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Gentrification
For a brief explanation, gentrification is when people with money buy property in poor areas. This makes the property values better and can bring in new jobs, stores, etc., but it can push out people who can't then afford to live in the area anymore because of higher rents, etc. It's a popular topic for discussion so let's discuss.
I'll keep my personal comments brief for the moment. Gentrification is something I'm seeing where I live (the greater San Francisco area) and people I know keep having to move further away from SF (where the jobs are) to areas where the rents are affordable but the jobs aren't plentiful. That makes for some hard times. |
Gentrification seems to be that issue people don't really want to talk about in most cities... but it's a sticky problem, huh? On one hand, you're technically improving the often blighted areas of a city; making them safer, more economically sound. However, there's the small issue of the people who once called that place home and now can no longer afford the increased rent or taxes... what to do about them?
I've seen this happening in quite a few historic neighborhoods in my home city of Indianapolis, and while I personally love how Massachusetts Ave. (Mass Ave as it's so cutely referred) is now a happening gay culture scene in an otherwise fairly conservative area, making it "safe," for the people who have the extra income to buy fancy drinks and eat at waaaaay overpriced restaurants came at the cost of throwing quite a few people out of their homes due to increased property tax. Personally, I feel displacement is an unfair method to "revitalize" parts of the city. It goes into the whole, "you're unsightly and unsafe because you're poor," problem. I've heard of some areas giving landlords incentives for maintaining current tenants or cities creating "displacement-free" blocks, though I almost fail to see how that's even possible. Either way, any effort to combat population polarization gets my vote, as vague as that may sound. |
I don't personally have an issue with gentrification. My perception of it, as far as it has occurred in my city, is that it is an inevitable process. Back in the 70s the inner city areas were quite industrial and were inhabited by blue collar workers. Manufacturing then moved out to the suburbs and the labour workforce followed. At the same time, Australia has undergone a shift in our economy and at the moment we are mostly a services and knowledge based economy. As a result, the city centres are dominated by white collar professionals. This has resulted in the gentrification of inner city areas, as these professionals do not wish to commute as long to the CBD for work, increasing prices of housing stock and pushing out lower earners to the further suburbs. At the moment this is a creeping trend and the fringe of "affordability" is creeping ever outwards.
I haven't been really aware of the larger displacement issue, at the moment the focus on housing in our country is mostly on the younger generation in general not being able to afford housing (regardless of career). Living in the inner city suburbs comes with a price tag well over $1 million (unless you buy a tiny apartment). There are still many public housing buildings within high-end inner city areas, which may be some way of minimising displacement, although I have to admit I find it odd to be walking down the street in some high-end parts of the city, passing by rich people and then shortly after passing by people from public housing. There has also been other causes for gentrification in my city, including access to high ranking public schools that have zoning restrictions. As people want their children to be able to attend said public school, they will pay a premium on houses within its zone. Real estate agents will list one of the features of these houses as being in the school zone, and they can even sell for $100,000s more than nearby houses not within the school zone. |
Gentrification becomes more inevitable the larger the city/area is, but I think more attention in this topic should be placed on the undeniable racial aspect of many gentrification scenarios. It's a pretty obvious point, but nonetheless. Higher class, more 'livable' areas are more often than not whiter in residential complexion, in contrast to poorer areas often being populated by racial minorities. Gentrification is a cruel process that often serves to further geographical boundaries between white communities and other communities, either through indifference of those taking part or realising that driving out the poor black people is a surefire way to cash in on white money. Again, I think this point is pretty obvious for anyone who is aware of gentrification, but I thought it should be elaborated on for the sake of the topic.
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Let's not superimpose a race issue onto what is very clearly, consistently and bluntly obviously a class issue. There are many examples of where white people are getting pushed out of their homes by gentrification, or where the people pushing them out are not white. There is a good example above, and another major one I can think of is London - where both white and black (and everybody in-between (it's also worth considering that there are many races and cultures inside "white" and "black" - see, for example, Polish families in England)) families who have been living in the city's outer areas for generations are being pushed out, particularly by extremely rich Chinese and other Asian investors who see impoverished areas as business opportunities or, worse, "edgy" and "atmospheric". Just because it's rich vs poor doesn't automatically make it a racist issue and the idea that white people are trying to further the geographical boundaries between themselves and black people through this process is honestly very farfetched. It's money and greed, not race, that drives gentrification.
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Oh yeah I'm not disagreeing with either of you, I'm just pointing out how there is a racial element.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housing_segregation_in_the_United_States#Neighborhood_disinvestment |
I won't speak as though I know much about this outside of my own country, so I'll just talk about how it is here.
Lotus pretty much summed up what happens so I won't go into that again either, but I feel saying "we're on the fringe of affordability" doesn't quite sum up exactly how problematic things are getting. Especially when you consider that Australian city's have some of highest property rates - for rent or sale - in the world. For a lot of us in the lower socio-economic classes, say mid-lower middle class or less, it is getting to the point where we can't afford to live scarily quickly. The cost of living, in particularly in regards to the prices of housing, in suburban or city areas is extremely high and is steadily increasing whilst wages aren't. This pushes people further out of the areas they want/need to live in and on some occasions even forces people to move to rural areas where they lose a lot of opportunities they would have had in the suburbs. I'm coming to a point where I'm going to be looking to move out and find my own place in the next few years but that's a terrifying prospect the way things are going here. Unless something is done in the near future things are going to become very dicey. |
Complaining about gentrification is really a waste of time as long as you're talking about a free market. Gentrification is not a new thing, and while it's a race issue in the United States, it's really only recently become a race issue. Once the switch from projects to vouchers started it was pretty much inevitable that gentrification was going to become a race issue despite the fact that at it's core it's economic. Gentrification is just a nasty name for development and avoiding that connection isn't going to make it go away. Where I'm from, gentrification actually happened at such a high rate that businesses can't keep up with it. The "in" part of the city simply rotates along the outskirts and development follows a couple years too late. The end result is that we have a lot of businesses have a couple good years and then a decade of pain. Ironically it doesn't affect the people of the city because they can just squat their house for an extra couple years before they can sell for a decent price again.
