Gentrification: as usual it's more complicated than that.

I have a confession to make: I am a gentrifier.

More specifically: A few weeks ago, I was talking to a native Philadelphian who asked me in passing where I lived. When I told her, she gave me a long look and said, "Girl, you in the hood."

"Yeah," I answered. "I guess so."

My neighborhood is poor. One can see this by just looking around, but since you all are not (necessarily) in Philadelphia, here are some quick facts about my little corner of the world:

-The average real estate price for a home is about $52,000.
-The average per capita income is in the bottom 3% of all U.S. neighborhoods.
-56.4% of children in my neighborhood live in poverty.
-Most people in my neighborhood work in retail or service jobs.
-The real estate vacancy rate is about 27%.^[1]

I don't see my neighborhood gentrifying anytime soon, to be honest. It's out of the reach of the big universities, Drexel and Penn, which have reached out their long arms and money to develop other parts of West Philly. We're not one of them.

But, by definition, I'm still part of the gentrification problem. I'm middle-class, making enough money to pay my bills (including those dastardly grad school loans) and save a little. I grew up middle-class as well; my mom's a graphic designer and my dad's a social worker, and while we were never wealthy, we had enough to live on, put food on the table, and go on camping trips once in a while. Now, I live in a rowhouse that my roommate owns with two other single women. We raise the property rates just by being there. And, in a country where race and class are often closely associated, add all of this to the fact that I'm a white girl living in a mostly African-American neighborhood, and the issue becomes…complicated.

One of the "success" stories that I hear sometimes is the Penn-Alexander school, which is in West Philly but south of where I live. The University of Pennsylvania partnered with the Philadelphia School District to form a Pre-kindergarten-8th grade (ages 4 to 14ish, for the non-USians among us) school. It is a success, at least in terms of education, and it's a public school, which is great. But over the years, the taxes and real estate prices in "Penn-Alexander catchment area" have skyrocketed and have pushed many of the original residents out. From all accounts, it still is a diverse school. And many times, families who move out of the area lie on their records just to keep their kids at Penn-Alexander, which says something about the quality of the other public schools in the area.

There's a conundrum here. I want Philadelphia, as a whole, to succeed. I want it to be a city that thrives, that has good schools and green spaces and safe areas to live. But I don't want that to happen at the expense of those who have lived here for years. That would be progress on the backs of the poor.

And that brings me back to my personal dilemma. My neighborhood has its challenges. I get harassed sometimes on the street (that is a whole 'nother post that might be a companion to this one). Sometimes public transportation can be difficult, especially at night and on the weekends. And, yeah, I can distinguish between gunfire and firecrackers easily now. But I like living where I do.

But the question that bothers me is the broader one: can I justify living here when I know that I'm contributing to gentrification?

I don't exactly have an answer to that.

Last year, the blog The DCentrist published a post called "Five Ways to Be a Good Gentrifier". When I looked around for reactions to the piece, I found one on a blog called Post-Bourgie that argued, in part, these were rules for being a good neighbor, not a good gentrifier.

Ultimately, that that is what I want to be: a good neighbor. I'm a visitor in a lot of ways. I realize that my living where I do is not, in and of itself, an expression of solidarity. But if I am to keep living here-and I'm planning on it-I need to be able to put down roots that last. When I read the blog post about gentrification, I recognized myself in some ways: we use the front porch in the summer; we talk (and listen) to our neighbors; if we need something quick, we use the little corner market around the street.

I think that's a good start, but I don't think that it answers my question. I'm not sure that it needs to; still, I'm bothered by the social, economic, and racial implications that gentrification, and my part in it, raises.

--sarah

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^[1] This information is from NeighborhoodScout.com. I'm not sure if this is all up-to-date or accurate, but it's pretty hard to get data on my actual neighborhood instead of West Philadelphia as a whole.↩

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Comments

[storiteller]

I completely understand. I'm in an even weirder situation in that I'm sort of a gentrifier in the suburbs, which no one understands. When people think of my town, they think "ritzy" and don't know that my neighborhood used to be the main supplier of drugs to all of the metro DC area and had a major murder problem not all that long ago. It actually has a lot less crime than it used to, but it's still far from rich. A lot of people in my neighborhood match a lot of the statistics you've listed. It's a traditionally African-American neighborhood. And I know for a fact that the amount of money I bought my house for raised the average price of the neighborhood. I feel a little bad about that, but on the other hand, I actually love the fascinating history and neighborliness of my neighborhood.

And then I get crap from my friends who live in the city because I live out in the 'burbs. They don't seem to consider that they're pushing people out, just that they're near the cool bars, and don't get that my neighborhood has character too.

[Nathaniel]

Whenever someone brings up gentrification, I ask myself, whats the alternative? None is ever given, because the answer would be for certain types of people to self segregate away from poor communities.

