What are the problems gentrification brings? Isn’t fixing up a neighborhood a good thing? How can gentrification stop?
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The basic thing is that if you go to a neighborhood where a lot of poor people are living, and “fix it up” in ways where now richer people like it, the poor people lose their homes because the rent goes up. In most poor neighborhoods, people don’t own homes, they are renting. And if the neighborhood is now fixed up, the landlords who own the houses and apartments can charge higher rent and make more money off of the new people who want to move in.
This may be nice for the neighborhood, but sucks for the people already living there that now have to move because their homes are now more expensive than they used to be. The poor people aren’t necessarily making more money now that the neighborhood is fancier, and landlords would rather earn more money than keep the rents at the low level they already were at.
It prices poorer residents out, essentially. It’s kinda unavoidable though, since part of the reason the current rents are so low is because the current housing is old and dilapidated. You can’t let housing degrade forever, and you can’t re-build it with old & cheap housing. Any improvement will cause the price to rise. It’s also essentially the result of supply & demand, which you can’t really stop.
I went back to visit my old city recently.
All the old vibrant lively places, where people of all types (class, age, race, gender) used to mix and mingle – with venues for rock, blues, country, punk, and a biker bar and a rich people’s classy bar, all on the same street – they are all now boarded up and shut down.
That was a place where gutterpunks, bikers, rednecks, drag queens, college kids, and also the local politicians and businessmen would all get together and meet each other and talk, shoot some pool, have some drinks together, whatever. It’s all gone now.
A few blocks away there are now much more expensive hipster venues. There’s only one type of person there, one class. Mostly one race (nowhere near as mixed as it used to be). Primarily one age group. No gay bars. All the music is the same bland pop. If I had to describe it, I’d label it “the upper-middle-class whitebread elevator music district”. It’s a totally different vibe. No sense of community or serendipity, no diversity.
—
Meanwhile, there used to be one or two homeless people around, and you could have a nice discussion with them. They’d talk about philosophy or culture or whatever. You could comfortably invite them to the bar, buy them a beer, take turns picking songs on the jukebox, and shoot some pool while they told you their life stories and the adventures they’d had while serving in the navy or whatever their stories were.
Nowadays instead, there are tons of homeless people, several per block, hitting you up for money. And they’re very different, with fear and desperation in their eyes. Like both prey and predator, and they’re trying to figure out which you are. They’re beyond desperate. They don’t want to talk or hang out, they just want to survive.
—
And I stopped to look at the slummy apartment building I used to live in when I first got out on my own. It was cheap then, easily affordable on a full-time minimum wage job. It looks exactly the same now, just a little older and more worn-down. But now it’s competing with the new luxury condos in the same area, and priced just under them. About 6 times what it used to cost. Nobody on minimum wage or just starting out can afford that.
—
That’s what gentrification does.
It takes a vibrant mixed community, kills it, homogenizes it, and throws everyone else out on the street.
—
I was excited to show off my old neighborhood, how lively and mixed and fun it was. How well everyone got along. And I was utterly embarrassed to see what it had become. And I am a straight middle class white guy, the demographic that this gentrification is supposed to be for. I was horrified by it.
One of my old friends asked me “you don’t have any reason to come back here again, do you?” and I said “No. The place I grew up is gone. The people are gone. There’s nothing here anymore.”
That is the problem with gentrification.
I went back to visit my old city recently.
All the old vibrant lively places, where people of all types (class, age, race, gender) used to mix and mingle – with venues for rock, blues, country, punk, and a biker bar and a rich people’s classy bar, all on the same street – they are all now boarded up and shut down.
That was a place where gutterpunks, bikers, rednecks, drag queens, college kids, and also the local politicians and businessmen would all get together and meet each other and talk, shoot some pool, have some drinks together, whatever. It’s all gone now.
A few blocks away there are now much more expensive hipster venues. There’s only one type of person there, one class. Mostly one race (nowhere near as mixed as it used to be). Primarily one age group. No gay bars. All the music is the same bland pop. If I had to describe it, I’d label it “the upper-middle-class whitebread elevator music district”. It’s a totally different vibe. No sense of community or serendipity, no diversity.
—
Meanwhile, there used to be one or two homeless people around, and you could have a nice discussion with them. They’d talk about philosophy or culture or whatever. You could comfortably invite them to the bar, buy them a beer, take turns picking songs on the jukebox, and shoot some pool while they told you their life stories and the adventures they’d had while serving in the navy or whatever their stories were.
Nowadays instead, there are tons of homeless people, several per block, hitting you up for money. And they’re very different, with fear and desperation in their eyes. Like both prey and predator, and they’re trying to figure out which you are. They’re beyond desperate. They don’t want to talk or hang out, they just want to survive.
—
And I stopped to look at the slummy apartment building I used to live in when I first got out on my own. It was cheap then, easily affordable on a full-time minimum wage job. It looks exactly the same now, just a little older and more worn-down. But now it’s competing with the new luxury condos in the same area, and priced just under them. About 6 times what it used to cost. Nobody on minimum wage or just starting out can afford that.
—
That’s what gentrification does.
It takes a vibrant mixed community, kills it, homogenizes it, and throws everyone else out on the street.
—
I was excited to show off my old neighborhood, how lively and mixed and fun it was. How well everyone got along. And I was utterly embarrassed to see what it had become. And I am a straight middle class white guy, the demographic that this gentrification is supposed to be for. I was horrified by it.
One of my old friends asked me “you don’t have any reason to come back here again, do you?” and I said “No. The place I grew up is gone. The people are gone. There’s nothing here anymore.”
That is the problem with gentrification.
