Stay out of Boyle Heights, Lebowski!
May 23, 2017 9:42 AM Subscribe
The 'Artwashing' of America: The Battle For The Soul of Los Angeles Against Gentrfication — Defend Boyle Heights has targeted 10 new art galleries on South Anderson Street, a formerly industrial strip along the desolate eastern bank of the Los Angeles River. Activists say the galleries are a proxy for corporate interests, especially those of high-end real estate. After the galleries will come the coffee shops and bars, and after that, the restaurants that serve bacon in cocktails. After that, unkempt lots empty for decades will be boxed in construction plywood, and then there will be many hollow promises of affordable housing. And then it really will be time for “fucking Victorville.”
Defend Boyle Heights
More on gentrification (En Español) from Boyle Heights Alliance Against Artwashing and Displacement (BHAAAD) (En Español)
LAist: Boyle Heights Development Seeks To Sell 'Mariachi' Experience While Displacing Actual Mariachis
City Lab: The Pernicious Realities of 'Artwashing' — In expensive London, artists are caught in the middle of developers' attempts to push out lower-income residents and rebrand neglected properties.
The Eastsider: Boyle Heights gallery blames anti-gentrification protests for closure
KCET: The Shifting Cultures of Multiracial Boyle Heights
LA Times: LAPD investigating Boyle Heights vandalism as possible hate crimes sparked by gentrification fight
The Guardian's 'Gentrified World' section
Statement from PSSST Gallery
Defend Boyle Heights
More on gentrification (En Español) from Boyle Heights Alliance Against Artwashing and Displacement (BHAAAD) (En Español)
LAist: Boyle Heights Development Seeks To Sell 'Mariachi' Experience While Displacing Actual Mariachis
City Lab: The Pernicious Realities of 'Artwashing' — In expensive London, artists are caught in the middle of developers' attempts to push out lower-income residents and rebrand neglected properties.
The Eastsider: Boyle Heights gallery blames anti-gentrification protests for closure
KCET: The Shifting Cultures of Multiracial Boyle Heights
LA Times: LAPD investigating Boyle Heights vandalism as possible hate crimes sparked by gentrification fight
The Guardian's 'Gentrified World' section
Statement from PSSST Gallery
I swear I'll read all of this, but I think this is an important perspective not discussed enough by artists when they (including myself) lament the loss of venues to increasing rents and all that.
I've definitely seen on more than one occasion the claim from artists that they should receive preferential affordability deals because they are positive contributors to a neighborhood. Cities are sometimes happy to oblige, seeing them as the first step to gentrifying a neighborhood into something more valuable economically. Sometimes it's fairly naive, but sometimes its framed as "we're the good poor people." The worst part is, I can't begrudge any individual just trying to survive in our current meat grinder of an economy.
posted by lownote at 10:23 AM on May 23, 2017 [6 favorites]
I've definitely seen on more than one occasion the claim from artists that they should receive preferential affordability deals because they are positive contributors to a neighborhood. Cities are sometimes happy to oblige, seeing them as the first step to gentrifying a neighborhood into something more valuable economically. Sometimes it's fairly naive, but sometimes its framed as "we're the good poor people." The worst part is, I can't begrudge any individual just trying to survive in our current meat grinder of an economy.
posted by lownote at 10:23 AM on May 23, 2017 [6 favorites]
On the other hand, it would be very nice if instead of doing the whole broke people fighting slightly less broke people thing, with a side of race mixed in, maybe the community groups and artists could work together to demand things for everyone that they all would benefit from like rent controls and more rights that help tenants stay long term?
posted by Zalzidrax at 10:28 AM on May 23, 2017 [13 favorites]
posted by Zalzidrax at 10:28 AM on May 23, 2017 [13 favorites]
all would benefit from like rent controls and more rights that help tenants stay long term?
There are few cities that have better rights for renters than Los Angeles. Any multi-unit building built before '78 is rent controlled, and the landlord has to pay relocation expenses of up to $20,000 if they force a long-term tenant out.
posted by hwyengr at 10:31 AM on May 23, 2017 [2 favorites]
There are few cities that have better rights for renters than Los Angeles. Any multi-unit building built before '78 is rent controlled, and the landlord has to pay relocation expenses of up to $20,000 if they force a long-term tenant out.
posted by hwyengr at 10:31 AM on May 23, 2017 [2 favorites]
I watched this happen in Austin and Dallas. So much of the community, including the artist community, was devastated by the process where the end goal was gated white fortresses that were outside the reach of any of the former tenants.
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 10:36 AM on May 23, 2017 [8 favorites]
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 10:36 AM on May 23, 2017 [8 favorites]
Money always goes after the arts, because money wants what it can't buy.
posted by Melismata at 10:37 AM on May 23, 2017 [4 favorites]
posted by Melismata at 10:37 AM on May 23, 2017 [4 favorites]
Is rent control in big cities good? Doesn't that just lead to the next generation of young people subsidizing whoever is there now while the landlord looks to wait till they can make a ludicrous profit in the future?
I'd say that rent control has been one of the main coups of the baby boomer generation in big cities, since it dispraportionatly helped them stay where they were forever.
It plays into the NIMBY attitude that people have with cities growing quickly. But besides deregulating housing permits so that more can be built anywhere in cities, there's no solution. The solution to needing more housing can't be don't have gentrification: it must be building to increase stock, meet demand, and increase density. If that means tearing down architecture and history then so be it - cities simply can't be static until there are no more people looking to live in them.
In NYC, they approve like, 20k new residential permits a year, most of which ends up being luxury stock. This can't be the answer. It just can't.link
posted by durandal at 10:48 AM on May 23, 2017 [13 favorites]
I'd say that rent control has been one of the main coups of the baby boomer generation in big cities, since it dispraportionatly helped them stay where they were forever.
It plays into the NIMBY attitude that people have with cities growing quickly. But besides deregulating housing permits so that more can be built anywhere in cities, there's no solution. The solution to needing more housing can't be don't have gentrification: it must be building to increase stock, meet demand, and increase density. If that means tearing down architecture and history then so be it - cities simply can't be static until there are no more people looking to live in them.
In NYC, they approve like, 20k new residential permits a year, most of which ends up being luxury stock. This can't be the answer. It just can't.link
posted by durandal at 10:48 AM on May 23, 2017 [13 favorites]
In the specific case of Los Angeles, the Rent Stabilization Ordinance went into effect at the same time as the statewide Prop 13 property tax freeze, so at least they doubled down on not letting the owners get off scot-free while sticking it to the renters.
Not that Prop 13 has done anything good for urban planning, but still...
posted by hwyengr at 10:53 AM on May 23, 2017 [1 favorite]
Not that Prop 13 has done anything good for urban planning, but still...
posted by hwyengr at 10:53 AM on May 23, 2017 [1 favorite]
Is rent control in big cities good?
Yes. Next question?
posted by Mayor West at 10:56 AM on May 23, 2017 [4 favorites]
Yes. Next question?
posted by Mayor West at 10:56 AM on May 23, 2017 [4 favorites]
Rent control hurts poor people the worst.
posted by NeoRothbardian at 11:02 AM on May 23, 2017 [3 favorites]
posted by NeoRothbardian at 11:02 AM on May 23, 2017 [3 favorites]
Why is it good? Why isn't building a ton more like Tokyo does better? Why do we keep having to put off the real long term issues onto the next generation for the sake of people staying exactly where they are forever as if living somewhere is a birthright? If we don't build more everywhere the problem just gets worse and worse and worse. If universal rent control was a thing then maybe it would make sense, but it'll be hard to convince me that there's anything ever good about giving one group something at the expense of the next generation
posted by durandal at 11:03 AM on May 23, 2017 [15 favorites]
posted by durandal at 11:03 AM on May 23, 2017 [15 favorites]
The problem is that, since Williamsburg, gentrification-via-artists has gone from something that just happened to an actual business plan. See: Durham, NC.
If there are lots of vacant lots, why can't the existing residents stay and the new fancy people live in newly constructed lofts etc? That would be the ethical approach to improving neighborhoods. Unfortunately our brand of capitalism has no ethical component.
posted by grumpybear69 at 11:04 AM on May 23, 2017 [5 favorites]
If there are lots of vacant lots, why can't the existing residents stay and the new fancy people live in newly constructed lofts etc? That would be the ethical approach to improving neighborhoods. Unfortunately our brand of capitalism has no ethical component.
posted by grumpybear69 at 11:04 AM on May 23, 2017 [5 favorites]
Oh god, I really just shut down when I hear NIMBY in housing conversations. It seems to be a remarkable shorthand (at least in the Bay Area) for a kind of free-market middle class libertarian that hates both the poor (why should they get to live where I can't), and the rich (greedy boomers, unless they're developers, in which case they can do no wrong).
Frankly, in certain places (like SF), the supply/demand solution for a peninsula that small is easy. You either decide the city will be for only the ultra-wealthy, in which case all the people shouting NIMBY will be the next ones gone, or else you stop building giant office buildings to bring even more jobs to a city that's has no unemployment, but a massive affordable housing crisis.
I have no idea for what the issues are in LA, and I'm guessing they're different, but watching developers win out on both sides can't be good for humanity.
posted by whm at 11:06 AM on May 23, 2017 [5 favorites]
Frankly, in certain places (like SF), the supply/demand solution for a peninsula that small is easy. You either decide the city will be for only the ultra-wealthy, in which case all the people shouting NIMBY will be the next ones gone, or else you stop building giant office buildings to bring even more jobs to a city that's has no unemployment, but a massive affordable housing crisis.
I have no idea for what the issues are in LA, and I'm guessing they're different, but watching developers win out on both sides can't be good for humanity.
posted by whm at 11:06 AM on May 23, 2017 [5 favorites]
I mean Im not from SF, So I apologize for using a term that's clearly pretty loaded out there. At the same time, San Fransisco's problems aren't getting addressed now, so why fight so hard to keep it like it is? I mean we've got to rethink how we do cities in America - fighting to keep any part of them static exacerbates the problem. We need more infrastructure and rail and everything as well, we need to more comfortably expand the footprint of cities where land is scarce and they've already been built.
I agree it's not good to have developers always winning, but even if the revolution came (let's hope it does), we'd have to decide how were going to build and use cities in the 21st century. It'll require a lot of demolishing and a lot of taxes and a lot of pain to start, but what is the other choice? Seriously? Stop having cities? Stop people moving to them somehow?
posted by durandal at 11:20 AM on May 23, 2017 [2 favorites]
I agree it's not good to have developers always winning, but even if the revolution came (let's hope it does), we'd have to decide how were going to build and use cities in the 21st century. It'll require a lot of demolishing and a lot of taxes and a lot of pain to start, but what is the other choice? Seriously? Stop having cities? Stop people moving to them somehow?
posted by durandal at 11:20 AM on May 23, 2017 [2 favorites]
In NYC, they approve like, 20k new residential permits a year, most of which ends up being luxury stock. This can't be the answer.
So...I mean...why do you think that is? Are you under the impression that the rent-control laws dictate that developers can only do luxury developments? No. If you doubled, tripled, quadrupled the size of development in NYC each year it would still be overwhelmingly luxury developments, because developers are chasing the perceived maximum possible return and always will. The market does not give a shit about housing low- to middle-income people, especially not under halfway decent conditions. It never will.
I can only take it that you are completely unaware that a major East Coast city repealed rent control (or, rather, the state forbade it, over the majority opposition of the city) just twenty years ago, and how that worked out. I invite you to scour the skylines of Boston and Cambridge for that great influx of affordable housing.
posted by praemunire at 11:30 AM on May 23, 2017 [16 favorites]
So...I mean...why do you think that is? Are you under the impression that the rent-control laws dictate that developers can only do luxury developments? No. If you doubled, tripled, quadrupled the size of development in NYC each year it would still be overwhelmingly luxury developments, because developers are chasing the perceived maximum possible return and always will. The market does not give a shit about housing low- to middle-income people, especially not under halfway decent conditions. It never will.
I can only take it that you are completely unaware that a major East Coast city repealed rent control (or, rather, the state forbade it, over the majority opposition of the city) just twenty years ago, and how that worked out. I invite you to scour the skylines of Boston and Cambridge for that great influx of affordable housing.
posted by praemunire at 11:30 AM on May 23, 2017 [16 favorites]
I strongly suspect that if inequality wasn't such a big feature of the economy, there wouldn't be as much traction for gentrification. Fewer rich people, rich people who are less rich, fewer poor people, poor people who are less poor - and you simply can't sustain this kind of extraction economy where rich developers see a cheap thing that poor people have made nice and use their money/political power to seize it. Also, when there's less hierarchy, you make your money by appealing to average people; when there's more hierarchy, you make your money by, on one hand, screwing the poor with inferior goods and payday loans and, on the other, offering gold plated mid century toilets to e-bankers or whatever.
When you have a few people with a lot of capital, they are going to fuck people over as an automatic component of investing that money. One of the reasons to tax the rich fairly hard should be to make them less rich, because a society where a small number of people have a lot of money and the power that comes with it tends to be a bad society.
