Gentrification May Actually Be Boon To Longtime Residents • Hacker News Board

Re: Gentrification May Actually Be Boon To Longtime Residents

#21

Post by johnrob » Sat, Aug 02, 2014, 6:26 PM UTC

forsaken wrote: post #2

This is only talking about people who own their homes. A lot of gentrification is happening in areas where historically the residents were suppressed from owning real estate. My own knowledge is mostly around the Portland, Oregon area, but there is a documented history of minorities being unable to purchase property, get loans, and lots of other institutional things that stop people from actually owning the land. For…

Agreed. Home owners in gentrified areas can't afford to move anywhere else (that isn't far away), so of course they stay put.

Re: Gentrification May Actually Be Boon To Longtime Residents

#22

Post by jaman12 » Sat, Aug 02, 2014, 6:26 PM UTC

anifow wrote: post #6

Gentrification is happenning in Toronto outside of the downtown core, albeit very slowly. The main effect is you have families cashing out and moving further and further away from the city to put the real estate price differentials to good use (bigger house, or cash in bank). In the current environment, it actually makes zero sense to buy residential property for the sake of renting it out, so the only ones who are l…

hrm, this is not happening very slowly and has been going on for quite some time. It stretches all the way up into North York and is happening all through the GTA. Due to the free flow of capital and the visas that Canada was handing out to immigrants with significantly large amounts of capital you could come to Canada with millions and buy up a few properties to then rent them out. It makes sense to move your capital away from a highly unstable middle eastern/Asian country where you don't trust the ruling elite or you yourself are corrupt and fear reprisal. How do I know this? I've talked to a quite of few of these people; the highest number of properties that one person has owned and rented out for monthly income is 4 and he was considering bringing in a few more million from his bank in Dubai because he realized that the UAE has little future when global warming gets out of control. I can go on about the CPC members I've talked to, etc. Further more I know bankers that work for the chartered banks here and the stories they tell me of HNWI are simply ridiculous.

Basically all this foreign capital tremendously augments the market, driving up prices for younger Canadians entering the real estate market for the first time -- this is the other side of the coin for those that didn't already have real estate downtown.

Long term it does look good. Capital inflows are being clamped down due to the visa program being pulled and more capital restrictions on banks, which means that all of these prices will not be sustainable along with the fact the at some point interest rates will be going up (Carney did his damage before moving off to replace King because of the Libor market rigging at the BoE) and he has been doing similar stuff to England's housing market.

Those of us who did not purchase properties outright have this to deal with once interest rates shoot up: http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/current-inflation-is-killing... http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/middle-class-canadians-just-ho...

At the end of the day gentrification in Toronto means less disposable income for those who can barely afford to have rents extracted from those that moved in their foreign capital. Although it's not as bad as the US where hedge funds are starting to buy up properties en masse.

Re: Gentrification May Actually Be Boon To Longtime Residents

#23

Post by bronbron » Sat, Aug 02, 2014, 6:27 PM UTC

shaftoe wrote: post #9

It's always hilarious to see arguments that people fixing up a run down neighborhood is terrible. That improvement is unfair to the people who ran it down or didn't own anything there to begin with. Let's just have things stay crappy and life will be fair to all.

> people fixing up a run down neighborhood

Whoa there, let's not put words in people's mouths. Gentrification has benefits and drawbacks, like everything else.

First, and foremost, the neighborhoods aren't always run down. The Missions and the Williamsburgs of the world aren't the only places undergoing gentrification. Sometimes they're just neighborhoods largely populated by immigrants (Greenpoint in Brooklyn), or traditional working-class neighborhoods (Potrero Hill in SF). Being populated by immigrants or working-class folks doesn't make a neighborhood run-down.

Second, what does it mean to "fix up" a neighborhood? I'd argue it's really just replacing the historic culture with the culture of the new residents (which is usually rich, mostly white people). Sure, one nice effect is a huge reduction in crime, but you're also often replacing historic establishments with rich people tropes (e.g. Murry's -> Whole Foods). Harlem will probably be a really safe place to be in 20 years, but isn't it going to be a little bit of a shame when the Apollo gets replaced with a coffee shop?

Re: Gentrification May Actually Be Boon To Longtime Residents

#24

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Aug 02, 2014, 6:39 PM UTC

curun1r wrote: post #20

gaius wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... And how is it helped by a £2 beer now costing £5, and a burger costing £20? Thats the problem with hipsters - they buy the property out from under some residents, then make it impossible for those that remain to afford anything. They are like locusts. Eventually (as we see in London) they even price themselves out of an area, then move onto the next to destroy. E.g. from Stoke Newington to Dalston. What about the…

Why do you target your rage at the hipsters paying £5 for a beer rather than the bartender charging £5 for that beer? Or, perhaps, his landlord, for raising is rent to the point where he needs to charge £5? I guarantee that the hipster would rather pay £2. The whole issue of gentrification seems to always come around to blaming the people who move in rather than the people who profit off of them, be they existing hom…

[deleted]