[Timothy (TRiG)]

I know someone in London who occasionally complains about the gentrifiers in her neighbourhood. But her complaint is that they make no effort to fit in. I don't think she'd have a problem with you.

TRiG.

[Ross]

It seems like the way Sarah is framing this, the only possible choices are being part of the "gentrification problem" or being part of the "white flight" problem. It seems like there must be a middle that is getting excluded here.

[Izzy]

Interesting. I think I agree with all the points in the article, and that they're more "how to be a good neighbor" points, except maaaybe the "say hello" one. (I'm pretty solidly New England in my preference for keeping myself to myself and having my neighbors/co-workers/fellow subway passengers do the same.)

I guess the question is, as people have brought up, what's the best middle way between gentrification and avoiding low-income areas?

[sarah]

@Ross: I do think there's a middle way. I guess I'm not sure what it is. Or I do: I think it would take a massive community-based effort to do revitalization without gentrification--having the people moving in and the people already there work together. And it would depend on the city and neighborhood you're in.

Philly's got plenty of challenges--a failing school system, for example. Penn-Alexander, from what I know, was supposed to be a school that worked against the failures of the public school system, and while it's done a lot of good, it might also be unsustainable. I don't know.

@Izzy: Oh, yeah. I've still got a core of New Englander in me that wants to just mind my own business. One of the things that I've learned about living in a small rowhouse is how close your neighbors are. Heh.

[Amaryllis]

I don't know, my house is generally held to lower the tone of the neighborhood... oh well.

One of the criticisms I hear about gentrifiers is that many of them are not invested in the local school system. When their kids reach school age, they move back to the suburbs or send the kids to private schools.

Which, I don't know, it's kind of hard to fault parents for doing the best they can for their kids. It's great to work for improving the school down the street, but if real change takes years and your kid has only this one chance at first grade, well, you'll do what you feel you have to.

I think part of the answer has to be a more regional outlook among the Powers That Be. More sharing of revenue across city-county lines, more partnerships in providing decent schools and dependable public transportation, more low-income or subsidized housing that isn't strictly concentrated in the "worst" neighborhoods, more regional public-health efforts, and so on.

I have no idea how to convince the average suburbanite to support any of that, though, when the counties are feeling pinched to provide for their own people.

And then you get people like this guy.
Because "quality people" don't live in low-income housing. Sigh.

[kisekileia]

I think part of the answer has to be a more regional outlook among the Powers That Be... more partnerships in providing decent schools

One of the very few really good things that Ontario's Conservative government in the second half of the '90s did was making education provincially funded, with the same funding formula used for every board, rather than having it funded through local property taxes. This reduced the tendency for richer areas to have better-funded schools due to having a stronger property tax base. The funding formula adopted was insufficiently flexible and was accompanied by massive funding cuts, and those funding cuts worked against equality by forcing schools to rely on student activity fees and fundraising for more of their income than before, but the move to a universal funding formula was in principle a good thing.

[Mike Timonin]

I'm pretty solidly New England in my preference for keeping myself to myself and having my neighbors/co-workers/fellow subway passengers do the same.

I've just finished outlining Fischer's Four Folkways for my US History classes, so I'm forced to wonder how this fits with Fischer's New England = Puritan = "small communities who live in each other's pockets" contention. Perhaps it fits very well, actually - when you live expecting people to stick their noses into your business, you develop strict rules of privacy...

[Izzy]

@Mike: I'd be inclined to think so, especially since it also seems to be an urban thing. The more people you have to interact with in daily life, the fewer of them you actually want to deal with, or something like that?

[Ross]

@Amaryllis: Now I am imagining those body-snatcher zucchini/throw pillow aliens from MST3K ('The Giant Spider Invasion') talking about gentrification and bringing "quality" to urban neighborhoods.

[sarah]

[[Amaryllis: One of the criticisms I hear about gentrifiers is that many of them are not invested in the local school system. When their kids reach school age, they move back to the suburbs or send the kids to private schools.]]

Yeah. My parents actually stayed in the suburbs because of this. They considered moving to Brooklyn or Harlem or the Bronx, because of my dad's work, but ultimately stayed in the suburbs because of the schools. This was back in the '80s.

The school issue is one I've thought about a lot, and I've had many a conversation with one of my roommates about. I don't have kids, so it's still theoretical for me. But I think that:
1) children are not social experiments. Obviously. And they're not vehicles for fulfilling my ideological ideals. So I don't want to put them in a place that harms them, whether it's physically (because the stats on school violence are kinda awful) or educationally.
2) If I had kids, I think I'd want to get involved in the schools before my children got to be school-aged. That way, I'd know the lay of the land and be able to see if other parents could get involved.
3) I'd also try to advocate for better funding. Kids on the Main Line get iPads, and kids in the Philly school district sometimes don't even get books. (This is one of the things that bugs me when politicians and their ilk go on about "equality of opportunity." Yeah, *sure* there is.)