End the inequality and the rest will mostly sort itself out - that's where the political effort needs to go. Driving out art galleries, etc, is a holding action, and one I find very sympathetic, but it's reminiscent of the heretic movements of centuries past, and heretics get crushed. (Because what else is this except heresy against the market? The idea that you shouldn't be able to buy something even if you're very rich or very artistic?)
posted by Frowner at 11:32 AM on May 23, 2017 [27 favorites]
When you have a few people with a lot of capital, they are going to fuck people over as an automatic component of investing that money. One of the reasons to tax the rich fairly hard should be to make them less rich, because a society where a small number of people have a lot of money and the power that comes with it tends to be a bad society.
End the inequality and the rest will mostly sort itself out - that's where the political effort needs to go. Driving out art galleries, etc, is a holding action, and one I find very sympathetic, but it's reminiscent of the heretic movements of centuries past, and heretics get crushed. (Because what else is this except heresy against the market? The idea that you shouldn't be able to buy something even if you're very rich or very artistic?)
posted by Frowner at 11:32 AM on May 23, 2017 [27 favorites]
I'm conflicted about this subject because my experiences as a new homeowner and former lifelong renter in Los Angeles have shown me both sides of a crappy coin.
The rent control law applies to any multi-unit home, including a single-family home with a cottage out back. Many LA houses built in the 20s and 30s, including mine, have this second unit for income. Rent control is nice, it caps rent increase to 3% annually, after all. But then things start to go south for the home owner when a renter stays over 10 years and is either over 62 or considered disabled (I say considered, because LA Housing considers panic attacks and anything else a disablity, meaning anyone can qualify even if they don't have SDI). They are now unevictable, and new home owners inherit the tenant and their status, so even if you want to you can't evict them even for you to live in that unit or to move your elderly parents into that unit. The only way you can evict them is to cease being a landlord (California Ellis Act).
This is all well and good for me because I took one unit and the parents took the other, so I would have no income, anyway. But I still had to pay the tenant $19,700. I had only banked on $7,600, which would have been the mom-and-pop owner occupancy price as the tenant, while having lived there 12 years, was under 62. But during the process he suddenly discovered he was disabled, and LA Housing's contract firm Paragon Partners labeled him as such; suddenly he became unevictable except through the Ellis Act. The conversation we had with the tenant literally was his reply to "we did not know you were disabled," being "I did not know I was, either." We offered him cash for keys, he refused. Last resort: Ellis Act.
I'm lucky. I could pay the $20k and the legal fees (I could also probably have contested the status, but it would have ended up costing the same but added more grief).
Homeowners stuck with these mom-and-pop landlord situations collect too little rent (think of the disparity of increasing rent 3% annually on tenants living 10+ years versus cost of living increases in Los Angeles) and have a hard time maintaining the property. So they try to sell and in this market that could get them a nice retirement fund or a place in the suburbs. But they can't sell because buyers don't want to inherit these tenants -- they need the second or third unit as income to pay for the mortgage. So you have this stalemate, with houses going up for sale and buyers flocking to them, then running away when they discover that charming little property with a back cottage to help pay the mortgage has an elderly woman paying $500/mo. No one wins here.
Meanwhile, developers misuse the Ellis Act when buying large complexes and evicting everyone, then sitting on the property for five years before putting some paint on the exterior and renting at the market rate. Or, if they have deep pockets, they tear it all down and build brand new condos or leased apartments that are no longer rent controlled. In other words, LA rent control is killing mom-and-pop landlord home ownership and the developers are making a killing building new, expensive condos by misusing the Ellis Act. I'm afraid the state will revise the law and potentially make it difficult for mom-and-pop landlords to get out of a situation like mine, and the developers will simply figure something else out.
We need affordable housing but the way things are right now in LA that's not happening regardless of rent control. I don't have the answer to it, but at this point I'm pretty well sold that LA's solution is no longer viable, however good it was in 1978, and something else needs to happen. Fix it, toss it and try something new, I don't know. I just know it's not working.
posted by linux at 11:34 AM on May 23, 2017 [18 favorites]
The rent control law applies to any multi-unit home, including a single-family home with a cottage out back. Many LA houses built in the 20s and 30s, including mine, have this second unit for income. Rent control is nice, it caps rent increase to 3% annually, after all. But then things start to go south for the home owner when a renter stays over 10 years and is either over 62 or considered disabled (I say considered, because LA Housing considers panic attacks and anything else a disablity, meaning anyone can qualify even if they don't have SDI). They are now unevictable, and new home owners inherit the tenant and their status, so even if you want to you can't evict them even for you to live in that unit or to move your elderly parents into that unit. The only way you can evict them is to cease being a landlord (California Ellis Act).
This is all well and good for me because I took one unit and the parents took the other, so I would have no income, anyway. But I still had to pay the tenant $19,700. I had only banked on $7,600, which would have been the mom-and-pop owner occupancy price as the tenant, while having lived there 12 years, was under 62. But during the process he suddenly discovered he was disabled, and LA Housing's contract firm Paragon Partners labeled him as such; suddenly he became unevictable except through the Ellis Act. The conversation we had with the tenant literally was his reply to "we did not know you were disabled," being "I did not know I was, either." We offered him cash for keys, he refused. Last resort: Ellis Act.
I'm lucky. I could pay the $20k and the legal fees (I could also probably have contested the status, but it would have ended up costing the same but added more grief).
Homeowners stuck with these mom-and-pop landlord situations collect too little rent (think of the disparity of increasing rent 3% annually on tenants living 10+ years versus cost of living increases in Los Angeles) and have a hard time maintaining the property. So they try to sell and in this market that could get them a nice retirement fund or a place in the suburbs. But they can't sell because buyers don't want to inherit these tenants -- they need the second or third unit as income to pay for the mortgage. So you have this stalemate, with houses going up for sale and buyers flocking to them, then running away when they discover that charming little property with a back cottage to help pay the mortgage has an elderly woman paying $500/mo. No one wins here.
Meanwhile, developers misuse the Ellis Act when buying large complexes and evicting everyone, then sitting on the property for five years before putting some paint on the exterior and renting at the market rate. Or, if they have deep pockets, they tear it all down and build brand new condos or leased apartments that are no longer rent controlled. In other words, LA rent control is killing mom-and-pop landlord home ownership and the developers are making a killing building new, expensive condos by misusing the Ellis Act. I'm afraid the state will revise the law and potentially make it difficult for mom-and-pop landlords to get out of a situation like mine, and the developers will simply figure something else out.
We need affordable housing but the way things are right now in LA that's not happening regardless of rent control. I don't have the answer to it, but at this point I'm pretty well sold that LA's solution is no longer viable, however good it was in 1978, and something else needs to happen. Fix it, toss it and try something new, I don't know. I just know it's not working.
posted by linux at 11:34 AM on May 23, 2017 [18 favorites]
The real estate agent interviewed in the article sounded fairly reasonable until she said this:
“Do you think it's fair in 2017 for you to pay $600 a month for a one bedroom? Let's be real here. I want a Ferrari, and I want to pay $300 a month."
Because a luxury performance car is exactly the same as housing (a small apartment at that). Good lord, that mindset.
posted by pernoctalian at 11:42 AM on May 23, 2017 [15 favorites]
“Do you think it's fair in 2017 for you to pay $600 a month for a one bedroom? Let's be real here. I want a Ferrari, and I want to pay $300 a month."
Because a luxury performance car is exactly the same as housing (a small apartment at that). Good lord, that mindset.
posted by pernoctalian at 11:42 AM on May 23, 2017 [15 favorites]
>Rent control hurts poor people the worst.
I have skimmed through that article three times, and the closest thing I can find to that point in there is a correlation is causation argument between rent controls and white flight.
And I will even admit that rent controls may not reduce average rents long term, a point against rent controls which that article is too busy idolizing economics 101 capitalism to even make, but what it does do is keep poorer folks from having to move every year because the housing market shoots up and says they suddenly don't "deserve" to stay in their apartment.
And frankly, I am not an urban planner, so I don't actually have a good idea of what the best solutions are out there, but the point I would like to make, is that cooperation is going to be important here. Because while "this community only exists because racist whites wouldn't let us be part of mainstream society and now they want to price us out of our homes" adds insult to injury, this is part of a really big problem that's facing the country. Namely that, the places where it's cheap to live have no jobs because they all cluster to the same spots, driving up the rent enormously and eating up the paychecks of anyone who's not making gobs of money, and increasingly the paychecks of those people, too. There are tons of people who can't live near where they were born because rent and housing costs are too high.
posted by Zalzidrax at 11:48 AM on May 23, 2017 [3 favorites]
I have skimmed through that article three times, and the closest thing I can find to that point in there is a correlation is causation argument between rent controls and white flight.
And I will even admit that rent controls may not reduce average rents long term, a point against rent controls which that article is too busy idolizing economics 101 capitalism to even make, but what it does do is keep poorer folks from having to move every year because the housing market shoots up and says they suddenly don't "deserve" to stay in their apartment.
And frankly, I am not an urban planner, so I don't actually have a good idea of what the best solutions are out there, but the point I would like to make, is that cooperation is going to be important here. Because while "this community only exists because racist whites wouldn't let us be part of mainstream society and now they want to price us out of our homes" adds insult to injury, this is part of a really big problem that's facing the country. Namely that, the places where it's cheap to live have no jobs because they all cluster to the same spots, driving up the rent enormously and eating up the paychecks of anyone who's not making gobs of money, and increasingly the paychecks of those people, too. There are tons of people who can't live near where they were born because rent and housing costs are too high.
posted by Zalzidrax at 11:48 AM on May 23, 2017 [3 favorites]
I doubt that rent control was ever a "solution" per se; it was another one of those things where the real solution (housing as a right, administered by the state as a middle class backstop instead of private ownership as a middle class backstop - like UK council housing but better) is unpalatable to anyone with any money. Just like single payer and/or national healthcare is the solution to our healthcare problems, but we get Obamacare instead since the political power isn't there.
And again, this is where inequality hits hard - as long as we have a small class of very wealthy people, it will be almost impossible to "solve" any large scale problems, because the solutions involve taking care of everyone even if it costs. If you're middle class, "pay somewhat more taxes but also never worry about medical bills, and you have access to good-quality state guaranteed housing for a sustainable rent" is relatively palatable even though it involves giving up some more cash, because what you get from socialized risk has a lot of value. If you're a kazillionaire, you don't care because you will never have to worry about medical bills and you own three mansions constructed entirely from the compacted bones and skin of the disenfranchised - so why would you ever accept paying more taxes?
posted by Frowner at 11:49 AM on May 23, 2017 [32 favorites]
And again, this is where inequality hits hard - as long as we have a small class of very wealthy people, it will be almost impossible to "solve" any large scale problems, because the solutions involve taking care of everyone even if it costs. If you're middle class, "pay somewhat more taxes but also never worry about medical bills, and you have access to good-quality state guaranteed housing for a sustainable rent" is relatively palatable even though it involves giving up some more cash, because what you get from socialized risk has a lot of value. If you're a kazillionaire, you don't care because you will never have to worry about medical bills and you own three mansions constructed entirely from the compacted bones and skin of the disenfranchised - so why would you ever accept paying more taxes?
posted by Frowner at 11:49 AM on May 23, 2017 [32 favorites]
I've been an unwitting part of this process in a major way at least once, in downtown Santa Ana in Orange County around 1999-2002.
It was pretty much an open joke that the city and associated developers were turning a blind eye to all of the not even really quasi-legal live-work studios we were inhabiting and working in, where people were basically living in very old office spaces and buildings, showering in the sinks in the communal bathrooms and all of that kind of thing.
One warning sign I can recognize clearly in hindsight was how many landlords were overlooking and allowing late rent payments. I knew some artists who were over 6 months overdue on rent and the managers/landlords just didn't really seem to care that much, because they had a much longer game plan in mind. They often had many empty units in these old buildings anyway, and the value that artists were going to provide were likely going to make up for it in much more lucrative ways 5-10 years down the road.
I didn't really have any context of why this would be bad, or what gentrification even really was or what it meant. I learned that lesson the hard way after actually living in the community and making friends with residents who were also fellow artists - with the notable difference that they weren't white/euro imports, but the Latino or Hispanic residents who had family roots or had been living in the city for generations.
Some of these people took the time to at least try to explain it to me and what was happening all around me, as they could see the big picture a lot more clearly then some random weirdo looking for cheap rent to do random art weirdo things.
And slowly but surely I watched a lot of these new friends get displaced. Local businesses like barber shops and restaurants were replaced with increasingly fancier and fancier galleries and coffee shops. Old buildings where I used to throw small raves or experimental shows were torn down and replaced with condos.
I remember at one point attending a gallery opening in a place that used to be a properly dingy, dusty concrete and brick basement where we'd had a very small, intimate Windy and Carl show had turned into a very posh, very bright gallery white abstract sculpture and modern art gallery filled with very expensive art and artists imported from somewhere else entirely, and suddenly seeing what was happening a lot more clearly, and the dissociative sensation nearly made me physically sick and dizzy.
I revisited the arts village in the late 2000s and sure enough it was well on its way to be a milquetoast faux-bohemian shopping/dining district rendered safe for consumption.
posted by loquacious at 11:56 AM on May 23, 2017 [9 favorites]
It was pretty much an open joke that the city and associated developers were turning a blind eye to all of the not even really quasi-legal live-work studios we were inhabiting and working in, where people were basically living in very old office spaces and buildings, showering in the sinks in the communal bathrooms and all of that kind of thing.
