There aren't enough diaries on Kos about gentrification. I don't know where you all live, but in my neck of the woods, (Shaw/Mount Vernon Square, Washington, DC,) you can't talk about anything without factoring for race, class, and the gentrification question; and I mean ANYTHING, from baseball to church parking. Below I've painted a picture of the debates in my neighborhood, which will hopefully prompt some chatter on a question that seems to get lost in the shuffle of Daily Republican Scandal. Please please please discuss; and don't forget to tip liberally, liberals!
My landlord was carjacked, at gunpoint. Three "kids," as he described them, pulled a gun on him in front of the house and took his car and wallet. It was around 10 PM. He's been living here for almost 20 years. Crimes like that used to be much more common. He was here, and he stayed. There were open-air drug markets a couple blocks away. He was here, and he stayed. The police used to find bodies dumped in the alley next to the house. He was here, and he stayed. Now there's a Convention Center down the street, the corner liquor store sells goat cheese, and the emptied-out rowhouses are being resurrected into $600,000 condos, but one still gets carjacked at gunpoint occasionally, and he's here, and he's staying. My landlord is white.
In America, race and class matter. In Washington DC, it seems as though they matter double. Washington is a "Chocolate City", notwithstanding the graham cracker crust of corruption (thank you, AGAIN, Stephen Colbert.) DC's demographic breakdown is approximately 60%-30%-8%-2%, black-white-hispanic-other. The black population however is dropping, (3% between 2000 and 2004,) as the white population increases by a comparable amount, largely due to the return of many whites from the suburbs. Having moved out to the suburbs in the 1970s and 80s, many whites now feel comfortable enough with urban Washington to trade their 2-hour commutes for townhouses, in a reversal of classic urban "white flight."
This influx of wealthier people has driven up real estate prices, particularly as the newcomers (some being new-returners) buy up property. Washington is particularly sucesptable to this phenomenon, because much of the real estate even in impovrished neighborhoods is townhouses, rather than housing projects. (Caveat: It's different east of the river, because of history of housing policy in DC...) Once one rundown townhouse is spiffed up into a Better Homes and Gardens showpiece, incoming buyers feel more comfortable investing in the rest of the block and it tends to snowball down the street--which is why a lot of DC is literally block-to-block in terms of development. Property value goes up, rents skyrocket, and well-established locals find themselves priced out of the places they've lived as long as they can remember.
All that said, the point of this diary is not to explain the process of gentrification. You all know what it is, some in more detail than others, but I want to make you think. Hopefully, some illustrative tales below will prompt discussion not just on the usual racial lines, but about some of the other issues gentrification provokes; ONWARD:
About a week ago I walked past Logan Circle and saw what looked to me (in my shameful religious ignorance) like some kind of old-fashioned tent-revival. It was, in fact, a rally led by leaders of local black churches. Everyone was out there in their Sunday best, protesting calls by neighborhood newcomers to increase ticketing of double-parked cars at the churches.
For years, people double-parked on Sunday mornings and everyone knew it, and everyone accepted it. The church was (and is) a major social institution, and the community agreed years ago to let it alone on this matter. However, many new residents in the neighborhood find it inconvenient, and argue that they have the letter of the law on their side. This is a huge political mess, as it pits the church's social power in the black community against the money and power of the newer residents. Consequently, most local politicians have responded by,...um....basically ignoring it so far. This case isn't simply about people being priced out of an area. Rather, it counterposes two different views on the neighborhood as an institution: On one hand, the communitarian ethos that says "this is how we agreed to do things among ourselves"; on the other, a legalist approach arguing that people shouldn't be allowed seperate rules from the rest of the city just because they all agree internally. I think you can see why local pols have avoided this one like the plague...
A second controvery has arisen over "Little Ethiopia." Or rather, what could be Little Ethiopia. But isn't. Yet. OK, I know I have some 'splainin to do--Listen:
The historic heart of black Washington ran up the 7th Street corridor to U Street, "Black Broadway" during Washington's own incarnation of the Harlem renaissance. After the 1968 riots, the U Street neighborhood declined economically, and it bounced back up recently, due in part to extension of the subway system to include a U Street/Cardozo station. The economic renaissance of the U Street neighborhood has been driven in part by East African immigrants, Ethiopians in particular, who have opened restaurants, clothing stores, and import shops. (Some did it directly after arriving in America, while others moved or expanded their establishments from Adams Morgan, an adjacent neighborhood which already had a number of African-owned businesses.) As a result of their strong economic influence, it was suggested to the DC council that 9th Street between T and U be designated "Little Ethiopia."
In the words of Lee Corso, "Not so fast my friends!" The idea met stiff resistance from the black community. The argument went that Africans were newcomers, who missed the Jim Crow era, missed the 68 riots, and missed the crack epidemic. By the time they arrived, real estate was cheap enough for them to buy into the community, but they had no roots and hadn't been through what the locals had to get to this point. Given the area's history, its rebirth was supposed to be a triumph for Washington's black community; not these interlopers. Ethiopians (and Eritreans) were to be credited for their contributions, certainly, but there was to be no renaming any parts of "Black Broadway" for them.
