Gentrification Reality Tour: Neither Benign nor Benevolent
Claims that the threat of gentrification are grossly exaggerated belie a fundamental misunderstanding of the real threat, the real victims, and the real consequences of inner-city redevelopment.
John Norquist, the President of the Congress for the New Urbanism, wrote that the threat of gentrification "is grossly exaggerated in all but a few mega metros and [the] obsession with the perceived threat from the moneyed class slows needed reinvestment in most large US cities."
He also quoted a dubious study by Columbia University Professor Lance Freeman, which claims that "low-income residents were no more likely to move from gentrifying neighborhoods than those not experiencing gentrification."
Although I do agree with Mr. Norquist that gentrification is not much of an issue in places like Detroit, where very few people want to live, his claims that the threat in places where gentrification is thriving is "exaggerated," and is nothing more than "armchair liberals assuming the heroic mantle of protectors of the poor," aside from being misguided and condescending, belies a fundamental misunderstanding of the real threat, the real victims, and the real consequences of inner city redevelopment.
The poor do not have a choice in the matter. They are being forced out of their neighborhoods, often by much more dire and sinister means than just escalating rents. The North Philadelphia neighborhood of Kensington, one of the nation's poorest and most neglected neighborhoods, exemplifies this problem, as shown in Drug War Reality Tour, a documentary by the Sundance Award-winning Guerilla News Network. Deindustrialization, accompanied by an increase in unemployment, created large ghettos in Philadelphia and other inner cities and some of their adjacent suburbs. The illicit drug market, as well as the rural prison-industrial complex which exploded in the subsequent 20 years as a result of the consolidation of independent farming into Big Agribusiness, became replacement economies for labor forces that were deemed expendable. As cities began to thrive again in the 1990s, these ghettos became large areas of very valuable real estate for prospective development. Now, the only problem was how to remove the inhabitants.
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The Kensington Welfare Rights Union (KWRU) conducts The Drug War Reality Tour, which transports busloads of people into Kensington to witness firsthand the battlefield of America's own domestic Drug War. Throughout the tour, the street-wise members of the KWRU explain the ins and outs of the inner city narco-culture and how forces like police complicity and corporate investment are aiding and using the drug epidemic to drive Kensington's people out of their own neighborhood in order to make room for new urban development.
"It's clear that there are forces at play that are using the consequences and devastation of the drug epidemic, and the deterioration of economic conditions, to begin to create a situation where they can push the poor out of urban areas to try to attract the so-called ‘Creative Class'—the educated class with the higher incomes—into the inner cities to try and create an infrastructure that will attract investment," says Willie Baptist, the Education Director of the KWRU. "So what you see now is an acceleration of this pushing of the poor into the periphery."
Because of the property seizure laws enacted during the last three Presidential administrations, the so-called "War on Drugs" has been used to evict tenants and seize inner-city property, which is then auctioned off or sold to waiting developers friendly with the police and city government, for barely a fraction of what it is worth. This practice in part helps keep afloat the artificial real-estate bubble which has been keeping the American economy from collapsing in on itself due to unemployment, crushing debt, and trade deficits.
In Chicago and New York, two of the most heavily gentrified cities in the nation, promises to rebuild failed public housing and decayed neighborhoods with New Urbanist mixed-income developments have mostly been a chimera. In Chicago, the Drug War has long been an established apparatus of gentrification, as police flood developing neighborhoods with an occupation-like finality, often making mass-arrests of young Black and Latino youth under the controversial "gang loitering ordinance" which prohibits more than four people (of color) from congregating together on any given block. Despite the blatant unconstitutionality of this law and its racial profiling, the message is clear: things are changing around here, and you are no longer welcome!
There is no policy apparatus to mandate -- or incentive to motivate -- developers to set aside units for low to moderate income families. And when "low-income" units are set aside, they are generally for those with an income of $30,000 a year; yet most low-income families barely survive on $8,000-$12,000 a year. Former Chicago Housing Authority residents who wanted to continue living in subsidized housing under the Section 8 voucher program, or move into one of the paltry few replacement units which have been built, have had to undergo Draconian scrutiny as part of screening processes, and very few have been approved. And even if residents do manage to secure Section 8 vouchers, very few private landlords will accept them as tenants.