One warning sign I can recognize clearly in hindsight was how many landlords were overlooking and allowing late rent payments. I knew some artists who were over 6 months overdue on rent and the managers/landlords just didn't really seem to care that much, because they had a much longer game plan in mind. They often had many empty units in these old buildings anyway, and the value that artists were going to provide were likely going to make up for it in much more lucrative ways 5-10 years down the road.
I didn't really have any context of why this would be bad, or what gentrification even really was or what it meant. I learned that lesson the hard way after actually living in the community and making friends with residents who were also fellow artists - with the notable difference that they weren't white/euro imports, but the Latino or Hispanic residents who had family roots or had been living in the city for generations.
Some of these people took the time to at least try to explain it to me and what was happening all around me, as they could see the big picture a lot more clearly then some random weirdo looking for cheap rent to do random art weirdo things.
And slowly but surely I watched a lot of these new friends get displaced. Local businesses like barber shops and restaurants were replaced with increasingly fancier and fancier galleries and coffee shops. Old buildings where I used to throw small raves or experimental shows were torn down and replaced with condos.
I remember at one point attending a gallery opening in a place that used to be a properly dingy, dusty concrete and brick basement where we'd had a very small, intimate Windy and Carl show had turned into a very posh, very bright gallery white abstract sculpture and modern art gallery filled with very expensive art and artists imported from somewhere else entirely, and suddenly seeing what was happening a lot more clearly, and the dissociative sensation nearly made me physically sick and dizzy.
I revisited the arts village in the late 2000s and sure enough it was well on its way to be a milquetoast faux-bohemian shopping/dining district rendered safe for consumption.
posted by loquacious at 11:56 AM on May 23, 2017 [9 favorites]
Pour one out for the "mom & pop landlords" whose plan to get a free lunch was so rudely derailed.
posted by Space Coyote at 12:22 PM on May 23, 2017 [10 favorites]
posted by Space Coyote at 12:22 PM on May 23, 2017 [10 favorites]
as long as we have a small class of very wealthy people, it will be almost impossible to "solve" any large scale problems
Translation: forget about it man, there's' nothing that can be done. Just go back to watching Netflix, and be thankful for what you have for now.
But on the bright side, this is only a temporary situation. Give it about 30-40 years of climate change and drought, and all of Southern California will be as uninhabitable as the Empty Quarter. The few hardy survivalists who find a way to get potable water and stay out of the heat probably won't have any rent worries.
So what I'm saying is, don't make any long-term plans for the cities.
posted by happyroach at 12:26 PM on May 23, 2017 [1 favorite]
Translation: forget about it man, there's' nothing that can be done. Just go back to watching Netflix, and be thankful for what you have for now.
But on the bright side, this is only a temporary situation. Give it about 30-40 years of climate change and drought, and all of Southern California will be as uninhabitable as the Empty Quarter. The few hardy survivalists who find a way to get potable water and stay out of the heat probably won't have any rent worries.
So what I'm saying is, don't make any long-term plans for the cities.
posted by happyroach at 12:26 PM on May 23, 2017 [1 favorite]
Actually around here (Boston/Cambridge), it seems as if people are bypassing the artists altogether; the rich folks are going straight for the empty warehouses, because it's cool to push out the local industry and its workers, or something.
posted by Melismata at 12:30 PM on May 23, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by Melismata at 12:30 PM on May 23, 2017 [1 favorite]
loquacious: been to Santa Ana recently? Limited edition sneaker shops, minimalist coffee bars, trendy eateries and bars. It's hard to believe, but you can see the latino community in the arts district shrink on practically a quarterly basis. I remember watching the exact same thing happen to the Mission in SF, it's weird to see it happening in Santa Ana, too.
posted by BuddhaInABucket at 12:33 PM on May 23, 2017 [3 favorites]
posted by BuddhaInABucket at 12:33 PM on May 23, 2017 [3 favorites]
The problem with definining "gentrification" as a problem and an evil process is that the alternative is for minorities to keep living in segregated neighborhoods that stay poor, what we used to call ghettoes, with bad schools, high crime, etc. Does anyone consider that a good thing?
posted by msalt at 12:40 PM on May 23, 2017 [4 favorites]
posted by msalt at 12:40 PM on May 23, 2017 [4 favorites]
> The problem with definining "gentrification" as a problem and an evil process is that the alternative is for minorities to keep living in segregated neighborhoods that stay poor, what we used to call ghettoes, with bad schools, high crime, etc. Does anyone consider that a good thing?
Before bothering to answer this question, I'd like to see some evidence for your unstated but implied thesis that the new money coming into these neighborhoods does anything to improve schools, reduce crime, or to create lasting neighborhoods where whites and minorities live together.
On schools: Gentrification doesn’t fix inner-city schools
Too rich in data/caveats to pull-quote from, but basically: two of the best studies out there show that property crime goes up with gentrification, while they come to different conclusions on other non-property crimes. Certainly doesn't support the idea that adding moneyed white folks pushes crime down to any degree at all.
posted by tonycpsu at 12:55 PM on May 23, 2017 [9 favorites]
Before bothering to answer this question, I'd like to see some evidence for your unstated but implied thesis that the new money coming into these neighborhoods does anything to improve schools, reduce crime, or to create lasting neighborhoods where whites and minorities live together.
On schools: Gentrification doesn’t fix inner-city schools
For those living outside of these neighborhoods, this might be gentrification’s dirtiest little secret. For those of us who live in gentrifying neighborhoods, it’s not a secret at all.On crime: Gentrification’s Effect on Crime Rates
“There are many ways to opt out of the neighborhood schools and gentrification has a limited effect on public schools,” said Mincere Keels, a University of Chicago professor who focuses on race and inequality.
“Many of the policies of urban education are focused around bringing upper-income families back into the public school system based on the assumptions that they will come into these neighborhoods and invest in the neighborhood schools and revitalize both the neighborhoods and schools,” she said. “But families that move into neighborhoods that are low-income often opt out of the neighborhood schools and these higher income families take their individual household resources with them and contribute them to” other schools.
Keels, along with researchers from Brown and Cornell universities, published a study in 2013 that looked at whether schools in gentrifying Chicago neighborhoods saw benefits, including improved academics and more economic diversity. They did not.
“These schools remain uninfluenced by gentrifying families,” the study concluded.
Gentrification, it turns out, usually stops at the schoolhouse door.
Too rich in data/caveats to pull-quote from, but basically: two of the best studies out there show that property crime goes up with gentrification, while they come to different conclusions on other non-property crimes. Certainly doesn't support the idea that adding moneyed white folks pushes crime down to any degree at all.
posted by tonycpsu at 12:55 PM on May 23, 2017 [9 favorites]
The problem with definining "gentrification" as a problem and an evil process is that the alternative is for minorities to keep living in segregated neighborhoods that stay poor, what we used to call ghettoes, with bad schools, high crime, etc. Does anyone consider that a good thing?
Rather than pushing them out to find new poor neighborhoods, further from work and the city core? I mean, the whole point of "gentrification" is that it's the replacement of residents by the gentry, not a general rise in prosperity. Admittedly, some of this happens through regular churn - people leave who would have left anyway, and the only people who can afford to move in are richer - so it's not always literally "I would stay here personally except that I can't afford it".
I think there's a crosscutting issue when neighborhood cultures disappear - a middle class or mixed-class Latino neighborhood that disappears is also a loss, for example, but a different kind of loss than when a poor or working class "affordable" neighborhood disappears. You might plausibly say "neighborhood cultures come and go, and it's sad sometimes but that's what happens and after all new neighborhood cultures develop" - if a neighborhood changed because people wanted to move to pleasant new places and everyone could afford to do so, and the people who moved into a place were not richer and fancier.
So for example, the West Bank in Minneapolis has been home to successive waves of immigrants since the late 19th century (Swedes!). There's traces of older waves of immigration - some people stay, some businesses stay, some cultural markers stay - but for the most part, people arrive and stay for a generation or two and then disperse to other neighborhoods, towns, regions.
It's sad, in a way, that it's not a Swedish or a Vietnamese or a Hmong neighborhood now, but it's also nice that the neighborhood now has lots of Somali families and businesses - you lose and you gain, things change.
What will be really sad is when (and I think it's inevitable) the university and local property developers work together to buy out and build luxury student apartments on all the blocks that have been affordable to immigrants for generations. That will be an irretrievable loss, and it will be a material loss to broke people.
The West Bank is also interesting in that it's a place where artists and weirdos and sixties remnants substantially coexist with low income immigrant communities, and this has been true for my entire time here in MPLS.
Worth noting - the community is anchored by Riverside Plaza, a huge apartment complex which is a mixture of market-rate and subsidized housing. The state is the backstop here - as long as the Riverside Plaza is not privatized, there will still be a critical mass of non-rich people here.
One way to deal with the threat of gentrification is simply to guarantee housing to a critical mass of people in an area. You can do quite a bit of different stuff here, but fundamentally, there's only so much money in the area. There are some old bars that are middling, a couple of new bars that are sorta-fancy but not really, restaurants of various kinds and degrees and a mixture of shops, and that's what the area supports. You can't get an artisanal picklery in here because you can't settle the place densely with rich people.
posted by Frowner at 1:06 PM on May 23, 2017 [8 favorites]
Rather than pushing them out to find new poor neighborhoods, further from work and the city core? I mean, the whole point of "gentrification" is that it's the replacement of residents by the gentry, not a general rise in prosperity. Admittedly, some of this happens through regular churn - people leave who would have left anyway, and the only people who can afford to move in are richer - so it's not always literally "I would stay here personally except that I can't afford it".
I think there's a crosscutting issue when neighborhood cultures disappear - a middle class or mixed-class Latino neighborhood that disappears is also a loss, for example, but a different kind of loss than when a poor or working class "affordable" neighborhood disappears. You might plausibly say "neighborhood cultures come and go, and it's sad sometimes but that's what happens and after all new neighborhood cultures develop" - if a neighborhood changed because people wanted to move to pleasant new places and everyone could afford to do so, and the people who moved into a place were not richer and fancier.
So for example, the West Bank in Minneapolis has been home to successive waves of immigrants since the late 19th century (Swedes!). There's traces of older waves of immigration - some people stay, some businesses stay, some cultural markers stay - but for the most part, people arrive and stay for a generation or two and then disperse to other neighborhoods, towns, regions.
It's sad, in a way, that it's not a Swedish or a Vietnamese or a Hmong neighborhood now, but it's also nice that the neighborhood now has lots of Somali families and businesses - you lose and you gain, things change.
What will be really sad is when (and I think it's inevitable) the university and local property developers work together to buy out and build luxury student apartments on all the blocks that have been affordable to immigrants for generations. That will be an irretrievable loss, and it will be a material loss to broke people.
The West Bank is also interesting in that it's a place where artists and weirdos and sixties remnants substantially coexist with low income immigrant communities, and this has been true for my entire time here in MPLS.
Worth noting - the community is anchored by Riverside Plaza, a huge apartment complex which is a mixture of market-rate and subsidized housing. The state is the backstop here - as long as the Riverside Plaza is not privatized, there will still be a critical mass of non-rich people here.
One way to deal with the threat of gentrification is simply to guarantee housing to a critical mass of people in an area. You can do quite a bit of different stuff here, but fundamentally, there's only so much money in the area. There are some old bars that are middling, a couple of new bars that are sorta-fancy but not really, restaurants of various kinds and degrees and a mixture of shops, and that's what the area supports. You can't get an artisanal picklery in here because you can't settle the place densely with rich people.
posted by Frowner at 1:06 PM on May 23, 2017 [8 favorites]
Actually around here (Boston/Cambridge), it seems as if people are bypassing the artists altogether; the rich folks are going straight for the empty warehouses, because it's cool to push out the local industry and its workers, or something.
I was about to say, here in my neck of the woods, galleries are usually the last thing to pop-up in the gentrified areas. Usually, the apartments, rehabbed homes and lofts are the first wave, with cafes and restaurants hot on their heels. Art galleries are almost a last minute thing, and don't necessarily survive long, either.
posted by Thorzdad at 1:18 PM on May 23, 2017
I was about to say, here in my neck of the woods, galleries are usually the last thing to pop-up in the gentrified areas. Usually, the apartments, rehabbed homes and lofts are the first wave, with cafes and restaurants hot on their heels. Art galleries are almost a last minute thing, and don't necessarily survive long, either.
posted by Thorzdad at 1:18 PM on May 23, 2017
Stop having cities? Stop people moving to them somehow?
