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!

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.

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?

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.

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.