Gentrification: Gone Too Far?

something about restaurant review...guess it's not about food or genritfication itself, just an attitude thing.

That sounds amazing, Dan.

Best food ever.

Yeah, and the US gave a lot of its towns Native American names.

More offensive, I think, is calling your restaurant "Tenement" or "Barrio" and claiming to keep it real by serving $16 rice and beans or latkes or Cuban sandwiches.

I don't quite follow the logic of that either. $45 truffles are a shibboleth of some sort of gratuitous non-beatnikness? Whereas the $25 entrees you could get across the street in 1999 were pure of heart and ever so revolutionary?

- is it preferrable for a neighborhood to remain dangerous and fucked up?

- is it preferrable for people who are making a living to live in the gated, paved out suburbs?

i'm just curious cause i've read about gentrification for years and i understand that it sucks that a working class neighborhood gets all fake-hip and whatever and suddenly the native inhabitants get kicked to the curb so richer folks can get some pretend-authentic city lifestyle... but i guess i'm trying to understand what the proper alternative is...

are people who actually make a living doomed to shit?

are people who live in a crappy, dangerous neighborhoods doomed as well?

can i get a clue?
m.

remember that white girl that got herself killed on clinton/rivington last year? by some ethnic guys. right outside as four's loft.

I'd be interested to see data on how many people are really "forced out" of a gentrifying neighborhood. One, tennants in NYC have an enormous amount of protection under the law. Two, everyone I know (four people) who was "forced out" of their apartment due to rising prices was well compensate, all of them over 100K, and one got 200K to move out. These were rent controlled apartments where they'd been for 20+ years and the landlords wanted to bring them to market value, and probably break them into separate units.

seemed like a step in the right direction at least.

Eventually the buildings will have to be either remodeled or demolished but the costs of renovation or new construction are high enough to be prohibitive for families currently living in the area. When they're rebuilt, they'll be luxury apartments of one kind or another -- whether quasi-industrial & modern & stylish (like the husband & wife-owned former-warehouse down the block) or those cookie-cutter places that attract people who were originally looking in Park Slope (like the old Bklyn Jewish Hospital building or the new high-rise place on Dean & err Washington?) or just possibly actually renovated into one- or two-family dwellings with period woodwork, wallpaper, etc. In any case they've been taken out of range for the pre-gentrification occupants.

When you're only talking abt a few individual buildings on a street, I suppose it doesn't make a huge difference -- but the larger the complex, the greater the impact.

come to my house! Wyckoff and Nevins, between the Gowanus Housing Project and the Wyckoff Houses.

well still. pretty white girls getting shot makes a neighborhood more dangerous where pretty white girls dont get shot.

The original restaurant review was funny. Eating $45 servings of truffle from the local bodega's plastic placemats. It's like a parody of social satire, re-heating one of Tom Wolfe's leftovers.

they're in the 100s, no?

But while we're talking about gentrification, a few things. First, I am by no means "anti-gentrification." *I'd* be the self-deluded one if I thought of myself that way, as I live in a very obviously gentrifying neighborhood of Jersey City and patronize a variety of gentrifying shops and restaurants.

Gentrification is a mixed-bag and it's also very different in different places. There are always some winners in any "old neighborhood." For example, my new landlord is a Dominican immigrant, now a grandfather, who owns a building in which he and his family have a bakery and two apartments. As far as I can tell, they bought long ago, probably for dirt, and are doing quite nicely even charging below market rent. He's moved out to the suburbs, and he and his family seem pretty comfortable and happy.

But some people on this thread seem UNBELIEVABLY OBTUSE about one simple economic fact -- rents go up = many renters are forced to move.

When I moved into my most recent apartment we hired two day laborers to help with our stuff, and I overheard one guy say to the other "Looks like we're just going to have to keep moving further and further out."

Right but rent control is already mostly gone in NYC, and often non-existant in other places. Most people do not have this kind of bargaining power.

seemed like a step in the right direction at least.

I think those might be Hope VI houses (a federal program, I believe) -- they did the same thing where I used to live in New Brunswick. These are a really mixed bag too from what I can tell. First of all, in New Brunswick at least, there were fewer than half as many units built as torn down (by the way, a friend of mine filmed the demolition of the project towers and caught the mayor on tape laughing and cheering as it happened.)

Second, although the units were set aside for low income residents, they weren't necessarily set aside for the same people who lived in the towers. Local newspapers reported that a lot of former tower residents just ended up in other towers that were on a highway right outside the city.

Which brings me to the counterpoint -- the fact that housing project towers were generally a shitty plan in the first place, concentrating the poorest people in one area, virtually imprisoning them, and often denying them easy access to services (depending on where the towers were built).

It's nice to see private businesses trying to address this by having high and low end products in the same location, but ultimately it needs political will, governmental measures to lessen inequality, and a certain cultural attitude towards egalitarianism. These are sorely lacking in the US, and rising Gini rates there show absolutely no signs of reversing any time soon.

Personally, I'd be content to see my neighborhood (and my rent!!!) stay as it is now -- fried chicken carryouts AND gourmet stores, Dominican Social Clubs AND wine bars. I can deal with there being some bums around, and even the gunshots the first night I moved in don't bother me that much (at least I haven't heard any since). But we all know things don't work that way -- if property values weren't rising, there'd be nothing to attract yuppies in the first place.

So. There's three or four more apartments that won't be available to anyone local in the forseeable future.

http://www.columbiaheightsnews.org/News/News-Front.html

this reads like a fucking parody. jesus christ.

Highland Park Announces Retail Tenants
Stabbing At 14th and Parkwood
View 14 Construction Begins
Yes! Organic Market Coming To Union Row
Update From Level 2 Development
Boxing Match Held In Honor of Shooting Victim
Fatal Shooting On Girard St
Allegro Move-In Dates Delayed
Two Retailers Sign Lease With DC USA
Three 11th Street Storefronts On The Market
New Education Center Opens
Rita's Water Ice Now Open
Construction On Solea Set To Begin
Boys and Girls Clubs Seeking Redevelopment
Student Murdered In Columbia Heights

And on and on. They have a bulleted list of their older headlines beyond what I've posted which is just as mind-blowing. WTF, wtf, wtf

Are you guys seeing some of your more recently gentrified neighbourhoods going into reverse yet or is it too early for that?

So far can't say so. Definitely a slowdown in home sales but no obvious reverse to speak of.

scuttlebutt is several dc condo investors who put down for units are desperately trying to find ways to not close once they're built

no "reverse" from previous conditions, just no actual improvement to speak of. most of the new retail lessees haven't been in business long enough to go out of business, nahmean?

Yeah, Jersey City's "Restaurant Row" is still adding restaurants and they're all relatively new like Tombot says. One of them is starting to look empty most of the time though. But even at the height of gentrification I watched upscale businesses and eateries come and go.

