apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

How fab for the mission district. Maybe the drug users will move elsewhere? I's sure the new condo owners want them to move.

1- Soho - only if you a born and raised New Yorker u can remember
2- Lower East Side

3- BROOKLYN ALL

4- Harlem

Shall I go on?

I live in Venice, and I fear my desire for a safe neighborhood will be at the cost of culture-numbing gentrification. I personally hope there can be a balance!

Gentrification generally means the people who could afford the rent have to find another place to live. Generally speaking, this means people of color and the businesses they own and patronize. Making a neighborhood "nicer" and "safer" generally means imposing a certain cultural standard different than the one you're displacing. Is it worth it? You didn't have enough places to eat and live and shop, you had to make up something new to feel trendy about? Make it safer for "decent" people, and too expensive for ...... answer me that please. Seedy, colorful, whatever your term is, it's not concerned with the displacement of the seedy and colorful, it's for your maximized trendiness and manufactured safety concerns.

Huh, right?

I'm about 90% certain my friends live in that building (they rent). But don't worry. There are still drug dealers on 3 of the 4 corners.

I live in LA and have seen it change a lot in the past 10 years. Although I have fond memories of the "Character" of places like 42nd st in NY, I can understand why someone might not be willing to trade safety for a crackhead.

Well, I, for one, am all about gentrification. I don't think gentrification has to mean 'only for the elite', however...which the 500k to 700k price tag seems to assinuate. Why can't gentrification provide safe, comfortable housing for people who can only afford, say, a $150,000 condo? Or an apartment that rents for $800? I'm not a crackhead...I'm college educated and gainfully employed... yet I keep getting chased out of my neighborhoods by rising rents...the beautiful apartment I was able to rent for $770 a few years ago is now $1020 thanks to the plethora of $500k-$700K homes that went up around it...I can't afford that and therefore, am getting pushed INTO the crackhead neighborhoods! I guess the rich folk just don't want my kind! Just because I can't afford $1000 in rent doesn't mean I want drug dealers on my doorstep, either. We need to find a happy medium.

But the way I look at it, if we at least clean up the crackhead neighborhoods and make it so the crackheads can't afford (read: don't get enough benies from the government) to be there, maybe the smarter ones will clean up and get real jobs, and the not-so-smart ones will just.... fade away. Just because you are poor doesn't mean you have to make yourself a menace to society...Gangland is not "culture" or "character".

Well put KTG. There are so many social issues behind this that we need to take a look at.

It seems as of the past 5 or so years it does not matter where you live, (good or bad) neighborhood, you may get a gun put in your face.
I say clean up you neighborhood, add lights and make things better. If you have to walk 5 blocks to a subway or bus station and walk in fear, then what does old character really do for you.

One reason that neighborhoods don't retain their character through a gentrification process is because it's cheaper to tear down and build new than to preserve the old. This is the fabric of the neighborhood and it gets thrown out. Sometimes people remodel old homes, but when you get developers buying lots and wanting a big return on their money...it's condos baby.

It's also not "gangland." It's affordable to people who clean your office and drive your taxis. My rent has only risen $95 in 3 yrs. and it's currently above what you think is too high. I'll say this, I'm not comfortable with a dangerous neighborhood, but I'd be unwilling to drive people out of their neighborhood, hoping "they" would at least attempt to afford the new rents while driving out the unwanted aspects. I think this puts people in a position where they can't afford to commute to their low-wage jobs and go on welfare, it uproots people of modest means for the good of the greedy. It's not ideal to have drug dealers and other criminals about your neighborhood, but profiting off the impoverished to begin with, and essentially putting people out of homes near the jobs that will pay them the most does very little to offset the cycle of poverty; it tends to do the opposite, which increases crime, which you hate, which you think isn't your doing or problem, etcetera etcetera. Making a nice place for people to live, meaning not the people who already live there is apparently sufficient cause for those with the means to, to take over neighborhoods where people had roots and turn them into generic little starbuck towns with an Indian restaurant or two, and a trendy little wine boutique, and a swell bakery, because we don't have enough of those.