[storiteller]

Whenever someone brings up gentrification, I ask myself, whats the alternative? None is ever given, because the answer would be for certain types of people to self segregate away from poor communities.

The problem with gentrification is that people who have sometimes lived in those neighborhoods for generations have to leave because rents rise so much that they are priced out of the area. Improving areas across-the-board, as Amaryllis suggested, is a major contributing factor to preventing it because if everywhere has low crime and good living conditions, rents don't have to go up substantially in some places and not others.

Another major contributing factor is to ensure not only is affordable housing available for both low-income and middle-income people. When I was visiting an apartment complex in the suburbs of London - one of the most expensive places in the world at the time - I heard the concept of "key worker housing" explained. This system not only sets some housing aside for low-income folks, but also reserves affordable housing at set prices for people who the community needs but do not make a lot of money. This includes teachers, police, fire-fighters, and nurses. I thought that was very smart because those folks often get left in the lurch when rents skyrocket.

Lastly, working to preserve some of the character of the neighborhood is really important. In DC, the businesses that serve the young up-and-coming folks are moving in and in some cases forcing other long-time businesses out.

[Will Wildman]

But, by definition, I'm still part of the gentrification problem.

I've been puzzling over this all day. I am not well-versed in gentrification theory and went to look a bit up to make sure I understood the issues: as I understand it, the idea is that richer-class (and often white) people start to move into a poorer-class (and often PoC) neighbourhood, it slowly becomes 'nicer'/more attractive to richer-class people, residential prices rise, and the original residents are forced to move because they can no longer afford to stay, thus placing a burden on them and increasing overcrowding in whatever areas they can still afford to live in. Have I more or less got it? Intricacies are welcome!

So there is this dual-issue, one whereby the characteristics of the area slowly change and a subsequent one whereby this displaces residents. The second one is obviously bad; the first one is not so obviously always terrible.

I'm kind of stuck on the same point Ross is, I think. Does just living in an area automatically contribute to gentrification? (That word still seems very weird to me in the context; I'm guessing it was originally meant to have positive connotations and just ended up being classist?) Does gentrification necessarily lead to displacement? The best solution, as has been pointed out in various places, is to try to ensure that all areas improve simultaneously, so that there's no justification for a huge exodus from one area to another. A person who was really devoted to that solution could presumably always try to live in the 'worst' part of town, to ensure that they weren't taking up space (physically or economically) that would then force someone else into a worse area. It's the same dilemma and difficult (even impractical) solution that would seem to result from being really devoted to charity - how does one justify having more than barely enough when there are others who don't even have that? Fred's written about this at some point, I think - how can you continue to have two shirts if anyone else doesn't even have one?

I'm not sure what institutions are in place that can address problems of displacement. Where do you lobby to prevent property taxes from rising? Where do you advocate to prevent local businesses from having to shut down? This is in no way my area of expertise and those are questions that I don't have answers for. But it seems to me that those are issues that get at the problem moreso than the exact area that a person lives in while being white and well-off. Am I missing big parts of the picture?

[Will Wildman]

(I might be spamtrapped. I know I checked for the 'your comment has been posted' confirmation, but it has not appeared over the last several minutes. If it's just typepad messing with me and this double-posts somehow, either one can be deleted; this little parenthetical is the only difference.)

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But, by definition, I'm still part of the gentrification problem.

I've been puzzling over this all day. I am not well-versed in gentrification theory and went to look a bit up to make sure I understood the issues: as I understand it, the idea is that richer-class (and often white) people start to move into a poorer-class (and often PoC) neighbourhood, it slowly becomes 'nicer'/more attractive to richer-class people, residential prices rise, and the original residents are forced to move because they can no longer afford to stay, thus placing a burden on them and increasing overcrowding in whatever areas they can still afford to live in. Have I more or less got it? Intricacies are welcome!

So there is this dual-issue, one whereby the characteristics of the area slowly change and a subsequent one whereby this displaces residents. The second one is obviously bad; the first one is not so obviously always terrible.

I'm kind of stuck on the same point Ross is, I think. Does just living in an area automatically contribute to gentrification? (That word still seems very weird to me in the context; I'm guessing it was originally meant to have positive connotations and just ended up being classist?) Does gentrification necessarily lead to displacement? The best solution, as has been pointed out in various places, is to try to ensure that all areas improve simultaneously, so that there's no justification for a huge exodus from one area to another. A person who was really devoted to that solution could presumably always try to live in the 'worst' part of town, to ensure that they weren't taking up space (physically or economically) that would then force someone else into a worse area. It's the same dilemma and difficult (even impractical) solution that would seem to result from being really devoted to charity - how does one justify having more than barely enough when there are others who don't even have that? Fred's written about this at some point, I think - how can you continue to have two shirts if anyone else doesn't even have one?

