The gentrification issue is really interesting to me, and obviously far more complicated than can be summed up with an "ugh, white people!" We live in a small, inexpensive house that was supposed to be our starter home (two months before the market crash way back when!) and now we've been here fourteen years with no plans to leave.
Our neighborhood is diverse, working-class, and is semi-rural (we're in the county just outside the city limits of a sprawling Southern city). Within the past five years, what was once a barren field filled with bracken has been developed into a new neighborhood (also extremely diverse) with homes that are 2-2.5 times more expensive than ours. Our neighborhoods are connected by a through street.
Since that neighborhood was built and filled, our home values have gone waaaay up. I'll give some numbers (though as a city dweller you might cry). We bought our house in the fall of 2007 for $112,000. It's now valued at about $170,000 based on comps in our neighborhood (but our house might actually go for more, because of improvements and upgrades we've made over the years).
I know this isn't gentrification in the traditional sense of a neighborhood being taken over and reimagined. But it's at least gentrificatoin-adjacent, in that more wealthy people have moved in next door (again, an extremely racially diverse set of wealthy people) and now our home values are so much higher, people who used to be able to actually buy a home may not be able to anymore.
I don't think anyone in our smaller-house, poorer neighborhood feels bad about this. Our investment in our homes is paying off.
Could what has happened naturally here be recreated on purpose? A neighborhood is built/revitalized and for the next 20-25 years it's purposefully rent/mortgage controlled (for instance, only people making under a certain income qualify to buy homes there) as a way of helping working-class people build wealth?
The Klein/Demsas podcast addresses a lot of these issues (especially in the second half). I think the super-short answer is that housing shortages only work out well for people who already own homes (especially if they never plan on buying another one). Expanding supply to match demand helps people at both the low end and the high end of the housing market, and it doesn't even matter that much what type of homes are built (because even if it's high-end stuff, at least fewer wealthy people will be bidding against poorer people for limited stock).
I think your perspective on gentrification is why it is so hard to fight it. From your perspective, building expensive homes --> rich people moving in, area prices going up. The underlying economics say that those "rich" people were priced out of elsewhere, so they moved to where you live, because that was the most affordable area they could fine. If we had built enough homes for them elsewhere, they never would have shown up in your area!
Right, but I'm not mad about it is what I'm saying. Our area is a prime example of the benefits of mixed-income neighborhoods. And I also think it's not necessarily applicable in my region to say those "rich" people were priced out of elsewhere. The demographics of both neighborhoods point to the people in the bigger, more expensive houses being newly part of the middle class (multiple immigrant families, multiple Black families, multiple Asian families, interracial families, and young white families too). But if what folks mean when they say gentrification is "upwardly mobile white people" and/or "house flippers" (which is often the case), then that's something else. I guess I'm just saying there are reasons for even lower-income people to be YIMBYs.
Actually, "defund law enforcement" is a key portion of the Republican philosophy. Did anyone notice their long-term commitment to refusing to adequately fund the Internal Revenue Service ...
At least the horse could take a punch. The one in 'Blazing Saddles' went down like a sack of potatoes.
The gentrification issue is really interesting to me, and obviously far more complicated than can be summed up with an "ugh, white people!" We live in a small, inexpensive house that was supposed to be our starter home (two months before the market crash way back when!) and now we've been here fourteen years with no plans to leave.
Our neighborhood is diverse, working-class, and is semi-rural (we're in the county just outside the city limits of a sprawling Southern city). Within the past five years, what was once a barren field filled with bracken has been developed into a new neighborhood (also extremely diverse) with homes that are 2-2.5 times more expensive than ours. Our neighborhoods are connected by a through street.
Since that neighborhood was built and filled, our home values have gone waaaay up. I'll give some numbers (though as a city dweller you might cry). We bought our house in the fall of 2007 for $112,000. It's now valued at about $170,000 based on comps in our neighborhood (but our house might actually go for more, because of improvements and upgrades we've made over the years).
I know this isn't gentrification in the traditional sense of a neighborhood being taken over and reimagined. But it's at least gentrificatoin-adjacent, in that more wealthy people have moved in next door (again, an extremely racially diverse set of wealthy people) and now our home values are so much higher, people who used to be able to actually buy a home may not be able to anymore.
I don't think anyone in our smaller-house, poorer neighborhood feels bad about this. Our investment in our homes is paying off.
Could what has happened naturally here be recreated on purpose? A neighborhood is built/revitalized and for the next 20-25 years it's purposefully rent/mortgage controlled (for instance, only people making under a certain income qualify to buy homes there) as a way of helping working-class people build wealth?
The Klein/Demsas podcast addresses a lot of these issues (especially in the second half). I think the super-short answer is that housing shortages only work out well for people who already own homes (especially if they never plan on buying another one). Expanding supply to match demand helps people at both the low end and the high end of the housing market, and it doesn't even matter that much what type of homes are built (because even if it's high-end stuff, at least fewer wealthy people will be bidding against poorer people for limited stock).
I think your perspective on gentrification is why it is so hard to fight it. From your perspective, building expensive homes --> rich people moving in, area prices going up. The underlying economics say that those "rich" people were priced out of elsewhere, so they moved to where you live, because that was the most affordable area they could fine. If we had built enough homes for them elsewhere, they never would have shown up in your area!
Right, but I'm not mad about it is what I'm saying. Our area is a prime example of the benefits of mixed-income neighborhoods. And I also think it's not necessarily applicable in my region to say those "rich" people were priced out of elsewhere. The demographics of both neighborhoods point to the people in the bigger, more expensive houses being newly part of the middle class (multiple immigrant families, multiple Black families, multiple Asian families, interracial families, and young white families too). But if what folks mean when they say gentrification is "upwardly mobile white people" and/or "house flippers" (which is often the case), then that's something else. I guess I'm just saying there are reasons for even lower-income people to be YIMBYs.
Australia is truly the Florida of the world.
Actually, "defund law enforcement" is a key portion of the Republican philosophy. Did anyone notice their long-term commitment to refusing to adequately fund the Internal Revenue Service ...