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Squalid posted:There are no "hot quick fixes to provide ample affordable housing to the desperately poor. Landlords HATE it!!!." There is no single solution, It's odd how often "let whatever development wants to happen happen and also maybe a couple of places will be semi-affordable" seems to be the only possible solution in these discussions. It's never "let's center the needs of people who have been on the poo poo end of a terrible power differential," for whatever reason. Insanite fucked around with this message at 19:05 on Feb 28, 2020 |
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Feb 28, 2020 19:01
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Insanite posted:It's never "let's center what people who have been on the poo poo end of a massive power differential need," for whatever reason. it's because those people don't have a unified voice, and i'm not talking about lack of political organization. it is that people in marginalized communities do not have a consensus opinion which can be used to validate the worthiness of a development. we can take the same material statement - "I oppose this development because it will fundamentally change the character of the neighborhood in which I have lived for decades" - and people will variably support or oppose the development whether it is wealthy white homeowners or poor nonwhite renters who appear to be making the claim. this then means that one's support/opposition to a development is not about the development itself, but a broader articulation of the unfairness of resource distribution in our society which is good to talk about and all but really not related to the actual development in question, it's just more culture war stuff removed from culture war stuff, just looking at the nature of cities and how they change over time - this change is inevitable. the question is how to manage the ramifications of change rather than attempting to hold back the tide
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Feb 28, 2020 19:08
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or in other words, the reason that this discussion always gets so pointlessly heated is that every possible outcome can be construed as bad for the poor, so the moral compass of left-oriented commentary spins wildly
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Feb 28, 2020 19:15
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luxury handset posted:this then means that one's support/opposition to a development is not about the development itself, but a broader articulation of the unfairness of resource distribution in our society which is good to talk about and all but really not related to the actual development in question, it's just more culture war stuff I don't even really disagree with this. My gut says that a lot of local opposition to stuff like this is more about giving the finger to how we allocate access to the city than anything else. I'm okay with a national politician attacking a development on that level--it's yet another example of urban spaces becoming playgrounds for the top quintile of earners. I'm unhappy with one's right to the city being mediated by how much money you have. I also don't think there's a way to escape this reality, short of revolution. Insanite fucked around with this message at 19:21 on Feb 28, 2020 |
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Feb 28, 2020 19:18
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luxury handset posted:tbh bernie probably hasn't heard of this development before and doesn't know anything about it, but is just +1ing grassroots organizations as a token show of support - and those grassroots organizations could have any particular incentive. the messy thing about local politics is that everyone is NIMBY for different reasons. if you support growth and a little side handout of affordable housing then you're pro-gentrification, if you oppose growth for changing neighborhood character - whether that's to preserve property values or oppose displacement - then you're also pro-gentrification. there's no clear winners here, all urban planning is a negotiation among stakeholders with unequal access to power! Yeah. Bernie's housing platform is actually fine, but sticking his nose into local issues for solidarity points makes the issues unnecessarily messy. https://twitter.com/crschmidt/status/1233229396577857536
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Feb 28, 2020 19:19
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Insanite posted:I'm unhappy with one's right to the city being mediated by how much money you have. I also don't think there's a way to escape this reality, short of revolution. historically this has been the case more often than not. in early modern europe, in many cities, citizenship had to be bought or earned - it wasn't assumed. rules around who got to inhabit a city and who got kicked out the gates each night were common enough as to where citizenship by habitation was not a safe assumption across history in the more immediate sense, the only reason we have problems related to intown gentrification in america are because of the dynamics of industrial era cities permitting mass suburbanization, which lead to an emptying out of wealth/population of various degrees in many nations but which is especially remarkable in the united states. what we americans think of as the status quo is a historical aberration. i only bring this up not to convince you to think differently about the injustice of cities, but rather to point out that there is no solution we can look for towards history when it comes to this unjust resource distribution, and that it seems to be an inherent aspect of cities themselves as to be symbols of unjust resource distribution e: really i just like talking about the history of cities 
Mr. Fall Down Terror fucked around with this message at 19:28 on Feb 28, 2020 |
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Feb 28, 2020 19:24
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luxury handset posted:historically this has been the case more often than not. in early modern europe, in many cities, citizenship had to be bought or earned - it wasn't assumed. rules around who got to inhabit a city and who got kicked out the gates each night were common enough as to where citizenship by habitation was not a safe assumption across history Yeah, I'm somewhat familiar with this story--particularly as a manifestation of capital flow, but it's cool/insanely depressing to think about cities as artifacts of accumulation. When I think about the ideal form of a region planned after the Fully Automated Luxury Communist revolution, it's dramatically more polycentric than most places you can experience now--just as society would have to be a whole lot flatter. And lots of other stuff, too, but that's getting into world building territory. I'm so out of my depth at this point and would love to go back to school for a second degree in geography or something if I weren't so old and busy.