It got stuck, again, politically. The city council, again, was both unwilling to take a side and unable to work out a comprimise. Last I heard, (and someone can correct me if I've missed any action on this,) there's still been no resolution. In this case, the issue isn't race--rather, it's authenticity. What qualifies people to claim a neighborhood? What qualifies other people to define it? Is it having lived there (x) number or years? Is it having made a particularly strong cultural contribution? The ongoing saga of "Little Ethiopia" is a testament to the complexity of debate in gentrifying cities.
When people need to get elected in Washington, (local gov't here, not federal,) the gentrification question is Topic Number One. "Us v. Them" rhetoric is not usually posed in quite as stark racial terms as Sharpe James used against Cory Booker in Newark, but railing against "downtown" business interests seems to work right good for Marion Barry even after all these years. (I've taken to calling him "Mayor Emeritus" Barry.)
On one hand, those downtown business interests are an easy target--and deserve a lot of criticism. The baseball stadium mess (which is worth its own diary) has shown how alienated the city's real estate powerplayers are from 90% of Washingtonians. (I mean the ones who stay here after 5:30 PM friday.) Having a Starbucks on every corner makes it easy to find a latte, but it makes it awful hard to be proud of where you're from; particularly if you can't be from there any more!
On the flip side, liberals need not pull their punches when dealing with machine politics. Many people who still support Barry (the man AND his machine) do so because he got them their summer job, or he used to come to the park they played at as kids. They have fond memories of him, which are nice, but hardly reasons to think he can manage a city. Frankly, the Barry machine reeks of Tammany Hall, corruption included. Sure, the ethnic groups are different, but the method is basically the same. Everyone out there is against you, so you should stick with us because we're your people and we know how to get you favors if you need them. It's old-school machine politics, plain and simple. Slamming "gentrification" is a surefire populist vote-getter; whether it actually helps raise standard of living for anyone is another question.
I need not tell you things are complicated; but they are. Gentrification raises of course the issue of race, but also issues of place, authenticity, community, and urban priorities.
Personally, I can see both sides of the argument. Moving the poor out of view is not a solution to poverty. It's socially and morally reprehensible, even if it makes the neighborhood look prettier for the mindless tourists in FBI t-shirts. On the other hand, the lower crime rates that seem to come with gentrification are good for everyone. Dropping from 500 murders a year to 200 doesn't mean that wealthy white lawyers are much safer in their Georgetown row houses than they were before; it means that black-on-black crime is down, and that people can sit out on their porches at night in Shaw, Columbia Heights, and Northeast DC. (And hopefully, soon, Southeast a little bit more...) I have a knee-jerk inclination towards rent-control as a method of ensuring mixed-income neighborhoods, rather than using vouchers a la Section 8, but otherwise I'm pretty much up for ideas.
The issue is quite strange to me personally. When I walk down the street in my jeans and white shirt and tennis shoes, I look like a classic "gentrifier." The facts argue otherwise:
-I'm not renting or buying a full property, I'm renting a single room in a house with a bathroom, no kitchen. I don't set the rent;
-And the rent is hardly "market" price. I looked for a place for 4 months before I finished college, and am currently paying $675, which includes ALL MY UTILITIES. Look around the Mount Vernon Square metro station in Washington DC for a place that's under $700 including utilities. Good, now KEEP looking...The fact that my landlord got the place (as in bought, not rented,) for so cheap way back when means that me and the other tenant can pay very little.
-I've been poor. Poor poor. Welfare poor, my mother was bankrupt poor, used to eating a lot of spaghetti poor. I'm not preaching in order to pat myself on the back; but I feel more comfortable with the people I see at the laundromat on the corner than I do with the kids who look more like me but are getting out of their BMWs in front of their $400,000 studio apartments.
So it's weird for me. I like this neighborhood. I haven't been here that long, but it FEELS like a neighborhood, the way a lot of DC doesn't. I have a Korean-owned corner store, a black-owned laundromat, and a Salvadoran restaurant around me. Most nights I feel safe on the street, sometimes it's a little dodgy. The crime rate is statistically higher than it seems it should be, compared to the general feeling walking around.
If I had money, and wanted to buy here, should I? That is, would I be doing more for the community by investing my money here, shopping at the shops, eating at the restaurants, if it means real estate prices go up for everyone else? Or would it be better if I just took myself to a "white neighborhood" and left this place alone? What if I were rich but black? Then what would be better for the community?
My landlord, myself, the Ethiopians on 9th Street, and whole host of others illustrate the contradictions of the gentrification process. I hope this diary has sparked some thoughts. Even with all the Daily Republican Scandal(s), gentrification and its consequences MATTER, they matter in every single urban area in America. Please feel free to post responses, agreements and objections, and otherwise. And yes, take my stupid poll! Keep it up, Kos Kritters! (I find "Kossacks" weird. My great-grandparents would be very confused if I told them I was a Kossack...)