Thus, continued racism, fear of the poor, and the specter of "drug crime" have given major cities all the pretext they need to forcibly change demographics, displacing hundreds of thousands of poor people—mostly black and Latino minorities. Those displaced are forced to move to the few compact, decaying ghettos that remain (for as long as they remain before they are gentrified), or increasingly to decrepit inner-ring suburbs which are fast becoming the most dangerous places in the nation. And of course many remain homeless and living in the streets.
Regarding diminishing tax bases and the need for investment, Norquist posits a monolithic understanding of "investment" by insinuating that the only form available is through the redevelopment of residential real estate. Although redlining and white flight moved most of the middle class out of the industrial cities, there is more than enough money in the wealthy class and the corporate tax base to rebuild our cities a dozen times over. But our government—federal, state, and municipal—has an entrenched policy of profligate corporate welfare, and the Bush tax cuts to the wealthy have had an almost universally deleterious effect on state and municipal budgets across the nation.
Despite the budget crises, cities have systematically eschewed taxing corporations, instead giving them TIFs (tax increment financing) and tax abatements to beat the band. While corporations more and more are becoming the sole owners of urban real estate, the solution for most city and county governments is to over-tax the working class residents to compensate. This is a massive policy failure and speaks more to the corruption and prevailing robber-baron mentality of our so-called leaders and the corporate establishment than it does to population demographics.
How many billions of tax dollars were bilked from urban residents to build private sports arenas in the last 20 years? To allow billion-dollar transnationals to erect corporate headquarters in gleaming skyscrapers, or introduce Big Box retail outlets in former residential areas? Yes, cities do need more residents of all sorts, but they are not getting them; what they are getting is a two-class system of the affluent, and the desperate-to-indigent, many of whom are only there to work in service jobs for the monied classes.
All this has created what I would characterize as an unspoken, "nudge-nudge, wink-wink" policy to redraw our cities into two-class City-States. Cities, corporations, developers, the "Creative Class," policy wonks, and apologists hide their intentions behind code words like "market forces," "investment" and "crime prevention," when in fact the market system only benefits those with enough capital to dominate it. In addition the "crime issue" has become a code word for racism and fear of the poor, as most property and violent crime has significantly receded in the last 15 years, and drug arrests have skyrocketed, in some places by as much as 1,000 percent.
Charles Shaw is a writer and activist living in Chicago. He is the publisher of Newtopia Magazine, and a Contributing Writer and Editor for The Next American City.
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Poor People's Rights
Wonder if I might just throw a tiny bit ugly reality into this very academic discussion? I'm not an urban planner. I'm a poor person. I live, as a single mother of 6 with 3 at home and 2 on weekends, on about $14,000 a year, (which is now, by the way, $9500 over the limit to qualify for Medicaid!) (Yeah, life is hard when you've got six years of college and can't get a job at McDonalds--unemployment in this county is 7.3% as of January '05)
So...I'm trying to move--my rent's over half my income, before utilities. Section 8 waiting list here is 3+ years, and I was just disqualified (after waiting 6 months) from the newer tax-incentive "projects" (Income-Based Housing) because my credit scrore is too low!
So I'm driving KC's "low-income" neighborhoods thinking I'll find a "diverse" area that will allow this white woman to share the street without too much overt hostility. I've called on two properties where the owner said, in so many words, "Do you know where these apartments are? Have you ever actually BEEN to this neighborhood? Maybe you'd better drive by first." In the run-down student housing near the college, intermingled with the professor's houses? More than I pay now. Over on "the other side of Troost"? Sure--there's housing available. Lots of nasty-looking houses with broken steps and holes in the roof boasting "Section 8 Accepted." So I call on them ... silly me--I learn the real meaning of that sign is, "Rent is higher than anyone would normally pay for this piece of shit property because we know Section 8 will pay whatever we ask." What about the dumpy apartments next to the nicer houses in the "progressive" (determined via anti-war yard signs, mostly) neighborhood, where people are obviously "fixing up the place"? Astronomically high. So I stop and talk to some folks in front of an apartment building east of downtown--"I'm trying to find somewhere to live ..." When the laughter subsides, the summary goes something like this: you are NOT serious!! We'll run your white ass right out of this hood. . . this is where WE stay.