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Feb 28, 2020 19:42
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Insanite posted:It's odd how often "let whatever development wants to happen happen and also maybe a couple of places will be semi-affordable" seems to be the only possible solution in these discussions. It's never "let's center the needs of people who have been on the poo poo end of a terrible power differential," for whatever reason. i can't imagine anyone actually arguing that, certainly it is not something you would hear from me. Unfortunately a lot of anti-gentrification activists are basically equivalent to a guy with a migraine slamming his head repeatedly into a wall, and when asked if he'd rather take an advil instead replies "That advil isn't nearly strong enough to completely cure my migraine forever! And the fact it doesn't solve all my problems instantly is proof that it actually causes migraines!" We need to listen to peoples concerns, and take their interests seriously. We don't want entire neighborhoods being displaced. But that means we need actual policy that really addresses their problems, rather than weird bullshit that will obviously make everything worse.
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Feb 28, 2020 19:45
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Squalid posted:i can't imagine anyone actually arguing that, certainly it is not something you would hear from me. Unfortunately a lot of anti-gentrification activists are basically equivalent to a guy with a migraine slamming his head repeatedly into a wall, and when asked if he'd rather take an advil instead replies "That advil isn't nearly strong enough to completely cure my migraine forever! And the fact it doesn't solve all my problems instantly is proof that it actually causes migraines!" You can see the irony here a little bit, right? Squalid posted:We need to listen to peoples concerns, and take their interests seriously. We don't want entire neighborhoods being displaced. But that means we need actual policy that really addresses their problems, rather than weird bullshit that will obviously make everything worse. Some people are misguided. Some aren't. Some want to monkeywrench a system that is always going to shortchange them. Building only nominally affordable housing will not win any of them over. If I weren't a gross STEMlord living in a market-rate condo, I don't think I'd give a drat if building lots of new housing for biotech engineers and software developers might possibly make things slightly less bad for me down the line. I was housing insecure a lot growing up, and it sucks tremendously. But I really don't want to get into a perfect v. good argument, as it's been done. I don't think capitalism can distribute space justly, so if we're not on that wavelength, we're always going to disagree. I'm not out there lobbying against this development, and it's possible that it being built is better than it not being built, but it's also yet another manifestation that the world is not a fair place.
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Feb 28, 2020 20:05
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Insanite posted:also yet another manifestation that the world is not a fair place. I don't think anyone in this thread is going to disagree with you there, but the anti-gentrification crowd dovetailing with equity-rich homeowners who want their property values to continue inflating feels uniquely tragic.
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Feb 28, 2020 21:10
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That is a phenomenon that I see more talked about than observed, to be frank, unless you mean more “coincidentally overlapping sometimes” rather than “dovetailing.” You could certainly say similar things about the more neoliberal YIMBY flavors and developers. Everyone sucks, apparently. Insanite fucked around with this message at 21:51 on Feb 28, 2020 |
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Feb 28, 2020 21:44
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Insanite posted:You can see the irony here a little bit, right? please, enlighten me.
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Feb 28, 2020 21:58
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Squalid posted:please, enlighten me. "i can't imagine anyone actually arguing that, certainly it is not something you would hear from me." "Unfortunately a lot of anti-gentrification activists are basically equivalent to a guy with a migraine slamming his head repeatedly into a wall, and when asked if he'd rather take an advil instead replies 'That advil isn't nearly strong enough to completely cure my migraine forever! And the fact it doesn't solve all my problems instantly is proof that it actually causes migraines!'" I don't think this is particularly fair representation of most housing justice activists. It is a good way to show that you have disdain for those activists and their communities, though, which may be a reason why--aside from material reality--it is hard to get them on board with what you want. Insanite fucked around with this message at 22:06 on Feb 28, 2020 |
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Feb 28, 2020 22:02
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alright, fine, maybe the Cato insitute would argue that, although in this respect their opinion is so marginal and irrelevant to actual policy as to be insignificant. As for the housing justice advocates, I might respect them more if they didn't waste their time on policies which are obviously and measurably harmful to the people they wish to represent, as for example with rent control advocates. I won't waste the thread's time recovering that ground but the rational for those policies are so completely discredited you have to be either ignorant or a snake oil salesman to actually call for its expansion, appealing as I'm sure it sounds to many. Someone who actually respects people is going to take their concerns seriously and work with them to address them, they aren't going to promise impossible things or stand idly by while they hurt themselves. as far as advocacy goes i know i am temperamentally unsuited to it. so i have to confine myself to 'serious' discussion in environments where that is appropriate. In that I am content, there's nothing wrong with a little division of labor.