The two arguments would be that wherever places are in the gentrifcation curve, will now either a) just stall, or b) reverse

is overspeculation in commercial property in newly gentrified and gentrifying areas going to see a greater increase in never-filled commercial spaces, exacerbated by empty residential blocks? in the uk i think we are seeing this already in certain cities, and empty builings on the way down are not for edgy-pioneers in the way that they are on the way up.

it looks like the beginnings of degentrification for urban areas to me

It will be interesting to see how - and to what extent- London is affected as it will probably be quite a long and gradual process

Real degentrification would require a SEVERE economic downturn and probably a huge spike in crime or something else actually driving people out of cities. More likely I think you'll see somewhat of a downturn followed by another wave of gentrification in however many years (five? ten?)

I think it might depend city to city (and area to area, and country to country of course), but if you look at it as businesses leaving an area rather than people, then it could be a slower process. increased empty commercial premises

I think, slow or quick, five years seems a bit soon for any new waves of gentrification tho?

the suburb i grew up in is fast becoming a slum if that counts

is there some reason everyone builds ugly "loft-style" box condos now instead of normal apartments? i just don't understand who would want to live in those things?

I think the people that bought them haven't quite understood who is going to live in them either

yeah, the suburbs are definitely becoming slums over the cities. My hometown suburb outside of NYC is starting to see its first rash of gang activity since all the immigrants are moving here, whereas in the past they'd just move to New York.

I doubt NYC will ever degentrify, since it went to shit under a million unique circumstances.

yeah five years is a bit soon, I agree. Maybe 10 is more likely. But I doubt you'll see a complete reversal of the trend, at least not in cities like London or New York.

i mean, obviously it's a cheap and quick way to build but they look so energy ineffecient, and not like something that will be around for generations.

xpost

what about late gentrifying areas of London or New York?

a couple more bands like vampire weekend would speed up the process too.

To be perfectly totally fair, I don't think the row houses from 1910 or whatever were supposed to stand for 100 years, either. Not that they aren't still a far patch on shoe-box condos in Prospect Heights, I think I complained about the Dean and Washington development right upthread.

Can anyone tell me about Long Island City btw

I heard there's degentrification in red hook.

The condo buildings being thrown up in Park Slope (and elsewhere) are very Lego-like.

the word is actually that gentrification has stalled in red hook but it isn't going backwards!! and the ikea isn't even open yet which is going to bring thousands of extra cars in everyday. if that somehow doesn't ruin the neighborhood i will think about moving back.

I get all my economic news from art graduates! Thanks for the info!

http://curbed.com/archives/2007/11/15/live_from_red_hook_a_short_history_of_degentrification.php

Businesses closing is worse than vacant space I think?

if businesses are closing i would think it's more to do with the giant ass cheap gourmet supermarket that opened

there are a ton of empty storefronts in downtown DC but we remain a long way from the days of chocolate city and the crack epidemic. meanwhile you have burbs all over the country where foreclosed and abandoned properties are being turned into shooting galleries. broken windows, baby, broken windows everywhere.

I want a giant ass cheap gourmet supermarket!! also can you guys send some of your arts and music scene down our way

haha oh wait

Is it competing with the bars that shutdown? Did you RTFA?

bars come and go in every neighborhood and the ones i know of in rh that have closed (the hook, lillie's) closed for entirely different reasons than "degentrification"...there were permit/license issues

rh can sustain a ton of bars and restaurants because there aren't that many apartments there to begin with and it's not a destination like the east village or something. and fairway competes with everything because it's huge.

How many new cars in Red Hook for that Fairway?

I think once money comes into a neighborhood there has to be a pretty good reason for it to leave.

i don't know...the parking lot is not huge but usually close to capacity. maybe ~150 spaces?

Local businesses have different economics than megadestinations. I doubt IKEA will draw people to move there.

ikea will deter people. hopefully red hook will not turn into elizabeth, nj

I'm not looking/planning to buy any more furniture but I'm much more psyched at the thought of driving a ZipCar to Red Hook. Driving back from Elizabeth was one of the worst driving experiences of my life.

I think once money comes into a neighborhood there has to be a pretty good reason for it to leave.

if the money comes from people with mortgages and car payments and forwarding addresses, sure. if the money comes from investors, it can leave in a heartbeat, that's called failure. a vacant condo is worth nothing.

I'm certainly not seeing any evidence of de-gentrification (I love the way that sounds kind of like de-baathification) in Downtown Jersey City yet. Definitely a slowdown in housing sales but right now it feels considerably more upscale/yuppie than even three years ago when I moved in. Tons of brand new rentals and condos are just coming on the market now. I think they way overbuilt, and I think those buildings may have a lot of dark windows for a few years (if the developers even remain solvent). But it's still going to take a lot for yuppies to out-and-out abandon the area at this point.

"zipcar to red hook" could be a bad song

they should make a zipline to red hook from lower manhattan. kind of like the roosevelt island tram but more "extreme"

[insert image of Bananas Gorilla riding zipper car to Richard Scarry's Busiest Ikea Ever]

(Pursued by Sgt. Murphy: "Let me see those Billy Bookcases, Bananas Gorilla!")

in general, i wouldnt really expect degentrification to be fully noticeable for another couple years. a failure of current businesses and a lack of new/replacement businesses are the major factors, unrealized empty space is only a primary indicator

if the money comes from people with mortgages and car payments and forwarding addresses, sure. if the money comes from investors, it can leave in a heartbeat, that's called failure. a vacant condo is worth nothing.

-- El Tomboto, Wednesday, 6 February 2008 21:00 (

this is pretty much it. if its the former its more likely to be an area that has undergone its gentrification process, is stable, and is unlikely to revert. if its a more recent process, or is speculative (anywhere "up-and-coming"), or based on money thats come from frothy types of business unlikely to survive recession, then it is much more likely to degentrify

Also where there has been a lot of overbuilding of substandard nature then sold to amateur landlords with high risk of default, you have new-slum-creation, which'll gentrify anywhere pretty quick

lol DEGENTRIFY, i mean

well and don't forget that those people with the mortgage need to be able to afford their ARM reset (if they have one, which is likely) and keep a steady paycheck coming through whatever we're in for in the next year or so. otherwise crasho blammo

Theoretically if its more established (longer gentrified), there should be a sizeable proportion of long(er)time owners, which should shield effects. newly gentrified areas likely to have this a lot less (late to the party places to get hit hardest)

Will it work out this way? who knows

heeeeeeey how bout we all stop saying "degentrification" like it's a real word

Results 1 - 10 of about 2,480 for degentrification. (0.37 seconds)

2,475 of which are on "curbed"

late to the party places to get hit hardest

yeah but in the states we've had the ARM bidness going on for the past six years or so in many areas. so the "early to the party" zones are the ones already getting blown up with foreclosures, that's why the burbs are seeing bad news already since a lot of that development was underway at the beginning of the wave of cheap credit - the urban investment came a little later and people who bought as late as last year still have 3-5 years before that negative equity and higher interest rate comes down on them

Where's a good neighborhood these days that's cheap and full of "young people" (the kind that's a hipster but will say "no I'm not I hate h1pst3rs" if asked). I was just totally priced out of prime WIlliamsubrg; I temporarily moved to that desolate area between Sunset Park and Bensonhurst... it's not as cheap as you'd think, and there's not a fucking thing going on.

Would you say ... Ridgewood?

