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Old 03-07-2018, 11:39 AM
fnh
 
2,887 posts, read 3,885,339 times
Reputation: 4214

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To deny race has anything to do with it is to be willfully ignorant.

Blacks And Latinos Denied Mortgages At Rates Double Whites | WUNC

https://www.revealnews.org/article/f...homeownership/

https://whyy.org/articles/unequal-le...neighborhoods/

And many more..
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Old 03-07-2018, 12:09 PM
 
4 posts, read 2,852 times
Reputation: 15
Quote:
Originally Posted by jerbear30 View Post
You are exactly right that there is NO moral dimension to gentrification, but that's also what a lot of folks find horrifying about it. Moreover, the people who do the gentrifying are only held blameless by an economic structure that many of the original residents of these communities do not hold to be the gold standard of all human behavior and ethics, as you do. To you, based on an institutionality that you seem to hold beyond question, there is no moral dimension to gentrification. Not to everyone.

In fact, you have to divorce the process of gentrification from its place in history entirely in order to arrive at your conclusion about there being no "moral" dimension to it. Historically, gentrification is done by wealthy white people whose parents were by and large also wealthy, thus making it easier for them to get their wealth, and so on. Gentrification takes place in less privileged areas, and it by and large displaces poorer people, and people of color. This is bound up in a historical paradigm that goes way back and that is still being played out.
Good points being made here.
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Old 03-07-2018, 03:55 PM
 
Location: ✶✶✶✶
15,218 posts, read 30,418,861 times
Reputation: 10847
OK, whatever it is - what are we going to do about it?

Rent control? Force lenders into subprime mortgages to achieve socioeconomic justice? Stalinist purges of the "gentrifiers" as bourgeois counterrevolutionaries, even?
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Old 03-07-2018, 04:06 PM
 
Location: Houston
5,582 posts, read 4,848,583 times
Reputation: 4527
Quote:
Originally Posted by fnh View Post
You are correct that these practices have a moral dimension to them springing from past history of (then-legal) discrimination. This contributed to the disinvestment in many urban neighborhoods.

I still say that gentrification, on its own, is not a moral phenomenon. It is simply the outcome of a change in the value of a location as perceived by the market and what the maximum price is for willing purchasers or lessees to locate there. It is completely analogous to when national "credit tenant" chains are willing to lease space at higher rates than the previous mom-and-pop shops were willing or able to pay - and thus the mom-and-pop shops are driven out. Some cities incorrectly assigned this pattern a moral dimension and felt the need to enact policies to prevent it (disallowing chain retail etc.). These policies are not justified, and are in fact morally offensive, as we can all agree.

Where gentrification can have a moral dimension is when government intentionally undertakes actions to drive out an existing relatively lower-income/wealth group from an area by raising property values. I have rarely if ever seen this happen intentionally by a government.

More often, a government makes improvements that an existing community desires, but in so doing also happens to make the area attractive to those willing to pay higher prices. Whether one should assign a moral dimension to that phenomenon or not is up for discussion. For example, it was the 3rd Ward community that wanted Emancipation Park to be improved. By all accounts, it's now a very nice park. If it spurs accelerated gentrification of nearby housing, was it then good or bad? I would argue neither - it was just the City (and others) undertaking a community-desired neighborhood project. I would posit that the City was not obligated to protect nearby residents from gentrification resulting from a project that the same residents wanted.
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Old 03-07-2018, 09:48 PM
 
1,483 posts, read 1,710,513 times
Reputation: 2513
Quote:
Originally Posted by jfre81 View Post
OK, whatever it is - what are we going to do about it?

Rent control? Force lenders into subprime mortgages to achieve socioeconomic justice? Stalinist purges of the "gentrifiers" as bourgeois counterrevolutionaries, even?
No, but one thing we could do is accept that the people who are being "gentrified" and displaced have a right to complain.
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Old 03-07-2018, 10:04 PM
 
Location: ✶✶✶✶
15,218 posts, read 30,418,861 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jerbear30 View Post
No, but one thing we could do is accept that the people who are being "gentrified" and displaced have a right to complain.
Honestly, if my plan was to keep living in this general area at all, it wouldn't be gentrification I'd be most afraid of "displacing" me. More like one of those "500-year" weather events.

Maybe enough of those will at least pump the brakes on property values.
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Old 03-07-2018, 11:13 PM
 
12,733 posts, read 21,646,540 times
Reputation: 3768
I'm so disturbed as a black man. I'll keep my comments to myself.
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Old 03-07-2018, 11:40 PM
 
Location: Beautiful Northwest Houston
6,263 posts, read 7,418,889 times
Reputation: 5041
Quote:
Originally Posted by SouthernBoy205 View Post
I'm so disturbed as a black man. I'll keep my comments to myself.

To post a comment to say you have no comment, or will keep implied comment to yourself, is contradictory. You say you are "disturbed" and that is a comment in and of itself, as is saying you have no comment. Get it ?....
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Old 03-08-2018, 12:07 AM
 
Location: ✶✶✶✶
15,218 posts, read 30,418,861 times
Reputation: 10847
Quote:
Originally Posted by SouthernBoy205 View Post
I'm so disturbed as a black man. I'll keep my comments to myself.
Didn't you write a term paper about this?
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Old 03-08-2018, 12:55 AM
 
12,733 posts, read 21,646,540 times
Reputation: 3768
Privileged white people won't ever understand our struggles. I hope they don't ruin Third Ward.
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