# Gentrification of Rural America **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [August 28, 2021, 9:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gentrification-of-rural-america/949695 "2021-08-28T21:41:07Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Whack-a-Mole](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whack-a-mole/32/141_2.png) [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2021, 9:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gentrification-of-rural-america/949695/41 "2021-08-29T21:55:27Z")
> [@Saintly\_Loser](#): > > I guess that’s what an economics textbook would say. > > Here, what happens is that the working poor, the ones who serve up the fast-food meals and deliver your DoorDash and Instacart food, get pushed further and further out to the outskirts of the city, parts of the city ill-served by public transportation, and end up having to commute two hours or more each way for a shitty, low-paying job. > > And then middle-class blue-collar people start facing the same squeeze. But they’ll make the brutal commute because they have to. How else is it supposed to work? Of course the most desirable places are taken by those who can pay more. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2021, 9:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gentrification-of-rural-america/949695/42 "2021-08-29T21:59:29Z")
> [@Saintly\_Loser](#): > > Really? That isn’t how it looks to me right now. And I’ve been here for more than sixty ears. I’m with you. 70 years ago my father, who worked for the UN, bought an affordable house in Queens not too far from the Nassau County border, so spreading out from the city is hardly new. My old house is absurdly expensive now. (Not too bad to my house in the Bay Area, but expensive compared to normal places.) Saying “commute” doesn’t cut it because long commutes kill your quality of life. That’s one big reason people don’t want to go back into the office around here anyhow. > [@DavidNRockies](#): > > And a lot of the mountain communities – famously, playgrounds for the rich and famous – have been struggling to find service workers. They’re simply priced out of the market and uninterested/unwilling/unable to drive an hour to work, particularly in an area with harsh winters. Not just mountain communities. Our city councilman said that our quite big town has tons of openings in the city and in the police department because these workers can’t afford to live here. And their salaries are pretty high, relative to the rest of the country. Imagine someone like a hair cutter or janitor. > [@Whack-a-Mole](#): > > If a parent can do this then they are very wealthy and are the people who gentrify areas. That being sell their house and pay the down payment for their kids. Nope. We have friends who were both school teachers. I don’t know for sure but given when they bought their house and our current prices they have a million dollars of equity in it, easy. But traditionally wealthy? Not at all. In my neighborhood which is good but not the best in my city I don’t remember when a house of over 1,000 sq. feet went for less than $1 million. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2021, 10:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gentrification-of-rural-america/949695/43 "2021-08-29T22:00:59Z")
> [@Whack-a-Mole](#): > > How else is it supposed to work? > > Of course the most desirable places are taken by those who can pay more. Gentrification is not buying up the most desirable places, it is buying up the least desirable places, making them desirable, and kicking out the “undesirables” who lived there before. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2021, 10:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gentrification-of-rural-america/949695/44 "2021-08-29T22:04:39Z")
> [@Whack-a-Mole](#): > > How else is it supposed to work? Change the zoning laws so that lots aren’t restricted to over an acre or five acres. Allow multiple-family housing. Put in public transportation. Stop discriminating against people of color. Lots of other stuff. All of these are remedies people have been asking for over many decades. You’ll note that the one thing they have in common is that they change the rules under which the “free market” allows the wealthy to manipulate reality to their benefit and unnecessarily harm others. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2021, 10:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gentrification-of-rural-america/949695/45 "2021-08-29T22:23:17Z")
> [@Whack-a-Mole](#): > > How else is it supposed to work? Depends on your definition of “supposed”, I suppose. Or maybe on your definition of “work”. If society’s only supposed to work well for its richest members, and everyone else is supposed to be screwed, then you’re right, there’s no problem. At least, unless the next revolution comes along. Which generally screws everybody for a while, rich and poor alike. ---
