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Fascinating article, thank you for sharing it.
SCR was likely riverdancing as he read that article, as it validates a lot of his complaints that he gets trashed for.
And again, I think it shows the validity of the complaints against Peduto and his Progressive allies in City government - they are focused on the upper class and the lower class. The new construction has been focused on "luxury" condos so that folks can move in, from coastal cities, and do jobs in the tech industry that many locals simply aren't qualified for. This creates a lot of change, and you can see the cultural backlash (just open up a P-G article about bike lanes and look at the comments). The lower class, particularly in minority communities in the East End (Hill, Homewood, East Liberty) also get a disproportionate amount of attention.
The housing costs are a joke to the techies moving in from coastal cities, but they are expanding like a mushroom cloud. While wages have stayed stagnant. As if it wasn't harder to get ahead and as if there weren't enough barriers to keep the working class from home ownership, now the glorious Progressives want to jack up taxes to make it even harder on the working class - with the express purpose of political pandering to the lower class.
The City is well on its way to becoming a land only for the wealthy and the poor - who get propped up by government assistance. It is death by a thousand cuts (administered via taxation) for the working class. And they can be expected to pack for the suburbs. Nobody stands up for this class of people (and part of that is their very parochial Pittsburgh culture in which these people have been taught not to speak up or rock the boat) - but there is always something new for the other classes.
Just this week in the P-G, I saw that Rudiak is forming a task force to expand affordable preschool and that Pedutohead hired yet another middle manager (with a salary of $104k) to lead yet another Department he created (Mobility and Infrastructure) to focus on driverless cars and his beloved bikes. Who do they think is going to be paying for all of this? They're trying to squeeze water from rocks with all of the taxes they'll be levying on working class folks - who have had stagnant wages for decades and are faced with increasing costs for poor services (ie - PWSA)... maybe my house in Etna will appreciate in value a bit and I'll have some more owner-occupied houses around me - as the path the City is going down is going to increase the popularity of suburban options for working class folks.
SCR was likely riverdancing as he read that article, as it validates a lot of his complaints that he gets trashed for.
I'm absolutely 100% content with moving out of Polish Hill to permit a wealthier white person to move into my unit if that's what people on this sub-forum feel is best for the city at-large. I'm a PITTSBURGHER first and foremost and a Polish Hillian second. I want to do whatever is best for the long-term health of the city. As long as I can still afford to rent a 1-BR somewhere in a SAFE CITY NEIGHBORHOOD (job requirement that I live IN THE CITY LIMITS) I'd be fine with being forced out of my current home.
My problem is the racial double-standard of making sure wealthy whites don't displace poor blacks from East Liberty 200 at a time while not caring if wealthy whites displace poorer whites 200 per year in Lawrenceville and Polish Hill. If the mayor is going to stand up for the residents of Penn Plaza and East Liberty because of their race, then he also needs to stand up for the residents of other neighborhoods, even if the residents aren't black. If not, then I'M STAYING PUT, too, and will become a very vocal thorn in the side against gentrification of working-class WHITE neighborhoods by WEALTHIER WHITES.
I get trashed on here because:
1.) I'm too blunt at times and don't "tap-dance" around touchy subjects that the group-thinkers on here are afraid to discuss; and
2.) While a proponent of affirmative action in the field of higher education and the workplace I am NOT a proponent of saying "blacks should get to live in trendy neighborhoods on the cheap, but whites can't." This bullet point has made me a horrible racist in the eyes of people like wpipkins2 and blackbeauty, and I don't care.
If my JOB didn't require me to live IN THE CITY, then I'd gladly consider moving to Etna, Sharpsburg, Millvale, Wilkinsburg, or West Mifflin with other poor whites. As it stands right now median rents on 1-BR units are rising steadily even in the "unfashionable" yet still safe city neighborhoods, and unless REAL WAGES for the WORKING-CLASS (not the "creative class") start to rise, there's going to be MUCH MORE discussion about gentrification over the next decade---and not just from me, either.
Not all of us are cut out to be "urban pioneers". I'm not going to move to Beltzhoover and have to put razor wire and security cameras up, not to mention always have to carry my firearm, to protect me from urchins like the two Beltzhooverites who just beat that poor immigrant Z-Trip driver to death and left him in the street. I love to walk/jog at night, and if it wasn't that ride-share driver it easily could have been me murdered at that hour of the morning heading out for my early job. Now that the city's coffers are filling up with this Lawrenceville and East Liberty "new money" maybe Mayor Peduto should hire MORE POLICE OFFICERS to sweep the crime-causing trash out of MORE city neighborhoods to make them habitable for working-class blacks and whites alike? I'd gladly live in Beltzhoover or Homewood if I didn't have to carry a gun to live there.
The only one who is "possibly" forcing you out of your neighborhood is your landlord or other landlords who can get more per month than you're able to pay. Seems you're only fighting yourself by staying in a place you're having a difficult time being able to afford.
And $40,000/year isn't being poor, especially if your partner is also making $30,000.
