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Well, I'll tell you from personal experience, that area was certainly low-income and also certainly "a mess" (in many ways) in the early 2000s. I'm not necessarily equating the two, but I'm just glad I don't hear gun shots and sirens 24/7 when I visit friends there. I certainly used to - all day and night.
Times and situations change, and vibrant, healthy cities are ever-fluid. NL and Poplar neighborhoods are no places to halt progress because 20 years ago the city built thousands of low-income housing units. That area is basically one mile from the heart of our city. I don't have an answer on where to place those that are largely entirely supported by society. We (society) have supported most of the individuals living there for decades. We can easily support them elsewhere. People have inhabited NL for hundreds of years. The neighborhoods don't "belong" to anyone because people have lived there for 40 or 50 years. Same goes for every neighborhood in my opinion. This is not a racial issue, it's a market value, capitalist society issue and it's critical for the advancement of our entire city.
In purely economic terms, you're right.
But there are investments other than monetary that people make in a place, and it's often those investments (most often emotional) that lead people to claim that kind of ownership — poor, middle-class and wealthy alike.
I'm not saying that those should trump all other concerns, especially since the people who claim that kind of ownership usually want to see anything but change happen around them. But that doesn't mean we should mark their investments down 100 percent, either.
But there are investments other than monetary that people make in a place, and it's often those investments (most often emotional) that lead people to claim that kind of ownership — poor, middle-class and wealthy alike.
I'm not saying that those should trump all other concerns, especially since the people who claim that kind of ownership usually want to see anything but change happen around them. But that doesn't mean we should mark their investments down 100 percent, either.
Ok, I'll humor this, but let me ask you, exactly what "investment" are you referring to? New buildings/school funding/any tangible improvements; or block parties and community gatherings? People can have that kind of community unity anywhere. It doesn't need to occur in an area that should be generating millions and millions of tax dollars for our bankrupt city. I would propose that you're using the term "investment" to actually describe a level of "sameness and comfort." Two completely different situations.
Ok, I'll humor this, but let me ask you, exactly what "investment" are you referring to? New buildings/school funding/any tangible improvements; or block parties and community gatherings? People can have that kind of community unity anywhere. It doesn't need to occur in an area that should be generating millions and millions of tax dollars for our bankrupt city. I would propose that you're using the term "investment" to actually describe a level of "sameness and comfort." Two completely different situations.
Since I said "non-monetary," then bricks and mortar or paychecks are out. The word "invested" is used figuratively to describe that other stuff, which was the sort of thing I had in mind — lived experiences in a place.
Again, I'm not saying they should rate higher than ratables, especially since the people "invested" in that fashion usually don't want anything to change. I'm just saying we shouldn't just wave that sort of thing away. Place does matter, and while you can have block parties anywhere, who you have them with and where you have them form part of the overall memory. West Oak Lane may remind me of Oak Park South, but they're not interchangeable.
Since I said "non-monetary," then bricks and mortar or paychecks are out. The word "invested" is used figuratively to describe that other stuff, which was the sort of thing I had in mind — lived experiences in a place.
Again, I'm not saying they should rate higher than ratables, especially since the people "invested" in that fashion usually don't want anything to change. I'm just saying we shouldn't just wave that sort of thing away. Place does matter, and while you can have block parties anywhere, who you have them with and where you have them form part of the overall memory. West Oak Lane may remind me of Oak Park South, but they're not interchangeable.
I think the best that can happen in these situations is that people "invested" in those properties have a reasonable place to go if the places they live in are redeveloped. You can't kick someone out of their place and not offer a reasonable place to re-locate, whether or not the media vilifies you - which they most certainly will.
What's interesting is that these places where people have all this "investment" in are hotbeds for crime and violence, in serious disrepair and strewn with trash and garbage. Most would consider these places to be unlivable - until they have to leave. I have lived in these places before and the self-sabotage that occurs is stunning.
Everyone wants to see a problematic location upgraded. Why wouldn't you? It makes the area safer, improves home values, upgrades retail and services. We need to focus more on the relocation part of the equation. Subsidies for builders focused on the relocated should be enacted and the new property should have to be included in the proposal.
Obviously, corruption makes all of this subject to a breakdown in the process but at least the backend of the gentrification process should be highlighted more in the process.
Obviously a multi-faceted, complicated issue that easily slides down the rabbit hole when discussed.
Since I said "non-monetary," then bricks and mortar or paychecks are out. The word "invested" is used figuratively to describe that other stuff, which was the sort of thing I had in mind — lived experiences in a place.
Again, I'm not saying they should rate higher than ratables, especially since the people "invested" in that fashion usually don't want anything to change. I'm just saying we shouldn't just wave that sort of thing away. Place does matter, and while you can have block parties anywhere, who you have them with and where you have them form part of the overall memory. West Oak Lane may remind me of Oak Park South, but they're not interchangeable.