Now, tell me again that gentrification hasn't raised the cost of housing in the city, and that racism isn't an issue! 'Cause I'm not moving in with the white folks in the trailers next to the tracks beside the auto plant where the confederate flags and "Protected by Smith & Wesson" stickers abound!
And tell me again what you oppose about poor people's rights... what rights were you referring to? Because it's now absolutely clear to me that this poor person doesn't have a "right" to anything.
Excuse me?
Kunstler has asked: "Why do the poor have a permanent right to inhabit the inner city?"
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I hope an imposter posted this, and not THE Andres Duany. With this sort of 'out-of-touch with reality' attitude when it comes to the plight of the poor, all three empty mentions of the word "diverse" ought to be stricken from the charter of the CNU on the organization's Website. The unfortunate reality is that in a capitalist society, the "right" does exist for well-to-do white people to build neighborhoods for other well-to-do white people, but as an urbanist myself -- if I may co-opt the term -- I prefer to strive for a more inclusive way of building communities. It is so easy, and equally apalling, for someone such as Duany to toss out a quote such as the one above when the money and power to assert one's supposed "rights" obviously sits in the corner of the upper classes and not with those barely surviving in the inner city the New Urbanists seek to 'transform.'
Lack of supply
Gentrification is merely a symptom of restricted supply of halfway decent places to live in North American cities. If there were more such livable neighbourhoods, price pressures would ease off. More regulation or subsidy (even if well managed) is far less likely to alleviate the problem than increasing the supply of pleasant, urban neighbourhoods (which can also make a decent profit).
How about a fact-check?
For all I know, this essay could be a fictional account of some alternate universe. There are no facts cited, it's just all grand sweeping statements like "Former Chicago Housing Authority residents ... have had to undergo Draconian scrutiny as part of screening processes, and very few have been approved", and "even if residents do manage to secure Section 8 vouchers, very few private landlords will accept them as tenants", and "continued racism, fear of the poor, and the specter of 'drug crime' have given major cities all the pretext they need to forcibly change demographics, displacing hundreds of thousands of poor people—mostly black and Latino minorities."
These are all just statements. Nothing is supported by facts. What's the point of this essay? What am I supposed to take out of it, other than that you're passionate on the issue and may or may not have your facts straight?
"dubious study"
Mr. Shaw:
As a social scientists, I encourage and welcome critiques of my work. Such criticism, if well founded, will lead to an overall expansion of our knowledge. So I am very curious as to what specifically about the study you found to be "dubious?"
A Final Note on this Discussion
To all...
It is clear this is an incendiary issue, and I am happy I was able to throw a little proverbial fuel on the fire.
I do not expect many to agree with me or my assessments, or my approach (although, at times I am not that pleased with it either). It involves challenging too many personal interests of this society of P & D people. My intention was not to write something that would be palatable; my intention was to raise awareness about the negative consequences of Gentrification, and make unmade connections.
Sometimes, in desperate situations, polite and politically correct language becomes antithetical. This is a dire situation in our cities, no matter the relative scale from city to city, and our nation at large, because the fundamentals underlying the academic arguments behind Gentrification (beginning with acknowledging that official definition of "gentrification" is "The restoration and upgrading of deteriorated urban property by middle-class or affluent people, often resulting in displacement of lower-income people")are deeply socio-economical, and hence political, in orgin and nature. Moreover, they are being used as jusitification for related policies that are a legitimate threat to our freedoms. It may be difficult for many to see that now, but persistance will show it eventually.
Thus, until these issues are openly acknowledged and addressed--and not some politically correct, sanitized version nor an overly demagoguish version either--then people like myself will continue to write what we write and say what we say, in varying forms of indignance, I am sure.
