gentrification sucks

[rapturedbyrobots]

the city of durham, nc is undergoing a heavy round of gentrification (as are many cities nationwide). there is a high level of collusion between banks, business and city government. mostly behind the scenes, but sometimes up in your face....like when the city council attempted to bypass the legally required bidding process for surplus property to sell land parcels slated for publicly-financed redevelopment to a development company run by the mayor. in all, about a QUARTER BILLION dollars have been spent or allocated to completely gentrify downtown durham and the surrounding neighborhoods. these neighborhoods have historically been populated by working class and people of color. but ever since the deliberate destruction of black wallstreet in the 60's in the name of urban renewal (which meant tearing up black houses and businesses to build a highway), the area has been systematically underserved.

amid the fight for space that is heating up in the area we thought we'd take a chance (while there are still chances) to relocate our arts center to a better location before everything is bought up by speculative developers and absentee landlords. we've been operating in the area for 10 years, working with the city's community centers to promote, public schools, and state & private universities to promote youth leadership & cultural arts programming. ALWAYS for free...so we don't have a lot of extra money. in order to move to a bigger, better, more accessible space that would allow us to expand membership and add more programming, we needed a $10,000 bridge loan. this is NOTHING for a business loan. this is NOTHING compared to the billions being spent on gentrification projects. but we were immediately denied loans by the local credit unions (even though they acknowledged the loan amount was next to nothing) because we don't fit the overarching model of 'community' development. we neither make money for developers, nor provide products that attract the upper middle class, professional demographic that the new urban developers are catering to with their luxury modern urban lofts & overpriced downtown retail/restaurants. instead, we provide a publicly accessible, low or no cost space for community members (even poor people of color...gasp!) to use imaginatively. we are trying to be all and none of these things: a performance space for artists, a practice space for musicians, a venue for family events, a meeting space for community groups and non-profits, an art gallery, and on...and on...and on... what we are not, apparently, is fundable.

i just had to vent. please share any similar experiences/frustrations you've had with gentrification and the loss of public space for the poor and under-represented. the churches are quickly becoming the last public spaces for these populations (we have 3 on our block...until the city's plans for redevelopment come through).

[Warpy]

1. I hated it in Boston

because every single brownstone mansion the yuppies bought up to renovate meant about 20 people who had been living in the rooms had nowhere to go.

Marginal workers had been living in those places, long ago converted to rooming houses. That meant dishwashers and bus boys were able to keep a roof over their heads. It wasn't much, just a bed, a hot plate, and a bar fridge, but it beat the hell out of living 6 to a studio apartment or hitting the bricks.

If you want to know why homeless shelters are packed, gentrification had a lot to do with it. Depressed wages are the other reason.

Working people are generally treated like shit in this country.

[divvy]

2. Who pays for the improvements?

Main Entry: gen·tri·fi·ca·tion

Pronunciation: \ˌjen-trə-fə-ˈkā-shən\
Function: noun

Date: 1964
: the process of renewal and rebuilding accompanying the influx of middle-class or affluent people into deteriorating areas that often displaces poorer residents

How do you build something new so it looks like a deterioriating area when you are done? Who pays for the construction? There has to be some balance otherwise infrastructure will simply crumble. A slum has a tough time attracting a grocery store without some accompanying development. With no jobs, people are forced to live where they can.

It is a vicious circle.

In Detroit, an ethnic neighborhood got bulldozed for a factory ...... that never got built.

[rapturedbyrobots]

9. not true at all

in durham there is no lack of imagination or desire to fill the 'slums'. no idea why you would call a working class neighborhood a slum. but anyway...most of the deteriorating commercial real estate that contributes to urban blight in durham is simply not made available for grocery stores...or anything else. the buildings just sit there, boarded up, crumbling...setting a cap on land values in the neighborhoods surrounding them (making it easy to buy up entire blocks for luxury condo construction). people have offered to buy them, offered to lease them...but the owners (speculative developers) hold out because they are waiting for an influx of rich northerners that can pay more...way more than the current market rate. unfortunately, the 'tide to lift all boats' never comes (its been 'coming' for at least 10 years now). the result is that locals have NO ACCESS to these spaces while the speculators wait to cash in and the city quite literally falls apart.

and for the most part, when renovation does happen the CITY pays the costs through very generous incentives to developers for gentrifying re-development. no help if you're just a regular homeowner trying to fix your house though.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

3. Its far from a new issue and there are often racial implications

Sometimes its beaten back, at least for a while. The Tenderloin in San Francisco comes to mind as a success, The Castro as a failure, though its now a much more mixed and family neighborhood. New Orleans is still up in the air.

I saw a column written by an African-American activist in the Washington Post some years ago claimed that it was wrong to sell houses to whites in traditional black neighborhoods and one of the reasons cited was gentrification.

However seeing an urban area brought out of blight by people trying to rejuvenate our inner cities is not always bad thing. There may be a balance in their somewhere it seems, just real hard to find it.

[political_Dem]

4. it ruins ethnic and historical neighborhoods.

[Mari333]

5. happens all over, been goin on for a long time

it is a topic worth studying...
why is it when poor people /artists/ anyone in any given area get taken over by bad taste and yuppies eventually..I saw it happen in chicago and now in my own small town which has gone from being a little town with a few artists who came here to hide and is now a sprawling ugly T shirt tourist town , over half the houses bought up by yuppie types and developers who rent them out after destroying their quaintness by overhauling them into faux quaint megahomes.

ugggly

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

6. And the Kelo decision just propels it faster

The horrific Supreme Court decision said that it was acceptable for a government entity to use eminent domain to facilitate the transfer of privately owned property to another PRIVATE entity if that second entity could be seen as having a positive purpose, i.e higher taxes created or creating employment. As Sandra Day O'Connor said (paraphrase) "Every Motel Six desired by Hilton could be at risk " The apologists for the decision always say that state government can create stronger eminent domain laws but I say that is small comfort. State legislatures are even more likely to be corruptible and swayed by loud voices in small ponds, not to mention that the laws can change when the legislature changes.

Kelo is just a monstrosity and it was brought about by the LIBERAL members of the Supreme Court, believe it or not. It needs to be overturned.

[starroute]

7. There was something lately about Philly becoming a bedroom community

Atrios linked to it -- basically, more young families in the inner city and fewer businesses.

That's a bad thing even aside from the other issues with gentrification. Cities have always been the engines of economic growth and innovation. But if businesses get pushed out to the suburbs -- or if small businesses just get priced out of being able to locate anywhere they might have access to employees and markets -- economic growth is going to take a hit.

Gentrification carries with it a NIMBY attitude that's bad for anybody or anything that isn't pretty enough to measure up.

[MilesColtrane]

8. I just got tossed out of the neighborhood I lived in for 17 years... (Dallas)

because the place I was renting was sold and razed.

When I moved in, there were plentiful, roomy, late 40s/early 50s rent houses in the area.

Almost all of them have been torn down and replaced with $800,000+, zero lot, McMansion monstrosities now.

Many artists and musicians used to live in Lakewood, but they've since been elbowed out by the doctors, lawyers, and yuppies.

[Libertas1776]

10. Just take a look at NYC

it has been horribly altered by gentrification, Manhattan especially, by the Giuliani and Bloomberg dictatorship...er...i mean administrations. It really pains me every time i go into the city and see the whitewashed, gentrified sex and the city, gourmet cupcake obsessed faux liberal gated community the city has become made sanitized and safe for the yuppies and The Joneses.

Here's a really good blog that catalogs the non stop gentrification and dismantling of everything original and unique about NYC. It's really fascinating and incredibly depressing: http://vanishingnewyork.blogspot.com/