Gentrification? Economic Development?

[buenosdiaz]

Lets talk about it.

Most of us living in urban places are familiar with it. DC is pretty bad with it when you look at neighborhoods now vs 10, 15, 20, and even more years ago.

I'm discussing this because my coworker brought it up at work and kind of asked why my parents moved out of DC when I was a kid.

In our case my parents wanted a house and it was a personal choice to move out to silver spring. However, this isnt the case for a lot of people that saw increased rent and were "forced" to move out. Urban poverty turned into suburban poverty with enclaves of poor neighborhoods around the DC metro area.

Of course economists argue that it does more harm than good to create price ceilings. But it does seem a little unfair that people are displaced from their community and a community of economic growth is envisioned without those very people inhabiting the neighborhood being a part of it.

One of the meetings that I remember bothering me the most at my job was a meeting we had with one of those green jobs organizations that talked about the job opportunities that would be created in urban communities by retooling buildings and designing cities into more "green" cities.

I brought up the question of the shifting demographics that these renovations would create and if they had thought at all of the affordability of these new neighborhoods that the inhabitants of it were creating and effectively gentrifying their own neighborhoods under the pretext of job creation...

the women didnt really have a concrete answer

This post is pretty aimless but its an issue that really bothers me but at the same time there doesnt seem to be an answer for it. So yes discuss please

what is your take on gentrification of cities? Are there benefits for it? Will it be harmful? how can we change urban housing/economics? should we?

[renaissance]

I live in a row house on the outer edges of Capitol Hill. Across the street is a very swanky condo building where Ben Bernanke owns a place. Three doors down from me, in another row house, I'm pretty sure there is a crack den. Right next door to me is a lovely young family with 2 kids and 2 dogs. Diagonally across the street there are a few ok looking houses with some older people who look like they've lived there for 35 years. One block to the left of me is pretty much the cutting off point of where I would feel safe walking at night by myself. Go one to two blocks to the right of me, and you're in million dollar home territory (depending on the state of the economy, I guess). Several blocks NE of my place, and you can't go 2 blocks without seeing 4 cop cars circling the block once its dark out. I would not live up there, but I go through it some nights to get to the bars/restaurants.

I love DC, and I love what gentrification does in terms of fixing up neighborhoords, but I believe it does push long time residents out of being able to afford their place. Sure, you may own your house, but what happens when those million dollar homes start moving your direction, hiking up property taxes and/or rent?

[buenosdiaz]

thanks ren for giving my thread life haha

you assface

yeah im not going to be entirely nice to you sorry cant do it

[renaissance]

thanks ren for giving my thread life haha

you assface

yeah im not going to be entirely nice to you sorry cant do it

:mad: I gave a valid, thoughtful response

[zoony]

Well, it's not always a bad thing.

Spend some time in Philly. Neighborhoods there are defined by ethnicity and family- resulting in some of the most bigoted/narrow minded knuckle dragging jerks in the country. Might do them some good to be forcably removed to the suburbs- maybe their kids will grow up a bit different

I have a friend who grew up in an Irish neighborhood in Philly. You didn't go to the Italian neighborhood, and vice versa. And woe to anyone who purchased a row-house in one of those neighborhoods from outside. They'd burn it down before you could ever move in. And if you're black- forget it, lol

[ljs]

I grew up in farm communities, so this is a new concept for me. However,I am familiar with one program that allows emergency workers (cops, firefighters, paramedics...) purchase a home in a low income area of the town they work, for a very low rate and cost. There is also programs for teachers similar to that. I thought about it, but would never have lived in the "worst" parts of the town I was a cop in. It is full of gangs, grafitti and tons of crime.

One of my friends who is a juvenile probation officer did purchase a house in that "bad" area. She got a 3,000 sq ft turn of centry home for around $60k. She put about $40K remodeling it. The house is absolutely gorgeous, and totally sticks out in that neighborhood. She also repaints her garage about once a week b/c of the grafitti. Many of the gang members know she lives there, but so far no major issues. I bet if you took that same house, plugged it into Seattle or another metropolitan area, it would easily be worth $250-$300K.

I think the idea of driving up taxes, insurance and such would be the most problem, but I do understand the reason for wanting gentrification. As always, there is a pro and con to it.

[LegionOfDoom]

Gentrification to me masks the flaws we have as a society. As long as we have a monetary system in place the reality of life is that there will be rich people, middle income people and poor people.