Parts of Crown Heights? I dunno about "full" of young people but when I started joining stuff like the block garden or whatever I was pleasantly surprised.

I mean a fair bit of the NB lives/has lived out there on the Prospect Heights/Crown Heights border. I liked it there a lot.

do not move to crown heights please

you can live there or "bushwick" for not much, but you end up commuting to party, so it won't match 90s W-burg for sex/drugs/rnr.

(not u laurel obvs. you should move back!)

I think I'll check out Crown Heights; thanks for the recommendation bell_labs

Biggest drawbacks: crime rates, the C train.

http://curbed.com/uploads/2008_02_Gateway%20to%20Williamsburg.jpg

ok lol at token goth chick in that menagerie

for shizzell, my mizzell

(sorry)

and what ethnicity is mr. breeder supposed to be? is he a zombie?

He's a reprogrammed morbius.

Erin e-surance will fit right in
http://www.uncle-andrew.net/blog/pics/erin.jpg

he's got something in his pocket keep alot of folks alive

I'm pretty sure "goth girl" to the left is actually supposed to represent a style-conscious Manhattanite, and "goth girl" to the left is a Pratt brat.

don't forget Samurai Jack!

I was referring to goth girl to the left. girl to the right in the black coat with cutesy hair is obviously not actually goth duh.

only one "man" in sight

And it falls on his shoulders to repopulate the 'Burg.

and what ethnicity is mr. breeder supposed to be? is he a zombie?

Yes, that is not a skin tone. But I love the huge self-satisfied grin on his face. He been doin' some impregnatin'.

But what if wallets fail? Is there faith enough in the human blood to support the economy!?

MEN BE NOT APPEARIN' MUCH IN ADS AIMED AT PROSPECTIVE RETAIL LESSEES

MEN BE KNOCKIN' UP BLONDES

I think it's odd that the brunette in the foreground is supposed to be the Everygirl that you identify with but she lives on the Upper East Side.

no guy in skinny yellow mustard slacks with vegan emerica loafers no credibility. even the corporate lawyers who are buying up williamsburg dress like 23 year old industrial designers.

i don't even understand where that's supposed to be?! "gateway to williamsburg"?

That doesn't make any fucking sense, Williamsburg is a few miles away and the only thing that goes directly there from is the G at Fulton. Which is not that big a deal.

no, they travel in VW bugs, dig?

it's for the new building next to kellogs
xxp

if I used the zipcar to red hook line in a song and called the song "degentrification" would that make degentrification into a word? how many youtube hits do you need before merriam webster acknowledges your contributions

http://curbed.com/uploads/2008_02_502%20Metropolitan%20Brochure%20One.jpg

Yes, it's along the BQE so maybe it's only the Gateway to Williamsburg if you DRIVE there. Which is completely retarded.

Also, Wburg beware: if they succeed in making people think that, the shitty stadium over Atlantic Yards is going to be almost as big a pain in YOUR asses as it is in ours.

also are black girl and protagonist brunette carrying bags from kiehl's, bloomingdale's or the levi's store?

I'm all for Williamsburg getting more amenities; I mean, for a neighborhood so pricey it has nothing in the way of decent day-to-day resources. But does NYC really need -more- retail? The place is basically a giant outdoor mall now

your observations are so unique!

Damn straight they are

http://curbed.com/uploads/2008_02_Gateway%20to%20Williamsburg.jpg

Whoa there, first one's still piping hot and another one's already in the oven?!

Irish twins.

and she's wearing super-high heels too!

Celtic Tigress.

ha, that was sharp

i feel like I rarely see strollers past bedford. which is pretty great.

gah, and she is like 6 months pregnant again while pushing around an infant. what a nightmare.

in trendy downtown Columbus

I've seen strollers on blood-stained Nostrand Avenue in Bed-Stuy as early as turn of the decade. Nothing's gonna stop 'em.

Yay the Grand Street rezoning went through.

http://curbed.com/archives/2008/03/27/karl_fischer_sizechopper_grand_street_rezoning_approved.php#reader_comments

Up to 20 possible planned projects might have to be redesigned to meet the new height restrictions.

The only people who seem to fret about gentrification are the gentrifiers. Except for Furious Styles, but he's a fictional character.

no, not really.

from oakland thread:

i am very possibly moving to oakland for a few months. would def appreciate any decent quotes on rent prices. i'm looking for a shared house on the cheap in a neighborhood that's at least like a 2.5/10 on the safety scale, and i'm trying to avoid any gentrificationy situations. i am pretty broke all the time. friend of a friend who lives there says he works one day a week as a waiter and has no trouble paying for rent/groceries but we don't believe him.

― if you ever leave me peggy, leave some propane at my door (zachlyon), Sunday, February 19, 2012 4:34 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I actually find the whole proposal slightly offensive. If you're going to move into any area, you will still be you regardless. You can't control peoples' perceptions of you and your intentions for living in that place. When my wife and I left our Adams Pt apartment to own in North Oakland, a white neighbor came by not long after moving in and in the course of our conversation called us "pioneers". I took offense, thinking that made our neighbors (many of whom have roots in this neighborhood going back at least a couple of generations) something else. Saying you don't want to gentrify a place just by you being there seems like the same type of thinking, coming from the opposite side. Live where you want to live, live where you can afford to live, live where you feel safe living, but accept your own presence in your community.

Sorry if this isn't clear, and if I've got the whole notion wrong, maybe we can hash that out too.

― WARS OF ARMAGEDDON (Karaoke Version) (Sparkle Motion), Monday, February 20, 2012 3:00 PM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

can you 'gentrify less' by moving to one neighborhood or another? is moving to bed stuy 'gentrifying more' than moving to the lower east side? has anyone decided not to live somewhere with this in mind?

http://www.salon.com/2012/08/25/can_bohemia_be_saved/

Feel like this could just as easily go in one of the hipster or quiddities threads.

http://ny.curbed.com/archives/2012/12/05/ecofriendly_luxury_rental_acacia_launches_in_bedstuy.php#more

I got a spam e-mail about this development so I looked into it, and I find it bizare. So you have apartments that are not even that cheap (1BRs in bed-stuy starting at $1887/mo), reserved for people with decent incomes, with all kinds of luxuries (ft doorman, in unit washer dryer, rec room, childrens' playroom, etc.), and it's all taxpayer subsidized. What is the idea behind this? It's not like the 1960s/70s where NYC supposedly needed mitchell-lama to keep middle class people from fleeing the city -- the well-off do not seem to need any convincing to move further and further into brooklyn. This is basically taxpayer-subsidized gentrification, and those who aren't lucky enough to win the lottery for that housing are just paying for someone of equal income to have a nicer apartment than they have.

as far as dumb taxpayer supported projects go 'more housing in brooklyn' is low on the list of things to worry about

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/10/realestate/moving-deeper-into-brooklyn-for-lower-home-prices.html

southward and eastward it goes

Which raises the question for me once again: Will New York City ever run out of (mostly) white affluent people who like farm-to-table restaurants and designer bike shops? I feel like the answer has to be yes, but I've already called the top a couple times and been wrong. Prices in neighborhoods like Fort Greene now just boggle my mind. I do wonder if there's a lot of speculative, overly optimistic buying of rental properties now -- multifamilies and the like. Ultimately, aren't all these people going to have kids and need good schools (which don't just spring up or change overnight)?

you could have asked that question about the people who moved there 10 years ago. some of them probably moved out to long island. some of them aren't going to have kids. some of them are staying in brooklyn.

