then, I guess that’s where we’re at with this, huh? 