I'm not sure what institutions are in place that can address problems of displacement. Where do you lobby to prevent property taxes from rising? Where do you advocate to prevent local businesses from having to shut down? This is in no way my area of expertise and those are questions that I don't have answers for. But it seems to me that those are issues that get at the problem moreso than the exact area that a person lives in while being white and well-off. Am I missing big parts of the picture?

[Will Wildman]

I think I've been spamtrapped twice. The second comment was just a redux of the first, so they don't both need to be saved, but either one would be appreciated.

[burgundy]

I have only minimal policy-related experience (and pretty much no personal experience). I did work on an evaluation of an urban renewal project in Austin (which is here if anyone wants to read it; not all of it is immediately germane to the discussion.) I'd be interested to know if there are differences in California in how gentrification shakes out, as a result of the caps on property tax increases.

I don't know how much can be done to combat gentrification that doesn't involve significant subsidies. Anything you do to improve conditions (reduce crime rates, replace condemned buildings with new development, attract businesses back to a neighborhood) will increase property values, and thus increase taxes (in the absence of a cap). So you can say, "we're building a new apartment building, but we'll set aside a certain number of units for low-income residents" or "we're renovating the houses in this neighborhood, but we're putting most of them into a program for low-income applicants" or whatever. But those are still limited programs, and they don't address the impact on the people next door to the apartment building, or across the street from the renovated homes.

One option, I guess, is to lower property-tax burden across the board by raising revenue from other sources. Texas doesn't have a state income tax, so we raise our money (at the state and local level) from sales taxes and property taxes. In Austin, the city, county, school district, hospital district, and community college district all levy property taxes.

[storiteller]

@Burgundy, it's really interesting that you worked on this in Austin, because I was just visiting there and heard the former mayor talk extensively about urban renewal. In particular, he was talking about the site of the former airport and how they had worked to redevelop that area into residential housing to reduce pollution, reduce congestion, and increase economic development downtown. He also mentioned the University of Texas project, where they tried to get more students to live near or on the campus to prevent them from having to drive to class.

The one thing that I've noticed with gentrification in DC is that when the poorer people are forced out, they're forced into the suburbs. In many cases, this is actually far more problematic than the city, because the layout is much less dense, there's less public transit, and it's generally much more difficult to get around without a car. The suburbs also sometimes provide fewer public services, like community centers or free health clinics, than the city because they don't have a history of serving lower-income folks. I don't know if this has been a pattern anywhere else.

[hapax]

The *idea* behind property taxes is sound enough (from them that have more, more shall be asked), but the execution (at least in the USA) is horrible. It always seems to lead to the result that "to them that have, even more shall be given", and institutionalizes social stratification (especially through school funding) worse than anything I can think of.

Tossing all property taxes in a wider geographic area (county, or preferably state) to be divided equally would be a good start, but there's still the problem of rich and poor counties, rich and poor states (I say that as someone who lives in one of the wealthiest counties of one of the poorest states; there are those who deeply resent the the amount of "our tax monies" that are "thrown away" downstate; there are those who think that there's not ENOUGH redistribution; and then there is the (odd to me, but I guess I can sort of grok it) folks in the poorer counties who look at the upstate tax money as "people who live don't live around here trying to interfere in what we do."

So, I guess I'd get behind drastically reducing the reliance on property taxes. Unfortunately, the second biggest source of state income is sin taxes, which are even more regressive.

[burgundy]

storiteller, the area we looked at was a specific part of East Austin, which was historically African-American due to segregation policies implemented in the 1920s. Check out this map for a sense of how the demographics have changed; it's only gotten more dramatic with time. Austin has seen its black population decrease not only the percentage of the overall population, but in absolute numbers as well, despite having rapid population growth overall. The East Austin gentrification is hitting Latino areas hard as well.

Overall, Austin is a hard place to live in if you don't have money, and it's getting harder all the time, across the board. There's been a big push for infill and densification, because we don't like sprawl, but high-rises are expensive to build, and then expensive to live in. There's a huge affordability gap in housing, and the requirements placed on developers (e.g. we'll let you increase your floor-to-area ratio if you put some money in this pot for affordable housing) just aren't enough. And there are limits to what local governments can do in terms of rent controls, because of state law.

[burgundy]

I think I might have gotten spamtrapped? There were links, so I'm not surprised.

[burgundy]

Yay, post is back!

I have a lot to say on the mechanics of gentrification, especially in Austin, but I don't want to go overboard. This isn't a wonk blog; this is about personal stuff, and I don't want to be all spewing statistics and stuff over people's personal struggles.