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General knowledge Failure of Section 8 Landlords and Section 8 And to address your point on infrastructure, I'll just give you this link to Vox. |
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I don't know where the joke is exactly because America is quite a bit more "market friendly" than most industrial countries. |
http://www.heritage.org/index/
Canada, Singapore, hell even Hong Kong have higher economic freedom than the United States does. Also: "free-market" = "child porn legal" Nice strawman there, Esper. |
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And I wouldn't personally trust that website's analysis since it considers government spending as a bad thing, giving countries like Sudan high marks for spending very little and countries like Denmark very low marks for, apparently, spending money on things, presumably services. Assistance from the government could be something to help offset the negative effects of gentrification. |
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I don't think highly of you or God, or most anyone on this part of the forum in particular who shares your views and I doubt that is going to change. |
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In the UK Gentrification is usually shown between London and everywhere else. Largely because London's rents and house prices are almost 4 times what they are anywhere else. For instance, my mothers home is worth around £200k in South West UK, if the property was in London it would be worth closer to £800k to £1m because it also sits on a lot of land.
Now, I'm not against Gentrification on principle - turning an area from less than desirable to actually a nice place to go is a great thing, it's something that I really think is necessary to creating nicer neighbourhoods. What I disagree with is when it causes inflation on everything around it and it becomes unaffordable. But on the flip side, I don't think that the Government (through taxes) should have to offset the effects of gentrification, I think they should be capping rents and getting a more realistic value of the property based on what it is - not where it is. |
I think gentrification is simply a consequence of free market economics on housing. People pay to get what they want and can't buy what they can't afford. Even if there are rent controls, landlords could still use other means to get higher rents, for example, evicting tenants. I say it's unavoidable.
I'm not sure how government assistance for gentrification would be feasible. How do we define who is suffering from gentrification? How do we help them? Handouts? Help them find new housing? I don't think any of those are necessary. It's probably better prevent the most severe cases of gentrification rather than deal with the effects after the fact. Rent controls exist in many countries and seem to slow down rising prices. I also think that they're "market rational" in that they restore desired market mechanisms. Some government intervention in the market is necessary to allow the market to function as a market, take anti-monopoly legislation for example. Other than that I'm not sure what else can be done should be done. Gentrification will still occur, but some of its excesses could be avoided. |
Governments can assist with gentrification by creating low cost housing, setting rent limits, encouraging more development, etc. Essentially they do all the things governments do, pulling levers to try to balance supply and demand. The effectiveness of each policy is heavily dependent on time and place, but in the past governments have made various efforts to make sure their citizens had proper housing. In 19th century Berlin that took the form of having an average of 54 people in every (small) city block. It was a great idea on paper but it was pretty brutal to actually live there. There was a similar situation in New York in the same time period. London had a pretty difficult time of it as well, because the culture was hostile towards the poor and towards government intervention in their condition. None of that is gentrification per se, but it's conceptually quite close. The rich and a good percentage of the middle class had greater housing choices than the poor, who had to live close to work, regardless of the cost.
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We have issues with gentrification here. My fiance and I live in a small town (12,000+) in South Dakota that's around 60% poor whites. Recently new apartments, townhouses and houses have been built all over town, increasing its value but reducing options for poor citizens needing housing. Here, there are only a couple of landlords with affordable rentals available, and the rentals are old and trashy (trust my, I live in one). The landlords choose what internet/cable services you are allowed to use in those rentals and they rarely do any repairs (or do them poorly, as was the case of my fiance's toilet a couple years ago) or address complaints because there are almost no other options for poorer individuals to find better, affordable housing. In short, poor Americans living in my town (and many other similar towns in the Midwest) are stuck in dingy, unsafe, old houses and apartments because they cannot afford to live in the nicer housing options meant for more wealthy patrons. We have a growing homeless problem because there is suck a lack of affordable housing options. Many end up in the homeless shelter, on the street. You'd be shocked to know how many kids my fiance drives to school on his bus route (he works as a bus driver part-time) from the homeless shelter.
It's quite frustrating; my fiance and I both have jobs that are above minimum wage pay, and we cannot even afford a one-bedroom brand-new apartment in town with both our incomes together. They charge an upwards of $800-$900 for just one room, not including any utilities, and they also have HOA fees that pay for landscaping and general repairs. How can a low-income individual ever hope to pay for that? |
Here the government does do something to a degree, we have a few government owned houses that go on a rent to buy scheme. So you rent the house but once you've covered the house's value it's yours. It's similar to a mortgage but there's a few differences I can't explain very well.
The only problems are that it is often hard for the people who actually need access to this housing to get into it and that there's simply not enough houses on these schemes around. |
It's unfortunate that cost of living goes up when demand does but I don't really see that there's any avoiding it. It's certainly not the fault of people deciding to move in, they've as much of a right to be there as anyone else.
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