In the 70's and 80's it was chic to move out to the suburbs, take all of your income and start a new in VA or MD. Who was left in the City when the services and schools were failing...poor folks. So those folks who left are now empty nesters in their suburban McMansion's on the brink of retirement and want back in to the City they left behind so they could rear their children. Now the blight of the City is getting restored so lets all cheer for economic restoration. So the City has seen positive signs of people and companies wanting back in.....but only have the poorest of neighborhoods sitting on the Primest of locations oh what will they do? Emminent Domain now the City is so concerned that they will move you and your families to just the other side of the river in SE and let the highest bid contractor build the newest innovation to City life "Mixed Use" Commercial and Residential buildings. The biggest problems back in the day was if you didn't have a car you had to take a bus or train across the City to shop for food and clothes. Now the City got smart and will have everything all in one place. They realized from years past how those residents who moved into the suburbs complained that in the City nothing was close as in the suburbs where the shopping is plentiful. The City sure fixed that problem. Now select poor folks can grab a shot at the 5% availability to those displaced by econmic uptick. First your family is put through a screening process which is more like the FBI perfoming a background check on every single family member. One single blemish from one family member and your DQ'd. Sorry we don't want the scourge infecting our new utopian society.

So let me wrap this up!

Poor neighborhood in a great location.

Move inhabitants out send them across the river "Emminent Domain"

Beautiful mixed buildings of Retail and Commercial

Pick the best of the poor and give them a discount so we can save a little face.

Rinse - Repeat

[buenosdiaz]

So let me wrap this up!

Poor neighborhood in a great location.

Move inhabitants out send them across the river "Emminent Domain"

Beautiful mixed buildings of Retail and Commercial

Pick the best of the poor and give them a discount so we can save a little face.

Rinse - Repeat

yeah, the funniest thing about my job is that its a non profit intent on "creating policy solutions for low income people" lol

when i got here and asked everyone where they lived

it was Columbia Heights, Adams Morgan, Petworth haha

:jerk: go figure, cant buy that kind of irony

[Brad_Edwards_Fan]

I feel very differently about it when/if emminent domain is used.

Assuming that the land is all either owned by private owners or the city i think that they can sell the land to whomever they choose. If that means that the owner of a large appartment building that houses a lot of poorer citizens chooses to sell his land to a developer who is gonna replace where 50 low income folks lived with a building that will house 5 upper income people and a Whole Foods, then that is his right. If the entire neighborhood does this and the population that used to live there is forced out, well such is life. (Although i have heard of developments here where the develper pays for relocation counseling for folks that are being moved out. I think it is the right thing to do, but probably not required) The owner of the land has the right to sell it, and the person who buys it has the right to develop it as he sees fit (within zoning rules).

Same goes for city owned land, i feel that they too can sell the land as they see fit, but i think in this case if they are displacing a low income population they need to have some sort of plan in place to help them relocate. Here in Chicago, they have been tearing down the projects for a little while to replace them with mixed income neighborhoods (with the screening process that Legion describes). The main reasons behind this is that the stacking public housing ideas have been a miserable failure and somehting needed to be done, as well as the fact that much of this land is worth a truckload of $$.

The result for Cabrini was like 30k people moved out and around 1000 that qualified for the new neighborhood. So long as the rest still have access to voutures and other public housing, i dont know that i have an issue with this. I feel that all of our citizens should be taken care of to ensure that they are not out in the street, but i dont think that keeping them from being homeless means that they have to live in the best parts of town (even if they didnt used to be good parts of town).

If this means that someone now has a 30 min train ride instead of a 10 min bus ride to get to work/school/shopping, then so be it. I feel we have a "right" to have the govt help us keep from being homeless, i dont think that we have a right to a short commute.

Cases like New London where private land owners were essentially forced to sell so the whole area could be redeveloped, i think that is total BS.

[gbear]

I see the problem as more one of isolationism rather than gentrification. There is a book called Bowling Alone with a chapter on the number one predictor of crime in a neighberhood. It's not wealth. It's not education of the population. It isn't race, ethnicity, or amount of/lack of diversity. The number one predictor of crime in a neighberhood was how many people knew the names of the their neighbors.

People don't steal from the family the ate dinner with last week. They don't vandalize the car of the neighbor that helped them fix the lawn mower.

More and more we isolate ourselves in our own little niche comunities. Heck, we all talk on the computer. How many on here can tell you as much about their neighbors as they can about 5 different people they "met" on here?

We segregate ourselves by our politics. We segregate ourselves by our religion. We segregate ourselves by our ages. We segregate ourselves by whether we have children and what ages...Soon we are alone, and we only interact with those we agree with on any particular theme (see Redskins board for NFL fans of a team as we mock even NFL fans because they have different fan loyalties).