Guiltripication

There was another recent Times piece (maybe I posted it in quiddities) about how you supposedly have to wait in long lines for anything kid related in gentri-brooklyn, like even for passes to storytime at the library.

I guess what I'm saying though, is that I don't think NYC overall is projected for massive population explosion in the next decade or two, so it seems like the expansion of gentrified brooklyn can't go on forever unless it's siphoning people off from other areas, which may be the case (I read recently that prices are going down in Harlem, e.g.).

well it's hard to predict population growth, and it's not the only thing that matters. if 1000 old italian dudes from bay ridge move to florida and 1000 finance dudes move to north brooklyn, brooklyn's population didn't change.

there is probably something of a stronger generational preference for urban living than there was 10/20 years ago + people are waiting longer to have kids + slow growth of 'urban' housing stock in nyc metro area. lotsa reasons to believe rent prices can keep rising. there's also a limited amount of brownstone brooklyn out there - like, as a 'luxury neighborhood' fort greene might be a substitute for brooklyn heights, but sunset park isn't a substitute for fort greene.

true, although for whatever reason that's not stopping people from buying up ugly wood-frame/siding houses in east williamsburg.

well proximity to manhattan is another luxury good w/ a fixed quantity

Been thinking lately about the weird stage of gentrification where chain retail comes in -- in Brooklyn it seems like it's often AFTER the high-end boutiques and restaurants are saturated. Seems kind of backwards somehow -- first you get locally hand-sewn $250 denim shirts, then you get J. Crew?

I recently read David Cross whining about why he was leaving the E. Village for brooklyn, and he was talking about how manhattan is getting full of 7-11s and IHOP and shit like that -- and that IS kind of weird. Local bougie greenmarkets are way nicer and fancier than 7-11s, so why do shittier chains come in as an area gets richer?

because people with enough money have no fucking taste or standards at all. its only the strivers who care.

i think it's because the real estate becomes more expensive so only chains can afford to pay the rent. kind of like how it's not a big deal for chili's to get a liquor license in nj but local restaurants are all byob.

First wave of gentrification is often young, single people with disposable income. When they have families (or when more young families are attracted to the area as a second wave) $250 denim shirts are less of a priority, I guess.

shoot me before that happens sharivari. i'm asking you specifically.

local greenmarket > 7-11 > $250 denim shirt

james you gotta have at least one sweet $250 denim shirt tho right

i think it's because the real estate becomes more expensive so only chains can afford to pay the rent. kind of like how it's not a big deal for chili's to get a liquor license in nj but local restaurants are all byob.

― Treeship, Wednesday, October 16, 2013 1:09 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this seems like the right answer. Only then how come real estate doesn't get cheaper again once all you have is shitty chains and no one wants to live there anymore?

too late bozoz have bought all that shit up and cant get rid

Far easier for chains to absorb the initial red ink after setting up a new location too

too late bozoz have bought all that shit up and cant get rid

― unblog your plug (darraghmac), Wednesday, October 16, 2013 11:21 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I read this as bezos and was very confused

IHOP and shit like that

man i could really go for an ihop in my nabe

I used to think that until one opened in my nabe, then I found out that IHOP is pretty disgusting, and I wonder now whether

a) It was disgusting when I was in college and I just didn't realize it;
b) It has gradually become disgusting over the last 20 years; or
c) Some locations are disgusting and others are not.

stop saying "nabe" never do that again

you fucking nabes

http://www.theeastsiderla.com/2013/10/silver-lake-is-so-over-york-boulevard-is-the-place-to-be/

Read this as York Avenue, got excited about Upper East Side getting cool again

the universal signifier:
http://www.cntraveler.com/daily-traveler/los-angeles/10/shopping-bars-restaurants-york-boulevard-los-angeles/_jcr_content/par/cn_contentwell/par-main/cn_colctrl/par-col2/cn_blogpost/cn_image_1.size.3-cafe-de-leche-los-angeles.jpg

There are newer Ihops? The 7-11s are probably replacing a mom and pop. Same thing happens in Chicago. My thing is, if you're going upscale, please offer more "yuppie" food, 7/11 - instead of those horrid nachos!

we had a 'mom and pop' convenience store in my old nabeorhood, it was a disgrace, at least a 7-11 would stay well-stocked and not have weird off-brand stuff

Spike Lee shared some thoughts at a public forum in Fort Greene (audio included):

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/02/spike-lee-amazing-rant-against-gentrification.html

Been listening to a lot of anti-gentrification discussions lately and I want to ask for clarification on some things without looking like I'm pushing back, because I don't want to derail the conversation. Not feeling good about some statements that have been thrown around, like, "It looks like the damn Midwest at my subway station now." (NB This was not said by anyone I know and it was not in reference to my near neighborhood so it's not that I'm taking it personally, it's that it's a shitty thing to say.)

I feel like the "death" of "Black Brooklyn" is greatly exaggerated? And that to say "It's all over, it's already gone, RIP" is to erase so many young people and organizations who have STAYED or returned and are writing and organizing and getting the Community Safety Act passed and getting visibility for the homeless and keeping the food banks open and teaching Black kids how to use film editing software and buying houses and opening businesses and raising their own kids and building community. They don't like gentrification either but a lot of them are both having it acted out on their communities and also perpetrators of it, since they come (or come back) to Central Brooklyn with degrees and good jobs and are now middle-class and want to live in brownstones and stuff. (I didn't put this together myself, a Black woman brought it up at a talk I went to the other week, saying there should be more conversations about Black people who were NEVER from "the hood" or whatever.)

Also the fact that a) gentrifiers have the incentive to move into places they didn't formerly live is a result of a shitty economy, wage stagnation, etc. And b), the fact that the working class non-white people who already live there get priced out is also partly due to that shitty economy, poverty-level wages for full-time work, the dismantling of social supports at every level of government, zoning that prohibits the development of affordable housing because it doesn't profit investors/developers...about a hundred things that are bigger and more powerful but less visible than the white people moving in.

Also Spike Lee is wrong for the second time on record about "Stuyvesant Heights," which is not made-up realtor speak but in fact a v v old name.

I forget if it was Doug Henwood or just someone he cited who had a really good article about how the path of gentrification is much more planned by powerful interests than the naked eye would reveal and is not really at bottom about white people just wandering off the subway and deciding to buy brownstones.

NB I'm not saying I think that Lee is saying "RIP Black Brooklyn"!--but I was at a panel discussion last week where someone in all seriousness did say that. Luckily at least one smart person on the panel pushed back on that so it didn't stand, but I feel like that idea, that an edenic time is over, that wonderful Black post-Great Migration communities will never exist again now that they've been ravaged by the white middle-class, is one I've been hearing a lot of tones of? And, like...the Italian and German/Jewish and Irish people who lived in Central Brooklyn, some of whom lost their brownstones in the financial crash, which is how a lot of Black families bought them in the first place...those people mourn that THEIR "idyllic" childhood communities changed, too? (Ugh, I took a car service through East NY once where the 60-something Long Island-resident driver exclaimed, "My grand parents used to live right on that block, I just remembered this street!" and was of course racist about how much "worse" it is now and why.)

