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It seems like much of DC is being overtaken by upwardly mobile credit card crunchers. People cannot now afford to buy homes in the same neighborhoods they grew up in. Fenty's salary is only $145K/year. How can that salary can enable him to live in DC in the high style becoming of a big city mayor.
Hey, OrlandoRE_Miracle, I've got some questions for you:
Why'd you change your name? And, perhaps more to the point of interest of people on this forum, why does someone who hasn't set foot in the District in over a decade, and who lives in Orlando, Florida, persist in posting on the DC forum?
And why didn't you follow through on your threat you made back in February to vacate the DC forum?
Quote:
Originally Posted by stars99
I've decided to go back to the Florida forum instead of posting here anymore. They seem to be more open to different points of view there.
Well he does have a point... a lot of people who grew up here probably cannot afford a house on the same salary their parents had when they bought their house. My self included.
Well he does have a point... a lot of people who grew up here probably cannot afford a house on the same salary their parents had when they bought their house. My self included.
True. And that goes for a lot of people. It's also a topic that has been batted around here adnauseum. Personally, I'd prefer if DC had affordable, working class neighborhoods that were safe and had reasonable amenities. We aren't Chicago or Philly, and it's unfortunate that the choices in DC seem to be "crime-infested rathole" or "uber-expensive yuppie hood" (although I exaggerate a bit).
But I also know a lot of people who lived through the 70s and 80s here, and no one is anxious to return to that time.
Yeah. And if you don't want a crime-infested rathole or uber-expensive yuppie hood, you'll have to settle for a suburb that's far-flung and has no Metro access. About a 1.5-2 hour commute.
Hey, OrlandoRE_Miracle, I've got some questions for you:
Why'd you change your name? And, perhaps more to the point of interest of people on this forum, why does someone who hasn't set foot in the District in over a decade, and who lives in Orlando, Florida, persist in posting on the DC forum?
And why didn't you follow through on your threat you made back in February to vacate the DC forum?
The name is stars99, and here is what I think of your post:
Regardless of what you're calling yourself these days, you're still making the same post after post that you made here up until a month or so ago under a different moniker.
The District is losing the middle-class tax base to the suburbs and that's a shame. You lose that "buffer" between the wealthy neighborhoods and the impoverished street blocks.
So now you have yuppies complaining about street muggings and night-time shootings around newly gentrified areas in Columbia Heights or the Petworth area. When you plop a luxury condo development in the middle of a low-income minority populated area, you will encounter the full "urban" experience. There's no middle-class neighborhood to buffer the gangs, the prostitutes, the homeless and abandoned houses from your privileged condo life. So the big-bucks condo owners demand more police presence (intimidation against youth and minorities) in the neighborhood. The extra cop duty costs DC taxpayers more money.
No one wants to go back to the 1970s or 1980s? Really? I think you meant to write, "No property owners want to return to that time". Many people who lost neighborhoods to 1990s and 2000s gentrification would have a different opinion from you. They would much rather be in the District than living in the hell hole called PG County.
Quote:
Originally Posted by 14thandYou
True. And that goes for a lot of people. It's also a topic that has been batted around here adnauseum. Personally, I'd prefer if DC had affordable, working class neighborhoods that were safe and had reasonable amenities. We aren't Chicago or Philly, and it's unfortunate that the choices in DC seem to be "crime-infested rathole" or "uber-expensive yuppie hood" (although I exaggerate a bit).
But I also know a lot of people who lived through the 70s and 80s here, and no one is anxious to return to that time.
The real estate developers price condos and apartments through the roof because of close access to Metro. Here's the problem: middle and lower income need the Metro for commuting and getting around town. Many lower-income people do not own vehicles. Some middle-class residents choose not to own a vehicle out of environmental concern.
Your high-income professional yuppie has little use for the Metro rail or bus since he can commute by car or work from home; yet, he is living the high life in his $600,000 loft condo next to a Metro station.
That's so f*cked up.
God...I hope a hard-core libertarian takes over the White House and absolutely slashes federal government budgets by 30-40 percent and kill thousands of lucrative government contracts to local private sector companies in the process. The government issues a blanket ban on money-peddling from lobbying shops. Voila...instant severe recession in the metro DC area. Swanky restaurants and boutique retail shops close their doors. Crime goes up. Yuppies bail out of town. Housing prices and rental rates plummet to affordable levels once again.