There was a post about having areas you didn't feel safe walking in. My bt is that most people from the "rich" parts of the city have nothing to do with the parts from the poor parts. That separation is a large part of the problem. The gentrification could be decent thing if people would get out and meet each other. We villanize that which we are unfamiliar with, and we are becoming less and less outgoing. The result is we familiarize ourselves with ever less. We demonize those that speakk funny or heaven forbid a language other than English.

I miss having block parties. I know most of my neighbors because I'm out with my kids or dogs all the time, and I talk to every one. That I have odd looking dogs and 2 out going kids that don't look alike or like me means I have natural conversation starters. Still sadly, I think that is unusual these days.

[ljs]

gbear, I see your point, I'm just not sure it would work that way...only in a perfect world.

This reminds me of redistribution of school kids. Where you bus the "poor" kids to a rich neighborhood, or the minority kids to a white neighborhood. Then you go to the school and look at the groups....all the black kids together, the "stoners" together, the Latin kids together, white kids together..

You don't see them intermixing, even though it's nearly forced upon them. I can see that being a similar issue with these neighborhoods.

[DjTj]

yeah, the funniest thing about my job is that its a non profit intent on "creating policy solutions for low income people" lol

when i got here and asked everyone where they lived

it was Columbia Heights, Adams Morgan, Petworth haha

:jerk: go figure, cant buy that kind of irony

But isn't it better to have to have gentrification in Columbia Heights/Adams Morgan/Petworth than to have those areas be poor and crime-ridden while all the money is out in the suburbs?

You're never going to completely solve the divide between the rich and the poor, but I think it's better to have the yuppies living 2 miles away instead of 10 miles away. The people living in the gentrified neighborhoods will at least have a chance to see some of the poverty up close. They will have to deal with homeless people and police sirens at night ... you can't force integration, but you can put people a little bit closer together.

And being just a little bit closer helps benefits flow to everyone in the neighborhood. It's not all yuppies shopping at Target at Columbia Heights. The Giant there is really nice. So is the new Safeway at 5th and New York Ave. And it's not just big companies that are benefiting. Smaller business owners with convenience stores and dry cleaners can get more business.

It's not a perfect solution, but I do think that getting people back into cities is a step in the right direction.

[buenosdiaz]

But isn't it better to have to have gentrification in Columbia Heights/Adams Morgan/Petworth than to have those areas be poor and crime-ridden while all the money is out in the suburbs?

You're never going to completely solve the divide between the rich and the poor, but I think it's better to have the yuppies living 2 miles away instead of 10 miles away. The people living in the gentrified neighborhoods will at least have a chance to see some of the poverty up close. They will have to deal with homeless people and police sirens at night ... you can't force integration, but you can put people a little bit closer together.

And being just a little bit closer helps benefits flow to everyone in the neighborhood. It's not all yuppies shopping at Target at Columbia Heights. The Giant there is really nice. So is the new Safeway at 5th and New York Ave. And it's not just big companies that are benefiting. Smaller business owners with convenience stores and dry cleaners can get more business.

It's not a perfect solution, but I do think that getting people back into cities is a step in the right direction.

true it just bothers me when you hear them talking about not feeling safe in some parts etc etc

i mean if culturally there was an attempt to integrate with the neighbors id be cool with it

its just that it seems they are right smack in the middle of it and live in their own world oblivious to the surroundings be it for fear or whatever

[Peeping Wizard]

Gentrification does not always occur via Eminent Domain. Frankly, I don't see much wrong with some run down neighborhoods getting cleaned up and thus increasing the tax revenue base for the city.

[Peeping Wizard]

gbear, I see your point, I'm just not sure it would work that way...only in a perfect world.

This reminds me of redistribution of school kids. Where you bus the "poor" kids to a rich neighborhood, or the minority kids to a white neighborhood. Then you go to the school and look at the groups....all the black kids together, the "stoners" together, the Latin kids together, white kids together..

You don't see them intermixing, even though it's nearly forced upon them. I can see that being a similar issue with these neighborhoods.

That's because government programs don't change human nature. It is in our DNA to flock to people who we view as being most like us. It's great to branch out and cross ethnic and cultural fences, but many are uncomfortable when doing so.

[#98QBKiller]

It's not all yuppies shopping at Target at Columbia Heights.

Yep you can go just a few blocks from there and find streets where people still get shot over gang-related activity.

I do agree with your post though Tj, I think it's a good thing to put people from different socioeconomic backgrounds closer together like that. I think eventually it will make the city better and maybe make some of those yuppies think about volunteering some time and/or money into the community around them. And like you said it will help the small businesses in the area too.