**Author:** ![Whack-a-Mole](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whack-a-mole/32/141_2.png) [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2021, 10:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gentrification-of-rural-america/949695/46 "2021-08-29T22:26:11Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#): > > Depends on your definition of “supposed”, I suppose. Or maybe on your definition of “work”. > > If society’s only supposed to work well for its richest members, and everyone else is supposed to be screwed, then you’re right, there’s no problem. I am likely one of the more liberal members on the SDMB. I’m all for equitability. But you still need to be able to divvy up scarce resources. If every person in the US wants a lakeside home in Wisconsin that is dirt cheap how do you do that? More, are you going to tell someone who owns a lakeside home that they cannot sell their property for maximum value but must, instead, sell it at a much diminished price? ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2021, 10:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gentrification-of-rural-america/949695/47 "2021-08-29T22:30:26Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#): > > > [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > > > People get screwed by vagaries of economic change all the time. That doesn’t mean the economic change is bad. > > Doesn’t it? > > It’s bad, certainly, for the people who get screwed. Why should this be less important than the advantage to others? > > A particular change may be an overall benefit even though a few people get screwed, yes: especially if care is taken to provide those people with support, including support that’s actually useful to them. But that doesn’t mean that damage should be written off as inevitable and not worth consideration; or that “the vagaries of economic change” are always good. The damage is bad in itself, and it shouldn’t be just assumed that benefits will overwhelm damage. > > If more people are getting screwed than are benefitting, and/or if those benefitting are those who already have most of the benefits and those getting screwed are those least able to deal with it, and/or if community structures are being damaged or destroyed and being replaced with nothing or with versions that are worse: then yes, particular economic changes can be bad. The assumption is that money flowing into a location inevitably helps fewer people than it benefits. I don’t think that’s true. For one, it is very untrue that literally “everyone” who isn’t rich gets pushed out of their homes. To keep using Bozeman as a reference point, median household income in Bozeman in 2019 was $55,000. That isn’t actually all that high. Evidence suggests other areas that underwent an increase in the number of wealthy people present, have frankly seen more people living better lives than before. Take my own home state, Virginia. It’s hard to describe how much different Northern Virginia is than from when I was a kid, and while there are some cost-of-living concerns, it’s got way more people living there, with much higher income, and much better schools than in the 1950s. Even further south around where I lived for 30+ years in the Richmond area, a lot of that NoVa gentrification “leaked down”, even places like Fredericksburg VA which is basically in the middle of the DC to Richmond corridor and not crazy close to either, bears little resemblance to what it looked like in the 70s (a small, not very prosperous southern city, mostly with a few blue-collar industries and a lot of rural people.) A lot of the people that choose to highlight the plight of those being squeezed are doing so for altruistic reasons–economic shuffles hurt some people even when they help far more, and those people hurt, we need to address as a society. Assuming they will just “sort themselves out” is a great failure of classical liberalism in the 20th century. _Economies largely do sort themselves out, people do not_, and the failure to recognize that has led to a growth of things like reactionary extremism among working class people throughout the OECD. However as altruistic as the goal is to highlight the people who are screwed by this, you shouldn’t let that confuse the larger picture that these centers of economic development **generally provide a higher quality of life to a greater number of people than previous lived there.** ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2021, 10:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gentrification-of-rural-america/949695/48 "2021-08-29T22:39:18Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > That said, I’m not in principle against the idea of people buying into neighborhoods, cities, and areas which suddenly seem to be desirable. That’s not exactly how it works though. Gentrification is often more along the lines of a bunch of people with some money (not necessarily rich) decide to move into an economically depressed neighborhood because the houses are cool older ones, and the prices are low because the neighborhood is primarily populated by poorer people. And many times these older homes are not in great repair because that costs money. So yuppies buy fixer-uppers in lower income areas, and fix them up. If enough people start doing this, the neighborhood starts looking attractive to other people who start doing the same, who either buy the fixed-up houses, or fix up houses of their own. Property values rise, taxes rise, goods and services prices rise, and the lower income people end up selling and moving. None of this is planned or directed in any way. It’s not like the Grand Wealthy Cabal looks at some neighborhood, circles it in blood-red marker, and sends out instructions to their minions to take it over. It’s more of an emergent property than anything else, and that’s the problem. In a larger system, there’s usually either surplus housing of the appropriate income level, or that