Rents reflect the overall desirability of a place to live.
If you make a place more desirable to live -- whether by lowering crime, adding more interesting stores, or beautifying the area -- it's a simple fact that *more people will want to live there*, and so rents will rise.
There's an interesting hypocrisy in the gentrification debate. Either people have the 'right' to keep their neighborhoods of a certain ethnic composition, or they do not (the latter is, I'd wager, the position of all thinking people). You'd hopefully feel awful about advocating against too many minorities moving into an area, so why do you not feel any shame about advocating against too many white people moving into an area?
On a separate note, regarding class rather than race, economic studies show that having more well-off people -- specifically, people with bourgeois habits and mores --living in the midst of the poor influences the poor themselves to make better choices, steering a greater percentage of their income toward health care and education rather than unnecessary luxury consumption.
This does not happen because the middle-class are paragons of virtue, but rather because the things they waste money on to show status (golf, home renovation) cost significantly more than the things that the poor waste money on to show status (designer clothes), and so the poor tend to give up on playing the 'status game' and invest in more rational activities that will help improve their economic circumstances in the long-run.
Those in Columbia Heights who stick around and pay more for rent will be getting more for their money -- a lower crime neighborhood and better habits. Those who can't will move elsewhere -- but the issue isn't the gentrification of their specific area, the issue is that they don't have the funds to afford to live in a community as nice as what their community is becoming.
"Taxation Without Representation," sounds familiar doesn't it? Is this not the slogan that members of the thirteen colonies used to illustrate the repressive acts of the tyrannical leadership and the unrepresentative nature of the taxes imposed upon them? Unfortunately, this phrase rings true again in the politics of the U.S. capitol.
Washington, D.C., a metropolitan conglomerate of almost 600,000 U.S. citizens, still emphasizes the slogan's historical parallel through the use of ostentatious license plate inscribing. The only American city without a voting member in the house or senate, this city finds itself in a unique political conundrum. City funds are appropriated by Congress, and the only native input is found by way of Eleanor Holmes Norton, the non-voting representative of our nation's capitol. Recently elected Mayor Adrian M. Fenty has promised to propel the district towards "world-class" prestige (of that other than political significance) and fulfill the district's motto, Justitia omnibus, "Justice for All."
To this I attribute the rapidly gentrifying areas of Columbia Heights, Anacostia and parts of S.E., north of the Anacostia (for those of you familiar with the layout of D.C.). However, this is not only occurring in Washington, it has been or is currently problematic in Los Angeles, New York City boroughs and other predominantly minority-populated, urban neighborhoods. But more importantly, local policies are not protecting the low-income and section 8 housing neighborhoods in many of these metropolitan cities. The housing developments are being flattened to make way for condominiums and upper-class housing complexes by those attempting to capitalize on the breathtaking views of metropolitan society. (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/metro/forcedout/)
These residents are being marginalized into the suburbs, where they struggle to find jobs, and loose out on the readily accessible public transportation and public services offered within city limits. You can argue for the safety and charm these new urban middle-and-upper-class developments bring, but at what expense? Anacostia recently opened its second Supermarket, and for those of you that know Anacostia, it is far too expansive for only two Supermarkets. The problem is that it was strategically placed against the backdrop of newly-built, suburban-looking middle-class housing, attempting to push out the native residents of historic Anacostia.
What gentrification is doing is pushing out the residents of urban cities, pushing out the residents who rely on public transit, who rely on the multiplicity of human services found within city limits. These newly gentrified areas simply allow the wealthy a new home, of which they most assuredly do not need. They move from areas of accessibility into areas of accessibility, forcing the poor and repressed further into the clogged gutters of urban society. We can be ashamed of the American poverty found constant across metropolitan society, it is our creation. But we cannot attempt to hide the downtrodden by subjugating them into the materialistic over-consumption of suburban society, of which they cannot, and will never survive.
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If you make a place more desirable to live -- whether by lowering crime, adding more interesting stores, or beautifying the area -- it's a simple fact that *more people will want to live there*, and so rents will rise.
There's an interesting hypocrisy in the gentrification debate. Either people have the 'right' to keep their neighborhoods of a certain ethnic composition, or they do not (the latter is, I'd wager, the position of all thinking people). You'd hopefully feel awful about advocating against too many minorities moving into an area, so why do you not feel any shame about advocating against too many white people moving into an area?
On a separate note, regarding class rather than race, economic studies show that having more well-off people -- specifically, people with bourgeois habits and mores --living in the midst of the poor influences the poor themselves to make better choices, steering a greater percentage of their income toward health care and education rather than unnecessary luxury consumption.
This does not happen because the middle-class are paragons of virtue, but rather because the things they waste money on to show status (golf, home renovation) cost significantly more than the things that the poor waste money on to show status (designer clothes), and so the poor tend to give up on playing the 'status game' and invest in more rational activities that will help improve their economic circumstances in the long-run.
Those in Columbia Heights who stick around and pay more for rent will be getting more for their money -- a lower crime neighborhood and better habits. Those who can't will move elsewhere -- but the issue isn't the gentrification of their specific area, the issue is that they don't have the funds to afford to live in a community as nice as what their community is becoming.