Gentrification is a symptom of income inequality, you can't stop it without solving income inequality. Right now, cities are growing in income inequality. Mostly this is not due to increases in poverty but rather because professional class folks are growing in wealth and want to live in the city. Working class people are being forced to compete, and they can't.

If you want to save the character of your neighborhoods, maybe you should look into improving the character of rich people.

Agree, KTG. In the gentrification I've seen, there's nothing in place to keep people from being displaced, from being priced out of a neighborhood that means home to them. Instead, gentrification seems to be dominated by speculators, people who come into a neighborhood intent on making a profit off of a house whether by "improving" it and selling it after a few years or renting it out, raising property taxes.

Other problems I've seen:
decreasing density (fewer eyes on the neighborhood, more deserted, hurts public transit)
increasing costs so those who are lower income have to go further for basic necessities/affordable entertainment/restaurants
increasingly homogeneous and temporary residents
disenfranchisement of longer-term residents
*increased* crime because people don't take basic safety precautions plus there is the assumption of wealth

But this is Mpls, not LA that I'm observing. Who knows how similar the two are?

So explain to me the low income homes and housing throughout the US that have been remodeled and or fixed up and then a year or two later are in total disrepair and or look like crap?

I live in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. I remember the days of stepping over crack vials and dime bags and being wary not to walk further East than Avenue B on any given day or night.

Gentrification set in and lo and behold, no more crack, dealers, prostitutes, crackheads, drunks, or dangerous people to run into any given hour. This is not a bad thing.

I do feel for the decent, hardworking folks that have been pushed out of the neighborhood. I was able to move here only because I made less than $39K a year back in 2001 when I applied for this H.D.F.C. apartment. I had to apply and get interviewed and have references, etc. This city should adopt the H.D.F.C. application and approval method in all these gentrifying neighborhoods so that the good folks (the honest, working poor and middle class) can stay and the baddies are the only ones having to look for housing elsewhere. Isn't that a more neighborly process?

I really hate gentrification. All these uppity white people coming into my 'hood and cleaning it up, remodeling burned out homes, and displacing crackheads and prostitutes. All the 'culture' is gone. All the new people who have moved in to the area don't want me and my gangbangin' bros seducing their daughters. I don't understand; we add 'character'.

I hate the idea that a neighborhood can only be safe because rich folks have moved in and build condo buildings. Look at Glen Park, it's a safe neighborhood and it's a middle class neighborhood or what about the outer sunset. middle class Asian families have been there for generations now and it's been safe. The only people that think the mission is so dangerous are the ones using that to justify tearing down rental properties and who are just pissed that their liberal arts education didn't snag them a better job so they could live in the Marina.

While the mission may have parts that aren't pretty, it's hardly not safe, maybe when there were alot of gang conflict back in the late 80's and early 90's. The mission hasn't been "gangland on over 15 years. Just because you are afraid because there are latino and black people on the streets doesn't make it dangerous. Don't want to deal with that guy you think is a dealer? guess what, he doesn't want to deal with you either. don't want the homeless folks sleeping on street, work to get more safe shelters, more treatment for mental illness and actually become involved in your community including all those people you look down on.

I don't what's more annoying white people moaning about how the mission is "losing it's colour" because of the hipsters moving in or the white folks who think they are do-gooders for driving families from the only homes in the city they can afford. My culture isn't there to add "flavour" to your urban hipster fantasy.

poptart do you even live in a this city because we have no subways and as for gun crime, all you have to do is look at the crime stats online to see that gun crimes are on the decrease and rarely happen in San Francisco.

TheoJ, I have no idea what your culture is but you, sir are no better than those that you decry.

Gentrification is often more like a "re-gentrification." Cities weren't always poor. Now that people with money want to live in the City again, there's a lot of bitching and moaning. No one was complaining when they moved out and rents collapsed enabling poorer people to move in. And, often, the "rich" white people moving in are just professionals who are looking for housing that they can afford, too. I'm sure I'm considered to be one of those people in my neighborhood, but I'm here because it's the best I could afford for now. Just like everyone else.