I feel him about people moving in and imposing their imported QOL standards though.

Yes! Absolutely! One really great quote I noted from last week was, "If I'm sitting on my stoop and it disturbs you, you didn't move here to be my neighbor."

I am really not looking for people to back me up or use anything I said to try and discredit those who protest gentrification, I'm trying to listen to a lot of voices on this topic and be thoughtful and do my best to support and respect etc etc etc.

http://www.thenation.com/article/173867/how-1-percent-rules

Found it. Slightly misleading title.

I also remember seeing something a while back about pretty old planning documents discussing two "corridors" -- one emanating from midtown into queens and one emanating from downtown and into downtown brooklyn, that seems pretty in line with what's happening, even though I guess it's not rocket science that that's how things would develop.

People who already own nice buildings not being able to afford the upkeep or the taxes anymore is a real thing, for sure. Tax liens are a real thing, people selling their possessions to keep their homes from being foreclosed on is a real thing, because of increasing property values. You don't benefit from your property value going up UNTIL YOU SELL IT, as far as I can tell, so that's a nasty little catch-22.

Buuuuut also elderly people who can no longer afford or aren't able to maintain their 3- and 4-story buildings from 1880...they often have adult children who didn't choose to stay there, who live somewhere else and aren't interested in helping their parents keep the property! That's a real thing too. And a very sad thing, but again, not the fault of gentrifiers.

This topic really packs a lot of sadness into one very tangled mess.

As Fitch would later argue in The Assassination of New York, the deindustrialization of the city—more than 700,000 manufacturing jobs, two-thirds of the total, disappeared between 1950 and 1990, a period when national factory employment rose by more than a third—wasn’t merely the product of “outside forces” like globalization and technological change. It was planned, via the influence of the RPA and other entities like the Real Estate Board of New York on the city planning apparatus. Instead of protecting manufacturing as a valuable resource using zoning and tax breaks, exactly the opposite tack was taken: zoning changes and tax breaks designed to squeeze the little factories out and replace them in accordance with the six-part hierarchy listed above.

yes if only manhattan was still a manufacturing center that would be a fantastic use of space

This topic really packs a lot of sadness into one very tangled mess.

this is a big part of the simplistic rhetoric, imo. there are a million interconnected things at play, but it's much easier to direct your rage at some new development or w/e than it is to break down all these factors and rage at many things simultaneously. and even when you do isolate the contributing factors, when it comes to stuff like development subsidies or lending practices or federal housing policy there are just so many layers and moral complexities at every step that people seem to just disengage at some point

so much yammering about this in my 'hood now

mostly I just shake my head and feel deja vu

here's a good (and fairly ridiculous) example

let's get together and yell at each other!

there's a certain kind of person that moves in NEXT DOOR TO A BAR, IN NEW YORK CITY, and expects no noise after midnight.

the level of shared or common understanding with this type of conflict is just extremely low at this point, even something like this - http://oaklandlocal.com/2014/01/20-ways-to-not-be-a-gentrifier-in-oakland-community-voices/ - which seemed fairly innocuous to me and sidesteps some of the less visible/systemic stuff, is met with all this "goddamnit i don't have to smile at you, you don't own oakland" ridiculousness

btw I own Oakland

Let my people go!

went to a "debate" on affordable housing in SF on Monday. super frustrating.

"we should build housing!"

vs

"we need rent control and income-targeted housing!"

all night long. i dunno am i a neoliberal tool for thinking we can do both.

we have rent control. Lee just passed that plan to build 30,000 more affordable housing units (which is an *insane* number btw. and fwiw I live in an affordable housing unit thx to city programs)

I don't mean insane in a bad way - it's great! Just that it's an exponential increase in a program that has historically been underfunded and oversubscribed

how are they funding that??!?

Then comes the motherfuckin’ Christopher Columbus Syndrome.

Would it be trollish to point out that, at least in DC, some of the working-class African American neighborhoods being made over by gentrification were before that working-class or middle-class white neighborhoods?

how are they funding that??!?

my understanding is that this will go through the City's Below-Market Rate program, which mandates that a certain percentage of all new housing built in the city be sold to people who qualify for the Below-Market Rate program (ie, meet specific income criteria). I don't know if the increase is simply a result of increasing the percentage mandated (which doesn't cost the city anything really; the cost of construction is on the developer), or if there's other funds being drawn on. The BMR program also provides loans to qualifying families - so obviously THAT costs money - but I don't know where it comes from. The city is awash in cash right now, so I don't think finding money is really the issue. They could probably recoup the increased costs of the program by taxing Google/Apple buses lol.

I should ask my buddy/ex-bandmate in the Planning Dept about this

and let's keep in mind that 30,000 number is the goal for 2020 - by which time I assume the current bubble will have burst

here's more of his plan: http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Sneak-peek-Mayor-Ed-Lee-has-a-housing-solution-5151504.php

a lot of different components. Looks pretty good to me, albeit a little late.

closing the Ellis Act eviction loophole seems pretty crucial.

as a longtime resident it's been interesting to get different perspectives from different landlords. I was talking with an acquaintance at my daughter's dance class a couple weeks ago about this. Her family owns the building that houses the dance studio, as well as the building her family lives in. And she knows if she wanted she could find some way to kick out her tenants and raise rents and make a ton, but it's more important to her to have long-term, reliable tenants that she knows and is comfortable with, even if they're paying half of what the units could go for. For her it's not worth the hassle. I don't think it's any coincidence that she both has this attitude and grew up in the city. Tons of landlords are way more mercenary, and there's enough young, stupid, rich people who don't know the value of anything and are more than happy to drive prices up by throwing around exorbitant amounts.

Would it be trollish to point out that, at least in DC, some of the working-class African American neighborhoods being made over by gentrification were before that working-class or middle-class white neighborhoods?

― Word Salad Username (j.lu), Wednesday, 26 February 2014

Yes. The circumstances in which long ago white residents left D.C. neighborhoods is not analagous to the situation today, and ignores the history of D.C.

here's a good summary of lee's seven point plan btw: http://sfmayor.org/index.aspx?page=846&recordid=507&returnURL=%2findex.aspx

this is funny to me:

5. Build more affordable housing, faster, which will require more funding, but also new tools that spread the burden of its construction from the City to our private partners.

"we will provide affordable housing but we're not exactly sure where or how, also let's make the private sector do it from now on"

http://www.city-journal.org/2013/23_3_bed-stuy.html

surprisingly good piece from kay hymowitz (!) in the city journal (!!)

this is funny to me:

5. Build more affordable housing, faster, which will require more funding, but also new tools that spread the burden of its construction from the City to our private partners.

