"Displacement of residents and change in neighborhood character."
August 4, 2024 2:47 PM Subscribe
I changed how I think about gentrification (Lindsay M. Miller, author of the 2019 essay 'We need to change how we think about gentrification', writing for Denver's Westword)
You know, I'm glad that this person got the right idea over time, but I cannot help but feel angry that they did not listen to community activists or study the experience of the people who have been displaced.
"Pretend you're going to fix public housing, bulldoze it and move richer people in" is so normal. It's why we don't have much public housing left. There's a whole playbook for doing it - let the place deteriorate, let mold grow on the walls, let broken windows stay broken, let concrete crumble - instead of doing ongoing maintenance, so that you have to make major changes, then kick people out, then replace them with richer people and market rate plus "affordable" housing - "affordable" housing is just about what people in my income bracket, with two low-level office jobs in the family, can afford to pay. It's not what poor people can afford.
If people would just fucking listen to the marginalized people who have been through all this stuff before, we could stop wasting a lot of time. And I say this as someone who had to change my mind on assisted suicide, for instance. I didn't believe disability activists until I saw how Canada uses it to murder disabled people, and then I became extremely anti- where I'd been extremely pro-. Luckily, I was not in a position where my opinion on this topic mattered, but if I'd listened to the people likely to be harmed by the policy, I wouldn't have wasted so much time being wrong.
posted by Frowner at 3:29 PM on August 4 [25 favorites]
"Pretend you're going to fix public housing, bulldoze it and move richer people in" is so normal. It's why we don't have much public housing left. There's a whole playbook for doing it - let the place deteriorate, let mold grow on the walls, let broken windows stay broken, let concrete crumble - instead of doing ongoing maintenance, so that you have to make major changes, then kick people out, then replace them with richer people and market rate plus "affordable" housing - "affordable" housing is just about what people in my income bracket, with two low-level office jobs in the family, can afford to pay. It's not what poor people can afford.
If people would just fucking listen to the marginalized people who have been through all this stuff before, we could stop wasting a lot of time. And I say this as someone who had to change my mind on assisted suicide, for instance. I didn't believe disability activists until I saw how Canada uses it to murder disabled people, and then I became extremely anti- where I'd been extremely pro-. Luckily, I was not in a position where my opinion on this topic mattered, but if I'd listened to the people likely to be harmed by the policy, I wouldn't have wasted so much time being wrong.
posted by Frowner at 3:29 PM on August 4 [25 favorites]
Plus so-called affordable housing is usually part of a limited time contract between the local government and the development corp, and at the end of the contract, like 10 years or so, the “affordable” housing reverts to market rate. It’s not the same as public housing.
posted by toodleydoodley at 3:39 PM on August 4 [16 favorites]
posted by toodleydoodley at 3:39 PM on August 4 [16 favorites]
An "affordable housing" project intended to redevelop a factory corridor in my city charged a SEVENTY DOLLAR apartment application fee, then never responded to the application or my friends' attempts to contact them for months afterward.* But hey, bullet dodged because six months later everyone was evacuated due to elevated levels of a carcinogen; residents were never able to return to their homes and were offered just $5k and no rights to sue to terminate their leases.
So yeah. Automatic distrust of these kinds of projects for me. Which sucks and is shitty because like, affordable housing is the goal! But it somehow always comes back to people tossed out of their homes.
*They did get their $70 back eventually, after I found the contact info for the CEO of the development firm and sent him a polite but firmly worded e-mail about how he was taking advantage of low-income families.
posted by brook horse at 4:03 PM on August 4 [8 favorites]
So yeah. Automatic distrust of these kinds of projects for me. Which sucks and is shitty because like, affordable housing is the goal! But it somehow always comes back to people tossed out of their homes.
*They did get their $70 back eventually, after I found the contact info for the CEO of the development firm and sent him a polite but firmly worded e-mail about how he was taking advantage of low-income families.
posted by brook horse at 4:03 PM on August 4 [8 favorites]
but I cannot help but feel angry that they did not listen to community activists or study the experience of the people who have been displaced.
"Pretend you're going to fix public housing, bulldoze it and move richer people in" is so normal.
I mean; if you believe what the author wrote, and if you believe the actual and stated intent of DHA and other agencies meshed, that's not what was meant to happen. FTA:
----
He and other Sun Valley community leaders were hopeful. DHA had spent the better part of a decade collecting input from residents and involving them in the planning process. The redevelopment would be disruptive, he said, but in the end, it would benefit everyone.