[AnaMardoll]

I want to comment on this, but I have nothing intelligent to say. So I will instead say "thank you for this very interesting post and the very informative and thought-provoking comments". This SEEMS like spam, but you'll know that it's not because I've failed to link to anything in my generic (but genuinely heart-felt in this case) praise-comment.

[storiteller]

I have a lot to say on the mechanics of gentrification, especially in Austin, but I don't want to go overboard. This isn't a wonk blog; this is about personal stuff, and I don't want to be all spewing statistics and stuff over people's personal struggles.

I think it makes sense in this case to get into a bit of the wonk stuff. Of course, I might be saying that just because I'm interested in the public policy as well. :-) Not to speak for Sarah, but I think this is an issue where policy/mechanics can and perhaps should be linked to personal stories. People share their stories so that they can know others care. Once other people show they care, we can create enough of a movement to push change. But how should we implement change in a way that reduces harm? And that's where policy can come in - to offer some solutions, that can then be further weighed against personal experiences.

As for Austin, it doesn't surprise me that the infill was problematic in parts. The former mayor sounded like he had done some really good things, but he was incredibly full of himself and seemed a little too in love with his expensive downtown condo.

[burgundy]

Let me guess, Will Wynn? I nearly had a head-on collision with him once: I was trying to enter the parking garage, and he was leaving. Through the (one-way) entrance. And I would advise suspicion of any Austin mayor who tries to take a lot of credit for things; the mayor has no more actual power than any other Council member. The mayor chairs the meetings and has more public recognition, which can be parlayed into a certain amount of political weight if one is savvy enough, and there are some boards and commissions where the mayor is responsible for the appointees. But that's it. (Oh, and they have a bigger staff and a more private office.)

[storiteller]

Ahem, the event had something to do with work, so I won't name names. But, I'll say that you have more experience than I do here.

[Ross]

The *idea* behind property taxes is sound enough (from them that have more, more shall be asked), but the execution (at least in the USA) is horrible. It always seems to lead to the result that "to them that have, even more shall be given", and institutionalizes social stratification (especially through school funding) worse than anything I can think of.

From what I hear, this is a regional thing, but my experience with that in particular is that the linkage between property taxes and school funding does not actually help the rich nearly so much as it helps the rich-adjacent.

In much of maryland -- and this is something I didn't understand until I was an adult -- it is just taken for granted that pretty much everyone who can afford to do so will put their kids in private school. So those high property taxes end up paying for public schools not for the children of the rich, but for the children who live in the small enclaves of lower-income that are close enough to the wealthy neighborhoods as to be lumped into a common school district.

This, of course, does nothing for people living in places that are universally poor. But it's why I have a complicated relationship with gentrification. When my wife and I were looking to move out of the city, we looked primarily at school districts (She became a little obsessive and nearly vetoed our dream house because the schools were rated 1% higher in the next school zone over, where we didn't like any of the houses on the market), and I was really surprised by the fact that the correlation between school quality and diversity were pretty much direct: the best schools, with only a very few exceptions, had the most diversity (This correlation held when I looked at the schools I'd attended in rural maryland in the misty dawn of time. But the correlation was exactly the opposite in the districts in New Jersey where my wife had gone to school).

[Lonespark]

This is a good post. It's an important issue to think on. Especially the part about schools, Grrrrrr. But I have difficulty coming up with anything meaningful to say. I feel like just flailing my arms and going "Moooooore... Coooomplicated..." every time it comes up.

There have been some excellent posts on Racialicious regarding gentrification. Other places too, I'm sure, but of the places I hang out to suck up fandom, that's one of the few.

[sarah]

[[Lonespark: I feel like just flailing my arms and going "Moooooore... Coooomplicated..." every time it comes up.]]

Oh, me too. It's something that's been on my mind for a long time, which is why I ended up writing this.

I got really lucky. I went to really good public schools all the way up. But if we'd stayed on Long Island, I probably would have ended up in a Catholic high school, because our local public high school wasn't very good (although, strangely, the elementary and middle schools were).

@burgundy: I'm okay with the wonk stuff. :) It seems that the issue of gentrification is both widespread, in the sense that it happens in a lot of cities, and local, in the sense that the solution probably differs from city to city. So I'm interested in what you did in Austin.

[burgundy]

What I "did" was really mostly just historical research and performance measurement related to the urban renewal project; the gentrification research was so that we could speak to some of the outcomes. We weren't working on addressing the gentrification itself.

There was some talk a few years ago of setting up a "land trust" in East Austin, where some sort of city/county partnership would buy people's land, while the residents owned the houses, so their property tax burdens would be reduced. I don't remember that ever going anywhere, and it raises all kinds of other issues.