demand will be met in fairly short order by developers and builders. But what’s happened in Bozeman is that everything has happened so fast that there hasn’t been enough time for that demand to be met, and housing prices have skyrocketed, and people are having trouble finding housing. This will change- markets work like that. If they have trouble finding service workers, they’ll have to eventually pay enough so that they can live close enough to work in Bozeman. As for policies to mitigate this… I’d say that maybe the only thing you could reasonably do would be to have tax rate rise mitigations to keep tax rates from climbing too fast or too far for people who lived somewhere originally. I think that might go a long way to keeping people where they are. But you can’t really prevent the local cleaners from raising their prices, or grocery stores from carrying more expensive food or things like that which come with more money in an area. ---
**Author:** ![doreen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/858c86/32.png) [@doreen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/doreen)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2021, 10:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gentrification-of-rural-america/949695/49 "2021-08-29T22:50:49Z")
> [@Saintly\_Loser](#): > > But that’s different from saying that those who do live in a particular metro area, who may be part of multi-generational kinship networks that provide for child care and stability and, when needed, financial support, should just up and leave because now Wall Street people want to live in, of all places, Bushwick (which would have been inconceivable when I was younger). In my whole life, I never would have thought that Bushwick would become a desirable area. But there are very similar neighborhoods where hipsters don’t want to live- mine , for example. Public transit is good and the travel time to Manhattan by train is approximately the same as the travel time from Bushwick. But the gentrifiers don’t want to live here for two reasons - one is that there aren’t any cute restaurants or coffee shops etc. If the gentrifiers moved here they would pop up. The other reason is my neighborhood is mostly 1-3 family owner occupied homes. There are some apartments over the stores but there are few buildings with more than 3 units - and apparently the hipsters who live in Bushwick \* don’t particularly like the idea of living in owner-occupied homes with only a couple of apartments. Which is fine with me because no one is getting driven out of the neighborhood - people who leave are leaving for other reasons. Kids who grow up here may not be able to afford to stay here but it’s not due to gentrification. \* Who may not actually be all that wealthy - I saw listings for a company called “Common” that apparently has a number of co-living spaces in Bushwick and other areas. I looked at a few listings and the prices start at about $1125 a month for a private bedroom, in a fully furnished (right down to dishes) shared apartment, and the rent includes utilities, wifi, weekly cleaning of shared spaces, rooftop and backyard access, a common lounge and laundry detergent, paper towels and soap are supplied. That price is actually not bad for that - and I’m sure the lanldord is making plenty renting 4 bedrooms per apt starting at $1125/mo ---
**Author:** ![Whack-a-Mole](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whack-a-mole/32/141_2.png) [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2021, 11:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gentrification-of-rural-america/949695/50 "2021-08-29T23:07:33Z")
> [@bump](#): > > As for policies to mitigate this… I’d say that maybe the only thing you could reasonably do would be to have tax rate rise mitigations to keep tax rates from climbing too fast or too far for people who lived somewhere originally. This already exists in some places (in the case below for senior citizens): [Cook County Treasurer's Office - Chicago, Illinois](https://www.cookcountytreasurer.com/exemptions.aspx#:~:text=Seniors%20can%20save%2C%20on%20average,the%20tax%20year%20in%20question). ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2021, 12:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gentrification-of-rural-america/949695/51 "2021-08-30T00:32:18Z")
> [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > The assumption is that money flowing into a location inevitably helps fewer people than it benefits. I don’t think that’s true. And it’s not either what I said, or what I was assuming. I said specifically that some such changes may be overall beneficial. You even quoted me saying that. And the second paragraph of mine which you quote starts with “if”. It most certainly does not assume that those conditions always apply when money flows into a location. ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2021, 4:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gentrification-of-rural-america/949695/52 "2021-08-30T04:24:12Z")
I never said that was what you were personally assuming. I don’t usually waste time divining the thoughts of random message board posters. The phrase “the assumption being made” was a rhetorical address to the common arguments made about gentrification and my subsequent response to them. The only direct relationship with your post was that your post was 1) a response to a previous post of mine and 2) was expressing concerns about the effects of gentrification. ---