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Feb 29, 2020 00:03
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Insanite posted:If I weren't a gross STEMlord living in a market-rate condo, I don't think I'd give a drat if building lots of new housing for biotech engineers and software developers might possibly make things slightly less bad for me down the line. I was housing insecure a lot growing up, and it sucks tremendously. The specific project with a better-than-most ratio of market-rate to affordable homes seems like the best achievable solution in the current moment and was, I assume, only achieved after extensive fighting from affordability advocates. I'm 100% behind also fighting for widespread federal public housing programs, but that cause is not furthered by completely rejecting the project in question.
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Feb 29, 2020 09:58
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Cugel the Clever posted:This makes the mistaken assumption that those engineers and developers won't move into the neighborhood if that new housing goes unbuilt. Not building doesn't eliminate the reason folks might want to move in, so those that don't have their hearts set on newer housing stock will start taking up those homes that already exist, again driving up rents/prices. You could maybe block employers from setting up shop nearby, but that would just screw over existing residents in a different way. Yeah, this basically. The project may not have been perfect but I think it's ridicoulus to argue that a disused racetrack is a better use for the land. Plus I would be extremely surprised if the interests of existing property owners didn't play at least as large a role in getting it canned as whatever purported equity concerns there were. Both of these things are true IMO: There are in fact valid reasons to oppose some development that aren't neighborhood character bullshit or just homeowners protecting their property values. and Given the state of housing politics in US cities, it's logical to adopt a posture of extreme cynicism and skepticism towards anyone who opposes new housing, particularly dense multifamily housing, for supposedly high-minded concerns such as equity. I voted for bernie, but I do worry about staffing in his admin. Who is going to end up being more influential in his admin in setting priorities, the people who wrote his pretty excellent housing plan, or the people that are using the official campaign account to put out (stupid, lovely, wrong) takes like that? Insanite posted:Cynically: This is to get Bernie a boost from people who aren't likely to be Warren voters on Tuesday. I loving hope it's the former with this particular aspect. Wedding leftism even further to NIMBYism would be disastrous from both a housing justice and climate action standpoint. Fill Baptismal fucked around with this message at 10:19 on Feb 29, 2020 |
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Feb 29, 2020 10:15
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The BEST thing Bernie can do is listen to local activists and not get involved in local issues. Bernie has a great federal housing plan and should stick to it. In MD for example one of our DSA backed state delegates - Vaughn Stewart- has an excellent Housing For All bill that is being backed by a plethora of groups here. From YIMBYs, to leftists, even environmentalists, ect. https://www.citylab.com/equity/2020/01/maryland-upzoning-bill-density-affordable-housing-zoning/604288/
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Feb 29, 2020 14:55
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I'd imagine that that's what he's doing. He's not saying anything novel. Cugel the Clever posted:This makes the mistaken assumption that those engineers and developers won't move into the neighborhood if that new housing goes unbuilt. Not building doesn't eliminate the reason folks might want to move in, so those that don't have their hearts set on newer housing stock will start taking up those homes that already exist, again driving up rents/prices. You could maybe block employers from setting up shop nearby, but that would just screw over existing residents in a different way. I don't think there's any mistaken assumption there at all. If you're poor and can only afford <50% AMI housing, your long-term options remain "get tremendously lucky," "get displaced," or "be homeless" whether or not this development happens. AFAIK, the activist groups aren't even opposed to the development--they just want higher proportions of housing affordable to ~30% AMI. They will almost certainly not get this, but why not ask for it? What do they have to lose, at this point? (I’ve also read that they’re looking to avoid another Seaport situation: https://apps.bostonglobe.com/spotlight/boston-racism-image-reality/series/seaport/) The regional planning and housing policies in this country are completely incapable of and disinterested in providing stable, sustainable housing for poor people. My point is not to have the same dumb internet urbanism argument about development, gentrification, and displacement that we all know, but that our system's inability to deal with this problem seems intractable. In this context, "trust us, this is best for you--it could be worse!" is just not good enough. In other words, I guess, this: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/feb/29/governments-developers-housing-human-right Kill Bristol posted:I loving hope it's the former with this particular aspect. Wedding leftism even further to NIMBYism would be disastrous from both a housing justice and climate action standpoint. It's inappropriate to liken poor communities of renters to NIMBYs. Insanite fucked around with this message at 02:01 on Mar 1, 2020 |
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Feb 29, 2020 15:39
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https://www.citywatchla.com/index.php/cw/los-angeles/19391-are-developers-riding-the-homeless-to-the-bankquote:It’s as if the operating theory is that everyone who is homeless deserves a home, while other parts of society need to make environmental sacrifices to meet that need. No idea about the actual merits of the bill, although I have a feeling the environmental sacrifices are "traffic" and "character" rather than like lead in the water.
