Gentrification. It's a key happening right now. Is gentrification good? Is it bad? What is it? Dictionary.com defines gentrification as, "the buying and renovation of houses and stores in deteriorated urban neighborhoods by upper- or middle-income families or individuals, thus improving property values but often displacing low-income families and small businesses." That's as good of a definition as any. It shows both major viewpoints. Gentrification is happening in Over-the-Rhine right now. Actually, it's strange that it hasn't happened yet with its close proximity to downtown and its beautiful old architecture. Gentrification isn't about mixed income; it's about changing the entire feel and everything of a neighborhood. But that just moves the poverty elsewhere.
This weekend in Chicago we got an interesting view of gentrification. We met with three students of the Masters of Social Justice program at Loyola University. As a part of the program, each student has to do a two-semester internship. Nathan, one of the students who spoke with us, works with a group in the Lawndale neighborhood of Chicago, which is where we stayed, but we didn't have an opportunity to explore too much. In this neighborhood, there's a law or ordinance that says residents of the area can take vacant lots and begin gardening on them. This makes the area nicer, which improves the property values, which raises property taxes, which raises rents, which pushes lower-income people out. And so this sort of work is stuck in a dilemma: you want people to work toward beautifying their neighborhoods so that they can live in nicer areas. But that beautification can essentially push them out of the neighborhood and cause the neighborhood to gentrify. That really sucks. It's yet another example of how our society is set up to benefit those who own things, those who already have money.
1 comment:
Looking back several years later, I want to mention the Henry George Single Tax proposed as a tax on landowning, based on the theory that property values are based on society, so speculative buying is profiting off the work and presence of others. Thus, society should benefit from land values since it was society that created those values. This is a progressive form of taxation and would, in theory, eliminate some of the the challenges mentioned in this blog post. (Note: Marx argued that this proposal was a step backward from Communism, so save capitalist domination over the proletariat.)
Recognizing that we will probably never get to a Single Tax such as George proposed, I still think this is an interesting analysis to use as a lens through which to view the situation and through which to critique the current system.
Post a Comment