Re: Gentrification May Actually Be Boon To Longtime Residents

#25

Post by omegaham » Sat, Aug 02, 2014, 6:47 PM UTC

curun1r wrote: post #20

gaius wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... And how is it helped by a £2 beer now costing £5, and a burger costing £20? Thats the problem with hipsters - they buy the property out from under some residents, then make it impossible for those that remain to afford anything. They are like locusts. Eventually (as we see in London) they even price themselves out of an area, then move onto the next to destroy. E.g. from Stoke Newington to Dalston. What about the…

Why do you target your rage at the hipsters paying £5 for a beer rather than the bartender charging £5 for that beer? Or, perhaps, his landlord, for raising is rent to the point where he needs to charge £5? I guarantee that the hipster would rather pay £2. The whole issue of gentrification seems to always come around to blaming the people who move in rather than the people who profit off of them, be they existing hom…

Your last paragraph makes me unsure where you're actually standing on this, but I think that the issue with the hipsters is that they are financially indifferent. Since they're wealthy compared to the locals, they have the interesting condition of wanting to look like bohemian beatniks while enjoying modern luxuries. You end up with the kid who wants to live in a little loft in Harlem but also wants wifi for his laptop. And he's willing to pay for it. Also, since he's not strapped for money, he's willing to pay extra if it means that he gets the ambiance he's looking for. That's why formerly dingy dive bars start selling $5 Pabst Blue Ribbons, shitty apartments start adding amenities and increasing the prices, and everything follows from there.

Personally, I don't really blame anyone, although I chuckle at the fact that there are people who want to pretend that they're poor while demanding luxuries used by 1% of the world.

Re: Gentrification May Actually Be Boon To Longtime Residents

#26

Post by gipp » Sat, Aug 02, 2014, 6:48 PM UTC

johncarrington wrote: post #8

gipp wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair enough. I just Ctrl-F'd 'bias' and had nothing, guess I could have been more thorough. That paragraph still fails to specify whether this applies only to homeowners and renters, or whether that still holds when looking just at rentership. We have "original resident renters living in gentrifying neighborhood benefit", and we have "movers overall benefit", but that doesn't necessarily imply "original resident rent…

"I just Ctrl-F'd 'bias' and had nothing, guess I could have been more thorough." Did you consider maybe reading it?

That's pretty much what "been more thorough" meant there, yes.

Re: Gentrification May Actually Be Boon To Longtime Residents

#27

Post by BrainInAJar » Sat, Aug 02, 2014, 6:58 PM UTC

anifow wrote: post #6

Gentrification is happenning in Toronto outside of the downtown core, albeit very slowly. The main effect is you have families cashing out and moving further and further away from the city to put the real estate price differentials to good use (bigger house, or cash in bank). In the current environment, it actually makes zero sense to buy residential property for the sake of renting it out, so the only ones who are l…

The neighbourhood I live in in my city was once crappy, got gentrified when living in the gay district got popular, and thanks to the power of inflation, is now just a nice, modest, middle class neighbourhood again.

Re: Gentrification May Actually Be Boon To Longtime Residents

#28

Post by forrestthewoods » Sat, Aug 02, 2014, 7:01 PM UTC

wallflower wrote: post #13

This article conveniently sashays around the real effects of gentrification due to the "entitlement" mentality of the more recent newcomers. For example, I heard of a neighborhood ballpark that was used for decades by Latino children to play ball. The newcomers with dogs would chuck their dog's droppings over the fence and onto the ballpark. Latinos who used to play dominos outside at another park. Until they were co…

It's entitlement all the way down. People who live somewhere feel entitled to stay there indefinitely because they were there "first". People who don't live there feel entitled to buy their way in because that's how supply and demand work.

Re: Gentrification May Actually Be Boon To Longtime Residents

#29

Post by tptacek » Sat, Aug 02, 2014, 7:01 PM UTC

wallflower wrote: post #13

This article conveniently sashays around the real effects of gentrification due to the "entitlement" mentality of the more recent newcomers. For example, I heard of a neighborhood ballpark that was used for decades by Latino children to play ball. The newcomers with dogs would chuck their dog's droppings over the fence and onto the ballpark. Latinos who used to play dominos outside at another park. Until they were co…

This reads like an attempt to counter data saying that gentrification reduces churn from the pre-gentrified population with anecdotes about dog feces and dominos.

Re: Gentrification May Actually Be Boon To Longtime Residents

#30

Post by kareemm » Sat, Aug 02, 2014, 7:04 PM UTC

wallflower wrote: post #13

This article conveniently sashays around the real effects of gentrification due to the "entitlement" mentality of the more recent newcomers. For example, I heard of a neighborhood ballpark that was used for decades by Latino children to play ball. The newcomers with dogs would chuck their dog's droppings over the fence and onto the ballpark. Latinos who used to play dominos outside at another park. Until they were co…

First off, anecdote != data.

But I'll bite.

> The newcomers with dogs would chuck their dog's droppings over the fence and onto the ballpark.

This seems more like douchebaggery than entitlement. If I had to hazard a guess, douchebaggery isn't limited to gentrifiers.

> Seems like the newcomers didn't like the bodega feel when they were out walking their dogs.

Seems like a function of (middle-to-upper-class) western life and its disappearing third places. But perhaps playing dominoes in the park is illegal?