Making it harder for people to move in, i.e., opposing job and population growth, is literally the solution that a certain sector of SF ...progressives have latched onto. I think the idea is that opposing job creation will somehow preferentially keep out the rich techies, whose inflated purchasing power is indeed distorting the local economy. But as a non-rich SF resident who works at a non-profit (and whose income qualifies me for some affordable housing lotteries), I can tell you that making it harder for newcomers to live and work in SF mostly just hurts the lower- and middle-income transplants, because the $150K-a-year techies have the resources to just bear it and maybe grumble about it on Quora. (At best, it will make the new techies all move to Ingleside or West Oakland. If there's anywhere left to gentrify in West Oakland, I mean.) Like, I played on a queer rec softball team a few years ago with a lot of other new-ish transplants, and I can tell you that the person who happened to have the most trouble finding work and affordable housing in the Bay Area was definitely not the white guy who worked in software.
posted by en forme de poire at 1:55 PM on May 23, 2017 [11 favorites]
Making it harder for people to move in, i.e., opposing job and population growth, is literally the solution that a certain sector of SF ...progressives have latched onto. I think the idea is that opposing job creation will somehow preferentially keep out the rich techies, whose inflated purchasing power is indeed distorting the local economy. But as a non-rich SF resident who works at a non-profit (and whose income qualifies me for some affordable housing lotteries), I can tell you that making it harder for newcomers to live and work in SF mostly just hurts the lower- and middle-income transplants, because the $150K-a-year techies have the resources to just bear it and maybe grumble about it on Quora. (At best, it will make the new techies all move to Ingleside or West Oakland. If there's anywhere left to gentrify in West Oakland, I mean.) Like, I played on a queer rec softball team a few years ago with a lot of other new-ish transplants, and I can tell you that the person who happened to have the most trouble finding work and affordable housing in the Bay Area was definitely not the white guy who worked in software.
posted by en forme de poire at 1:55 PM on May 23, 2017 [11 favorites]
It's really too bad that municipal income taxes are verboten by the CA state legislature (I believe?). A large, progressive income tax for people who work or live in a given city/metropolitan area, spent on transit and a land trust, is the only way I can see a local solution to housing crises that doesn't fuck over a big chunk of low-income residents. Unfortunately, America mostly hates its cities and doesn't trust them with the power to actually govern themselves.
posted by en forme de poire at 2:05 PM on May 23, 2017 [7 favorites]
posted by en forme de poire at 2:05 PM on May 23, 2017 [7 favorites]
Homeowners stuck with these mom-and-pop landlord situations collect too little rent (think of the disparity of increasing rent 3% annually on tenants living 10+ years versus cost of living increases in Los Angeles) and have a hard time maintaining the property. So they try to sell and in this market that could get them a nice retirement fund or a place in the suburbs. But they can't sell because buyers don't want to inherit these tenants -- they need the second or third unit as income to pay for the mortgage. So you have this stalemate, with houses going up for sale and buyers flocking to them, then running away when they discover that charming little property with a back cottage to help pay the mortgage has an elderly woman paying $500/mo. No one wins here.
Except for the elderly woman who doesn't get kicked out of her home in her old age, that is.
You are describing a situation in which the price of property reflects the limits and encumbrances on the property as if it were a shocking and unforeseeable consequence of the rules. That's actually how a market in property is generally supposed to work. The LA rules, I believe, have been around for quite some time. If the purchaser didn't properly price their effect in when the purchaser bought the property (or, if the purchaser inherited, in setting the initial rent), the purchaser is a bad capitalist and doesn't deserve protection or coddling. I see no reason why the owner's interest in maximizing the sales price so they can get a "nice place in the suburbs" should so entirely outweigh the elderly woman's interest in keeping her home, period.
posted by praemunire at 2:13 PM on May 23, 2017 [12 favorites]
Except for the elderly woman who doesn't get kicked out of her home in her old age, that is.
You are describing a situation in which the price of property reflects the limits and encumbrances on the property as if it were a shocking and unforeseeable consequence of the rules. That's actually how a market in property is generally supposed to work. The LA rules, I believe, have been around for quite some time. If the purchaser didn't properly price their effect in when the purchaser bought the property (or, if the purchaser inherited, in setting the initial rent), the purchaser is a bad capitalist and doesn't deserve protection or coddling. I see no reason why the owner's interest in maximizing the sales price so they can get a "nice place in the suburbs" should so entirely outweigh the elderly woman's interest in keeping her home, period.
posted by praemunire at 2:13 PM on May 23, 2017 [12 favorites]
I mean, the whole point of "gentrification" is that it's the replacement of residents by the gentry, not a general rise in prosperity.
That's not how language works, though. Yes, that is the etymology of the word "gentrification" but the term isn't used that way (and if you want to be technical like that, there is no gentry (nobility) in the US). In practice, it's a catchall for any new residents in a poor neighborhood, and if we're going to question assumptions, where's the data that all new residents are white, much less wealthy? That seems unlikely.
The whole point of this FPP is criticism of artists and art gallery owners moving in. Artists have frequently been early migrants into rough, inexpensive urban neighborhoods because they're poorer, less conventional, and are attracted to the often more interesting cultures of the minority groups there.
posted by msalt at 2:30 PM on May 23, 2017
That's not how language works, though. Yes, that is the etymology of the word "gentrification" but the term isn't used that way (and if you want to be technical like that, there is no gentry (nobility) in the US). In practice, it's a catchall for any new residents in a poor neighborhood, and if we're going to question assumptions, where's the data that all new residents are white, much less wealthy? That seems unlikely.
The whole point of this FPP is criticism of artists and art gallery owners moving in. Artists have frequently been early migrants into rough, inexpensive urban neighborhoods because they're poorer, less conventional, and are attracted to the often more interesting cultures of the minority groups there.
posted by msalt at 2:30 PM on May 23, 2017
Pour one out for the "mom & pop landlords" whose plan to get a free lunch was so rudely derailed.
Yeah, fuck those people who had the gall to pay off their mortgages and use their property to do something so egregious as... provide housing for others!
This movement in Boyle Heights has a lot of stupidity behind it. Really, letting some blighted buildings near the river rot away is preferable to someone finding use for them? I sympathize with people not wanting their neighborhood to change. How far are you willing to go for that? It sounds like some folks are willing to self sabotage.
Except for the elderly woman who doesn't get kicked out of her home in her old age, that is.
You are describing a situation in which the price of property reflects the limits and encumbrances on the property as if it were a shocking and unforeseeable consequence of the rules. That's actually how a market in property is generally supposed to work. The LA rules, I believe, have been around for quite some time. If the purchaser didn't properly price their effect in when the purchaser bought the property (or, if the purchaser inherited, in setting the initial rent), the purchaser is a bad capitalist and doesn't deserve protection or coddling. I see no reason why the owner's interest in maximizing the sales price so they can get a "nice place in the suburbs" should so entirely outweigh the elderly woman's interest in keeping her home, period.
This hypothetical elderly woman doesn't seem to be presented as a shocking and unforeseeable consequence of the rules, but rather, an unfair consequence of the rules. Making the landlord into a significant, possibly majority, provider of the elderly woman's welfare. Nice if you as a landlord are keen to be so charitable. Sadly, few people enjoy being compelled into such charity. Lesson learned here: don't rent out surplus space, making housing even harder to come by and more expensive overall by taking a usable unit off the market.
posted by 2N2222 at 2:32 PM on May 23, 2017 [10 favorites]
Yeah, fuck those people who had the gall to pay off their mortgages and use their property to do something so egregious as... provide housing for others!
This movement in Boyle Heights has a lot of stupidity behind it. Really, letting some blighted buildings near the river rot away is preferable to someone finding use for them? I sympathize with people not wanting their neighborhood to change. How far are you willing to go for that? It sounds like some folks are willing to self sabotage.
Except for the elderly woman who doesn't get kicked out of her home in her old age, that is.
You are describing a situation in which the price of property reflects the limits and encumbrances on the property as if it were a shocking and unforeseeable consequence of the rules. That's actually how a market in property is generally supposed to work. The LA rules, I believe, have been around for quite some time. If the purchaser didn't properly price their effect in when the purchaser bought the property (or, if the purchaser inherited, in setting the initial rent), the purchaser is a bad capitalist and doesn't deserve protection or coddling. I see no reason why the owner's interest in maximizing the sales price so they can get a "nice place in the suburbs" should so entirely outweigh the elderly woman's interest in keeping her home, period.
This hypothetical elderly woman doesn't seem to be presented as a shocking and unforeseeable consequence of the rules, but rather, an unfair consequence of the rules. Making the landlord into a significant, possibly majority, provider of the elderly woman's welfare. Nice if you as a landlord are keen to be so charitable. Sadly, few people enjoy being compelled into such charity. Lesson learned here: don't rent out surplus space, making housing even harder to come by and more expensive overall by taking a usable unit off the market.
posted by 2N2222 at 2:32 PM on May 23, 2017 [10 favorites]
A large, progressive income tax for people who work or live in a given city/metropolitan area, spent on transit and a land trust, is the only way I can see a local solution to housing crises that doesn't fuck over a big chunk of low-income residents.
I like that, though it would be likely to encourage affluent flight to the suburbs. Which you may or may not consider a bad thing.
To my eye, the real solution is to find ways for neighborhood residents to buy property, whether it's targeted low-cost loan programs, urban homesteading of abandoned properties, tougher enforcement of laws against discriminatory loan practices, rent-to-own projects, etc. Maybe the settlements for banks and mortgage companies who had predatory lending practices can include news loans on better terms, or the money from those can be used to help residents purchase.
Once residents own property, they benefit from "gentriification" and it becomes a win-win situation.
posted by msalt at 2:37 PM on May 23, 2017 [1 favorite]
I like that, though it would be likely to encourage affluent flight to the suburbs. Which you may or may not consider a bad thing.
To my eye, the real solution is to find ways for neighborhood residents to buy property, whether it's targeted low-cost loan programs, urban homesteading of abandoned properties, tougher enforcement of laws against discriminatory loan practices, rent-to-own projects, etc. Maybe the settlements for banks and mortgage companies who had predatory lending practices can include news loans on better terms, or the money from those can be used to help residents purchase.
Once residents own property, they benefit from "gentriification" and it becomes a win-win situation.
posted by msalt at 2:37 PM on May 23, 2017 [1 favorite]
two of the best studies out there show that property crime goes up with gentrification, while they come to different conclusions on other non-property crimes.
If those are the two best studies, then much more research needs to be done.
The study showing an increase in both property and personal crime looked only at Baltimore and defined gentrification purely by an increase in property values (nothing about demographics). It compared crimes rates in 1970 vs. 1979, which was a distinct peak period for crime. Basically it "proved" that in a famously crime-ridden time, crime went up more in poor neighborhoods where property values increased (for any reason) over the period.
The second study (by McDonald, of 14 cities) supports that. It covered the period 1970-84 and found that, despite the explosion of crack in the 1980s,
If those are the two best studies, then much more research needs to be done.
The study showing an increase in both property and personal crime looked only at Baltimore and defined gentrification purely by an increase in property values (nothing about demographics). It compared crimes rates in 1970 vs. 1979, which was a distinct peak period for crime. Basically it "proved" that in a famously crime-ridden time, crime went up more in poor neighborhoods where property values increased (for any reason) over the period.
The second study (by McDonald, of 14 cities) supports that. It covered the period 1970-84 and found that, despite the explosion of crack in the 1980s,
"The crime rates rise to a significant climax in 1980, and then subside again shortly after (McDonald 1986). This tells us that the time frame of the observations plays a crucial role in the results one gets.posted by msalt at 3:03 PM on May 23, 2017
In an attempt to correct for this, McDonald (1986) calculates each neighborhood’s crime rate as a ratio of their respective citywide rate (these values can be seen in Table 2). The results show significant declines in personal crime from what they were in 1970 in 6 of the 14 neighborhoods (McDonald 1986). The analysis of property crime rates showed just the opposite result. Property crime rates for all but one neighborhood showed a decline (McDonald 1986). "
> If those are the two best studies, then much more research needs to be done.
You're more than welcome to find others. What you can't do is assert without evidence that adding rich white people makes things better. (I mean, you can, of course, but you're not going to convince anyone.)
posted by tonycpsu at 3:07 PM on May 23, 2017 [3 favorites]
You're more than welcome to find others. What you can't do is assert without evidence that adding rich white people makes things better. (I mean, you can, of course, but you're not going to convince anyone.)
posted by tonycpsu at 3:07 PM on May 23, 2017 [3 favorites]
Yeah, fuck those people who had the gall to pay off their mortgages and use their property to do something so egregious as... provide housing for others!
Yes, fuck aspirants to the rentier class. This sentiment is correct and good.
posted by Space Coyote at 3:21 PM on May 23, 2017 [5 favorites]
Yes, fuck aspirants to the rentier class. This sentiment is correct and good.
posted by Space Coyote at 3:21 PM on May 23, 2017 [5 favorites]
Renting out your carriage house != rentier economics. In that context you are providing housing where none was previously available, providing a public good. If you bought a bunch of formerly owner-occupied homes and converted them to rentals, thereby decreasing available ownership stock, you might be getting closer to being a capitalist pig.
posted by grumpybear69 at 3:39 PM on May 23, 2017 [2 favorites]
posted by grumpybear69 at 3:39 PM on May 23, 2017 [2 favorites]
Making the landlord into a significant, possibly majority, provider of the elderly woman's welfare.
and
Yes, fuck aspirants to the rentier class. This sentiment is correct and good.