My personal foibles aside, please do not make the mistake of interpreting this as self-righteousness. There is culpability all around, and I am more than aware of mine.
I'd like to leave you with a thought, which I hope you may take a minute to contemplate. Per racism, I once was told by a friend many years ago that "all White people are racist and all Black people have internalized racism". It took me many years to understand what that meant, and involved so much that it would be impossible for me to explain it here. But, in its simplest terms, it means that the psychological processes behind racism--and by extention and present association--fear of the poor are so complex and so ingrained into our minute by minute thought patterns, that it often prevents us for seeing things the way they are, or when seeing it, justifying it through an array of means which often involves dehumanizing some group, such as referring to gang youth as "feral". "Feral" is defined as "Existing in a wild or untamed state, or having returned to an untamed state from domestication." This is preceisly the point I have been making. To view another human being as a lesser species that needs to be "domesticated" was the pervailing belief and practice during Slavery. Enough said about that; the only way to solve the problem is to be empatheic and understanding of the situations that force people into these situations. To think otherwise, in my opinion, is to succumb to the demogogy of "Good" and "Evil".
I believe that to be a critical thinker we need to strive to be apolititcal humanists, and very self-critical of ourselves as a species. This does not make you popular. But it is as necessary to the overall debate as the choir singing the praises.
There is much to learn, but as I discover every day, there is an equal, if not greater amount, to unlearn. We are in the midst of an epidemic of Cognitive Dissonance in this society. I believe in my heart this is at the root of so much of the animosity going on these days, present situation inclusive.
Cultures
Mr Shaw. I had to reread your article, looking to gain some understanding of why it should receive such vitriolic, unwarranted responses. That they reinforce your assertions about racism and fear of the poor is understandable, but please seek explanations and solutions that do not further inflame the situation.
Gentrification is not wholly negative. The neighborhood of my youth was mostly black (I'm white), but has become mostly Asian. The city where I now live has refurbished most of its inner-city housing, though the higher standard of living has raised the cost of housing for everyone.
The corporate welfare element of your argument may not mesh well with the racism angle on gentrification. These days, cities have little choice but to award subsidies to developers almost as the cost of doing business. Be that as it may, cities should expect returns on subsidies that benefit those the city serves - its citizens and its cultures.
Urban planning is a highly political and thus contentious field. I have said many untoward things in the heat of debate and always regret it. I have strong differences of opinion with Right and Left politics and believe that most solutions can be found with a Moderate perspective.
I mentioned cultures and suggest the US lacks the will to build them, though culture is the essense of neighborhoods, livihoods, economies, and natural environs, as well as skin color and history. It is wrong to popularly label gangs as a culture. A gang of young men and women are only a small struggling segment of an irresponsible, indifferent, unhealthy, overly pious culture that built no means for them to mature.
I Have Been Labelled an Interloper
Mr. Shaw labels me an "interloper" who has never been to a bad Chicago neighborhood. For one thing, I'm an urban planner working for a nonprofit whose projects are almost exclusively located in powerfully underpriveleged areas of the South and West sides where I'm frequently in the field.
Second of all, I recently moved downtown to River North, into an established "yuppie" building...after spending two years living on a gang-infested block in Logan Square, where I moved because at the time that was all I could afford. I lived with gangsters toking up in my laundry room, residents white, Hispanic, and other getting mugged on a nightly basis walking home from the L, and an open air drug market in front of my house. I certainly wish the police Mr. Shaw describes had been working in my old neighborhood. I cannot tell you how many times I had to call the police, nor how many times the police opined to me that their hands were tied because the loitering ordinance was struck down and there was nothing they could do unless someone got hurt.
It is facile to dismiss a person's opinion outright by calling them names instead of meeting their opinion on factual grounds. Obviously Mr. Shaw has no patience for differing views. I wonder which one readers will think is more benign: gentrification; or my and many others' intolerably unsafe experience living in Chicago's many "Logan Squares"?