Another thing that is very Austin-specific, and not directly related to gentrification but still of interest to a lot of people in those neighborhoods, is that Austin is the largest city in the US that does not have geographic representation on the City Council. All Councilmembers are elected citywide. We also have abysmal voter turnout - in local-only elections (i.e. no federal offices on the ballot), we have recently been getting less than 10% of registered voters. And if you map voter turnout, you see huge geographic disparities: turnout is much higher in affluent West Austin. So you have the entire Council essentially reporting to the same groups, because those are the groups that get you elected (the public safety unions, West Austin, the Austin Neighborhood Council, some of the larger developers, although it's true that they don't all vote in lockstep and we recently had the ANC candidate beat out the public safety union-backed candidate). Some parts of the city have no one to speak for them, and it costs a lot more to run a citywide campaign than it would to just campaign in a local district. We've got a charter revision committee working on a proposal for districts, but this issue has gone to the voters I think seven times over the years, and it's lost each time (because the people who currently vote would only lose power.)

Based on my better-than-layperson-but-not-expert knowledge, I don't think there's any way to really address gentrification without looking at systemic issues. Austin needs better employment prospects for people without college degrees. Austin needs better public transit so that people without cars can live in more neighborhoods without forfeiting access to work and community engagement. Austin needs more affordable housing. Austin needs to be less racist and segregated. Austin needs to find a way to balance its growing entertainment district with the needs of the nearby (and encroached-upon) residential neighborhoods. And so on.

Going back to the original post, what I frequently heard at community meetings and in news articles and so on was that residents didn't mind the mere fact of richer, whiter people moving in so much as they minded the lack of engagement, which goes back to the "being a good neighbor" thing.

[Froborr]

The engagement thing is, I think, a real issue in D.C., because D.C. has two noticeably distinct populations:

1) A mostly African-American, long-term population that has lived here for decades and will continue to live here for decades. Lives mostly east of the Anacostia River, and increasingly is being driven further east into Prince George's County, Maryland. Mostly lower- and lower-middle incomes.

2) A mostly white, transient population that moved here for work, lives here for five or ten years, and then moves on. Used to live mostly in Northern Virginia or the Maryland suburbs north of the city, but increasingly lives in the city itself, west of the Anacostia River. Mostly middle incomes up to stratospheric incomes (three of the five richest counties in the U.S. are D.C. suburbs.)

These two groups generally don't have a lot of interests in common, but more importantly, there is very little interaction between them. The supposedly recession-proof economy of D.C. actually only applies to the second group, who usually work for the government, government contractors, or businesses that support the government and contractors. The first group are the ones that do get hit by the bad economy, and they are the poorer group to begin with.

Compounding the problem is that D.C. and Prince George's County are in different states, and coordinating anything between D.C. and its neighboring states is extremely difficult at the best of times. (See: Any attempt to improve the Metro system, ever.)

[storiteller]

@Froborr A mostly African-American, long-term population that has lived here for decades and will continue to live here for decades. ... Maryland suburbs north of the city

Your two points are completely true, except that I just want to make clear that they aren't totally cut and dry as people think they are. By revising your statement the way I did, I described my neighborhood. My neighbor across the street is third-generation in my neighborhood - her grandfather lived around the corner. One day in the summer, I sat with her and talked about all of the history of the neighborhood, which I knew nothing about before I moved here.

In addition, there are an increasing amount of immigrants in the DC metro area from South East Asia and elsewhere that aren't accounted for in those groups, that people often forget. My friend of Taiwanese descent who lived in the city would grocery shop in my town because it had an Asian grocery store that he couldn't find where he lived.

I don't mean to imply that you think it's that simple, but a lot of the details often get lost in conversations like this. Forgetting the subtleties can affect public policy and make people feel as if they are seen as non-existent.

[Froborr]

@storiteller: And you know, if I'd thought about it for five seconds I'd have put a "mostly" in front of the geography as well as the races, because my mother lived in a neighborhood in Maryland, north of the city, where most of the people had lived for at least 20 years, and often for generations.

I may be wrong about this, but my experience has been that the East Asian immigrants mostly live in the suburbs, and I was mostly thinking about people actually living in the city. I mean obviously we eventually have to move them all into the city as part of Operation Suburbia Is The Devil, but AFAIK they aren't really a factor in gentrification issues in the city yet.

[sarah]

@storiteller and Froborr: I lived in Columbia Heights for a year ('06-'07) when it was right in the middle of gentrifying. There were stabbings and drug deals in the alley behind my house, but the houses on my street went for $600,000-$800,000.

Our "landlords" were the Spanish Catholic Center, which rented the house to the Capuchin Franciscans for the volunteer corps. Between the property taxes and the maintenance costs, the SCC couldn't maintain the house anymore. They sold it for $650,000--and it wasn't in great shape, either. We used to stuff towels in the windows to keep the draft out. (It was a lovely house, though, when you looked at its potential.)