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Mar 7, 2020 08:10
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CEQA has been abused so much at this point that I wouldn't be surprised if it's net resulted in higher emissions by discouraging density and leading to higher commute times.
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Mar 7, 2020 10:21
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Sure, but at least people's neighborhood parking environment has been thoroughly protected from encroachment by the dreaded poors.
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Mar 11, 2020 12:25
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https://twitter.com/rabonour/status/1237424594526416896?s=20 There was a piece in the LA Times yesterday that was a nice example of the “only good gentrification is my gentrification” genre, and also a little bit racist. The third pic is my favorite. “I bought here because I couldn’t afford anywhere else, how dare people gentrify it!”
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Mar 11, 2020 17:41
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saw this video today and was reminded of the discussion of parking minimums we had here recently. This summarizes some of the academic criticisms, and for fun the author uses a drone to look at how well a selection of his local retailers handled black friday crowds https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XscydK-3LI
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Mar 13, 2020 06:39
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oof not exactly proud to be familiar with the locations in this video.
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Mar 13, 2020 07:07
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Badger of Basra posted:https://twitter.com/rabonour/status/1237424594526416896?s=20 If she didn't have much money, and didn't want the neighborhood to change more than the tiniest amount, what makes her a gentrifier? Are we assuming the first part is a total lie/delusion? What would a non-gentrifier moving in look like, for comparison?
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Mar 13, 2020 07:25
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Dylan16807 posted:I feel like I'm missing something obvious. She got to live there because she made the best offer the landlord or previous owner received. IDK what a non-gentrifier would look like in that particular neighbourhood - gentrification can mean a mix of different intersecting changes in the ethnic, age, class, behaviour and income characteristics of an area, but it probably isn't a white journalist.
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Mar 13, 2020 10:44
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Dylan16807 posted:I feel like I'm missing something obvious. A young white professional not having enough money to move to a rich neighborhood and so moving to a cheaper, usually nonwhite one is usually how gentrification happens. You can be a gentrifier even if you don’t want to be because it’s not about whether you like, go to a yoga studio, but about who is bidding for a limited supply of housing. I think the article is dumb because she wants to separate herself somehow from people doing the same thing she did now just because she did it first. Also it’s kinda racist.
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Mar 13, 2020 13:36
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gentrification is not a moral choice people make, nobody (or well, hardly anybody at least) is thinking to themselves 'hohoho i am going to price working-class people out of this neighborhood and start agitating for opening a starbucks instead of the local butcher'. they're just moving where their money's good enough and bringing their preferences with them. dirt-poor students are often the first wave and they don't do much other than just be single, young people without much connection to the community
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Mar 13, 2020 13:42
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V. Illych L. posted:gentrification is not a moral choice people make, nobody (or well, hardly anybody at least) is thinking to themselves 'hohoho i am going to price working-class people out of this neighborhood and start agitating for opening a starbucks instead of the local butcher'. they're just moving where their money's good enough and bringing their preferences with them. dirt-poor students are often the first wave and they don't do much other than just be single, young people without much connection to the community Yah gentrification is more of a phenomenon than a choice for renters. But the cycle of gentrification is brown/black community land is made cheaper by society, white developer comes in and says I can make good money by rehabbing this building, neighborhood is perceived to be "good" because it becomes whiter and more educate, rents go up, gentrification. When I was doing my masters, I did a whole thing on gentrification and while it was easy to see where people moved, it was harder to see where they moved to, so we didn't see which neighborhoods were absorbing people who were forced out of their community.
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Mar 13, 2020 14:03
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V. Illych L. posted:gentrification is not a moral choice people make, nobody (or well, hardly anybody at least) is thinking to themselves 'hohoho i am going to price working-class people out of this neighborhood and start agitating for opening a starbucks instead of the local butcher'. they're just moving where their money's good enough and bringing their preferences with them. dirt-poor students are often the first wave and they don't do much other than just be single, young people without much connection to the community Does it cause gentrification just to be white, because of how new potential buyers react, regardless of your actual actions and place in the community?