Of course, Mr. Shaw needn't worry about me being a gentrifier anymore. My money is now spent in a much safer neighborhood with much better services. Perhaps I should adopt Mr. Shaw's strategy and try to keep poor people and racial minorities out of my new neighborhood to protect its "character"? That seems no more defensible to me than Mr. Shaw opining to keep white residents with money out of less-priveleged neighborhoods to protect their character. It's amazing how inner-city activists feel completely free to espouse such reverse racism. My city, Mr. Shaw. My decision where to live. Read the Constitution lately?
? for Charles Shaw
Charles, while I generally disagree with your entire premise, I'm curious which actual policies you are advocating.
Would it not be beneficial for these residents to try to be a part of the gentrification? What exactly, are you doing that would benefit them? How does defending their lives as professional gang members and drug dealers/users benefit them? It seems to me that their path to "progress" depending on how one defines it, is to participate in gentrification, not prevent it.
Of course, I agree to some degree, that some cities go overboard in corporate welfare like gentrification, but that is more a criticism of those particular cities, not the phenomenon, in general.
In perspective, I think it's fair to say that some, even many, gentrification advocates are well intentioned. Can we say the same thing about the gang members and drug dealers whom you describe as victims?
Tripe
I consider myself fairly progressive on these matters, but this is quite the scream-fest. Blaming the existence of an urban underclass on sports stadiums again? Please. I can't take any of this seriously.
gentrification? What gentrification?
Shaw seems to think that the War on Drugs somehow leads to gentrification.
But let's look at the record: Shaw focuses on three cities, NYC, Philadelphia and Chicago.
As of the 2000 Census, Philadelphia had a poverty rate of 22.9%- three and a half times that of its suburbs.
NYC had a poverty rate of 21.2%- about two and a half times that of its suburbs.
Chicago had a poverty rate of 19.6%- about three and a half times that of its suburbs.
If this is gentrification I would hate to see what Shaw likes.
Presumptions
Mr. Shaw,
If you see a young middle income couple moving into a house in South Shore or Washington Park, do you think they are to blame for the police harrasement that may have preceded them?
Who is the racist here?
Shaw continues to support gang violence and uses class and racial rhetoric to halt development in the cities and keep it out in the suburbs.
Shaw seems to think that he is the only person who has ever lived in these dangerous areas and lived to talk about it on this website. Many of us live this fight everyday, and Shaw is indeed the enemy. Because of him and people of his ilk, the slums resist change, fight the police, and support gangs and drug culture. Because of these people, we endure gunfire in the streets and loose friends to the violence that surrounds us.
affordable housing
Hi Charles:
I'm still running the affordable housing tract. I'm trying to understand how we can displace a whole segment of people and call it progress. Hope all is well, bobbi ubber-sponsor
What?
1. The Freeman study isn't dubious. It identifies the reason that there is limited displacement: because people want to stay in nice areas, they pay a greater and increasing proportion of their income stream in rent. I do think, in strong real estate markets, that this displacement will increase. Short of changes in federal housing policy and increased subsidies, I can't offer solutions to this, unless rents were based on incomes, not demand for housing.
2. But Freeman's work isn't the whole story.
3. I only know my own experience, which is Washington, DC and Detroit. In DC, we have a significant increase in neighborhood investment (I don't call it gentrification). I don't think that there is a massive occupation of poor neighborhoods by police in order to lead to displacement and conquering of neighborhoods by the forces of whitey and order.
4. I think it's incredibly facile to argue that people have an inalienable right to create disorder. I think of myself as an inner-city progressive, where my politics are mediated by the reality of living in a city and dealing with municipal institutions and disorder. At the same time that I vote Green or other for President, I read and value the perspective of City Journal or Fred Siegel's _The Future Once Happened Here_.
5. I consider myself an old urbanist committed to repopulating and revitalizing the center city. Public safety is an important piece of this agenda. While I consider myself a libertarian on the issue of drugs and favor legalization to reduce the crime and disorder currently associated with drug sales, I prefer to not associate with people who use drugs, and I don't use drugs myself. In any case, I don't romanticize drug use or negate the problems the drug industry creates in urban areas.