.....
A “National Model for Redevelopment” Gone Wrong
The Denver Housing Authority received so much attention for its redevelopment plans because, unlike other recipients of CNI grants (and those from similar programs like HOPE VI), DHA had committed to “redevelopment without displacement.” Their planning process had included extensive community engagement, and residents were reassured that, though construction in the neighborhood would be disruptive, they would be able to remain in their community while it was completed.
Unfortunately, just as DHA was getting ready to break ground, the coronavirus pandemic swept across the globe.....
---
posted by lalochezia at 4:17 PM on August 4 [1 favorite]
"Pretend you're going to fix public housing, bulldoze it and move richer people in" is so normal.
I mean; if you believe what the author wrote, and if you believe the actual and stated intent of DHA and other agencies meshed, that's not what was meant to happen. FTA:
----
He and other Sun Valley community leaders were hopeful. DHA had spent the better part of a decade collecting input from residents and involving them in the planning process. The redevelopment would be disruptive, he said, but in the end, it would benefit everyone.
.....
A “National Model for Redevelopment” Gone Wrong
The Denver Housing Authority received so much attention for its redevelopment plans because, unlike other recipients of CNI grants (and those from similar programs like HOPE VI), DHA had committed to “redevelopment without displacement.” Their planning process had included extensive community engagement, and residents were reassured that, though construction in the neighborhood would be disruptive, they would be able to remain in their community while it was completed.
Unfortunately, just as DHA was getting ready to break ground, the coronavirus pandemic swept across the globe.....
---
posted by lalochezia at 4:17 PM on August 4 [1 favorite]
again, FTA
Sometime during the spring of 2020, Sun Valley residents were informed that DHA had rescinded its commitment to them, and they would not be able to stay in the neighborhood during the redevelopment. Shortly after, the majority of Sun Valley residents were relocated to other DHA properties so construction could begin.
--
Here's the real story IMHO. Did someone just pay someone off to change tack and sell these people out? Was it genuinely a $20M shortfall where these residents didn't have enough backroom political juice to save the plan? Was this all sweet talking from the get-go? Is it even possible to do the kind of thing that DHA said they did, because it literally is the model that everyone - including community members! - suggests is the most reasonable course of action with public housing?
posted by lalochezia at 4:21 PM on August 4 [5 favorites]
Sometime during the spring of 2020, Sun Valley residents were informed that DHA had rescinded its commitment to them, and they would not be able to stay in the neighborhood during the redevelopment. Shortly after, the majority of Sun Valley residents were relocated to other DHA properties so construction could begin.
--
Here's the real story IMHO. Did someone just pay someone off to change tack and sell these people out? Was it genuinely a $20M shortfall where these residents didn't have enough backroom political juice to save the plan? Was this all sweet talking from the get-go? Is it even possible to do the kind of thing that DHA said they did, because it literally is the model that everyone - including community members! - suggests is the most reasonable course of action with public housing?
posted by lalochezia at 4:21 PM on August 4 [5 favorites]
Not to be overly suspicious, but never ever ever believe politicians when they tell you that kind of stuff. It's always going to be a lie, because their goal is to get rid of public housing. There is no history of keeping any kind of promise like that. They tell lies. They probably lie to their own community engagement people to keep them on side, but they lie. It's just like every "we're going to have your interests at heart" lie they tell poor people to get them on side. At best, the person telling the lie means it but doesn't have the political power to enforce it, as with the "community mental health treatment" that was going to exist after deinstitutionalization. Every single thing that benefits ordinary people was clawed out of capital in bloody hunks, and never ever trade away any of it. Let them build some new public housing elsewhere and give you the keys first if they want to rebuild.
posted by Frowner at 4:50 PM on August 4 [6 favorites]
posted by Frowner at 4:50 PM on August 4 [6 favorites]
I think part of the problem is that there are very real costs that come with construction, and particularly legal construction according to code. But another part of the problem is that the gulf between owning and renting is just so unbelievably far, and it’s because of credit bullshit. And so developers don’t see an incentive in keeping prices low.
posted by corb at 4:51 PM on August 4 [1 favorite]
posted by corb at 4:51 PM on August 4 [1 favorite]
So long as we live in a market-driven society, you're going to get gentrification: when you've got a pocket of poverty in a newly-desirable location, developers are going to buy plots, bulldoze and rebuild and middle-class people are going to pay too much for a rundown house and either bulldoze/rebuild or just renovate. You can't stop this process, not in any meaningful way: the developers have more clout, financially, culturally and politically, than the current residents, and the city has a compelling interest in gentrification because it transforms neighborhoods where total tax revenue is very low into much more revenue-generating zone, all without having to do much more than approve some building permits.