"we will provide affordable housing but we're not exactly sure where or how, also let's make the private sector do it from now on"

― hug niceman (psychgawsple), Wednesday, February 26, 2014 7:47 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Actually this is not mysterious or vague at all, it's the way "affordable housing" has already been done for decades now (i.e. the govt almost never directly builds housing anymore), and there are indeed many "tools" for making it happen.

yes, obviously there are lots of tools and nearly every single one is connected to the private sector in some way... saying we need more housing and new tools is a total nonstrategy, it's not like ANY new tool would work, it needs to be something that doesn't rely on federal money and will somehow result in an unprecedented # of new units. the private sector doesn't like building affordable housing without the guaranteed rent that comes along with something like lihtc, and even with that program and other awesome CA programs there is a HUGE market failure to provide affordable housing. that statement is funny because he's calling for this insane shift in the housing market but isn't really bringing any new ideas to the table

anyways, it's definitely a good trend to see guys like lee and deblasio talking about affordable housing and putting those issues at the front of their agendas. at this point i'm just not sure it'll accomplish anything beyond a little political goodwill though, i guess we'll see what the "task force" comes up with

from the Vanishing New York site, long but eminently sensible

Neil Smith spent much of his career researching and writing about gentrification. As noted earlier, what I call hyper-gentrification he termed “gentrification generalized,” or “third-wave gentrification,” and his explanation of the phenomenon and its history—first published in 2002--is essential to understanding exactly how today’s gentrification differs from the past and has evolved into, in my opinion, a very different beast....

Gentrification generalized, according to Smith, is a product of globalization and neoliberal urban policies, a return to the 18th-century brand of laissez-faire liberalism that assumed “the free and democratic exercise of individual self-interest led to the optimal collective social good” and that “the market knows best.”

We all have to stop saying, “New York always changes, so this is normal.” This is not normal. This is state sponsored, corporate driven, turbo charged, far flung, and impossible to stop in its current form.

http://vanishingnewyork.blogspot.com/2014/03/on-spike-lee-hyper-gentrification.html

http://world.soufun.com/zt/201403/xinyuanrealestatetheoosten.html

http://imgn1.soufunimg.com/news/2014_03/04/1393947545933.jpg

???

BIG OOSten the tax cutter.

Grossed out that I got all the way through that City Journal article before I realized it was by Kay Hymnowitz.

I know right! But it was a surprisingly good article I thought. I had a little bit of a hard time deciphering what the larger point was and I'm sure there's some agenda I'm missing, but I kind of wish more leftish stuff on gentrification would bring that level of attention to detail.

http://twentytwowords.com/photos-new-york-city-storefronts-taken-10-years-apart-show-gentrification-decay-36-pictures/

this was posted on the wall street thread but also seems relevant here: http://www.thenation.com/article/179233/why-wall-street-firms-make-terrible-landlords

In that city, hundreds of thousands of apartment units were still designated as “rent regulated,” meaning that landlords were prohibited from dramatically raising the rent. The only significant way around that constraint for a landlord was to wait for a long-time tenant to move out. Then the rent could be raised to whatever the market would bear.

To private equity firms, this dynamic seemed to offer a profit opportunity. All they had to do was buy up rent-regulated buildings and replace the current tenants with higher paying ones. (In industry-speak, this was called “transitioning” the building.)

My last rental was in a building that it turned out had been bought a couple years earlier by Black Rock. They had a very large and reputable property management company running the place, and tbh they were perfectly fine landlords for market rate tenants -- great super, nice people to deal with etc. But they were also making moves to push the rent-stabilized tenants out in every way possible. They also tried to pull a very large rent increase on us, and we balked and then held over past our lease while looking for a place to buy. They did mistakenly start eviction proceedings after we left, which was dumb of them, but no harm ended up being done. I do kind of wonder whether they'll get the rents that justify whatever they paid for the building in the long run. The NYC market is so insane.

http://www.salon.com/2014/04/08/gentrifications_insidious_violence_the_truth_about_american_cities/

Gentrification is violence. Couched in white supremacy, it is a systemic, intentional process of uprooting communities. It’s been on the rise, increasing at a frantic rate in the last 20 years, but the roots stretch back to the disenfranchisement that resulted from white flight and segregationist policies.

“Even gentrifiers themselves are convinced they are doing something terrible,” Davidson continues. “Young professionals whose moving trucks keep pulling up to curbs in Bushwick and Astoria carry with them trunkfuls of guilt.” It’s an odd and eloquent assumption about the mind of a gentrifier, but really, it’s irrelevant what they think or what Davidson thinks they think. The gears are all already in place, the mechanisms of white supremacy and capitalism poised to make their moves. Davidson talks of a “sweet spot”: some mythical moment of racial, economic harmony where the neighborhood stays perfectly diverse and balanced. There is no “sweet spot,” as Andrew Padilla at El Barrio Tours points out in his excellent point-by-point takedown, just fleeting moments of harmony in the midst of an ongoing legacy of forced displacement.

real white supremicists are pricing archie bunker out of astoria :(

really like that post from the vanishing new york dude, morbs

yeah i just check in on him to see where i can no longer eat, usually

oh no, the soul of Astoria! They found it?

(j/k, in fact one of my fave Greek eateries THERE closed in the last year, but it's been awhile since Chris Walken left)

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2015/01/the_gentrification_myth_it_s_rare_and_not_as_bad_for_the_poor_as_people.2.html

i don't really have the expertise to understand this too deeply, but this has been going around

What the fuck the picture and caption though?!

han other neighborhoods. The apparent unwillingness of other ethnic groups to move into and invest in predominantly black communities in turn perpetuates segregation and inequality in American society.

That's a good observation. These gentrifiers almost never move into black neighborhoods!

gentrifier for gentrifier blogsite interviews other gentrifiers to tell gentrifier audience that gentrification is good for people who don't read said blogsite, aren't interviewed in article

is it more important to integrate neighborhoods or keep whitey from culturally appropriating black streets

gentrification is good

http://www.pophistorydig.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/Shareholders-329.jpg

fyi I'm gonna gentrify the f out of my new place but the denizens are mainly white so how does that eh intersection

http://i.imgur.com/BAgCuih.jpg

new flyers are appearing in my neighborhood

crown heights?

prospect lefferts gardens

close

the leader of mtopp has been on an insane campaign for months to stop a zoning study for the neighborhood (looks like she's going to succeed, too). she brings a crew to every community board meeting and shuts it down. as time has gone on her messages have evolved to include more and more all caps and bold letters, an alternating triad/quatrain structure, and lots of warnings about the evil motives of almost every race. the latest meeting was canceled due to the snow, which she claimed indicated that god was in support of her group.

spend 5 seconds on their website: http://www.mtopp.org/

lol when i was an intern for wayne barrett i feel like i was looking at websites like that all the time

"Our Vision For Empire?" was a disappointing click through

obv i sympathize with some of their concerns about the neighborhood changing and wanting to have a voice and role in the decisionmaking, but their position is that everyone involved with the city or the community board is evil and corrupt, and therefore they'll attempt to blow up any attempt to deal with zoning resolutions or studies for the neighborhood. i guess they just want to plug their ears and hope everyone will just forget about the neighborhood and go away? it's a fucking mess.