I think a more nuanced view is needed in situations like these. A new homeowner, likely to be a millenial or Gen-Xer who has leaned on their parents to scrape together a down payment, is hardly a rentier on par with say the Kushner family or other big property managers. These folks would reasonably find a protected, rent-controlled, and generally unevictable tenant a significant financial burden. If they've budgeted in market rate rent in order to be able to afford their mortgage, then that's a pretty big mistake and is on them.
But frankly the state should be providing for its elderly, particularly those whose income stays stagnant in their retirement. The situation described above appears to put the burden squarely on the middle class homeowner, which is likely to be untenable for a lot of people, and makes the home very difficult to sell. As described above in this thread, many people will Ellis Act the tenant out onto the street, and then take the unit off the market so as not to have that burden, further constricting housing. That leaves the rentier class even more entrenched as landlords for a large portion of the populace.
Bottom line: the way we've structured the solution puts much of the burden of the poor on the poor themselves, and on the middle class, and leaves the upper class free and clear. This must change.
posted by Existential Dread at 3:49 PM on May 23, 2017 [13 favorites]
and
Yes, fuck aspirants to the rentier class. This sentiment is correct and good.
I think a more nuanced view is needed in situations like these. A new homeowner, likely to be a millenial or Gen-Xer who has leaned on their parents to scrape together a down payment, is hardly a rentier on par with say the Kushner family or other big property managers. These folks would reasonably find a protected, rent-controlled, and generally unevictable tenant a significant financial burden. If they've budgeted in market rate rent in order to be able to afford their mortgage, then that's a pretty big mistake and is on them.
But frankly the state should be providing for its elderly, particularly those whose income stays stagnant in their retirement. The situation described above appears to put the burden squarely on the middle class homeowner, which is likely to be untenable for a lot of people, and makes the home very difficult to sell. As described above in this thread, many people will Ellis Act the tenant out onto the street, and then take the unit off the market so as not to have that burden, further constricting housing. That leaves the rentier class even more entrenched as landlords for a large portion of the populace.
Bottom line: the way we've structured the solution puts much of the burden of the poor on the poor themselves, and on the middle class, and leaves the upper class free and clear. This must change.
posted by Existential Dread at 3:49 PM on May 23, 2017 [13 favorites]
You're more than welcome to find other [studies on crime and gentrification]. What you can't do is assert without evidence that adding rich white people makes things better."Adding rich white people" is your inflammatory rhetoric unconnected to anything I said or to any evidence, including the article you cited. Before you demand data, perhaps you should prove that gentrifiication consists of "rich white people." In Portland, for example, the St. Johns neighborhood has grown much more ethnically diverse as it has gentrified -- it was historically the poor white neighborhood.
You want evidence? How about the Lower East Side of Manhattan, Times Square, Harlem, etc? Or the second of your two studies, as I quoted? Or for that matter, Boyle Heights? The OP article describes how crime has changed during this gentrification:
In 1992, there were 97 homicides attributed to the Hollenbeck Division, the local station of the Los Angeles Police Department. 'Gang members were part of the scenery ...' Last year, Hollenbeck Station recorded only 14 murders."Neighborhood improvement is a long terrm process. Sure, there may be an immediate short term uptick in property crime when people with more money move into a poor, high-crime neighborhood. Which proves nothing about the long term effects.
It's hard to understand what proposition you are defending. Do you think crime is unconnected to poverty? Are you saying certain neighborhoods are georgraphically doomed to high crime, regardless of who lives there? And if so, why do you want minorities to keep living there?
posted by msalt at 4:26 PM on May 23, 2017 [3 favorites]
"Homeowners stuck with these mom-and-pop landlord situations collect too little rent (think of the disparity of increasing rent 3% annually on tenants living 10+ years versus cost of living increases in Los Angeles) and have a hard time maintaining the property. So they try to sell and in this market that could get them a nice retirement fund or a place in the suburbs. But they can't sell because buyers don't want to inherit these tenants -- they need the second or third unit as income to pay for the mortgage. So you have this stalemate, with houses going up for sale and buyers flocking to them, then running away when they discover that charming little property with a back cottage to help pay the mortgage has an elderly woman paying $500/mo. No one wins here."
… there seem to be some major omissions in your account here.
First off, the idea that a 3% rent increase is too little to keep up with the cost of living inflation that increases maintenance costs seems plausible — until you remember that the property tax increases are capped at 2% under Prop. 13, which is wildly lower than the increase in property values. And because the owner owns the house, the owner has equity that builds up to borrow against, and as that's based on property value, that will also increase faster than 3% per year.
Second off, the idea that there are parts of LA where people can't sell their homes and appreciate a significant profit over their investment, or that buyers are being scared away from inheriting tenants, seems to treat the value of the home as unrelated to the tenants. Buyers may not want to inherit those tenants at the price you're attempting to sell at, but unless this is a property that was purchased very recently and you're attempting a flip, you're basically guaranteed a healthy profit on the sale versus what you purchased the home for.
Third, with a rental property out back, there is basically zero way for you to not profit from that even at an RSO rate. It's not going to increase your property taxes more than you take in on rent minus maintenance unless the place is in shoddy disrepair going in, which is something that is the buyer's duty to recognize and price in when buying (and even then, longterm, it's unlikely that it would lose money due to the overall increase of property values, so it can be realized in a sale).
Being unable to increase the rent more than 3% can certainly present cash flow problems, but all of this seems like you're forgetting that once you pay off the mortgage, you continue to own the house, and the value of owning the house needs to be priced in. You're not coming out as much ahead as you might have without RSO, but the individual focus kind of reinforces why we either need RSOs or massive property taxes that can subsidize rents for people who can't afford to buy a house like you did.
posted by klangklangston at 4:40 PM on May 23, 2017 [7 favorites]
… there seem to be some major omissions in your account here.
First off, the idea that a 3% rent increase is too little to keep up with the cost of living inflation that increases maintenance costs seems plausible — until you remember that the property tax increases are capped at 2% under Prop. 13, which is wildly lower than the increase in property values. And because the owner owns the house, the owner has equity that builds up to borrow against, and as that's based on property value, that will also increase faster than 3% per year.
Second off, the idea that there are parts of LA where people can't sell their homes and appreciate a significant profit over their investment, or that buyers are being scared away from inheriting tenants, seems to treat the value of the home as unrelated to the tenants. Buyers may not want to inherit those tenants at the price you're attempting to sell at, but unless this is a property that was purchased very recently and you're attempting a flip, you're basically guaranteed a healthy profit on the sale versus what you purchased the home for.
Third, with a rental property out back, there is basically zero way for you to not profit from that even at an RSO rate. It's not going to increase your property taxes more than you take in on rent minus maintenance unless the place is in shoddy disrepair going in, which is something that is the buyer's duty to recognize and price in when buying (and even then, longterm, it's unlikely that it would lose money due to the overall increase of property values, so it can be realized in a sale).
Being unable to increase the rent more than 3% can certainly present cash flow problems, but all of this seems like you're forgetting that once you pay off the mortgage, you continue to own the house, and the value of owning the house needs to be priced in. You're not coming out as much ahead as you might have without RSO, but the individual focus kind of reinforces why we either need RSOs or massive property taxes that can subsidize rents for people who can't afford to buy a house like you did.
posted by klangklangston at 4:40 PM on May 23, 2017 [7 favorites]
Or for that matter, Boyle Heights? The OP article describes how crime has changed during this gentrification:
"In 1992, there were 97 homicides attributed to the Hollenbeck Division, the local station of the Los Angeles Police Department. 'Gang members were part of the scenery ...' Last year, Hollenbeck Station recorded only 14 murders."
The LAPD recorded a total of 2,589 murders in 1992 and just over 290 in 2016. So the reduction of homicides handled by the Hollenbeck Division over this time period simply reflects the overall development of homicide rates across Los Angeles. It's not particular to that division.
posted by Hairy Lobster at 5:18 PM on May 23, 2017 [6 favorites]
"In 1992, there were 97 homicides attributed to the Hollenbeck Division, the local station of the Los Angeles Police Department. 'Gang members were part of the scenery ...' Last year, Hollenbeck Station recorded only 14 murders."
The LAPD recorded a total of 2,589 murders in 1992 and just over 290 in 2016. So the reduction of homicides handled by the Hollenbeck Division over this time period simply reflects the overall development of homicide rates across Los Angeles. It's not particular to that division.
posted by Hairy Lobster at 5:18 PM on May 23, 2017 [6 favorites]
Yes, that is the etymology of the word "gentrification" but the term isn't used that way (and if you want to be technical like that, there is no gentry (nobility) in the US). In practice, it's a catchall for any new residents in a poor neighborhood
That simply isn't what the term means, colloquially or technically. If a neighborhood that is dominated by refugees switches to refugees from a different country, no one will ever call that "gentrification." It's a real term, with real meaning; it's intellectually dishonest to pretend otherwise.
Whether or not the kind of change described by gentrification is bad or good depends on where you sit, whether or not you will benefit (financially, culturally, or otherwise) from the changes, and what your political views are. I'll cop to being conflicted -- I'm a beneficiary in many ways, but would prefer that we had a society with better protection for the poor (which, yes, should include not having to move every six to twelve months). I want change and think neighborhoods are best when there is a process of change, but I want that change to be buffered by robust protections for vulnerable people and limitations on speculators.
posted by Dip Flash at 5:40 PM on May 23, 2017 [6 favorites]
That simply isn't what the term means, colloquially or technically. If a neighborhood that is dominated by refugees switches to refugees from a different country, no one will ever call that "gentrification." It's a real term, with real meaning; it's intellectually dishonest to pretend otherwise.
Whether or not the kind of change described by gentrification is bad or good depends on where you sit, whether or not you will benefit (financially, culturally, or otherwise) from the changes, and what your political views are. I'll cop to being conflicted -- I'm a beneficiary in many ways, but would prefer that we had a society with better protection for the poor (which, yes, should include not having to move every six to twelve months). I want change and think neighborhoods are best when there is a process of change, but I want that change to be buffered by robust protections for vulnerable people and limitations on speculators.
posted by Dip Flash at 5:40 PM on May 23, 2017 [6 favorites]
So the reduction of homicides handled by the Hollenbeck Division over this time period simply reflects the overall development of homicide rates across Los Angeles.
True, just as the crime rates in the studies cited above were inflated by the 1980 peak of crime. It's very difficult to separate out global effects from those of gentrification, especially when the larger changes are so massive.
The McDonald study above attempted to correct for this by comparing these neighborhoods to their cities overall over the same time period, as you do here, in coming to the conclusion that that 6 of 14 gentrified neighborhoods had "significant declines in personal crime," and 13 of 14 had less property crime)
posted by msalt at 5:43 PM on May 23, 2017
True, just as the crime rates in the studies cited above were inflated by the 1980 peak of crime. It's very difficult to separate out global effects from those of gentrification, especially when the larger changes are so massive.
The McDonald study above attempted to correct for this by comparing these neighborhoods to their cities overall over the same time period, as you do here, in coming to the conclusion that that 6 of 14 gentrified neighborhoods had "significant declines in personal crime," and 13 of 14 had less property crime)
posted by msalt at 5:43 PM on May 23, 2017
First off, the idea that a 3% rent increase is too little to keep up with the cost of living inflation that increases maintenance costs seems plausible — until you remember that the property tax increases are capped at 2% under Prop. 13, which is wildly lower than the increase in property values. And because the owner owns the house, the owner has equity that builds up to borrow against, and as that's based on property value, that will also increase faster than 3% per year.
There are areas of LA where yes, the home owners are doing quite well even when dealing with rent control tenancy. Fairfax, Carthay, and Hancock Park, for instance. But areas like Koreatown, Alrington Heights, and Jefferson Park have home owners who cannot monetize the investment they made on that house. They may have reverse mortgages or expensive/growing health issues. They themselves could be retired and so dependent on the income generated from that second unit. They are stuck just like their tenants, unable to move themselves without selling, but unable to sell at a price that will keep them solvent.
Buyers may not want to inherit those tenants at the price you're attempting to sell at, but unless this is a property that was purchased very recently and you're attempting a flip, you're basically guaranteed a healthy profit on the sale versus what you purchased the home for.
Yes. There are many flippers in LA. They thought they could outlast the tenants, or that they could make them leave however way they thought, but their plans didn't work out and now they're stuck. I don't really care about those guys much; they tried to play the system and got schooled. Unfortunately, they are also the least likely to be sympathetic to their inherited tenants and tend to be terrible landlords. Again, no one wins (though I supposed I couldn't care less for the flipper landlord in this example).
posted by linux at 5:49 PM on May 23, 2017
There are areas of LA where yes, the home owners are doing quite well even when dealing with rent control tenancy. Fairfax, Carthay, and Hancock Park, for instance. But areas like Koreatown, Alrington Heights, and Jefferson Park have home owners who cannot monetize the investment they made on that house. They may have reverse mortgages or expensive/growing health issues. They themselves could be retired and so dependent on the income generated from that second unit. They are stuck just like their tenants, unable to move themselves without selling, but unable to sell at a price that will keep them solvent.
Buyers may not want to inherit those tenants at the price you're attempting to sell at, but unless this is a property that was purchased very recently and you're attempting a flip, you're basically guaranteed a healthy profit on the sale versus what you purchased the home for.
