(April) When Progress is a Six Foot Monkey
Spent some of the weekend at the Mississippi Street Fair. You probably have something like this going on in your neck of the woods this summer. Great local bands, people chewing sausages and sipping beer, shuffling past the craft booths in sandals....I love this stuff. But this year, I saw a sign in the window at Mississippi Records that stopped me mid-shuffle.
Since this is a family website, I've taken the liberty of airbrushing the text on the sign. But you get the idea.
I haven't had a chance to talk to the owner, yet, but I think I know what this is about. See, Mississippi is on the business end of a staggering wave of new money and new people......
What used to be a working class black neighborhood peppered with impoverished white artists is now one of the hottest real estate spots in town. The speed of property changing hands is positively dizzying.
After I took in the storefront sign, I moved on past a toney kids clothing store. The place peddles $50 onesies. Kids come out of there looking like they're ready to join the Decemberists for a late set. And there, in the doorway, I encountered the disturbing face of gentrification first hand.
The horror.... the horror....
Seriously, we should talk more about this.
I have a friend--an architecture critic--who tells me that gentrification is the best problem a city possibly can have. I'm not convinced, but I'm not sure what you do to stop people throwing money at cheap real estate. A gal I know wrote a pretty thoughtful piece on gentrification for our local weekly. Sounds like a good place to start.
delicious
diggI went to some interesting urban planning conferences about DC and one thing they were quick to point out is that we had a lot of development coming from abandonded properties, which is good, and for many lower income home owners, the boom was a huge injection of wealth for families that never had any, which is also good. Many cashed in the DC fixer uppers for news homes in the burbs and were happy for it. Then there are the jobs that are created - many in the service and construction sector - also good. The big losers in the equation were the renters - low income rental is becoming an oxymoron. I'd not want to be a minimum wage renter in this town.
Deborah
Yeah, clearly it's not all bad.
The thing here in Portland is that the African-American community here is relatively small (compared with other metro areas of 1.5 million), and it sure seems like it's harder to maintain a sense of community with people spreading out to the burbs.
What happens to majority-black churches, schools, and other institutions when people leave the old neighborhood?
Different stories with the Asian & Latino communities--still booming--but that's a whole different thread....
It depends on the landscape and location. XM Radio was a big catch for Northeast DC and lots of development were surrounding in that area. The new Baseball Stadium and oddly, a new soccer stadium will help the Anacostia area. There are many benefits to this.
However, on the flip side, you're right about rent being very high in DC. But, it not only effect families, but businesses. There has been a big shift of moving the non-profit, small business in the suburbs like Crystal City, Tyson's, and Silver Spring. NPR is actually trying to move to get a bigger spot in the next few years. I actually don't want NPR to leave DC, but DC wants corporations to take over the city in the next decade to generate revenue, so be it. I can rest assure you it's going to be a different DC in 5 years.
Gentrification is a complex topic; one certainly can't label it as simply "good" or "bad". Yes, it's good for a neighborhood when it causes crime to go down, results in the restoration of beautiful buildings, causes the value of locals' homes to go up, but the flipside if it is that the criminal element probably just got shoved to a different part of town (moving a problem doesn't mean it's been solved), many beautiful buildings are demolished to make way for more profitable condos, and rising real estate values often drive out the poor locals who can't afford the property tax anymore (this is especially true in states like Texas, where the absence of state income tax results in property tax that is inordinately high).
Gentrification issues are interwoven with issues of race, but I don't think race is the best angle to start from when looking for answers. The core problem is economic: some people have a heck of a lot more money than some other people. The poor will continue be pushed out of their neighborhoods so long as there's a wealthier group that wants to move there. As the gap between the rich and the poor widens, as the middle class continues to disappear, it gets ever easier for a wealthy minority to take over whatever neighborhood it wants. Sure there are poor folks here and there who say they'll never leave their neighborhood, but when someone dangles hundreds of thousands dollars in front of them, enough will end up taking it.
So if the root of the problem is economic disparity, what do we do? We can certainly vote for people who are are fighting for a more equitable system, but such people are quite rare in politics. Yes, one might say, Republicans in general do more blatantly serve the interests of the wealthiest minority, but mainstream Democrats are in bed with the same folks. For there to be any meaningful change, a truly systemic change, there'd have to be a revolution. Those is power never willingly give it up; it has to be wrested from their hands. But we're so far from that these days, in fact, it seems like at every turn the American people are willingly surrendering their constitutional rights (not exactly the behavior of a populace that's poised to take back their government). No, I fear that so long as we've got a terrorist boogeyman to keep us in line, so long as too many Americans aren't starving to death, so long as our entertainment industry keeps us mesmerized, so long as we can let kids graduate from college without ever really having had to seriously examine the imperialist corporatocracy for which they'll soon toil...so long as the dookie doesn't really hit the fan, we'll keep on doing what we do: letting the might-is-right of bigger money have it's way with the poor folks.
You say you want a revolution? I'm game, and know lots of others who are..but we all know that if we really did anything to meaningfully challenge the status quo (a million-man tax protest, say), our lives would become instantly miserable: they'd audit us, harass us, wiretap us, lock us up as enemy combatants, and certainly seize our houses (which are worth so much now!) I don't know the answer to gentrification, but I'm damn sure that the answers aren't going to come from inside of the political machine which serves the interests of those who profit from it. It's going to come from regular people who are willing to risk their own (and their family's) comfort to fight a dangerous, dangerous battle against a very entrenched and very powerful foe.
Yep, I have two weeks worth of Paul Frank underwear, with the days of the week on them, and Julius the monkey on the bum. Yes, ha ha funny, days of the week, but it comes in handy when travelling on long trips, which I do a lot.
Is this where I mention I own Paul Frank underpants? Bright yellow underoos style with the Paul Frank team dressed as the Fantastic Four, acquired years and years ago.
I am torn between my love of monkeys and my hatred of overpriced hipster gear.
is a good place to be discussing underwear. I, for example, don't own a pair that doesn't have holes in it. What!?! Don't give me that look! Everybody's underwear has holes in it. How else are you going to put them on?
It's not just in town. Country folks feel it, too.
In bright red spray paint
on the new overpass
that spans the former farm
of a childhood friend
these words:
"Behold the tyranny of progress!"
( Ya gotta respect a tagger who can spell "tyranny" right!)
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