Chicago Gang Loitering Ordinance
Although the Illinois Supreme Court did in fact deem the gang loitering ordinance unconstitutional a few years ago, it made little difference on the streets. The Chicago Police still actively employ it as unofficial policy. The practice of racial profiling is pandemic in Chicago, particularly in both gentrifying neighborhoods and in such controversial policies such as "Operation Closed Market", where masses of Black people in poor neighborhoods are arressted oftentimes a could hundred a night in massive multi-block sweeps of, many of whom did nothing more than walk on a certain block at the wrong time. It's called "WWB" (Walking While Black).
I am certain Mike Dolye has neither been to any of these places, nor knows anything about the brutal and blatantly unconstitutional tactics of the Chicago Police. Interlopers have no right commenting on things they know nothing about.
Moreover, the fact that "Walt" called black people "feral" is indefensible and racist beyond imagination, and makes me sick. I am willing to bet the the only information "Walt" has about gang culture he got at his local Blockbuster. Gang culture is highly complex and, in these neighborhoods, the only thing that separates many youth from total indigence. Stereotyping by effete Liberals who have never met a gang member does not help the public at large move any closer to understanding.
Although gangs can be quite violent with each other, it pales in comparison to the police violence and harassment perpetrated against them on a daily basis.
These comments have only reinforced my assertions that racism and fear of the poor is driving gentrification.
The Middle Class Has the SAME Rights
The anti-loitering law was struck down several years ago. An educated urbanist such as Mr. Shaw knows this, making it baldly obvious he is just rabble-rousing. Speaking as a member of the "creative class" Shaw refers to, I have as much right to live in any neighborhood I choose as does a person of lesser means. It's not my fault someone else's income is lower than mine (though it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see poor family after poor family of color here in Chicago who very publicly seem to take no responsibility for parental guidance or personal development).
And quite frankly it works both ways. Just as a Section 8 resident might not be made to feel welcome in the new Trump condo here in Chicago, I certainly am not going to move on down to Englewood, either. The urban poor do not have the license on neighborhood accessibility.
This whole idea that gentrification is a bad thing is utter nonsense. If I choose to spend my money on housing and sundries elsewhere, who loses out? Not me. The local tax base does. Yeah, that would be a big help to the urban poor.
Freeman Study
Is the Freeman study dubious?
improvement is NOT inevitable
I can only speak from my own personal experience, and that is: that without gentrification, the decline is continuous and devestating. People in my beloved city (Cincinnati) are dying, in part because activists have deterred ureban improvement with the same vehemence that Shaw exhibits. My experience is that there are many, many more urban areas in this country that share the problems of Detroit (flight) than those that suffer from high rents and too much police enforcement. Gentrification is NOT inevitable, and I know because I see the crime, poverty and deterioration every day.
Why do the poor have a permanent right
Kunstler has asked: "Why do the poor have a permanent right to inhabit the inner city?"
Shaw op-ed
Shaw's example undercuts his premise. Philadelphia's housing costs are still very low. Moreover, the gentrification in Philadelphia is neither massive nor widespread. The same applies to Chicago where most of the South Side is barren and neglected. It is NOT gentrification doing this.
The drug war/prison-industrial complex deserves scrutiny and criticism. But Shaw is setting up a straw man argument here. The huge underemployment of minority urban males also creates a severe problem in their communities, one that is addressed only by imprisoning them for often minor offenses. The problem is not just drugs, it's the social ecology of entire cities beset by feral gangsters.
Blaming gentrification and yuppies for this dolorous state of affairs is always tempting. We all despise yuppies, even those of us who qualify as yuppies. Unfortunately, the city cannot survive without a strong economic class. I would prefer that class be "middle", but if evolution tilts to the "upper-middle" most cities are still better off than simply collapsing altogether.
The resurgence of cities in shows that the best of America is still alive. Bush may give spendthrift tax cuts to corporations, but most of them are not good civic citizens to begin with. Cities are blue oases in a red desert. They are not the enemy. Making them so only rewards those who are.