Yes. There are many flippers in LA. They thought they could outlast the tenants, or that they could make them leave however way they thought, but their plans didn't work out and now they're stuck. I don't really care about those guys much; they tried to play the system and got schooled. Unfortunately, they are also the least likely to be sympathetic to their inherited tenants and tend to be terrible landlords. Again, no one wins (though I supposed I couldn't care less for the flipper landlord in this example).
posted by linux at 5:49 PM on May 23, 2017
I'm not sure the "unkempt lots empty for decades" being developed is the best argument against this process.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 5:50 PM on May 23, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 5:50 PM on May 23, 2017 [1 favorite]
I like that, though it would be likely to encourage affluent flight to the suburbs. Which you may or may not consider a bad thing.
Yeah, I don't consider it an intrinsically bad thing, but if you do it as in NYC then people who live and/or work in the city would be taxed, so escaping to the suburbs wouldn't help avoid the tax unless that's also where the jobs were.
Now, that's actually true to some extent in the Bay Area, but I suspect part of the reason for this is that the existing tax structure encourages it: instead of municipal income taxes, we have a payroll tax on large businesses whose offices are in SF. Switching to taxing individuals could both entice businesses into the city and make the tax more progressive. I also think young techies typically don't actually want to live in the South Bay; it's almost as expensive and you have to give up a car-free/car-light urban lifestyle, which for many defeats the point of seeking employment in SF to begin with. (Politically I think that group is also more receptive to paying increased taxes in general, just based on their age and education levels.)
I'm not sure how it would work in LA since I've never lived there. One thing that I would think might help mitigate the problem is that the city itself covers a lot of area, unlike in the Bay Area which is carved into a lot of small independent jurisdictions (that don't seem to get along, lol). So you'd have to go pretty far out to avoid City Hall. From what I've read I also think LA may have a big opportunity because it's building a lot of transit; if the city bought up property alongside in-development transit corridors and put it in e.g. a municipal land trust, it could ensure that people could afford to stay in regions with decent transit, and that the new rail lines wouldn't just push all the affordable housing back to just outside its range.
posted by en forme de poire at 6:11 PM on May 23, 2017 [1 favorite]
Yeah, I don't consider it an intrinsically bad thing, but if you do it as in NYC then people who live and/or work in the city would be taxed, so escaping to the suburbs wouldn't help avoid the tax unless that's also where the jobs were.
Now, that's actually true to some extent in the Bay Area, but I suspect part of the reason for this is that the existing tax structure encourages it: instead of municipal income taxes, we have a payroll tax on large businesses whose offices are in SF. Switching to taxing individuals could both entice businesses into the city and make the tax more progressive. I also think young techies typically don't actually want to live in the South Bay; it's almost as expensive and you have to give up a car-free/car-light urban lifestyle, which for many defeats the point of seeking employment in SF to begin with. (Politically I think that group is also more receptive to paying increased taxes in general, just based on their age and education levels.)
I'm not sure how it would work in LA since I've never lived there. One thing that I would think might help mitigate the problem is that the city itself covers a lot of area, unlike in the Bay Area which is carved into a lot of small independent jurisdictions (that don't seem to get along, lol). So you'd have to go pretty far out to avoid City Hall. From what I've read I also think LA may have a big opportunity because it's building a lot of transit; if the city bought up property alongside in-development transit corridors and put it in e.g. a municipal land trust, it could ensure that people could afford to stay in regions with decent transit, and that the new rail lines wouldn't just push all the affordable housing back to just outside its range.
posted by en forme de poire at 6:11 PM on May 23, 2017 [1 favorite]
> "Adding rich white people" is your inflammatory rhetoric unconnected to anything I said
Not true:
> It's very difficult to separate out global effects from those of gentrification, especially when the larger changes are so massive.
Quite -- yet you confidently asserted -- without citing any studies at all that try to do this difficult job of controlling for natural trends -- that gentrification pushes downward on crime *and* improves schools. You've provided no evidence at all for improved schools, and have only cited my own link (which I acknowledged had some conflicting results) in support of your position. You're also cherrypicking the McDonald study results that support your beliefs, leaving out the part where it says "Finally, it was the general observation that despite the apparent decline in personal crime rates, most of the gentrified neighborhoods maintained crime rates higher than their citywide averages."
All I'm saying here is that this is complex stuff that doesn't lend itself to facile statements about money coming in creating better outcomes. It's way more nuanced than that.
posted by tonycpsu at 6:12 PM on May 23, 2017 [3 favorites]
Not true:
the alternative is for minorities to keep living in segregated neighborhoods that stay poor...Emphasis mine. Even if you had not explicitly referred to minority neighborhoods becoming less segregated, the correlation between race and income means that gentrification brings white people. If noting that simple fact for the record is inflammatory, I guess I'm being inflammatory.
> It's very difficult to separate out global effects from those of gentrification, especially when the larger changes are so massive.
Quite -- yet you confidently asserted -- without citing any studies at all that try to do this difficult job of controlling for natural trends -- that gentrification pushes downward on crime *and* improves schools. You've provided no evidence at all for improved schools, and have only cited my own link (which I acknowledged had some conflicting results) in support of your position. You're also cherrypicking the McDonald study results that support your beliefs, leaving out the part where it says "Finally, it was the general observation that despite the apparent decline in personal crime rates, most of the gentrified neighborhoods maintained crime rates higher than their citywide averages."
All I'm saying here is that this is complex stuff that doesn't lend itself to facile statements about money coming in creating better outcomes. It's way more nuanced than that.
posted by tonycpsu at 6:12 PM on May 23, 2017 [3 favorites]
been to Santa Ana recently? Limited edition sneaker shops, minimalist coffee bars, trendy eateries and bars.
Gah, stop. Yeah, that was starting to happen even before I left. After the CSUF live/work studios went in they put in the Gypsy Den cafe. I remember a few other building projects get started while I was still there, like the Rite Aid and other chain stuff coming in.
Heck, I helped gut and rebuild one of the street front units of the Santora with my own hands to help someone put in a more respectably working class and local-friendly coffee shop and cafe. (I mean, sure, they totally folded and went bankrupt spending more money feeding starving artists than selling anything. I'd go over there to buy coffee and a snack or something and the owner would be on the side patio grilling up like 20 pounds of ribs and just giving them away.)
I'm also just kind of now really thinking about this from a much more removed perspective, and even the name of the Gypsy Den is sticking out as actually really offensive. I have conflicting memories and feelings about that place because the original version in Costa Mesa was actually kind of cool in an age when there wasn't a Starbucks nearly on every corner, and that they often let the radio station I was involved with do DJ nights and whatnot.
But in hindsight and with a more aged eye the name itself really sticks out, even above and beyond the irritating faux bohemian aesthetic.
It's uncomfortable but I think I can now own up to why I was there. I was there for cheap rents and to party and basically take advantage of my privilege to get away with doing things like throwing broad daylight street raves that I couldn't afford to do elsewhere.
And at no point would I be considered a serious artist. I was just there to hang out with artists, and most of the really serious artists actually bugged me.
I can feel somewhat better, maybe just through pure dumb luck, that we were personally really well received by the community and integrated well, that I was also genuinely there for the existing culture and I had a natural affinity for it.
posted by loquacious at 6:13 PM on May 23, 2017 [1 favorite]
Gah, stop. Yeah, that was starting to happen even before I left. After the CSUF live/work studios went in they put in the Gypsy Den cafe. I remember a few other building projects get started while I was still there, like the Rite Aid and other chain stuff coming in.
Heck, I helped gut and rebuild one of the street front units of the Santora with my own hands to help someone put in a more respectably working class and local-friendly coffee shop and cafe. (I mean, sure, they totally folded and went bankrupt spending more money feeding starving artists than selling anything. I'd go over there to buy coffee and a snack or something and the owner would be on the side patio grilling up like 20 pounds of ribs and just giving them away.)
I'm also just kind of now really thinking about this from a much more removed perspective, and even the name of the Gypsy Den is sticking out as actually really offensive. I have conflicting memories and feelings about that place because the original version in Costa Mesa was actually kind of cool in an age when there wasn't a Starbucks nearly on every corner, and that they often let the radio station I was involved with do DJ nights and whatnot.
But in hindsight and with a more aged eye the name itself really sticks out, even above and beyond the irritating faux bohemian aesthetic.
It's uncomfortable but I think I can now own up to why I was there. I was there for cheap rents and to party and basically take advantage of my privilege to get away with doing things like throwing broad daylight street raves that I couldn't afford to do elsewhere.
And at no point would I be considered a serious artist. I was just there to hang out with artists, and most of the really serious artists actually bugged me.
I can feel somewhat better, maybe just through pure dumb luck, that we were personally really well received by the community and integrated well, that I was also genuinely there for the existing culture and I had a natural affinity for it.
posted by loquacious at 6:13 PM on May 23, 2017 [1 favorite]
I'm not sure the "unkempt lots empty for decades" being developed is the best argument against this process.
Can you elaborate? I'm not sure what you're saying.
posted by msalt at 7:53 PM on May 23, 2017
Can you elaborate? I'm not sure what you're saying.
posted by msalt at 7:53 PM on May 23, 2017
they are saying that unkempt Lots are worth developing. Is that controversial? Should those lots remain vacant?
posted by grumpybear69 at 9:52 PM on May 23, 2017
posted by grumpybear69 at 9:52 PM on May 23, 2017
we were personally really well received by the community and integrated well
Truth, or fantasy?
...how would you know?
posted by aramaic at 10:00 PM on May 23, 2017 [1 favorite]
Truth, or fantasy?
...how would you know?
posted by aramaic at 10:00 PM on May 23, 2017 [1 favorite]
Not Boyle Heights specific...
If the current residents of the poor neighborhoods that are being gentrified were the owners of their properties – and many are not due to redlining, exclusionary housing policies, predatory lending policies, lack of access to capital, wholesale disenfranchisement (i.e. no GI Bill), etc. – then they could potentially benefit from gentrification.
Additionally, if the gentrified neighborhoods were to remain mixed income, then maybe there would be a benefit for those residents who stayed (whether by chance, or by choice), however, it seems to me that over time economic segregation succeeds in flipping entire neighborhoods/cities. The poor residents just end up in another ghetto, and the wealthier residents continue smugly hoarding the material and social benefits their access to wealth grants them.
That said, gentrification is white flight's child. White flight didn't enrich the lives of the residents in the cities in which it occurred, and neither will its progeny, gentrification. In both situations you have a more economically mobile and powerful class of people either forcibly removing, or forcefully unleashing their monetary might on a less powerful class of people.
How dare anyone fight back? Lol.
posted by nikoniko at 10:09 PM on May 23, 2017 [3 favorites]
If the current residents of the poor neighborhoods that are being gentrified were the owners of their properties – and many are not due to redlining, exclusionary housing policies, predatory lending policies, lack of access to capital, wholesale disenfranchisement (i.e. no GI Bill), etc. – then they could potentially benefit from gentrification.
Additionally, if the gentrified neighborhoods were to remain mixed income, then maybe there would be a benefit for those residents who stayed (whether by chance, or by choice), however, it seems to me that over time economic segregation succeeds in flipping entire neighborhoods/cities. The poor residents just end up in another ghetto, and the wealthier residents continue smugly hoarding the material and social benefits their access to wealth grants them.
That said, gentrification is white flight's child. White flight didn't enrich the lives of the residents in the cities in which it occurred, and neither will its progeny, gentrification. In both situations you have a more economically mobile and powerful class of people either forcibly removing, or forcefully unleashing their monetary might on a less powerful class of people.
How dare anyone fight back? Lol.
posted by nikoniko at 10:09 PM on May 23, 2017 [3 favorites]
Also, god forbid we come up with systemic solutions to systemic problems. Ooops, what problems? I meant systemic opportunities! Never mind, let's make some money! We're all just individuals on the same meritocratic playing field, playing a friendly game of monopoly.
posted by nikoniko at 10:20 PM on May 23, 2017 [2 favorites]
posted by nikoniko at 10:20 PM on May 23, 2017 [2 favorites]
I sympathize with people not wanting their neighborhood to change. How far are you willing to go for that? It sounds like some folks are willing to self sabotage.
Well, back in the late 80s, the residents of Haight-Ashbury were willing to commit arson.
Though it should be noted that this bit of rebellion burned eight buildings, left 60 people homeless, and destroyed the admin center for the Haight-Ashbury Free Clinics. So, not that constructive, all in all. But I'm sure that the guy who did it felt he had to destroy the village in order to save it.
Also, god forbid we come up with systemic solutions to systemic problems.
Since when do we EVER come up with systemic solutions here? it's just the usual round of throwing up one's hands, yelling "Rich people! Because Capitalism!" and then doing the dance of futility.
I mean, at least this time somebody proposed a progressive income tax levied by cities, which is an idea at least, though it should be obvious who a city tax would really be levied at. It's a far cry from something doable, though.
posted by happyroach at 11:09 PM on May 23, 2017 [2 favorites]
Well, back in the late 80s, the residents of Haight-Ashbury were willing to commit arson.