If you want to stop gentrification, you have to persuade a lot of people in whose direct interests gentrification works to accept a giant distortion in the market, and keep it that way over decades—and this is big money, too. Americans are in general highly skeptical (rightly so, IMHO) of these kinds of social engineering projects on principle, and you've got nothing like the critical mass it would take of people arguing in public that "this pocket of poverty should just stay here" to make it actually happen, and KEEP happening over decades. I mean, if you're just bemoaning the fact that we live in a market-driven society, I'm actually here for you, but we do, and the idea that it's possible, let alone desirable, to keep these pockets of poverty poor is... madness, honestly. Absent paradigmatic change that really inconveniences taxpayers, you're always going to see at best some kind of token move toward "affordable housing" as the fig leaf for a slightly kinder and gentler sort of gentrification.
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 5:12 PM on August 4 [5 favorites]
If you want to stop gentrification, you have to persuade a lot of people in whose direct interests gentrification works to accept a giant distortion in the market, and keep it that way over decades—and this is big money, too. Americans are in general highly skeptical (rightly so, IMHO) of these kinds of social engineering projects on principle, and you've got nothing like the critical mass it would take of people arguing in public that "this pocket of poverty should just stay here" to make it actually happen, and KEEP happening over decades. I mean, if you're just bemoaning the fact that we live in a market-driven society, I'm actually here for you, but we do, and the idea that it's possible, let alone desirable, to keep these pockets of poverty poor is... madness, honestly. Absent paradigmatic change that really inconveniences taxpayers, you're always going to see at best some kind of token move toward "affordable housing" as the fig leaf for a slightly kinder and gentler sort of gentrification.
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 5:12 PM on August 4 [5 favorites]
Let them build some new public housing elsewhere and give you the keys first if they want to rebuild.
ok but this is not a real choice poor people get. we don’t actually get to choose. believing or not believing lies has nothing to do with it.
posted by knock my sock and i'll clean your clock at 6:18 PM on August 4 [8 favorites]
ok but this is not a real choice poor people get. we don’t actually get to choose. believing or not believing lies has nothing to do with it.
posted by knock my sock and i'll clean your clock at 6:18 PM on August 4 [8 favorites]
From what I have seen, an enormous part of the problem is people (and, more often, corporate entities) that reside in one very wealthy state buying property in a poorer state. This is why I think whatever must happen must happen on a federal level, and why I've been so consistently frustrated with four years of a democratic administration that I'm relatively sure isn't even aware of the problem. "Ya mean Corn Pop doesn't live there anymore? Well, that's the American Dream, Jack!" Because the donor class is largely responsible for this mess, doing something about it isn't incentivized for the ostensible left. I'm honestly at a loss. Obviously, the GOP would be even more useless.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 8:02 PM on August 4
posted by kittens for breakfast at 8:02 PM on August 4
I think the idea that the lack of public housing is inevitable and will never get better is crap. I also believe the idea that the "free market"should have anything to do with public housing policy is crap. I remember when the US had a great deal more public housing, but there was considerable disagreement from its beginnings in 1937 around the idea that either there should be any at all and/or that certain minority groups should benefit from having it.
The case of Pruitt-Igoe is a good example of how that disagreement is expressed. The federal government spent a considerable sum of money to build public housing in St Louis, then turned it over to the local housing authority, which consistently underfunded it and allowed it to deteriorate to the point where it became dangerous. Once that happened there was a clamor to tear the project down (done in 1976) and generally declare that public housing was inevitably dangerous and should never be allowed to become established again. The government has since then disinvested in any increase in public housing, consistently underfunding HUD for decades. It was said then that the private housing industry would be the best entity to provide housing for poor people there after, because they would innately do a better job of providing it and caring for it than a government agency. There was an idea behind this that government should never do anything private enterprise could do, along with a general objection from conservatives that doing anything to help "those people" would always end up failing and a waste.
The result has been to push provision of housing for poor people to the "free market", who views it as a game to increase their wealth. The government gives them money to provide housing to low income people through a variety of methods, but there is never enough to go around (this keeps rents across the spectrum high through restricting supply). They have also placed barriers in the way of any effort to increase public housing stock so the money has to go to the developers.
