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Gentrification May Actually Be Boon To Longtime Residents

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Re: Gentrification May Actually Be Boon To Longtime Residents

#41

Post by [deleted] »

infosample wrote: post #35
forrestthewoods wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't think people who live in bad neighborhoods feel entitled. The choice is often moving from one bad neighborhood to another. Moving is expensive and a hassle for everyone, it's no wonder people don't want to move without a strong incentive.

[deleted]

Re: Gentrification May Actually Be Boon To Longtime Residents

#42

Post by infosample »

forrestthewoods wrote: post #36
infosample wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think people who live in bad neighborhoods feel entitled. The choice is often moving from one bad neighborhood to another. Moving is expensive and a hassle for everyone, it's no wonder people don't want to move without a strong incentive.

Define bad? Do you mean bad as in poor or bad as in dangerous and unsafe. I mostly hear gentrification in the context of poor neighborhoods rather than unsafe.

I don't think gentrification is happening in dangerous and unsafe neighborhoods. It's my opinion that is where many displaced residents move. Note: opinion, not fact.

I actually agree with your overall point - unless you own, you shouldn't feel entitled to stay. You should, however, be entitled to a safe neighborhood and legitimate opportunity.

Re: Gentrification May Actually Be Boon To Longtime Residents

#43

Post by gaius »

omegaham wrote: post #25
curun1r wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 lapt…

Exactly - they want a Disneyfied experience, playing at being poor in a fake attempt at "authenticity" but unwilling to forego their luxuries. It's not that the working class shouldn't have good coffee - it's that the greasy spoon charged 20p for a polystyrene cup and the artisanal roaster charges £10 for an espresso and a cupcake, so the honest folks, in practice, have nowhere to go once the hipsters take over. Coffee, beer, groceries, then rent and then the swarm has completely won. But where do the former locals go?

Re: Gentrification May Actually Be Boon To Longtime Residents

#44

Post by 616c »

Anyone who has met long-time residents of Washington DC knows that yeah, if you are white and rich it is working great for you. If you are black, it is not. I could write a thesis, and maybe DC is exceptional, but this is wishful thinking.

I lived in a very gentrified area of Washington for period. It was very weird. You are pushing out the poor people and you both want to pretend you do not notice. I believe saying the opposite is disingenuous.

Re: Gentrification May Actually Be Boon To Longtime Residents

#45

Post by Fishkins »

TehCorwiz wrote: post #33
kareemm wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 li…

Wait...Did you just argue that gathering in a park (a public gathering place) and playing a board game can be illegal? Where do you live that has laws like that?

I believe it's relatively common to gamble on dominoes, and gambling is often illegal. Even so, it's an innocuous crime and probably not the real reason they were hassled.

Re: Gentrification May Actually Be Boon To Longtime Residents

#46

Post by gte910h »

otterley wrote: post #38
msie wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see the same misplaced rage against foreign buyers of real estate (or the perception of foreign buyers inflating real estate prices). There is a whole lot of blame to go around.

Foreign buyers are a different matter; they usually have no intent to live in the properties they buy, and often no intent to lease them to tenants either. For example, the Hyde Park neighborhood in London is basically becoming a rich ghost town ( http://www.bbc.com/news/business-26980299 ).

This feels like a way to export money from China.

Re: Gentrification May Actually Be Boon To Longtime Residents

#47

Post by forrestthewoods »

infosample wrote: post #42
forrestthewoods wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Define bad? Do you mean bad as in poor or bad as in dangerous and unsafe. I mostly hear gentrification in the context of poor neighborhoods rather than unsafe.

I don't think gentrification is happening in dangerous and unsafe neighborhoods. It's my opinion that is where many displaced residents move. Note: opinion, not fact. I actually agree with your overall point - unless you own, you shouldn't feel entitled to stay. You should, however, be entitled to a safe neighborhood and legitimate opportunity.

"entitled to a safe neighborhood and legitimate opportunity"

That's kind of a meaningless statement. What does it even mean? Let's say you're correct and people are entitled to living in a safe neighborhood. Now let's say they live in an unsafe one. Now what? They're entitled to a safe neighborhood! It's their right! Who is required to give it to them exactly? Me? You? The states? The feds?

You can call something an entitlement or a right all you want. Go ahead. But in cases like this it's an incredible hollow gesture.

Re: Gentrification May Actually Be Boon To Longtime Residents

#48

Post by hifier »

bronbron wrote: post #23
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 t…

A lot of the gentrifying neighborhoods in NYC have histories that go much too far back to be attributed to the current residents, even if they've been there 50+ years. Maintaining a late 1800s brownstone is not cheap and without proper care these historic areas will just slowly deteriorate. I think it is an absolute positive that money is returning to these areas.

IMO, current residents have no more of a right to live somewhere than any newcomer.

Re: Gentrification May Actually Be Boon To Longtime Residents

#49

Post by delinka »

Can someone help me understand the problems with gentrification? Do renters feel entitled to stay in their neighborhoods even when their leases end? When owners need to perform remodels on [unoccupied] aging homes?

The only real issue that comes to mind is the owner of a home on a fixed income having to pay higher property taxes because the area around them is improving. I can think of lots of ways to mitigate this problem ... but I'm asking about other problems of which I know nothing.

Re: Gentrification May Actually Be Boon To Longtime Residents

#50

Post by infosample »

otterley wrote: post #37
infosample wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"That improvement is unfair to the people who ran it down" Assumption 1: The residents are the people who ran down the neighborhood. Assumption 2: Gentrification improves the neighborhood. My previous comment addresses the first assumption. Feel free to disagree. If a neighborhood is just real estate, assumption two is valid. If a neighborhood is a community of people, and gentrification moves a lot of the people, yo…

"If a neighborhood is a community of people, and gentrification moves a lot of the people, you have not improved the neighborhood, you displaced it." Maybe; maybe not. If crime and other social and environmental ills are reduced after the previous inhabitants have been displaced, I'd contend it's an improvement.

I agree, any reduction is an improvement. I have no problem admitting that I just don't know if we fixed the problem or moved the problem.

On one hand, overall crime in the U.S. is down and crime in New York City is really down.

I just wonder, is the goal of gentrification to fix neighborhood's ills or cheap rent in a cool area that happens to be a fantastic real estate investment?

I'm having a hard time understanding how moving people from the suburbs to the inner city and back improves anything aside from a specific geographic area for a while.

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