That's not to say that it isn't sad that people who are good citizens in their neighborhoods are forced out by high rents. Or that longstanding small businesses are forced out. That's a function of how development can work-the scale of redevelopment has to be large enough to turn a profit, because let's face it, developers aren't in the business of community service. There's no incentive for that. The trick is finding a way to incorporate some of the old into the new. How that's done, however, is another question.

KTG, I resent that you stated "you" throughtout your entire post, insinuating that I was somehow against what you were talking about. If you will go back and re-read what I wrote, you will see that you just restated everything I had said...we agree that gentrification shouldn't be pushing decent people out of their neighborhoods! i.e. why can't it mean $800 in rent instead of a 500k loft style condominium. Here in Chicago, rents have gone up astronomically since 2000, meaning lots of people, INCLUDING MYSELF, got displaced from their neighborhoods. I tried to move at my last lease renewal because I'm tired of how the people I live around don't care about the neighborhood and I'm tired of seeing cops all the time and I'm tired of people gathering in the parking lot for a drug deal so I can't go out to my car until they leave, but guess what? I couldn't afford anything! A neighborhood I could have lived in prior to 2000 has skyrocketed out of reach since the housing boom started, even with the recent decrease in housing prices! I am not talking about taxi drivers and maid service (I just started a cleaning service myself!) getting driven out...I am talking about driving out the crackheads and people who make neighborhoods dangerous for decent people! I honestly don't care where the crackheads end up! We don't owe them anything.

::So explain to me the low income homes and housing throughout the US that have been remodeled and or fixed up and then a year or two later are in total disrepair and or look like crap?::

Exactly! Agreed! You try to help someone and they don't take care of it. Oprah tried something once where she gave some 'needy' people brand new, beautiful places to live. She went back a year later and they had completely trashed the homes! Every single one of them. She actually kicked them all out and took the homes back since these people didn't appreciate what had been done for them. I'm all for affordable housing, but it doesn't have to mean giving nice homes to crackheads and prostitutes. Crackheads and prostitutes are very different from taxi drivers and cleaners.....I don't know why people tend to lump them together during discussions on gentrification.

geez guys, crackheads are people too. while that was a bit of a joke, i am really disgusted by the professed love of gentrification I see here. you are all seemingly adherents to the idea that poor people are inherently bad and choose to be criminals and drug addicts. poverty BREEDS criminal activity and addiction. stop blaming people for problems that you, lovely members of the Gentry, have imposed on these people in order to increase your monetary gains. when will people stop getting to the top by standing on those below them? you all disgust me.

no wonder this country is going down the toilet.

Because, amiencc, gentrification pretty much makes a sweeping generalization of the current population of a zone and I didn't mean "you, amiencc," except where you quoted a rent as high that's lower than mine was raised to last month. Being in favor of clearing out the riffraff tends to generalize the cultural tendencies of people who simply can't afford the rents of the buildings that are being bought cheap and "restored" to some arbitrary standard of decency. Neighborhoods are branded as trendy by real estate speculators who just want to cash in, buy low and sell high. "Crackheads and prostitutes" is really shorthand for everyone we don't think belongs here in our vision. Nobody wants crack dealers and hookers in their neighborhood, but once you get all the squares to move their little families in, it tends to put the squeeze on people who have to find housing elsewhere, same place as the crackwhores went. The interesting decent people leave, and now that you no longer need to provide "affordable housing" for hardworking people who deserve it, you win even better, if you own those buildings.

When I think of preserving local color, I don't think reminsciently about, "seedy (right behind the generic gas station and next to an alley where the crackheads used to pass out."

Gentrification, by definition, doesn't have to include crack dealers, pimps, and high crime. My old 'hood was solidly "working class," but the nearby university was out to change that. They bought up available retail space, and leased it (on the cheap) to 'desirable' businesses, ie coffee shops and gourmet sandwich places, slowly pushing out neighborhood delis and barber shops. Same went for housing, including several high-rise condos for non-students.

I benefitted from these neighborhood improvements as a grad student, but with rents climbing, I was up out when my course was done.