I went back to visit my old city recently.
All the old vibrant lively places, where people of all types (class, age, race, gender) used to mix and mingle – with venues for rock, blues, country, punk, and a biker bar and a rich people’s classy bar, all on the same street – they are all now boarded up and shut down.
That was a place where gutterpunks, bikers, rednecks, drag queens, college kids, and also the local politicians and businessmen would all get together and meet each other and talk, shoot some pool, have some drinks together, whatever. It’s all gone now.
A few blocks away there are now much more expensive hipster venues. There’s only one type of person there, one class. Mostly one race (nowhere near as mixed as it used to be). Primarily one age group. No gay bars. All the music is the same bland pop. If I had to describe it, I’d label it “the upper-middle-class whitebread elevator music district”. It’s a totally different vibe. No sense of community or serendipity, no diversity.
—
Meanwhile, there used to be one or two homeless people around, and you could have a nice discussion with them. They’d talk about philosophy or culture or whatever. You could comfortably invite them to the bar, buy them a beer, take turns picking songs on the jukebox, and shoot some pool while they told you their life stories and the adventures they’d had while serving in the navy or whatever their stories were.
Nowadays instead, there are tons of homeless people, several per block, hitting you up for money. And they’re very different, with fear and desperation in their eyes. Like both prey and predator, and they’re trying to figure out which you are. They’re beyond desperate. They don’t want to talk or hang out, they just want to survive.
—
And I stopped to look at the slummy apartment building I used to live in when I first got out on my own. It was cheap then, easily affordable on a full-time minimum wage job. It looks exactly the same now, just a little older and more worn-down. But now it’s competing with the new luxury condos in the same area, and priced just under them. About 6 times what it used to cost. Nobody on minimum wage or just starting out can afford that.
—
That’s what gentrification does.
It takes a vibrant mixed community, kills it, homogenizes it, and throws everyone else out on the street.
—
I was excited to show off my old neighborhood, how lively and mixed and fun it was. How well everyone got along. And I was utterly embarrassed to see what it had become. And I am a straight middle class white guy, the demographic that this gentrification is supposed to be for. I was horrified by it.
One of my old friends asked me “you don’t have any reason to come back here again, do you?” and I said “No. The place I grew up is gone. The people are gone. There’s nothing here anymore.”
That is the problem with gentrification.
The main problem of gentrification is that it pushes people out of an area. That hits renters first, but it also hits others – for example people will be unable to buy houses where they grew up.
This makes the problem difficult to see. It’s easy to see an area becoming physically nicer. It’s not too hard to see happy people who have moved into this gentrified place. It’s a lot harder to see unhappy people who have been pushed out and scattered around the place.
Even for the people who stay there are problems. Most appreciate things like cleaner streets and less crime, but they often lose places and people that are important to them, and generally see the character of their home change. Gentrification can damage the community in an area, particularly when incomers are less likely to get involved. (There can often be a racial element to this, too.)
What can be done about this? In part it’s an inevitable feature of a market based system, where prices for more desirable things will inevitably go up.
Some things can be done to limit the problem. More secure tenancies, better consultation with people living in an area about ‘redevelopment’, more mixed developments, making changes gradually rather than in big steps, more government provided housing. At a bigger scale, more income inequality helps. A focus by (local) government on the impacts on people rather than places may also help.
The main problem of gentrification is that it pushes people out of an area. That hits renters first, but it also hits others – for example people will be unable to buy houses where they grew up.
This makes the problem difficult to see. It’s easy to see an area becoming physically nicer. It’s not too hard to see happy people who have moved into this gentrified place. It’s a lot harder to see unhappy people who have been pushed out and scattered around the place.
Even for the people who stay there are problems. Most appreciate things like cleaner streets and less crime, but they often lose places and people that are important to them, and generally see the character of their home change. Gentrification can damage the community in an area, particularly when incomers are less likely to get involved. (There can often be a racial element to this, too.)
What can be done about this? In part it’s an inevitable feature of a market based system, where prices for more desirable things will inevitably go up.
Some things can be done to limit the problem. More secure tenancies, better consultation with people living in an area about ‘redevelopment’, more mixed developments, making changes gradually rather than in big steps, more government provided housing. At a bigger scale, more income inequality helps. A focus by (local) government on the impacts on people rather than places may also help.
The main problem of gentrification is that it pushes people out of an area. That hits renters first, but it also hits others – for example people will be unable to buy houses where they grew up.
This makes the problem difficult to see. It’s easy to see an area becoming physically nicer. It’s not too hard to see happy people who have moved into this gentrified place. It’s a lot harder to see unhappy people who have been pushed out and scattered around the place.
Even for the people who stay there are problems. Most appreciate things like cleaner streets and less crime, but they often lose places and people that are important to them, and generally see the character of their home change. Gentrification can damage the community in an area, particularly when incomers are less likely to get involved. (There can often be a racial element to this, too.)
What can be done about this? In part it’s an inevitable feature of a market based system, where prices for more desirable things will inevitably go up.
Some things can be done to limit the problem. More secure tenancies, better consultation with people living in an area about ‘redevelopment’, more mixed developments, making changes gradually rather than in big steps, more government provided housing. At a bigger scale, more income inequality helps. A focus by (local) government on the impacts on people rather than places may also help.
Fixing up a neighborhood would be great if the properties were rent controlled. But when you raise the rent on a poor family because a fancy café went in across the street, you destabilize the neighborhood.
Fixing up a neighborhood would be great if the properties were rent controlled. But when you raise the rent on a poor family because a fancy café went in across the street, you destabilize the neighborhood.
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