Though it should be noted that this bit of rebellion burned eight buildings, left 60 people homeless, and destroyed the admin center for the Haight-Ashbury Free Clinics. So, not that constructive, all in all. But I'm sure that the guy who did it felt he had to destroy the village in order to save it.
Also, god forbid we come up with systemic solutions to systemic problems.
Since when do we EVER come up with systemic solutions here? it's just the usual round of throwing up one's hands, yelling "Rich people! Because Capitalism!" and then doing the dance of futility.
I mean, at least this time somebody proposed a progressive income tax levied by cities, which is an idea at least, though it should be obvious who a city tax would really be levied at. It's a far cry from something doable, though.
posted by happyroach at 11:09 PM on May 23, 2017 [2 favorites]
Rent control hurts poor people the worst.
posted by NeoRothbardian at 11:02 AM on
Is this a gimmick account?
posted by atoxyl at 11:29 PM on May 23, 2017 [5 favorites]
posted by NeoRothbardian at 11:02 AM on
Is this a gimmick account?
posted by atoxyl at 11:29 PM on May 23, 2017 [5 favorites]
In NYC, they approve like, 20k new residential permits a year, most of which ends up being luxury stock. This can't be the answer.
Weird to see no mention of the constant and (nominally) unexplained flow of capital into major real estate markets like New York, SF, Vancouver. I've seen it referenced as "weird money," and generally it's oligarch types (and the wealthy classes below them) laundering or parking assets outside of Russia or China. When it's confined to 50 million dollar properties I suppose it doesn't have a huge distorting effect (although maybe it does!), but in many of these markets it's not just happening at the top of the market.
I don't know what to do about that, either, but there's a lot of weird money out there that needs somewhere to go, and major city real estate markets seem to be a universal sink. That's...a problem.
posted by schadenfrau at 5:24 AM on May 24, 2017 [4 favorites]
Weird to see no mention of the constant and (nominally) unexplained flow of capital into major real estate markets like New York, SF, Vancouver. I've seen it referenced as "weird money," and generally it's oligarch types (and the wealthy classes below them) laundering or parking assets outside of Russia or China. When it's confined to 50 million dollar properties I suppose it doesn't have a huge distorting effect (although maybe it does!), but in many of these markets it's not just happening at the top of the market.
I don't know what to do about that, either, but there's a lot of weird money out there that needs somewhere to go, and major city real estate markets seem to be a universal sink. That's...a problem.
posted by schadenfrau at 5:24 AM on May 24, 2017 [4 favorites]
Okay, here is my solution, which I mentioned upthread: public housing. Not for everyone unless we as a society decide to roll that way, but all new apartments, etc, should be 50/50 subsidized. This will, to a degree, replicate the conditions in MPLS's West Bank, an area which has not gentrified even during the insane rocket-gentrification of other near-university areas. Large numbers of average/lower income people who can't be evicted will:
1. Provide a market for regular-people stores
2. Prevent the establishment of designer cereal bars because there won't be the density of rich people needed to support them
3. Drive away such rich people as don't want to live amongst regular people
4. Demonstrate, by housing a diversity of average/lower-income people, that being working class isn't a pathology
A backstop population of working class people who can't be evicted, intermingled with richer people, will prevent gentrification. There will no doubt be knock-on problems as rich people try to work the angles, but as long as we're sincere about subsidized housing instead of "let's make it as shitty and shaming as possible", it will work. (All the apartments in the Riverside Plaza are nice mid-century ones. It's not a perfect set of buildings and has that sixties "concrete city in the sky" thing going on, but I've had several friends who live there and can testify that while they need about twice the elevators, there's nothing wrong with the place.)
This isn't any more implausible than "tax the rich", frankly, and has the advantage of providing housing stability to people with children.
posted by Frowner at 6:35 AM on May 24, 2017 [12 favorites]
1. Provide a market for regular-people stores
2. Prevent the establishment of designer cereal bars because there won't be the density of rich people needed to support them
3. Drive away such rich people as don't want to live amongst regular people
4. Demonstrate, by housing a diversity of average/lower-income people, that being working class isn't a pathology
A backstop population of working class people who can't be evicted, intermingled with richer people, will prevent gentrification. There will no doubt be knock-on problems as rich people try to work the angles, but as long as we're sincere about subsidized housing instead of "let's make it as shitty and shaming as possible", it will work. (All the apartments in the Riverside Plaza are nice mid-century ones. It's not a perfect set of buildings and has that sixties "concrete city in the sky" thing going on, but I've had several friends who live there and can testify that while they need about twice the elevators, there's nothing wrong with the place.)
This isn't any more implausible than "tax the rich", frankly, and has the advantage of providing housing stability to people with children.
posted by Frowner at 6:35 AM on May 24, 2017 [12 favorites]
Is housing:
(A) A basic necessity that we should guarantee as a human right
or
(B) A store of value that we should treat as an investment for profit-making purposes
Because these concepts are not very compatible.
posted by Grimp0teuthis at 11:05 AM on May 24, 2017 [9 favorites]
(A) A basic necessity that we should guarantee as a human right
or
(B) A store of value that we should treat as an investment for profit-making purposes
Because these concepts are not very compatible.
posted by Grimp0teuthis at 11:05 AM on May 24, 2017 [9 favorites]
I mean, I think they are. You can still have private property ownership and still require one subsidized or public unit for every private unit, as above. It's that we have basically abrogated the responsibility to meet that right that's the problem, not that private ownership is a thing.
posted by schadenfrau at 11:49 AM on May 24, 2017 [2 favorites]
posted by schadenfrau at 11:49 AM on May 24, 2017 [2 favorites]
You can require the subsidized unit with every market-rate unit, but doing that will often make it expensive enough to build that nothing at all gets built instead, which means that not only do you not have the new subsidized unit, the person who would have lived in the new market-rate unit will outbid somebody else for a different unit, so the requirement has effectively displaced someone instead of housing someone else.
I think it's better to subsidize housing for those who need the subsidy out of general taxation (whether of incomes or payrolls or property or whatever else) rather than trying to fund it all out of construction.
posted by enf at 1:13 PM on May 24, 2017 [1 favorite]
I think it's better to subsidize housing for those who need the subsidy out of general taxation (whether of incomes or payrolls or property or whatever else) rather than trying to fund it all out of construction.
posted by enf at 1:13 PM on May 24, 2017 [1 favorite]
That's an implementation issue, though. If the general concept works, the ratio could be 2 to 1 market rate to subsidized instead of 1 to 1. Or 5 to 3, or what have you.
I would still rather see mechanisms to enable ownership by residents of low-income neighborhoods than subsidized rentals. If residents share in the profits of increased property values, a lot of the inequities are solved and a lot of incentives are corrected.
Either way, the preferences should be reserved for low-income, long-term residents of the neighborhoods. (Not e.g. affluent trust fund artist types with low annual income who know how to take advantage of programs.) And this should start with all low-income neighborhoods, not just the ones already gentrifying. EG strict enforcement of code violations and delinquent taxation against absentee landlords, including the seizure of buildings with consistently non-compliant owners, using public money to bring them up to code and turning them into coops for local residents.
posted by msalt at 2:17 PM on May 24, 2017 [1 favorite]
I would still rather see mechanisms to enable ownership by residents of low-income neighborhoods than subsidized rentals. If residents share in the profits of increased property values, a lot of the inequities are solved and a lot of incentives are corrected.
Either way, the preferences should be reserved for low-income, long-term residents of the neighborhoods. (Not e.g. affluent trust fund artist types with low annual income who know how to take advantage of programs.) And this should start with all low-income neighborhoods, not just the ones already gentrifying. EG strict enforcement of code violations and delinquent taxation against absentee landlords, including the seizure of buildings with consistently non-compliant owners, using public money to bring them up to code and turning them into coops for local residents.
posted by msalt at 2:17 PM on May 24, 2017 [1 favorite]
It's a far cry from something doable, though.
New York City already has a 3% income tax for anyone who works or lives in the city. It's not enough, and it's not a progressive tax, but it's there.
posted by en forme de poire at 8:49 PM on May 24, 2017
New York City already has a 3% income tax for anyone who works or lives in the city. It's not enough, and it's not a progressive tax, but it's there.
posted by en forme de poire at 8:49 PM on May 24, 2017
During the last several years, projects such as the Eastside Accessibility Project and the extension of the Metro Gold Line have led to safer conditions on the streets, but they’ve also been cause for concern. Considering her community has historically been excluded from the urban-planning process, Ovarian Psyco Andi Xoch is skeptical. “Safer for who?” she wonders. “For us? It’s becoming a fight just to even survive in our own communities.”The ratio of coherent critique to posturing seems a bit low here. I'm having trouble understanding how extending the light rail system to Boyle Heights is a bad thing.
posted by msalt at 10:48 PM on May 24, 2017
Now, I love light rail and in general it benefits my city, but:
1. On a practical level, light rail brings gentrification - that's actually a selling point that has been used here in MPLS. Light rail is attractive to better off urban professionals - you might not want to live in an area if the commute is inconvenient or if it's remote, but if you can live three blocks from the train to downtown and it's a nice posh new train, that changes the equation. Every medium-near lightrail stop on the Blue Line has fancy lofts now, and I can say this for sure because I bike near the light rail all the time.
2. Light rail changes the policing equation. As richer people move in, there's pressure from them and the city to police more heavily. And as richer people move in, they usually see "crime" where it's really "people hanging out". I know this because when I was a student I moved here to a low income neighborhood - where I've lived these twenty years, getting poorer - and at the time I had no fucking idea what was crime, and I was scared of some dumb shit. I did not call the police, being left-wing, but I have met people who do. I have had conversations with people here who expect me, because I am white, to call the police on them because they are hanging out on their own porches or having an argument in their own yards.
3. Light rail changes businesses. Installing it- if that needs to happen - drops traffic to small business for a year or so. A common cycle is that small businesses die and richer, better capitalized ones ride it out, so chains flourish, as do businesses that cater to the rich. I have seen this with my own eyes.
4. Light rail changes the policing equation in another way - there's more police on trains than on buses. Also, there's usually racist panic as white neighborhoods flip out about how "they" can just take the train here now - I have seen this both around Chicago and here in MPLS. So there's pressure to police.
5. Another issue - here in MPLS, our cops have been using the trains as places to harass immigrants, even though we are a sanctuary city. Ricardo Levins Morales, a local artist and activist (who I know slightly, and who is politically on point and a darling human) filmed this interaction on the train, which at least seems to have gotten some traction.
Basically, you have to remember that unless there is strong, strong, well-enforced policy any time you make something nice in this world, there will be pressure to take it away from ordinary people and give it to the rich, and any kind of common benefit, like the train, will be geared toward the rich and justified in the media because it benefits them.
There's no reason the train has be be bad for POC or poor people, but without a real political commitment to equality, it sure can be.
posted by Frowner at 5:27 AM on May 25, 2017 [10 favorites]
1. On a practical level, light rail brings gentrification - that's actually a selling point that has been used here in MPLS. Light rail is attractive to better off urban professionals - you might not want to live in an area if the commute is inconvenient or if it's remote, but if you can live three blocks from the train to downtown and it's a nice posh new train, that changes the equation. Every medium-near lightrail stop on the Blue Line has fancy lofts now, and I can say this for sure because I bike near the light rail all the time.
2. Light rail changes the policing equation. As richer people move in, there's pressure from them and the city to police more heavily. And as richer people move in, they usually see "crime" where it's really "people hanging out". I know this because when I was a student I moved here to a low income neighborhood - where I've lived these twenty years, getting poorer - and at the time I had no fucking idea what was crime, and I was scared of some dumb shit. I did not call the police, being left-wing, but I have met people who do. I have had conversations with people here who expect me, because I am white, to call the police on them because they are hanging out on their own porches or having an argument in their own yards.
3. Light rail changes businesses. Installing it- if that needs to happen - drops traffic to small business for a year or so. A common cycle is that small businesses die and richer, better capitalized ones ride it out, so chains flourish, as do businesses that cater to the rich. I have seen this with my own eyes.
4. Light rail changes the policing equation in another way - there's more police on trains than on buses. Also, there's usually racist panic as white neighborhoods flip out about how "they" can just take the train here now - I have seen this both around Chicago and here in MPLS. So there's pressure to police.
5. Another issue - here in MPLS, our cops have been using the trains as places to harass immigrants, even though we are a sanctuary city. Ricardo Levins Morales, a local artist and activist (who I know slightly, and who is politically on point and a darling human) filmed this interaction on the train, which at least seems to have gotten some traction.
Basically, you have to remember that unless there is strong, strong, well-enforced policy any time you make something nice in this world, there will be pressure to take it away from ordinary people and give it to the rich, and any kind of common benefit, like the train, will be geared toward the rich and justified in the media because it benefits them.
There's no reason the train has be be bad for POC or poor people, but without a real political commitment to equality, it sure can be.
posted by Frowner at 5:27 AM on May 25, 2017 [10 favorites]
To continue: I think that people who are...well, I guess the word is "employable" rather than "middle class" or "college educated" now under our corporate masters...have a different perspective. If you are able to get stable employment that pays your rent and bills, even if things are not great, you have a different feeling about housing and transit. Transit exists to bring you to employment opportunities, and a new light rail train or a modernized subway/elevated/whatever train provides a pretty decent commuting experience - it runs regularly, you can usually get a seat for at least part of your ride if it's long and the train itself is new and fairly clean. So more, nicer transit benefits you, even if it brings problems as well.