**Author:** ![F.U.Shakespeare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/aca169/32.png) [@F.U.Shakespeare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/F.U.Shakespeare)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2021, 4:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gentrification-of-rural-america/949695/53 "2021-08-30T04:56:02Z")
> [@Whack-a-Mole](#): > > This already exists in some places (in the case below for senior citizens): > > [Cook County Treasurer’s Office - Chicago, Illinois](https://www.cookcountytreasurer.com/exemptions.aspx#:~:text=Seniors%20can%20save%2C%20on%20average,the%20tax%20year%20in%20question). Yep. Going back to 1978 in California: [1978 California Proposition 13 - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_California_Proposition_13) ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2021, 2:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gentrification-of-rural-america/949695/54 "2021-08-30T14:02:37Z")
> [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > I never said that was what you were personally assuming. I don’t usually waste time divining the thoughts of random message board posters. The phrase “the assumption being made” was a rhetorical address to the common arguments made about gentrification and my subsequent response to them It seems to me to make no sense to quote me in order to respond to some argument which I wasn’t making. I’m not sure that anyone else in this thread was making it, either; but if you think they were, then please quote them. ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2021, 2:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gentrification-of-rural-america/949695/55 "2021-08-30T14:12:53Z")
I understood the confusion so that is why I clarified. ---
**Author:** ![Bonum\_Legatum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bonum_legatum/32/6183_2.png) [@Bonum\_Legatum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bonum_Legatum)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2021, 2:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gentrification-of-rural-america/949695/56 "2021-08-30T14:12:53Z")
One thing that certainly happens: The people moving in notice that the local school system will not put their children on the track to the right college - which then becomes WE HAVE TO RAISE TAXES TO IMPROVE THE SCHOOL SYSTEM. Then they notice that the local airport doesn’t offer enough flights back to the “big city” WE HAVE TO RAISE TAXES TO ENLARGE THE AIRPORT. And so on. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2021, 3:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gentrification-of-rural-america/949695/57 "2021-08-30T15:09:12Z")
And the town has to supply trash pickup. And sidewalks. And street lighting. And town water, which didn’t come within ten miles of the place before. And take over the private roads and maintain them, including plowing them in the winter. ---
**Author:** ![MandaJo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ac91a4/32.png) [@MandaJo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MandaJo)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2021, 3:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gentrification-of-rural-america/949695/58 "2021-08-30T15:36:35Z")
> [@Whack-a-Mole](#): > > More, are you going to tell someone who owns a lakeside home that they cannot sell their property for maximum value but must, instead, sell it at a much diminished price? Well, no, but can we do something when they club together and get someone elected to the city council whose whole reason for being there is to make sure the land behind their property never gets developed, or if it does, it only gets developed in large plots, because they are worried that apartments or even a dense subdivision would lower the price of their own property? ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2021, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gentrification-of-rural-america/949695/59 "2021-08-30T20:00:00Z")
“Pushed out” \neq “Can’t buy in”. You referenced my post but did not really answer it. I still want to know who got pushed out. It is really not the same as rural gentrification where renters truly do get pushed out. When my daughter’s $2500 rental in NY was raised to $3500 and she was warned they were planning to make $7500 within five years, she was really pushed out. ---
**Author:** ![Odesio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/odesio/32/20003_2.png) [@Odesio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Odesio)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2021, 9:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gentrification-of-rural-america/949695/60 "2021-08-30T21:17:38Z")
> [@Hari\_Seldon](#): > > “Pushed out” \neq ≠\neq “Can’t buy in”. You referenced my post but did not really answer it. > > I still want to know who got pushed out. It is really not the same as rural gentrification where renters truly do get pushed out. When my daughter’s $2500 rental in NY was raised to $3500 and she was warned they were planning to make $7500 within five years, she was really pushed out. Do you think rent goes up, down, or stays the same in rural areas experiencing gentrification? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gentrification-of-rural-america/949695.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gentrification-of-rural-america/949695.md?page=4)