Is gentrification a good or bad thing?

[Snake Alchemist]

This is an issue which has caused me a lot of conflicted feelings. My wife and I recently paid our property tax bill and it has indeed gone up since last year. My neighborhood has shifted quite a bit from the time I purchased this home from a mainly Hispanic working class neighborhood to a majority white yuppie(is that word still used?) neighborhood, myself and my wife included. We bought in this neighborhood because it we knew what was going on. Houses were rising in value and in truth the condition of the homes has improved considerably with a lot of tear downs and remodels going on. But I can't get away from this nagging guilt that we are part of the problem. We've driven the people who once lived here out to less ideal locations.

To make matters worse we are now considering moving to another city and the ones we are looking at, San Francisco, Seattle, and Portland, OR (my favorite), have all gone through major periods of gentrification. Some very recently. It's a complex problem. I'm just wondering if there is any solutions, and if I'm making things better or worse.

[CJCRANE]

1. I think it's a natural part of the property business cycle

Apparently it's been happening for thousands of years (I looked up "gentrification" on Wikipedia where they give an example from 3rd century Britain).

IMO as an individual there's nothing wrong with buying a property in an up-and-coming area, that's obviously the best investment for you. But politically you can support policies that help working and middle class people to rise up in life and get more opportunities and choices. That will make more of a difference.

[Snake Alchemist]

3. Wow, I'll have to take a look at that. nt

[RevStPatrick]

5. That's pretty much what I was just gonna say...

"Gentrification" has been happening since Homo Sapiens displaced Neanderthals in Europe.
Actually, it's been happening since mammals replaced dinosaurs at the top of the food chain.
Or something like that.

It's not just part of the business cycle, it's part of the evolutionary cycle.
I think it's OK as long as you are not nasty about it.
You didn't force the previous owners out of their home, right?
You gave them a fair price, and they were happy about it, right?

[Snake Alchemist]

8. What bothers me is that as home prices rise, property taxes are forcing people out who

do not want to sell. I do agree that I gave the previous owners of my property a very fair price.

[HuckleB]

12. That is a problem.

It does mean that the tax system doesn't make sense, overall.

On the other hand, I live in a place where people loved to spend time saying that the increase in property taxes "forced them to sell." In reality, property taxes went up about $100 a year for a few years. Yes, that can be a problem for some, but not for those who complained. They sold, and moved to bigger houses in the burbs, but the they didn't want to admit their true motivations.

The world is never a simple place.

[quinnox]

2. It is nice to see new

small businesses and the areas become nicer in general. I mean, just on an aesthetic perspective I'd rather see a nice area than a bunch of ruined and rundown uninviting areas. And no, I'm not in the upper class, far from it.

[Snake Alchemist]

4. I often wonder if it's by design though. Courtesy of city governments. nt

[HuckleB]

13. Where I live, much of it is due to younger buyers putting in "sweat equity."

With some of them putting in more into local businesses.

It's hard to call that bad, IMO.

[Snake Alchemist]

22. I have found that lower income home owners do not have the cash flow or the free time

to put in sweat equity.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

6. Some have complained that there is a racial aspect to it. Memorable outside piece in the WP 10+

years ago along those lines.

Also been protests against it in San Francisco...some were afraid the Tenderloin might actually become respectable.

[Snake Alchemist]

7. There is a racial component to it.

Not sure if it is intentional or just inevitable.

[applegrove]

9. I know that in Canadian cities, like Montreal, they put in low income housing in places where they

are allowing condos to be built. That is the best idea. To keep the market mixed.

[mwooldri]

11. +1 - mixed housing IMO just "works better".

There's no "projects" to live in, or "council housing estates" as I'm more familiar with. The good side of the UKs councils selling off their housing is that you now do get a real mix of people, even in the estates where houses did get sold.

[HuckleB]

14. They've done that in Portland, too.

It seems to be helpful, but I'm not sure the percentage of low income housing is high enough.

[applegrove]

20. That is true. There are certainly more people who need low income housing than there is housing.

[Edweird]

10. I don't care for it. It's made places I liked really suck.

So, for me, it's been a bad thing. I've never benefited from it and it's worked against me.

[geek tragedy]

16. Mix of good and bad

It does mean people getting priced out of their homes, but the alternative is neighborhoods that remain generally undesirable places to live.