Now that the city's coffers are filling up with this Lawrenceville and East Liberty "new money" maybe Mayor Peduto should hire MORE POLICE OFFICERS to sweep the crime-causing trash out of MORE city neighborhoods to make them habitable for working-class blacks and whites alike
And the odds of him investing in the Police are as high as pigs learning to fly
I'm absolutely 100% content with moving out of Polish Hill to permit a wealthier white person to move into my unit if that's what people on this sub-forum feel is best for the city at-large. I'm a PITTSBURGHER first and foremost and a Polish Hillian second. I want to do whatever is best for the long-term health of the city. As long as I can still afford to rent a 1-BR somewhere in a SAFE CITY NEIGHBORHOOD (job requirement that I live IN THE CITY LIMITS) I'd be fine with being forced out of my current home.
My problem is the racial double-standard of making sure wealthy whites don't displace poor blacks from East Liberty 200 at a time while not caring if wealthy whites displace poorer whites 200 per year in Lawrenceville and Polish Hill. If the mayor is going to stand up for the residents of Penn Plaza and East Liberty because of their race, then he also needs to stand up for the residents of other neighborhoods, even if the residents aren't black. If not, then I'M STAYING PUT, too, and will become a very vocal thorn in the side against gentrification of working-class WHITE neighborhoods by WEALTHIER WHITES.
I get trashed on here because:
1.) I'm too blunt at times and don't "tap-dance" around touchy subjects that the group-thinkers on here are afraid to discuss; and
2.) While a proponent of affirmative action in the field of higher education and the workplace I am NOT a proponent of saying "blacks should get to live in trendy neighborhoods on the cheap, but whites can't." This bullet point has made me a horrible racist in the eyes of people like wpipkins2 and blackbeauty, and I don't care.
If my JOB didn't require me to live IN THE CITY, then I'd gladly consider moving to Etna, Sharpsburg, Millvale, Wilkinsburg, or West Mifflin with other poor whites. As it stands right now median rents on 1-BR units are rising steadily even in the "unfashionable" yet still safe city neighborhoods, and unless REAL WAGES for the WORKING-CLASS (not the "creative class") start to rise, there's going to be MUCH MORE discussion about gentrification over the next decade---and not just from me, either.
Not all of us are cut out to be "urban pioneers". I'm not going to move to Beltzhoover and have to put razor wire and security cameras up, not to mention always have to carry my firearm, to protect me from urchins like the two Beltzhooverites who just beat that poor immigrant Z-Trip driver to death and left him in the street. I love to walk/jog at night, and if it wasn't that ride-share driver it easily could have been me murdered at that hour of the morning heading out for my early job. Now that the city's coffers are filling up with this Lawrenceville and East Liberty "new money" maybe Mayor Peduto should hire MORE POLICE OFFICERS to sweep the crime-causing trash out of MORE city neighborhoods to make them habitable for working-class blacks and whites alike? I'd gladly live in Beltzhoover or Homewood if I didn't have to carry a gun to live there.
Gentrification lowers the crime and gives you the amenitities you enjoy. You are essentially saying, I will live in a lower rent neighborhood and then giving excuses of why you won't live there for things that make it a low rent neighborhood. That it why people don't take you seriously. Just admit you want to live in a trendy area without paying market rent.
Gentrification lowers the crime and gives you the amenitities you enjoy. You are essentially saying, I will live in a lower rent neighborhood and then giving excuses of why you won't live there for things that make it a low rent neighborhood. That it why people don't take you seriously. Just admit you want to live in a trendy area without paying market rent.
There is a problem with this - it is assuming that low rent places are necessarily not safe. While true, that is more a statement about our ever-increasing gutter culture more than economics.
It does not have to be that way. I am struggling to think of an example, but there surely must be (or have been) more humble neighborhoods that were not unsafe and actually pleasant places to live? (The italian enclaves of South Oakland years ago, maybe?)
But I have no side whichever on this issue. Why not let capitalism reach some equilibrium, and therefore people will live where they choose and where they can afford to? But then again, do we want a return to Oliver Twist-ism, a city of extremes in wealth?
Over the last few years, I have come to really not like those that I can tell are not from here. It's in the body language, the female modified valley girl/ivy league english accent (if you know what that is - really, what is that???), and the so noticeable standoffishness. Then anymore, the local city person (of those who are left) seem depressed, beaten, sad. It's all so weird. What happened to this town?
One thing you guys need to keep in mind is Peduto is covering his left flank right now, because that's where he's really vulnerable. The Reverend John Welch is running against him, alleging he's not done enough to help marginalized communities, particularly the black community in Pittsburgh.
I do not think Mr. Welch will have a winning coalition in a city where black people make up only 25% of residents. Nonetheless, the political pressure that Peduto feels is from those who argue he hasn't done enough for low-income people in the city, not that he's done too much. Honestly, many of his policies (including the executive order on affordable housing) look like window dressing to me, with the intention of making it seem like Pittsburgh is doing a lot while changing relatively little.
Peduto will not lose to the lightweight challengers.
If Pittsburgh is trending toward rich and poor, with no middle class, that is not a Pittsburgh thing - that is a national trend.
Please do not hang that around Peduto's neck.
Having said that, I have little sympathy for renters who feel entitled to stay in a neighborhood. If you can't afford it, find an area you can afford. It's not my responsibility to keep renters in a permanent spot.
If Pittsburgh is trending toward rich and poor, with no middle class, that is not a Pittsburgh thing - that is a national trend.
Please do not hang that around Peduto's neck.
It absolutely deserves to be hung around his neck. This may be a national trend, and Peduto "may not have started the fire", he didn't light it, but he didn't try to fight it either. Instead, his policies and priorities are just pouring gasoline onto the fire.
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