[Froborr]

Yeah, I think Columbia Heights is a clear case of gentrification gone badly. They were so desperate for local businesses they gave an IHOP franchise a local business loan, because the guy opening it lived in D.C. And there are still several empty storefronts in the fancy new big-box stack. It's ended up very much the worst of both worlds--the rents are high, but so is the crime rate.

[Gyrofrog]

Wow, Austin and DC in the same thread. (Maybe not a huge coincidence?) I lived in Austin for years, then relocated to the DC area about 9.5 years ago. (We are still kind of scratching our heads over this decision: on the one hand, no more Tex-Mex. On the other, at least 12 brands of injera.) I live out in P.G. County, by the way.

[sarah]

@Froborr: The Target (I think?)--that big shopping center on 14th Street, right near the Giant, was going up when I was there.

On the other hand, we found one of the most AMAZING pupuserias in Mt. Pleasant. One of my roommates was Nicaraguan, and she introduced me to the yummy goodness of the pupusa.

[Froborr]

@Gyrofrog: First, I declare that you and Gyroninja must fight for the title of One True Slacktiverse Gyro. Second, yeah, there is no good Mexican in D.C. Even by cruddy mid-Atlantic standards, there is no good Mexican in D.C.

@sarah: Yeah, it is a Target. Also a Best Buy and a Marshalls or something. They have been struggling to get anything else into that corner, and nobody is biting--hence the local business loan to IHOP.

[cjmr]

Because this seemed a semi-logical place to put this--cjmr's Brownie daughter and I will be in DC on June 9 for the big GS 100th anniversary celebration on the Mall and would love to meet up with Slacktivites for dinner somewhere on the Metro system.

[Froborr]

@cjmr: Neato! I'm in!

I feel like I should know what GS is, and I will feel very embarrassed when you tell me, but... what's GS?

[Brin]

Girl Scouts.

[Madhabmatics]

The True Gyro is the one that has the most lamb, obviously.

[Mmy]

Or, in Canada, Girl Guides :)

[Laiima]

@cjmr, I don't have suggestions on where to go to eat, but I'd like to meet up with you. (We get to DC by driving to Glenmont and taking the Red line in, but I think I've ridden all the lines at least once, so I'm not sure it matters to me where we might meet up.)

[tde]

Sarah

Perhaps some sort of gentrification offset program would work? You could continue to live there, but do things that will put downward pressure on the real estate prices. What sort of neighborhood characteristics do you think exist now that that keep real estate prices low?

[storiteller]

@cjmr, Laiima, Froborr and whoever else in the DC Metro area, I would be very interested in a Slacktiverse meetup in D.C. I would potentially recommend Busboys and Poets, a progressive restaurant that has a lot of very good vegetarian options. I'm not sure about gluten-free though. They have a number of locations, including one in Prince George's County.

[Froborr]

Ooh, I have heard good things about Busboys and Poets, but never actually been.

[Froborr]

The most Metro-accessible Busboys and Poets is at 14th and V, two blocks from the U Street station. According to Yelp reviews they have gluten-free options, I am e-mailing them to make sure.

[Gyrofrog]

I don't suppose anyone is still watching this thread, but I'd be interested in a DC area meetup. I'll just keep an eye on Slacktiverse...

[sarah]

I'm actually going to be in DC on March 14th during the day, if anyone would like to hang out, get lunch, have coffee.

@Froborr: I've been to that Busboys and Poets! It was a straight shot from where I worked on 14th and N.

[Froborr]

Busboys and Poets wrote back to me, and confirmed they have all three of vegetarian, vegan, and gluten-free options. What date are we looking at? I think both March and June were mentioned... I will happily do both, if people are up for it.

[cjmr, on her son's laptop]

Busboys and Poets looks intriguing as a grownup meeting place, but not necessarily an appropriate place to bring an exhausted grubby eight-year-old at the end of a long day. (Although as long as a restaurant has hamburgers, she'll have something to eat there...)

[Literata]

Popping in from the other thread - if there's a DC meetup, I would love to be there. Could someone email me, pretty please, to notify me of details whenever it's relatively finalized? (literathurley at gmail) Also, IIRC, Busboys and Poets = pear-tinis. I am sooo in.

[Froborr]

@cjmr: Unfortunately, I am not sure there are any more kid-friendly places which are also vegan/vegetarian/gluten-free friendly. But they do have hamburgers!

[storiteller]

@cjmr: Unfortunately, I am not sure there are any more kid-friendly places which are also vegan/vegetarian/gluten-free friendly. But they do have hamburgers!

Honestly, vegan/vegetarian/gluten-free friendly or not, I don't know if you're going to find non-chain restaurant places that are that much more kid-friendly in D.C. I don't have kids, but most restaurants in the city itself are pretty adult-oriented. Most of the tourists seem like they eat in the cafeterias in the museums (although the Native American one is fantastic, albeit pricey) for lunch. For dinner, I'm guessing chain restaurants. I just googled best kid-friendly restaurants in DC and almost all of them are chains or burger joints.