Gentrification is part of this process of disinvestment in public housing. There is a lot of talk about mixing income levels as a way of incentivizing better outcomes (if you have people who make more money living in the same neighborhoods as low income folks the habits of the people who make more money will somehow show the low income folks how to make more money - and somehow there will be no more low income people...) but this has not necessarily come out that way in practice, of course.
What has happened in the end is that every year we have had significantly more homeless people than the year before, and less means on the part of the government to address it.
I am sad for what's happened in Denver; I used to live there. The phenomenon described in the article has been happening there for many years. It used to be in the 80s if you could fog a mirror and hold a job you would be able to afford a place there, as well as in a great many other places (though to be sure it always helped if you were "the right color"). Now we have tent cities, a reduced quality of life nearly everywhere, and very few effective ways to address it.
We now have a generation of property owners who believe renting to people for a living is and should be like shooting fish in a barrel. "Disruptive" business models such as Airbnb have only accelerated this. Gentrification is a manifestation of the idea that developers will come in and invest in places that have been neglected and fix them up and make all of society better.
We also have a few generations of folks who have become alienated to the idea of living in any kind of housing due to chronic lack of affordability. It is easy to say "oh they're just on drugs and won't get a job", but drug use and difficulty with remaining employed are generally symptoms, rather than causes. I will not go into that subject here, but will say that as a formerly long term homeless person and someone who has worked for many years to help those with addiction and mental disorders there are no easy solutions and what we are doing does not help.
Rehousing unhoused people is not going to be easy or inexpensive on either side of the equation. It will take a commitment equal to the one that disengaged the government from providing public housing in the first place. I am not sure if we have that in us or not. I would like to think it is about as easy as funding even just a small part of the military industrial complex, but of course they have better representation in our system.
posted by cybrcamper at 8:44 PM on August 4 [5 favorites]
The case of Pruitt-Igoe is a good example of how that disagreement is expressed. The federal government spent a considerable sum of money to build public housing in St Louis, then turned it over to the local housing authority, which consistently underfunded it and allowed it to deteriorate to the point where it became dangerous. Once that happened there was a clamor to tear the project down (done in 1976) and generally declare that public housing was inevitably dangerous and should never be allowed to become established again. The government has since then disinvested in any increase in public housing, consistently underfunding HUD for decades. It was said then that the private housing industry would be the best entity to provide housing for poor people there after, because they would innately do a better job of providing it and caring for it than a government agency. There was an idea behind this that government should never do anything private enterprise could do, along with a general objection from conservatives that doing anything to help "those people" would always end up failing and a waste.
The result has been to push provision of housing for poor people to the "free market", who views it as a game to increase their wealth. The government gives them money to provide housing to low income people through a variety of methods, but there is never enough to go around (this keeps rents across the spectrum high through restricting supply). They have also placed barriers in the way of any effort to increase public housing stock so the money has to go to the developers.
Gentrification is part of this process of disinvestment in public housing. There is a lot of talk about mixing income levels as a way of incentivizing better outcomes (if you have people who make more money living in the same neighborhoods as low income folks the habits of the people who make more money will somehow show the low income folks how to make more money - and somehow there will be no more low income people...) but this has not necessarily come out that way in practice, of course.
What has happened in the end is that every year we have had significantly more homeless people than the year before, and less means on the part of the government to address it.
I am sad for what's happened in Denver; I used to live there. The phenomenon described in the article has been happening there for many years. It used to be in the 80s if you could fog a mirror and hold a job you would be able to afford a place there, as well as in a great many other places (though to be sure it always helped if you were "the right color"). Now we have tent cities, a reduced quality of life nearly everywhere, and very few effective ways to address it.
We now have a generation of property owners who believe renting to people for a living is and should be like shooting fish in a barrel. "Disruptive" business models such as Airbnb have only accelerated this. Gentrification is a manifestation of the idea that developers will come in and invest in places that have been neglected and fix them up and make all of society better.
We also have a few generations of folks who have become alienated to the idea of living in any kind of housing due to chronic lack of affordability. It is easy to say "oh they're just on drugs and won't get a job", but drug use and difficulty with remaining employed are generally symptoms, rather than causes. I will not go into that subject here, but will say that as a formerly long term homeless person and someone who has worked for many years to help those with addiction and mental disorders there are no easy solutions and what we are doing does not help.