[Cleita]

17. By gentrification do you mean it's turning white?

Because it seems these things go in cycles. I lived for fifteen years in a neighborhood in Santa Monica that started out Hispanic, then some whites moved in because the rents were cheaper but the units were fairly nice. Then some blacks moved in. My husband and I moved in about this time when it was a mixed neighborhood. Then the Hispanics moved out, some more whites and blacks moved in. Then it became too expensive for the blacks and the neighborhood became completely white and then the landlords tried to triple the rents and convert apartments to condos. About this time Santa Monicans voted in rent control. Then things stagnated for a few years. The landlords started selling and the units started being bought by Persians. The Persians rented to other Persians as the white Americans started moving out. By the time we left, when my husband retired, the neighborhood was 99% Persian in ownership and rentals. The Persians actually started fixing things up, which the landlords during rent control had let fall to pieces. It's been twenty years so I don't know what happened after that, but keeping up a nice neighborhood shouldn't make a difference in race IMHO.

[Snake Alchemist]

23. But rent control is relatively uncommon. nt

[Cleita]

25. I don't think it's common at all any more.

The real estate tycoons won.

[Snake Alchemist]

26. Where I grew up rent control was for show.

The person who could pay the super the most under the table was the one who got the apartment.

[Cleita]

27. That's one of the bad things about it.

In SM, the prospective tenants gave the landlord a cash sum under the table. Sometimes it was an agreed upon yearly "tip". We were already renters when rent control came about. They couldn't do anything about us until we moved out.

[ErikJ]

18. ENVIRONMENTAL aspect of gentrification is very good.

If you think about the environmental aspect, gentrification is very good. Most of the gentrifiers are white collars who work downtown. Living close in where gentrif takes place can cut their commuting carbon emmissions by 90%.

The displaced often dont work or if they do more often work out in the burbs and are more likely to take public transportation than white collars.

[Snake Alchemist]

24. Do blue collar workers not need to live close to downtown?

They often do not have the income to afford a longer commute either.

[smokey nj]

19. Report: Nation's Gentrified Neighborhoods Threatened By Aristocratization

http://www.theonion.com/articles/report-nations-gentrified-neighborhoods-threatened,2419/

Report: Nation's Gentrified Neighborhoods Threatened By Aristocratization

WASHINGTON—According to a report released Tuesday by the Brookings Institution, a Washington-based think tank, the recent influx of exceedingly affluent powder-wigged aristocrats into the nation's gentrified urban areas is pushing out young white professionals, some of whom have lived in these neighborhoods for as many as seven years.

Maureen Kennedy, a housing policy expert and lead author of the report, said that the enormous treasure-based wealth of the aristocracy makes it impossible for those living on modest trust funds to hold onto their co-ops and converted factory loft spaces.

"When you have a bejeweled, buckle-shoed duke willing to pay 11 or 12 times the asking price for a block of renovated brownstones—and usually up front with satchels of solid gold guineas—hardworking white-collar people who only make a few hundred thousand dollars a year simply cannot compete," Kennedy said. "If this trend continues, these exclusive, vibrant communities with their sidewalk cafés and faux dive bars will soon be a thing of the past."

According to Kennedy, one of the most pressing concerns associated with rapid aristocratization is the drastic transformation of the metropolitan landscape in a way that fails to maximize livable space.

[Honeycombe8]

21. It's not the fault of people who buy homes and fix them up and maintain them.

All neighborhoods change. Some go up in value, some go down. It has a lot to do with location and other things, like overpopulaton.

It's not like some neighborhoods that are changing RAPIDLY because of builders targeting neighborhoods, going in and bulldozing nice homes in order to build mansions on small lots. That started happening in my neighborhood, until the recession hit. Now THAT should be a crime. Some of the homes bulldozed were very pretty, pricey homes. The homes that replaced them were mansions on small lots that reached to the edges of the property and were several stories high. It blocks the view, causes a strain on the power grid, screws up drainage, uses resources that the neighborhood was never intended to use. That is not a natural changing of a neighborhood. It's a targeted greedy move to make more and more $$$.

But I bought my home years ago, and it has increased in value. That's because my neighborhood is in a great location that has become more prime as the years have gone by. There are more people here, which means more people want to buy houses, but there is a static number of houses within the loop, so people have to pay more if they want to live in that great location. I didn't cause this by buying my house years ago.