Nothing on that flyer is factually incorrect p much tho. (I think I've seen this woman at every community discussion etc on the topic--she'll prob be at the one tonight as well.) She sounds like someone who makes it impossible to work w her tho. I wonder what she's hoping to get out of this situation.

"the jewish area" bit is nagl to put it mildly

she seems hellbent on defending the status quo, which appears to be developers moving in and buying up property, gradually pushing people out of rent-controlled apartments, doing sham "upgrades" to local apartments so that they can raise the rent by $1000, and constructing giant buildings that are more than 10 floors taller than the surrounding neighborhood. that's what's actually happening, already. the CB is trying to make a request from the city to do a rezoning study so that they can exert some control over the situation. and that's what she (alicia) is fighting against, apparently.

admittedly i'm obv new to the area so maybe i'm missing something, but she seems insane and counterproductive.

xposts or "the uncle toms"!

Arguably everyone involved with the city is racist/corrupt in the sense that the power structure they work with is racist/has an explicitly racist history and is financially self-interested, and people who make those decisions usu stand to gain from development etc.

I've def heard a few Black "community leaders" here talk about development and resale as a good thing--and it can be, to an elderly person without a lot of retirement savings who can't live alone anymore and finds a buyer, makes 1.5m, and moves to a nice condo in North Carolina near her grandkids. But that's a hypothetical ideal, first, and second, it requires the property to change hands to someone with 1.5 million dollars who will probably be white, and quite likely not be willing/able to assimilate into the existing community. Worst case scenario it won't even be a resident owner, it will be an investment group who don't give a SHIT what happens as long as there are rich European tourists and film producers willing to pay 10K a month to rent a brownstone.

Mind you, the people publicly calling rising property values a general good are already well off and work in, like, real estate so I don't expect much from them to start with.

well yeah! xp

re "the Jewish area"...it's...idk how to put it really? I mean it's Crown Heights, both the Orthodox/UO and the Black & Caribbean communities have lived side-by-side in largely um homogenous enclaves for a long time now but... This out of place development that takes advantage of elderly and poor/disenfranchised residents does primarily (if not solely?) get located in historically Black areas.

Aaaand...the phenomenon of Jewish building owners and Black tenants is a common one, and the two groups don't share any interests really, because ime the property owners commonly gut and subdivide units to cram the maximum number of naive white Pratt students into them at inflated rents. Meanwhile they don't live in the affected area and never will and have little to no incentive to care what happens to the larger community.

Orthodox/UO is not such a great description of the CH jewish community imho. it's pretty exclusively chabad.

Okay yeah I wasn't sure so I didn't want to be more specific--I was going to say I think it's mostly Hasidic but I dunno if that splits along Lubavitch, Bobov, etc lines.

lubavitch is pretty much modern orthodox chassidic (tho maybe slightly more secluded in CH proper), i just bristle at the UO term which is kinda offensive actually

Is it? Sorry about that--ime people on the inside of that group just call themselves "religious" which, lol, but idk what out-group members are supposed to say?

it's just that UO becomes a kinda dehumanizing term that groups a lot of disparate groups together under some kind of fanatical/radical context. in CH they'd refer to themselves as Chabad Lubavitch, or more idiomatically just 'frum' (which refers to any religious Jew). orthodox is not super in vogue as a term in Chabad (by contrast like YU openly refers to itself as Modern Orthodox), and no orthodox 'sects' in judaism use the UO term which comes afaik from like the NYT beat writers.

wiki says: "Haredi Judaism (Hebrew: חֲרֵדִי Ḥaredi, IPA: [χaʁeˈdi]; also spelled Charedi, plural Charedim) is a stream of Orthodox Judaism characterized by rejection of modern secular culture.[1] Its members are often referred to as strictly Orthodox or ultra-Orthodox in English. However the term "ultra-Orthodox" is considered a derogatory slur by the community," and that fits my experience.

and chabad notably does not reject modern culture as much as, eg, williamsburg satmar, or kiryas yoel. chabad mostly speaks english as a first language, a lot of chabad ppl join the general workforce and get higher education - also the shluchim (who are not concentrated in CH) primarily associate w/ non-religious Jews as their praxis which leads to a huge influx of secular influence into chabad culture.

Based on my own experience I would have guessed that--I found Lubavichers much more pleasant to live around, friendlier, happier, and more integrated & open/welcoming in general. (Big ups to my boss's niece's wedding reception on EPkwy, that shit was CRAY.)

Anyway. There's a lot of history behind the kind of stuff on that flyer, even the dubious parts.

there's a really nice chabad restaurant in the neighborhood too if you've never been called Basil

jeez mordy goy up

I wondered about "frum," seen fairly often in man-seeking-man online personals.

jeez mordy goy up

...

also many self-identifying chabad ppl (including my family) are ba'al tshuvahs aka ppl who were not religious who became religious later in their lives which obv carries a ton of secular baggage w/ it. the chabad rabbi of my shul went to wharton for business school before he attended morristown yeshiva and became a chabad shliach. you'll never see a similar trajectory by bobov (tho i think i've mentioned here before the academic i know who was doing her dissertation on Bobov and became so inspired that she ditched her phd program, married a Bobov guy, had a bunch of kids and is now full blown Bobov).

I thought "goy up" was funny

sure, just highly unlikely!

(was trying to think of a comparable Brit/Irish bit but I gots nothin)

Mordy, do you think the buildings in the Chabad areas of Crown Heights are more likely to be owner-occupied, and/or rented by people who know the landlord?

Side note but I've always had this theory about a hushed "two-tiered" rent system in many gentrifying neighborhoods, like you have the ____ immigrants who have been in the neighborhood a long time and rent from _____ landlords at lower rents, getting places mostly by word of mouth, flyers only in their language, etc., and then the incoming young folks who pay closer to "market" rents. I don't have a ton of specific bases for this theory, more of a hunch.

that's a good question that i don't really have an informed answer to. my vague impression based on the ppl i know who live there (including my rebbetzein's family and my sister-in-law's family) is that they tend to own the properties - and that they mostly purchased them when the chabad community was first moving in and real estate was significantly cheaper. students + other transient residents tend to rent - and almost exclusively from chabad families who have - yknow - a basement for rent, or stay in dormitories (of which there are a few in the area, including a really nice, modern one that i almost lived in but ended up living in a craphole - sadness).

Yeah just wondering because obviously a hypothetical upzoning is going to make less of an immediate difference in a neighborhood where property owners occupy and therefore have no particular interest in tearing down and building bigger.

like you have the ____ immigrants who have been in the neighborhood a long time and rent from _____ landlords at lower rents, getting places mostly by word of mouth, flyers only in their language, etc., and then the incoming young folks who pay closer to "market" rents.

I think this pattern is clearly in place in a lot of cases! But it depends on the in-group having members with the resources to be property owners, enough to house themselves and a significant part of the rest of their population. When ownership is largely held outside that community, there's very little chance to build power or stability. Your whole community is a house of cards, basically, that depends on someone else not seeing a profit for themselves in disassembling it.