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Mar 13, 2020 21:09
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Gentrification is not about whether you shop at local businesses or whatever. It’s not an aesthetic problem in the way she is talking about it. She moved there because she could not afford to live where she wanted. The people who came after her are doing the same thing. Because she (and these new people) make more money than the existing residents and can pay more for the same housing, they push them out unless new housing gets built to house the extra people (either in the gentrifying neighborhood or in some other already rich neighborhood the new rich people would live in). Even if all the new residents shopped at the locally owned grocery store, the existing residents would still get pushed out because they can’t afford to pay the same amount for housing that the new ones can.
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Mar 13, 2020 21:19
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Gentrification is just how capital moves through commodified space. Yuppies and yoga and cafes are just all in for the ride.
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Mar 13, 2020 21:21
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Gentrification as commonly used is a mainly useless term because it can mean both very real and bad things (such as rent rapidly increasing to the extent that most of the population is priced out of the areas closest to good jobs) and aesthetic bullshit that's essentially just a faux-woke version of complaining about neighborhood character ("This place used to be authentic before gentrification").Dylan16807 posted:The thing is, it sounds like her preferences pretty quickly got aligned with what the community had, and she was making purchases at the existing local businesses. She wasn't lacking connection to the community. She's acting like she's somehow on a higher moral footing than the newer "gentrifiers" when they're doing the exact same drat thing she did, moving to an area because it's affordable and close to things that they want. This is what I mean about gentrification being a useless term. There absolutely are real and bad things that accompany housing scarcity. But there's also this stuff where people try and argue that others aren't living in the neighborhood in the "right" way. Fill Baptismal fucked around with this message at 23:54 on Mar 13, 2020 |
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Mar 13, 2020 23:48
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housing as a commodity is fundamentally some hosed up poo poo and is what unleashes these processes - once rents start increasing, it's already unstoppable
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Mar 14, 2020 00:54
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Badger of Basra posted:Gentrification is not about whether you shop at local businesses or whatever. It’s not an aesthetic problem in the way she is talking about it. Still Dismal posted:Gentrification as commonly used is a mainly useless term because it can mean both very real and bad things (such as rent rapidly increasing to the extent that most of the population is priced out of the areas closest to good jobs) and aesthetic bullshit that's essentially just a faux-woke version of complaining about neighborhood character ("This place used to be authentic before gentrification").
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Mar 14, 2020 14:41
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Dylan16807 posted:
The problem is..that is subjective depending who you talk to in the neighborhood and you will never get an agreement. Besides the people, what makes a neighborhood? The corner market, the little music venue? The local park? Neighborhoods change as cultures change even IF you prevent all development. Also even if you prevent or heavily regulated development if people want to move into a neighborhood because it became desirable (and a desirable neighborhood to live in is what literally everyone wants and is a good thing!) they will find a way to do so. You can’t stop gentrification you can only implement policies to make sure lower income people are not displaced by it.
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Mar 14, 2020 17:32
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Solaris 2.0 posted:The problem is..that is subjective depending who you talk to in the neighborhood and you will never get an agreement. So fun fact, in my research of gentrification, the literature pointed to Barnsbury England as the first example (which probably means it was the first studied), a former working class community that priced people and became middle class. They are now the home of a term called SUPER Gentrification, where its now a wealthy posh neighborhood that no one can afford. Worth googling when you get a chance. To your point, cities are points of rapid (a relative term I realize) change. A community will look completely different from 5, 10, 15, 20 years on all sorts of factors.
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Mar 14, 2020 20:27
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Solaris 2.0 posted:The problem is..that is subjective depending who you talk to in the neighborhood and you will never get an agreement. This reminds me of an architecture book I read where the author talked about this neighborhood in Philadelphia(?) that everyone loved as a real "authentic" place.Turns out it was built from scratch in a field by a developer, but because they did it 100 years ago everyone just pretends it sprang up from the ground like that.
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Mar 14, 2020 20:40
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Appeals to history are too often thinly-veiled defenses of a status quo that is untenable for the majority of people. A reporter in Denver had a pretty good on-air editorial on the folks fighting bike lines even after multiple cyclists were murdered by drivers.
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Mar 14, 2020 20:50
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I'm a mostly ignorant lurker here, but I'm curious about something. How does a municipality provide more services and infrastructure without gentrifying the area as well? Stuff like bike lanes or better schools, parks, library branches - stuff that should have been there the entire time. And yeah, that stuff should all be funded at the state level to ensure more equity but it's generally not so what's the proper way to do that in the short term?
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Mar 14, 2020 22:00
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