Do those black people want us to create "poor people reserves" where no nice houses or buildings are allowed? If that happened, they'd just turn around and start whining that it's racist segregation. It's just totally moronic complaint. There are real issues to talk about, but they make up bullshit.
property taxes. value of the houses. but the bigger point is that peoples houses are bought for X dollars. The people come in and either fix it up real nice or tear it down and rebuild it...and then try to sell it. And it's now Y value, (where Y is bigger than X). Prices people out of neighborhoods.
This "gentrification" this give me a chuckle. People wailed about "white flight" to the suburbs and now some young ones see the chance to return to the urban areas. The return of a few whites (or brown with money) gets a new name and a new reason to wail. Improving ones property has been a natural human endeavor since the hut was invented. Where that doesn't happen should cause one to be wary.
So the argument is that they are driven out of their homes by rising property taxes? Most home owners want the value of their home to rise. And anyway, the rise and fall of real estate values have nothing to do with race. Some black people seem to have this idea that white people conspire to improve an area to drive out black people. It's so absurd. And as another poster mentioned, the prior generation of civil rights activists wanted to end segregation, and now this generation seems to be complaining about integration. It's like they are afraid the ghetto is going away. We should all hope that ghettos go away and everyones communities improve. But unfortunatly, there will probably always be ghettos here. The same thing works in reverse, where communties age, and the poor move in and the wealthy move out. It's no conspiracy, it's just the way things roll. For people to get up and scream about it is just ridiculous.
What pisses me off, is when black people cry about white people moving into their neighborhood, in the context of complaining about racism. I mean, get real. If you're worried about that, then you are a fucking racist. I still don't really buy the whole bit about the value of your home going up too much. But I mean, if that's happening, sell it, take the profits and move to another area. What else would they have us do? Create poor people reservations where no development is allowed? Wealth caps? Quite being stupid.
Gentrification just doesn't happened to black neighborhoods. Go drive down SE Division from SE 12th to 39th. Drive into the side streets. You have well established neighborhoods, some middle class, some lower class. The city changed the zoning so apartments and condos could be built, up to 30 unit buildings with zero parking because the city believes that these new residents don't own cars, they either commute by bus or bike. But the fact is they don't, they park in the side streets. Neighborhoods are inundated with cars and traffic. Then the city started the stupid bioswale project and eliminated even more street parking. Nice working class neighborhoods have been drastically changed. Sure, like you say, their value went up, they should be happy. But a lot of people live in those neighborhood are retired, home paid for. Their property taxes have shot up. They're neighborhood is much more crowded, with people, cars, traffic. Packing more people into the inner city isn't always a great thing.
If you live in a neighborhood where the majority of the people are in 150K houses, but people come in and buy out the neighbors, or buy you out (and gentrify your house), you are being priced out of that neighborhood.
What's the alternative? More suburbs? That isn't a great thing either. What we need is the neutron bomb. Damn that Jimmy Carter! barfo
How about having the developer include parking with his apartment/condo? Might not be able to get 30 units in the same amount of space but it wouldn't have the same spillover into the neighborhoods.
When gentrification happens, the people who are pushed out aren't home owners. They're renters. Their rent goes from affordable to unaffordable and they're forced away. "Poor people reserves" already exist. They get compounded because of gentrification. Gentrification doesn't come to the ghetto as a first step. It goes to working class/lower income neighborhoods and forces a percentage of the people that live there down a rung so that they're corralled back into ghetto's and hoods. When enough development is built they usually buyout/bulldoze those too, which scatters people to another already over populated ghetto/hood. ...Anyway, I feel like Bernie is a Ron Paul for the left. He's old and has run out of fucks to give about trying to be what people expect from a politician and so people love him. Like Paul, he probably doesn't have a snowballs chance, but the people that love him really love him.
22,000 (plus at least 1k outside) showed up for Bernie's rally at Moda Center tonight, by far his biggest crowd thus far.
That's true, did you see him in the new Wet Hot American Summer show on Netflix? Fucking crazy, fams.