In some neighborhoods, the business that are there give it character.
People love that character and frequent the neighborhood because of it.
But then some idiots displace that which gave it character by making it generic (with chain stores and cookie cutter architecture).
Businesses that MADE the neighborhood desirable are forced to flee because of rising rents.
Neighborhood is destroyed, becomes another street with a (starbucks, gap, jambajuice, restorationhardware, you name it).
That kind of "gentrification" is just plain destruction.

OK, I think a big part of the problem here is that lots of people are looking at it backward. Yes, it's true that poverty *can* breed crime. But sometimes it's crime that attracts poverty. Say you start with a middle class neighborhood and suddenly take away the police force. Crime will increase. People who can afford to leave, do (white flight). No one wants to live in this neighborhood now, so property values decrease. The people left are the working class, who need the best deal on housing, and are stuck putting up with the crime.

But take a few enterprising businesses to buy up the cheap stuff and turn it into something trendy. They'll probably prod law enforcement back into the area to serve their interests. The rich find the area desirable again, buy up the property, and there's regentrification. (It doesn't always work this way; some neighborhoods don't 'make it.')

The problem here is law enforcement that's stronger in some areas than others. Police forces have finite resources and frequently can't contain all of the crime in their jurisdiction. The fact that containing some crimes may involve risking one's life is a further disincentive. So frequently, police look the other way when crimes are being committed in a certain area. This drives down the property values and that's where the working class ends up.

(I've left ethnicity out of this argument because I think the bigger problem is financial, although it's certainly not the whole problem.)

fuck condos.

I feel like half of these comments imply that gentrification is a government program that forces poor people out of their homes. Gentrification is an organic process that is the result of many individuals making an effort to improve their property and neighborhood. Once a developer comes in and builds condos gentrification is over.

That's pretty naive MiklakMiklak. I don't think any posts here implied this was a government intervention to clean up the neighborhood. It's almost always an outsider or outsiders seizing a diamond in the rough and making it marketable to a different class of people and making it more attractive to an even wealthier class eventually, you know, people who think it's trendy to live somewhere with a rough reputation when it is no longer rough. Gentrification implies intentional displacement and renovation to an attractive standard the earlier inhabitants can no longer afford.

Imagine if someone came to your house or apartment and besides fixing the things you agreed needed to be fixed, decided to throw away your sentimental belongings and other things you liked and replaced it with whatever they liked, and then charged you for it? Your home has been invaded, and suddenly, you're not worthy of it.

Landlords do sell properties all the time, however. Some new landlords are less attentive (quick cash), and some are bent on overhauling and dumping the riffraff, raising the rent and raking in the dividends on their investment. Imagine a whole neighborhood of families and friends and business owners being at the mercy of someone else's sweeping vision of "improvements." I think a barber and a deli, etc. that are surviving in the criminal conditions you observe aren't wondering when someone will come in and clean up the streets. It's tough enough to raise families in a real neighborhood, but when you price people out of their village and scatter them, the places they end up aren't better - and they may be farther away and more crowded and worse, and also you've taken their social supports, their neighbors, away. How is this helping, how is this serving the working poor, how is this changing anything for the better for anyone but the upper middle class, who hop on the trend here, decide they're too funky for the expensive neighborhoods they were priced out of? What you've done here is taken the street cred of a dangerous (as you see it) yet interesting neighborhood and turned it into a trendy new brand without any thoughts to the people who had to move out, who paid the price so you could feel like you were cool.

I don't know how you figure gentrification is over when the developers just start showing up. That's what gentrification is, lowball offers on properties, evictions by default, renovations, ruinovations, attractive new boutique bakeries and dog biscuit stores, demolitions and building lots into condos with appeal toward young professional white folks who think they used to be cool and desire to re-affirm that to themselves and quite often to their children. Imagine them trying to move in there with their little babies if it wasn't absolutely made safe! It's thrifty for them on the post-grad stage of life, but the omg, don't want to expose the young'uns to this foul urbanity! Trying to make "dangerous" into "artsy and safe" is like having the suburbs move into town and ruin everything that used to be cool, ok? It's a manufactured situation from the top to the bottom.