Rents And Gents - A Friday Morning Thinkpost

Special thanks to gregorama for inspiring this one. He spoke in his journal about the gentrification process going on in the neighborhoods that he grew up in and how he was now considering purchasing a condominium in the place that maybe wasn't so nice a few years ago. For the record, he's in Canada, but that doesn't particularly matter. The issue of this is the same, no matter where on the globe you might be.

In my response to his post, I said that as far as I was concerned, the terms "gentrification" and "Manifest Destiny" have the same basic meaning. Someone lives on a plot of land. Someone else who is more wealthy, more powerful, more "clever" comes along and wants that land and either coerces or forces the person who holds it to relinquish it.

The problem is exactly the same as well. Those that are "moving in" to an area know what they're doing and why they're doing it. They want to make money, they want to increase their personal wealth and have a nicer place to live that is more affordable than the places that already exist for them to live.

But this is a bit different from the Native Americans who had their own mores and social norms, and style of dwellings. Poor neighborhoods are a really tricky thing that must be examined from several different angles. You must begin with the landlords. Just who are these people? They are looking for passive income from tenants that rent their property. These are people who do the minimum. There's no urgency to fix a neighborhood up because there's no profit in it. The people that live there will not pay more for it, even if they could. It's the path of least resistance for these owners, and all they want is what money they can get and they'll leave you alone.

Now, someone would come along and offer to buy tracts of these properties and convert them into a newer, cleaner, nicer neighborhood. In the scheme of a city plan, this is great. It increases property values, lowers crime rates, gives a nicer look to a run-down part of town, offers jobs to construction and urban planning and looks great on the fiscal records.

From the POV of a hard-working person trying to support a family, this is not a positive. When you are poor, and just trying to make ends meet, it's not as if you want to live in squalor. It's not like you don't see what your neighborhood is like. But you are unable to do better. You are working as hard as you can just to make it to the next paycheck, and choosing which bills to pay in order to keep on going. There is no time to consider what to do about the area, because it's all about being able to eat that next meal, or keep the electricity on for another month.

In addition, who really knows what to do, even if you had the time to do it? What agencies could you call to even begin to fix up your neighborhood? I don't think people who are in a situation like that would even know to ask that question.

"They" are the poor. "We" are not. And as long as there is that allignment, this problem will persist. It's the Them and Us mentality that permitted Manifest Destiny to do what it did. Was that a crime? Of course it was. It was property theft.

In some ways, gentrification is just as bad. When the Cavalry came in and took the land from the Natives, in some cases, they put up the appearance of a treaty (when they weren't handing out pox infected blankets). Today, for those that can't afford the "new" neighborhood, there's nothing but an eviction notice. Find a new reservation.

This is an issue in NYC, as more and more $2,000,000.00 two bedroom condo properties are going on the market. Everything radiates out from Midtown. As prices in the city's most expensive neighborhoods increase, the prices in neighboring areas do as well, and as people start moving to find a place that's both affordable to their budgets and in a workable part of town, The Ripple Effect takes care of the rest. So, as people who work part-time, or low/minimum wage jobs are attempting to continue to earn some money they can use for something other than paying the bills, they have to move farther away, forcing them to commute longer, spend more money for the trip and have even less time in their lives for anything other than work and sleep. Is this any way to improve the human race?

But, of course, none of this is about improving the human race. It's about earning as much as you can, helping your own bank account and getting whatever it is you want, without a thought to those that don't have an option.

It's a societal problem that no one wants to look at because that would mean needing to spend money on it, and under the Us/Them concept, that would be like handing cash to the enemy. But shouldn't we think of everyone as part of the same family, and that this is more like a father forgiving a son's debt rather than an tenant unable to pay the cost?

Maybe the answer to gentrification is simple: if you want to renew a community, if you want to come in a take over a part of a town considered "run down," you have to find a way to make things right for the current residents as a part of the plan. Either incorporate housing for them to live in the blueprint of the new neighborhood as well, or create a new place for them to be that isn't inconvenient to their lives. Make THAT a law and maybe we can distance this term from "Manifest Destiny."

Really, if you expect people to be able to work jobs that are so low paying you have to get a supplement to afford a Metrocard, something has to be done, because soon, New York will be a gated community, and the only people around will be the super-wealthy residents, the tourists who have paid their visitor's passes, and the staff of people who are given entry permit ids, checked at the border by the Police and are only permitted to be on the property for the time they are scheduled, before being bused or shuttled off to wherever it is that they live, out of sight and far away.

But, let's face it... this renewal isn't working in our Case Study city: New Orleans, where it's clear that a lot of people who were homeowners will not be back. Those areas will be bulldozed, and "reassigned." In this case, Katrina and the Corps of Engineers, that didn't get the levees in line, acted as "gentrifiers." Maybe when all is back to "normal" in the Crescent City, they'll call it "New New Orleans." Maybe, when the time comes, we'll be called "New New York." And maybe after all this, the country will be called "The Same Old USA."