But what if you're basically not employable, or have very limited employment options? Let's say you've been to prison, or you have a serious disability, or you have to care for an elderly or disabled relative. Or you don't have a high school diploma, or you're undocumented and have some complicating factor like trauma or illness. Or you're addicted to something. So the only work you can get is precarious, possibly illegal and pays very, very badly.
Transit doesn't do much for you then, right? And if transit brings in new people who can pay more rent, and brings in more police, you're completely fucked. Better to live in a remote place that you can afford and struggle with that situation than to lose your home and move god knows where to god knows what situation.
I think that very often when mefites think about social policy, we are starting from a position of "people can get jobs and housing, even if both are pretty terrible" rather than "there are many people who are just as important who are so marginalized that jobs and housing are very hard to find", because most of us can, most of the time, get some kind of jobs and housing even if not very good.
One of the things that Black Lives Matter was putting about, back before the catastrophe that has engulfed us, was that our politics had to start from the situation of the most marginalized of all rather than the "squeaking by but could use some help". Transit is an illustration of this. There is no reason that public transit can't benefit everyone but I think we have to start from the standpoint of "people who talk about displacement coming from transit development aren't just making it up and they have as good a right as anybody to stable housing in a neighborhood that is at least somewhat suitable to their needs".
posted by Frowner at 6:22 AM on May 25, 2017 [5 favorites]
But what if you're basically not employable, or have very limited employment options? Let's say you've been to prison, or you have a serious disability, or you have to care for an elderly or disabled relative. Or you don't have a high school diploma, or you're undocumented and have some complicating factor like trauma or illness. Or you're addicted to something. So the only work you can get is precarious, possibly illegal and pays very, very badly.
Transit doesn't do much for you then, right? And if transit brings in new people who can pay more rent, and brings in more police, you're completely fucked. Better to live in a remote place that you can afford and struggle with that situation than to lose your home and move god knows where to god knows what situation.
I think that very often when mefites think about social policy, we are starting from a position of "people can get jobs and housing, even if both are pretty terrible" rather than "there are many people who are just as important who are so marginalized that jobs and housing are very hard to find", because most of us can, most of the time, get some kind of jobs and housing even if not very good.
One of the things that Black Lives Matter was putting about, back before the catastrophe that has engulfed us, was that our politics had to start from the situation of the most marginalized of all rather than the "squeaking by but could use some help". Transit is an illustration of this. There is no reason that public transit can't benefit everyone but I think we have to start from the standpoint of "people who talk about displacement coming from transit development aren't just making it up and they have as good a right as anybody to stable housing in a neighborhood that is at least somewhat suitable to their needs".
posted by Frowner at 6:22 AM on May 25, 2017 [5 favorites]
Can't remember where I heard this off the top of my head, but one thing that private transit companies apparently did in the past that I think cities could learn from is that they bought up a ton of land/property near new transit corridors. If the property remains municipally-owned, that's one potential way of maintaining what Frowner talked about with the West Bank of MPLS while also improving transit for everyone.
I will say that my understanding is that transit (and, perhaps surprisingly to white people, biking) is pretty key for the undocumented, because driver's licenses and the risk of getting pulled over make it too risky to drive. It absolutely can be a mixed blessing if the faster transit means you now face greater eviction pressure, of course.
posted by en forme de poire at 12:30 PM on May 25, 2017 [1 favorite]
I will say that my understanding is that transit (and, perhaps surprisingly to white people, biking) is pretty key for the undocumented, because driver's licenses and the risk of getting pulled over make it too risky to drive. It absolutely can be a mixed blessing if the faster transit means you now face greater eviction pressure, of course.
posted by en forme de poire at 12:30 PM on May 25, 2017 [1 favorite]
Very interesting points, Frowner, thanks.
Here in Portland, it's more that some affluent neighborhoods don't want light rail because of the racist panic you describe in your #4. A much needed bridge on I-5 across the Columbia was blocked for that very reason -- it included a light rail component, and conservatives in suburban Vancouver made "CRIME TRAIN!" their slogan. Which is ridiculous on a number of levels but it worked. The poorer neighborhoods around here are all pretty well served by light rail.
Your points about crime and policing are complicated and tricky, though. Nervous newcomers calling the cops about benign behavior sucks, but at the risk of being obvious, the police are the ones who should shut that behavior down (assuming a community policing approach); blocking light rail seems like a wildly inefficient solution to cultural ignorance. Something like a more streetwise version of the neighborhood welcome wagon seems a lot more apt.
There's an implication in what you say that neighborhoods like Boyle Heights are and should remain a sanctuary for illegality because the poor residents need that, and that seems really problematic.
posted by msalt at 1:42 PM on May 25, 2017
Here in Portland, it's more that some affluent neighborhoods don't want light rail because of the racist panic you describe in your #4. A much needed bridge on I-5 across the Columbia was blocked for that very reason -- it included a light rail component, and conservatives in suburban Vancouver made "CRIME TRAIN!" their slogan. Which is ridiculous on a number of levels but it worked. The poorer neighborhoods around here are all pretty well served by light rail.
Your points about crime and policing are complicated and tricky, though. Nervous newcomers calling the cops about benign behavior sucks, but at the risk of being obvious, the police are the ones who should shut that behavior down (assuming a community policing approach); blocking light rail seems like a wildly inefficient solution to cultural ignorance. Something like a more streetwise version of the neighborhood welcome wagon seems a lot more apt.
There's an implication in what you say that neighborhoods like Boyle Heights are and should remain a sanctuary for illegality because the poor residents need that, and that seems really problematic.
posted by msalt at 1:42 PM on May 25, 2017
There's an implication in what you say that neighborhoods like Boyle Heights are and should remain a sanctuary for illegality because the poor residents need that, and that seems really problematic.
I disagree. We don't right now have the kind of political power needed to fix things for neighborhoods where marginalized people are somewhat sheltered from gentrification by dysfunction. Making big changes to a bad but stable situation when you do not have the power to fix it is not right.
What happens is that policy setters think "oh, in theory we should totally not leave this neighborhood in misery, so even though we can't guarantee housing to the residents or provide food support or prevent police brutality, since we can create this gentrifying amenity we should do that, because at least it's something. Basically, we can't deal with the underlying problems, but at least we can bring in one little fancy thing, and anything good we can do is good, right?" And then that little amenity actually makes things worse for the residents.
This is what happened in MPLS (and elsewhere) with most of our housing projects (many of which were really pretty nice small apartment buildings, not even the giant towers) - it deteriorated (or was allowed to deteriorate) until it was a mess and the tenants were complaining. The city used a rhetoric of "oh look liberal Minneapolitans, it's so terrible that these people have to live in this deteriorated housing, let's knock it down...and in a few years we will rebuild some affordable housing which will be great!" Liberals looked at the existing terrible housing, decided to take the city at its word and stood idly by while the residents of the housing were scattered, many falling out of the subsidized housing system altogether. Then, of course, since there was not the political will to rebuild what was knocked down, it took years to get a much, much smaller number of units which did not even begin to replace what was knocked down.
The residents protested this whole thing like stink, but of course they were only the residents - poor people - so really what did they know?
Net result - the rhetoric of "look at the disenfranchised, we must do something - anything! - about this situation" was used to make people's lives much, much worse.
Or consider welfare reform - our welfare system was so broken and unhelpful that we had to replace it with...not very much at all, and that was made much harder to get. The rhetoric of "this system is failing poor people" was used to destroy a bad but functioning system and replace it with sweet fuck all.
Or consider how, when Reagan deinstitutionalized all the mental health patients, we were supposed to get lots of funding for community care centers and in-home support. Of course, all that happened was the mental health hospitals - themselves bad, but stable - were abolished and nothing was put in their place. So now people are free to starve in the street or be "institutionalized" in prison. There too, liberal rhetoric about the rights of mental health patients was used to justify something that made a bad situation worse.
Again, I basically like trains, but if there is a plausible argument that an "improvement" will displace actual poor people while creating a nice neighborhood for new, richer people, I don't think that's an actual improvement after all.
What I say is, the only way to fix housing insecurity is to fix housing insecurity - "we will put in some trains and that will, through the magic of the market, create economic effects that house the poor" is snake oil and people on the left should know better.
posted by Frowner at 3:14 PM on May 25, 2017 [4 favorites]
I disagree. We don't right now have the kind of political power needed to fix things for neighborhoods where marginalized people are somewhat sheltered from gentrification by dysfunction. Making big changes to a bad but stable situation when you do not have the power to fix it is not right.
What happens is that policy setters think "oh, in theory we should totally not leave this neighborhood in misery, so even though we can't guarantee housing to the residents or provide food support or prevent police brutality, since we can create this gentrifying amenity we should do that, because at least it's something. Basically, we can't deal with the underlying problems, but at least we can bring in one little fancy thing, and anything good we can do is good, right?" And then that little amenity actually makes things worse for the residents.
This is what happened in MPLS (and elsewhere) with most of our housing projects (many of which were really pretty nice small apartment buildings, not even the giant towers) - it deteriorated (or was allowed to deteriorate) until it was a mess and the tenants were complaining. The city used a rhetoric of "oh look liberal Minneapolitans, it's so terrible that these people have to live in this deteriorated housing, let's knock it down...and in a few years we will rebuild some affordable housing which will be great!" Liberals looked at the existing terrible housing, decided to take the city at its word and stood idly by while the residents of the housing were scattered, many falling out of the subsidized housing system altogether. Then, of course, since there was not the political will to rebuild what was knocked down, it took years to get a much, much smaller number of units which did not even begin to replace what was knocked down.
The residents protested this whole thing like stink, but of course they were only the residents - poor people - so really what did they know?
Net result - the rhetoric of "look at the disenfranchised, we must do something - anything! - about this situation" was used to make people's lives much, much worse.
Or consider welfare reform - our welfare system was so broken and unhelpful that we had to replace it with...not very much at all, and that was made much harder to get. The rhetoric of "this system is failing poor people" was used to destroy a bad but functioning system and replace it with sweet fuck all.
Or consider how, when Reagan deinstitutionalized all the mental health patients, we were supposed to get lots of funding for community care centers and in-home support. Of course, all that happened was the mental health hospitals - themselves bad, but stable - were abolished and nothing was put in their place. So now people are free to starve in the street or be "institutionalized" in prison. There too, liberal rhetoric about the rights of mental health patients was used to justify something that made a bad situation worse.
Again, I basically like trains, but if there is a plausible argument that an "improvement" will displace actual poor people while creating a nice neighborhood for new, richer people, I don't think that's an actual improvement after all.
What I say is, the only way to fix housing insecurity is to fix housing insecurity - "we will put in some trains and that will, through the magic of the market, create economic effects that house the poor" is snake oil and people on the left should know better.
posted by Frowner at 3:14 PM on May 25, 2017 [4 favorites]
I can't figure out why i'm supposed to have any sympathy whatsoever for someone who by their own report has the money to pay twenty thousand dollars to evict someone. Anyone with that kind of money, enough that they can use five figures to throw someone out of their home? They're clearly well-off enough not to need any empathy from me; they can just roll around in their bathtub full of money.
posted by adrienneleigh at 10:20 PM on May 25, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by adrienneleigh at 10:20 PM on May 25, 2017 [1 favorite]
frowner: I basically like trains, but if there is a plausible argument that an "improvement" will displace actual poor people while creating a nice neighborhood for new, richer people, I don't think that's an actual improvement after all. What I say is, the only way to fix housing insecurity is to fix housing insecurity - "we will put in some trains and that will, through the magic of the market, create economic effects that house the poor" is snake oil and people on the left should know better.
You can always make a plausible argument that any change will hurt some people. In fact, it's almost a certainty that any change will hurt some people. I can't understand that being a valid argument against any improvement, unless a rock-solid plan to fix everything is in place. Because of course, no such thing.
Light rail is a very expensive system that is being built regardless of Boyle Heights. The only question is whether to connect the neighborhood to it. Cutting off the entire neighborhood from transit as a way to help them? That seems like accelerationism in reverse. Decelerationism?
"Let's reinforce the poverty of a poor Latino neighborhood to make sure nobody else wants to live there. That's the most just policy." Uh, no.
posted by msalt at 8:05 PM on May 27, 2017 [1 favorite]
You can always make a plausible argument that any change will hurt some people. In fact, it's almost a certainty that any change will hurt some people. I can't understand that being a valid argument against any improvement, unless a rock-solid plan to fix everything is in place. Because of course, no such thing.
Light rail is a very expensive system that is being built regardless of Boyle Heights. The only question is whether to connect the neighborhood to it. Cutting off the entire neighborhood from transit as a way to help them? That seems like accelerationism in reverse. Decelerationism?
"Let's reinforce the poverty of a poor Latino neighborhood to make sure nobody else wants to live there. That's the most just policy." Uh, no.
posted by msalt at 8:05 PM on May 27, 2017 [1 favorite]
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The Newsweek article is really well done, though.
posted by twsf at 10:10 AM on May 23, 2017 [1 favorite]