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Money goes to where it wants to go and makes all the decisions in our society. If you have money, you are part of that cycle. If you don't, you are often victimized by it....intentionally or not.
Gentrification to me has more to do with the act of people with substantial money suddenly wanting and area that has been desirable for many reasons, location, access to the city etc. but was deemed undesirable until recently. I have a friend in Oakland which was many know was very much people of color, very cultural, artistic and laid back. He mentions investors are literally coming through offering to give every adult renter approximate 15,000 to move out.. The thing that happens though is that people who take the money would love to live in the same neighborhoods they help build but when you fast forward a few years no-one can afford to live there but the wealthy.
The part that's crazy is that the land has been there and before it wasn't good enough and now "overnight" it is. It's happening everywhere DC, New York, Dallas, Especially California. So former enclaves are toast and become overpriced run of the mill places. The don't tend to reverse because the cost of living keeps them unattainable for many especially those on fixed income, the elderly.
Nearly every urban area is going through this. The problem is that people who can no longer afford the rents of what once was the lower-income area have no where else to go. This is creating sort of a "white flight" but in reverse, as more have to look to suburbs and exurbs to find more affordable housing costs.
The main cause of gentrification is house flippers. They buy cheap homes in the poorest neighborhoods, and redo them for a profit. The problem is the only people who can now afford the flipped homes are the ones who don't live in that part of town.
Now would be a good time to mention that Gentrification isn't always white people moving into a poor minority dominated community. That's what we mostly hear about but not always the case.
Gentrification is nothing more than a code word that essentially means, "People who are not like me are moving into my neighborhood, but I don't want to sound prejudiced."
Gentrification is nothing more than a code word that essentially means, "People who are not like me are moving into my neighborhood, but I don't want to sound prejudiced."
Not true at all. It has a precise, objective meaning.
Not true at all. It has a precise, objective meaning.
Not really. It is nothing more than an elaborate system of semantics to, once again, say, "People who are not like me are moving into the neighborhood, and I don't like it." Or, alternatively, "I want to stand athwart the natural forces of economic development in order to fulfill some half-baked ideal of social justice." Never mind that the neighborhoods prior to being gentrified often struggle with crime and diminished economic opportunity.
The problem with Gentrification, aside from it being a code word used by bigots and virtue signallers alike, is that it actually is a word used to attempt the cementing of lower economic status of a neighborhood as if you can sweep the tide off a beach. People who move into a neglected neighborhood and start businesses, demand better law enforcement and generally try their best to raise the quality of a neighborhood's civic life will indeed raise property values.
I'm seeing a massive effort in my city. When we moved into our now-gentrified area of town twenty-five years ago, our friends told us we were nuts. We were the only owned house on a street full of rentals. Every night, there was a crime somewhere within a five-block radius. In the commercial district two blocks away, there were mostly vacant buildings and businesses hanging on by their fingernails. The park was constantly being dismantled by vandals.
Today, that same neighborhood boasts a thriving restaurant district. The park is a source of pride and public resource for everyone in the neighborhood regardless of economic status. The little league baseball park has kids and coaches from all walks of life. The crime rate has plunged to practically nothing. What was once a case study for urban decay has become a case study for revitalization. And that house we bought for $75,000 and improved with elbow grease and sweat is worth several times that today.
Hey, rents will go up. But those same developments also mean more tax revenue for the city, a higher quality of life for all who live in that neighborhood, and greater access to jobs and economic opportunity, including the original residents who stay. The neighborhood has remained diverse. Even more to the point, their efforts are pretty much an end run on the massive social engineering programs of the past fifty years that accomplished next to nothing. And, of course, those who actually own houses in those neighborhoods enjoy higher property values. The virtue signallers never think of those folks.
You cannot simultaneously decry the endemic poverty of the inner city while fighting the very movement of people and capital that will ultimately alleviate it.
Last edited by MinivanDriver; 09-06-2017 at 07:29 AM..
'Gentrification' is when white people move into an area with POC, and its racist.
'White flight' is when white people move out of an area with POC, and its racist.
And of course if white people move into a white neighborhood with no POC, well, that's racist, too.
Basically, when white people move, it is racist, so if you are white just stay put. You don't want to be a Nazi, do you?
LOL....boy....you all ancestors really left white people with a fck up image. Don't blame POC for that....blame white antecedents who did do all those things for those reasons.
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