I will take my chances with the gangs, pimps and street junkies.
Quote:
Originally Posted by HurricaneDC
Yeah. And if you don't want a crime-infested rathole or uber-expensive yuppie hood, you'll have to settle for a suburb that's far-flung and has no Metro access. About a 1.5-2 hour commute.
Location: Standing outside of heaven, wating for God to come and get me.
1,382 posts, read 3,716,773 times
Reputation: 537
Quote:
Originally Posted by coldbliss
Gotta love DC!
The real estate developers price condos and apartments through the roof because of close access to Metro. Here's the problem: middle and lower income need the Metro for commuting and getting around town. Many lower-income people do not own vehicles. Some middle-class residents choose not to own a vehicle out of environmental concern.
Your high-income professional yuppie has little use for the Metro rail or bus since he can commute by car or work from home; yet, he is living the high life in his $600,000 loft condo next to a Metro station.
That's so f*cked up.
God...I hope a hard-core libertarian takes over the White House and absolutely slashes federal government budgets by 30-40 percent and kill thousands of lucrative government contracts to local private sector companies in the process. The government issues a blanket ban on money-peddling from lobbying shops. Voila...instant severe recession in the metro DC area. Swanky restaurants and boutique retail shops close their doors. Crime goes up. Yuppies bail out of town. Housing prices and rental rates plummet to affordable levels once again.
I will take my chances with the gangs, pimps and street junkies.
No one wants to go back to the 1970s or 1980s? Really? I think you meant to write, "No property owners want to return to that time". Many people who lost neighborhoods to 1990s and 2000s gentrification would have a different opinion from you. They would much rather be in the District than living in the hell hole called PG County.
No, I meant to write what I wrote. Your comment "they would much rather be in the District than living in the hell hole called PG County" doesn't hold water, because many parts of DC in the 70s and 80s could rightfully be called a "hellhole". Why is one preferable to the other? In fact, much of PG County had a higher standard of living than most of the District during that time, and was thus more expensive--and unattainable--to homeowners trapped in drug-infested, unsafe inner-city neighborhoods.
This so-called pining for the golden days of yesteryear just rings hollow to me, because I know too many people--both black and white, including family members--who lived in those neighborhoods during that time, and what their firsthand experiences were. What people long for is not a return to the living conditions of those times, when the crack vials crunched under your feet as you walked to your car, but rather to the time when certain neighborhoods were affordable for people making less than six-figure salaries. That's understandable, but in DC you can't simply scrub out the social ills that plagued city neighborhoods during those decades--leading to the low cost of living--while decrying the loss of working class and affordable housing when those neighborhoods dramatically improved. The two are inextricably linked.
And, sure, let's talk property owners for a moment, since you raised the issue: there have been countless property owners, of all colors and socioeconomic backgrounds, who have benefitted immensely from the real estate boom. Houses that were close to worthless doubled, tripled or even quadrupled in value in a relatively short period of time. Yes, as houses have been sold, many of them have been purchased by wealthy individuals and families, and many of those new homeowners have been white. But I've seen scant evidence that few, if any, homeowners have legitimately "lost" their home to gentrification.
I'll be the first to admit that it's unfortunate that the past decade's real estate explosion resulted in a diminished middle/working class population in the District. But I'm not nearly blinded enough by frustration to long for a return to the time when huge portions of central DC were little more than open-air drug markets, hotbeds of prostitution, slumlord-controlled apartment buildings and derelict and vacant commercial corridors. There are plenty of those types of areas left in and around DC, which people are more than welcome to buy into if that is their preferred standard of living. However, I suspect that the anti-gentrification resentment stems more from the fact that any neighborhood not meeting the above description has become essentially unaffordable.
Ultimately, neighborhoods change, their characters change, and the people living in those neighborhoods change as well. My mother, for instance, grew up in an inner-city neighborhood that, at the time she and her family lived there, was mostly white and middle class. Over the ensuing decades, the neighborhood transitioned into a poorer, largely African-American neighborhood, which is what it remains today. In much the same way, it's not dissimilar to the cycle that sees many poorer individuals unable to purchase homes in neighborhoods that, 15-20 years prior, were affordable to them. Such is the cycle of a neighborhood's life.
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