As for Busboys specifically, they're usually pretty loud, so being a little loud shouldn't be a problem. The one in U St has a social justice/diversity bookstore that has a kids section. The one near Chinatown has a small Fair Trade gift shop that has some cool things to look at. So if she's antsy, there will be other non-restaurant things to look at.

[storiteller]

Also, Sarah, I'd love to meet up in March. It's hard for me to get out for lunch, but I could meet up after work around 6 PM.

[sarah]

@storiteller: unfortunately, I'm coming down with my college, and we're leaving at 5 pm. It's the first-year art history trip to the National Gallery. Once they get there, I'm free. So I'll be around the Mall from about 10 am to 5 pm. I figured that it might be hard to meet during the day because of people's work.

[I mostly lurk, and very rarely respond to questions.]

When we look at complaints about gentrification, we are really observing a personal and political reaction to impersonal change.

To the old-timers, the new people coming in are changing things that either never needed to be changed in the first place, or that the incumbents had already made due allowance and appreciation for.

For a place to gentrify, there needs to be something good about it, otherwise new people with money and choices would not choose to move there. Yet at the same time, this provides a signal to the market that, in essence, the old-timers were getting a deal: their financial arrangements reflected the conditions of the past, not the future, and the future looks brighter than it did before.

This change in orientation from the past to the future can happen very quickly in a neighborhood. Rents will rise quickly. Old buildings that had supported the prior uses of the neighborhood will disappear seemingly overnight. New stores and new neighbors arrive daily. The settled social web in which the incumbents were woven frays and expands to include new people.

To make a brief digression, there is a relatively small window in most people’s lives where big changes are tolerated, for most the window is from 18 to 30, and after that the human preference moves from flux back to fixity. There are, of course, plenty of exceptions, but in the aggregate if you are going to move to, say, find work, you will want to do it as early as possible, and stay as long as possible in the new location. And this same desire for fixity is related to the need to provide a stable environment for raising children.

One of the dangers of the extreme mobility that the US job market demands is that the need to move will happen during the “quite period” of settling and raising a family. For 13 years per child, every decision to move must recognize the burdens it places on children’s social development. For healthy children in strong families this disruption is tolerated well, but in other cases the stress can be severe and life-altering. Thus, families will often make significant sacrifices to try to stay in one place in order to provide the best opportunities for their children.

After having reached late middle age, having completed child-rearing, the family has the option of becoming mobile again. And here the amount of money you have becomes very relevant. Middle class or rich people have the option of beginning to assess where they would like to retire. They can either move now, or simply begin planning and laying aside money. If they own their home, they have probably built up significant equity. If they are renting, they can still begin putting aside money for retirement, however they conceive of it. One important part will be identifying where their other friends are moving to.

On the other hand, a family having reached late middle age with less money has a conundrum. If their neighborhood appears stable, then they are likely to simply assume that the future will continue to resemble the past: rents will remain where they are now, rising no faster than inflation. But there is no guarantee, it is a simple extrapolation of the past into the future. But in a poor or lower middle-class neighborhood, most of the neighbors are in the same boat and are likely to simply try to stay in place. On the other hand, if the neighborhood is in decline, then the choice is clear, move out as fast as possible to escape before it gets worse. Just as with optimism about the future, pessimism is also self reinforcing. The neighborhood will seem to change overnight, providing more evidence to those remaining that they should leave, if they can. From the perspective of the remaining renters, this can be a blessing: suddenly rents are lower than they were before!

Now consider that a poor neighborhood filled with ageing people is a politician’s dream: they vote regularly and they are frequently dependent on government services. And as they age in place, it becomes harder and harder to leave. Thus standing against gentrification is an easy stance for a politician to take. And it’s frequently the last piece of leverage that poor people have in their neighborhood.

So, to sum up, rich people with enough money to leave don’t worry about gentrification because they have enough money to select for themselves an appropriate escape. But poor people use the political process (anti-gentrification) in order to preserve the social order and familiar landscape that they know.

In a neighborhood that’s “gentrifying” what are the duties of the new inhabitants?

None, really. The old-guard did the same thing you are doing, trying their best to manage in a world that's constantly changing.

But if you wish to be more excellent than the bare minimum, they should take the opportunity to introduce themselves to their neighbors. They should consider ways to make changes in the physical structure of the neighborhood in a sensitive way. When possible with retail, they should co-locate new uses with old uses. Most importantly respect their personal history. Generally all the same things we should wish from any neighbor.

But the newcomers should definitely not feel the need to automatically support suggestions provided by local politicians, who are seeking to stay in office by appealing to a nostalgia for a place that already on its way out.