Rehousing unhoused people is not going to be easy or inexpensive on either side of the equation. It will take a commitment equal to the one that disengaged the government from providing public housing in the first place. I am not sure if we have that in us or not. I would like to think it is about as easy as funding even just a small part of the military industrial complex, but of course they have better representation in our system.
posted by cybrcamper at 8:44 PM on August 4 [5 favorites]
Wait a minute. I seriously thought that the entire point of these redevelopment projects was too get the poors to fuck off out of the city to some godforsaken exurb and never come back, probably with a heaping helping of the kind of racism that is completely "invisible" to the backers the project (but which nevertheless turns the neighborhood completely white; eventually someone opens a restaurant specializing in the food of the british colonial empire.) Am I just really cynical? I didn't think I was but...
posted by surlyben at 8:51 PM on August 4
posted by surlyben at 8:51 PM on August 4
I'm always frustrated by topics such as affordable housing (or any government-subsidized program ostensibly aimed at helping "poor people"), because the biggest part of the solution is something that we still won't touch, which is wealth inequality.
As long as people have the wealth to buy up houses via private equity or for VRBOs or just to be able to afford 7-figures for a detached single family home while others can't even find a place to live, we can't subsidize our way out of the trap that such a large percentage of the population is in.
If wealth were spread around a hell of a lot more evenly, the market wouldn't be focused on building only for the top ~30% of people who can actually afford things that give developers fat profit margins.
posted by Ickster at 9:08 PM on August 4 [4 favorites]
As long as people have the wealth to buy up houses via private equity or for VRBOs or just to be able to afford 7-figures for a detached single family home while others can't even find a place to live, we can't subsidize our way out of the trap that such a large percentage of the population is in.
If wealth were spread around a hell of a lot more evenly, the market wouldn't be focused on building only for the top ~30% of people who can actually afford things that give developers fat profit margins.
posted by Ickster at 9:08 PM on August 4 [4 favorites]
"You can't stop this process, not in any meaningful way: the developers have more clout, financially, culturally and politically, than the current residents, and the city has a compelling interest in gentrification because it transforms neighborhoods where total tax revenue is very low into much more revenue-generating zone, all without having to do much more than approve some building permits."
I see where the despair (and I hate despair because it renders us powerless) creeps in, but it is not inevitable. It wasn't always this way. That "interest in gentrification" is as described, but as we can also see it ruins the communities long term in ways the developers and city leaders never thought of.
posted by cybrcamper at 9:09 PM on August 4
I see where the despair (and I hate despair because it renders us powerless) creeps in, but it is not inevitable. It wasn't always this way. That "interest in gentrification" is as described, but as we can also see it ruins the communities long term in ways the developers and city leaders never thought of.
posted by cybrcamper at 9:09 PM on August 4
"As long as people have the wealth to buy up houses via private equity or for VRBOs or just to be able to afford 7-figures for a detached single family home while others can't even find a place to live, we can't subsidize our way out of the trap that such a large percentage of the population is in."
Where does the wealth come from? Rampant income stratification such as we see now comes from the ever increasing acceleration of acquisition and exploitation of income producing assets. Our housing markets have become ruled entirely (instead of partially) by private enterprise. If there was a source of public housing in sufficient quantities, properly maintained it would help keep the cost of housing lower and ease the effects of long term homelessness over a period of decades.
We can indeed subsidize our way out of this - by building and properly maintaining public housing.
posted by cybrcamper at 9:18 PM on August 4 [2 favorites]
Where does the wealth come from? Rampant income stratification such as we see now comes from the ever increasing acceleration of acquisition and exploitation of income producing assets. Our housing markets have become ruled entirely (instead of partially) by private enterprise. If there was a source of public housing in sufficient quantities, properly maintained it would help keep the cost of housing lower and ease the effects of long term homelessness over a period of decades.
We can indeed subsidize our way out of this - by building and properly maintaining public housing.
posted by cybrcamper at 9:18 PM on August 4 [2 favorites]
the profit motive is a real bad motive. the propaganda campaign to make it seem otherwise has been super mega double effective. it’s weird.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 9:37 PM on August 4 [2 favorites]
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 9:37 PM on August 4 [2 favorites]
In terms of grappling with despair about the feeling of inevitably, can I recommend out Capitalist Realism by Mark Fisher? It's quite short and quite potent for thinking about things that have been called inevitable.
posted by constraint at 12:27 AM on August 5
posted by constraint at 12:27 AM on August 5
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