What "other stuff" are you referring to exactly? You keep stating the term "investment," yet I still have no idea to what you're referencing. Cleaning a city-funded playground, watching a neighbor's kids, helping out an elderly neighbor, frequenting a local restaurant? This is what I personally refer to as "human beings simply living life." Every single neighborhood in the world (rich to poor and everything between) engages in this type of behavior.
Regardless, as Reddog accurately stated in his post, these neighborhoods we are discussing are almost all completely destroyed, litter-strewn, dangerous wastelands. If the result current residents' investment strategies are what we are seeing now, I say, get some new folks in to try some new "investment" strategies, or simply "be a human being living life" and pay taxes to our bankrupt city. Time to fire this band of "investors" and make our bets elsewhere.
What "other stuff" are you referring to exactly? You keep stating the term "investment," yet I still have no idea to what you're referencing. Cleaning a city-funded playground, watching a neighbor's kids, helping out an elderly neighbor, frequenting a local restaurant? This is what I personally refer to as "human beings simply living life." Every single neighborhood in the world (rich to poor and everything between) engages in this type of behavior.
Regardless, as Reddog accurately stated in his post, these neighborhoods we are discussing are almost all completely destroyed, litter-strewn, dangerous wastelands. If the result current residents' investment strategies are what we are seeing now, I say, get some new folks in to try some new "investment" strategies, or simply "be a human being living life" and pay taxes to our bankrupt city. Time to fire this band of "investors" and make our bets elsewhere.
If you've read my comments on the subject of neighborhood (fiscal) reinvestment often enough, you should know that I support the process — I call myself a "two cheers for gentrification" guy.
And the reasons I give gentrification two cheers are:
1) Not everyone who's low-income gets pushed out of a gentrifying neighborhood. The ones who remain enjoy a better quality of life because of the reinvestment as well.
2) and this applies especially to Philadelphia: A non-trivial number of those lower-income residents own their homes. They've been denied the opportunity to realize gains on their investment because of those decades of disinvestment. It's time they had the same opportunity to cash out should they so choose.
My home neighborhood in Kansas City (Oak Park South) looks worse than West Oak Lane does now because middle-class Black families like mine fled it starting around 1980. It needs reinvestment of the type you describe as well. West Oak Lane, for whatever other problems it may have, benefits from a continued presence of working- and middle-class Blacks who are both financially and emotionally invested in the place.
I guess what I'm saying is: The people whose investments are primarily emotional can nonetheless "bring something to the table" in a neighborhood in need of reinvestment. (Assuming, that is, that they understand what it is they can bring. When Mosaic Development Partners solicited actual money [in blocks of $100] from the neighbors of that new apartment building it built at Wayne Junction, the partners had to explain to the neighbors that this wasn't like buying lottery tickets — they would get their money back and then some, but the payoff would come to them over time. Given how much money many lower-income folks spend on lottery tickets, however, there are probably scads of potential $100 investors in redevelopment in their own neighborhoods; all they need is education about investing vs. gambling.
(By contrast, the residents of the University City Townhomes didn't even understand how the owner of that property was ready to respect their emotional investment because they were more interested in "hitting the lottery," so to speak, and that sent the whole deal south, leading them to resort to misdirected protests as a way of getting what they wanted but couldn't get from the owner.)
Oh, I like that one on 21st and Ludlow. The area sure is doing well, 10 years after the Salvation Army tragedy.
BTW, in the movie Philadelphia, its mentioned that Tom Hanks's character contracted aids at an adult theater and they described the location. Was that the same adult theater that collapsed or just completely made up?
My home neighborhood in Kansas City (Oak Park South) looks worse than West Oak Lane does now because middle-class Black families like mine fled it starting around 1980. It needs reinvestment of the type you describe as well. West Oak Lane, for whatever other problems it may have, benefits from a continued presence of working- and middle-class Blacks who are both financially and emotionally invested in the place.
Following myself up to note another semantic distinction I make that also touches on what I've been saying here.
If you read my featured-house posts, you may note that I refer to the properties on offer as "houses" rather than "homes." For most people who buy them, however, they're both, and both the house-building and real-estate-sales industries use the latter term exclusively. What makes a house a home are those unquantifiable things, the emotional stuff that gets people as worked up as financial loss does.
Oak Park South may have resembled West Oak Lane more than it does now when I was growing up in it, but Oak Park South is my home while West Oak Lane is full of houses. I'm going to lament WOL's decline if it happens, but it won't hit me the same way Oak Park South's has. My lived experience in Oak Park South may be identical to that of someone who grew up in West Oak Lane, but I wouldn't expect the West Oak Lane resident to respond the same way to Oak Park South's decline that I would because of that difference in emotional ties.
And even a beat-up, broken-down neighborhood is someone's home. To simply say that the lived experiences are identical, while true, is to ignore the emotional power of place.
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