Right, like one place I always had a feeling that was going on was Greenpoint, where the Polish community was pretty longstanding and there were presumably a significant number of Polish landlords. Probably in Carroll Gardens at one point with the Italian community too. And yes, I assume eventually selling out becomes too good to pass up for many of those landlords (or their Americanized kids who inherit).

Yeah I cut that post short but I was going to say, you need enough members to be owners that your group is still insulated against the % of owners who will at some point need to realize a profit for whatever reason--family, medical, professional, whatever. Or the resources within the group for other members to be able to buy them out and have everyone still come out ahead.

Without any of those things, you can only organize your life around the owners of your homes and businesses not noticing you enough to bother with.

i presume my fellow tenants of hardy Ukrainian stock do not all pay the pricey studio rate i do.

Also there are issues of wealth (in the form of rents, mostly? and profits from businesses that aren't community member-owned) being removed from one community and going into another one, where the owners who profit never put any value back into the local stores, businesses, charities, or faith communities.

Obv that is true of all corporate chains! But there's no face to put to, like, the board members & share holders of CVS or Burger King; this as opposed to your landlord, who raises the rent every year and has started not fixing things that break down.

She is the first person in line to ask a question btw zs.

haha, liveblogging! what meeting are you, again?

sorry, "which meeting are you at, again?" is what i meant

headed to the CB9 meeting tonight (well, sort of - it's a ULURP meeting), where they'll be discussing the proposed zoning study again.

just to get my facts straight:

- the status quo is that a bunch of luxury apt units are being built in our neighborhood. some are nearly complete, some are forthcoming. generally, they're much taller than any other building in the area (see 626 Flatbush), they're totally out of character, and longtime residents hate them, while developers and some local business owners support them.
- the new development that is already happening complies with the current zoning restrictions (or lack thereof). it's the status quo.
- Alicia Boyd and MTOPP want to stop the wave of new luxury unit development. they want to preserve the character of the neighborhood. they don't want really tall buildings, and they want to make sure that there is plenty of affordable housing.
- CB9 wants to commission a zoning study from the Dept. of City Planning to initiate a process that would lead to the rezoning of parts of the neighborhood, centering on Empire. They came up with a draft resolution last year that asks that the city "preserve the existing character of the neighborhood" and "prevent/limit out of context (i.e. high-rise) development in the district". (link that no one will ever click)
- Alicia Boyd and MTOPP opposes the draft resolution, the idea of the zoning study, and the idea of letting the Dept. of City Planning have a role in the process.
- any change in zoning must be approved by the Dept. of City Planning.

i totally sympathize with the concerns about doing a rezoning, getting betrayed by City Planning, and then watching the neighborhood get gentrified. but i don't understand what MTOPP is doing at all. they're shutting down community board meetings in an attempt to stop the whole rezoning process, but afaict they don't have an alternative, so they're reinforcing the status quo. there is an option to formally involve the city but with community leadership, called the 197-a Plan, that you would think MTOPP would support, but they haven't mentioned it (or any other viable alternative). the 197-a process apparently takes even longer than the standard zoning study process, so that probably wouldn't fly with MTOPP since one of their criticisms is that the standard zoning study process takes too long.

i just don't get what they're doing. support their goals, completely baffled by their tactics. oh well. going tonight to see what happens.

if there is a good way for communities to determine the zoning of their neighborhoods without involving the evil Dept. of City Planning, please let me know. i would love to speak tonight and raise it as an alternative and see what they say. otherwise, it seems like the choice is between the status quo and doing a zoning study that at least allows the community to have a seat at the table in rezoning process, even though we probably wouldn't get everything we want.

if i am wrong, please school me because it's very uncomfortable to be on the opposing side of the beloved local woman who is leading the fight to stop gentrification. i just don't understand how what she is advocating for can produce positive results.

there is a NYT piece today about fear of "market-rate" ruin across Brooklyn, even in East New York, given deBlasio's recent proposals. Also a couple small maps that show what we already know.

Downtown la is so insane now

That is my gentrification post

So many white people with their gentrification dogs

saw this referenced here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/04/nyregion/an-obstacle-to-mayor-de-blasios-affordable-housing-plan-neighborhood-resistance.html

xxxpost

I don't have any answers about what the alternative is. there is a severe housing shortage in nyc that drives up all rents. new development on empire would theoretically help to alleviate that, and I believe that new development everywhere is necessary (especially when it replaces low rise garages and warehouses like on that stretch).

I suppose the theory is that projects like these will make the neighborhood more desirable, increasing demand substantially while only increasing supply marginally? I have no idea how it would actually play out though.

a lot of people acknowledge high rents/housing shortages as being a problem of supply and demand, and then tackle the supply side. I suppose people who already have a place to live are more concerned about reducing demand.

looking at that statement, I guess a few things are off about it, but I'm freestyling here

thanks for posting the NYT link morbs and chinavision - it sums up the state of things more concisely than i ever could:

But in Brooklyn, the uproar has been so nasty that it has taken even some veterans of development fights by surprise. Preliminary rezoning plans, though they may never translate into construction, are drawing intense opposition.

The protests have reached a boiling point in Prospect-Lefferts Gardens, on the southeast side of Prospect Park, where about a dozen luxury towers are set to rise in the next few years. In April, the community board asked the city’s Planning Department for a zoning study of Empire Boulevard, a stretch of warehouses, auto-body shops and storage units, seeking to have a say — and ensure affordable housing — in the area’s inevitable development.

Within months, a group of incensed residents began disrupting discussions with demands that the board embrace a no-development policy instead of the rezoning proposal. The group, Movement to Protect the People, wants Empire Boulevard to stay low-rise and has called on the city to preserve, not build, affordable units in the area. It has threatened to sue the community board over its vote on the proposal, and it accused elected officials of conspiring with developers.

“Everybody’s not paying attention to the 80 percent luxury units that actually decreases affordability,” Alicia Boyd, the group’s leader, said of new buildings in which 80 percent of the units are market-rate, subsidizing the 20 percent that are affordable. “Yet somehow, this image of affordable housing keeps being pushed at us.”

that part in bold - that's what i'm confused about with MTOPP. putting aside whether or not it's a good idea to pursue a "no-development" policy, is it even possible to do that? does the CB have the authority to stop all development? wouldn't they have to do that via re-zoning?

“Everybody’s not paying attention to the 80 percent luxury units that actually decreases affordability,” Alicia Boyd, the group’s leader, said of new buildings in which 80 percent of the units are market-rate, subsidizing the 20 percent that are affordable.

totally! legitimate beef! but how do you address that without engaging with the city planning dept? (not a rhetorical question! is there a way? surely there must be a way if MTOPP has been fighting this battle for years, but their website and communications are such a mess that it's nearly impossible to figure out what they're actually proposing as an alternative)

nyc should tax the hell out of uninhabited properties imo

maybe her point is that the current zoning only allows low rise commercial uses, which doesn't attract developers in the same way. the status quo is stopping development on that stretch.

I think the strategy is to halt development (by some means) to keep empire boulevard unattractive, the idea being that it will not raise the desirability of the neighborhood?

if that is indeed her strategy, it's ridiculous because the area is already getting caught up in the wave of gentrification. every morning i take a picture (for eventual time-lapse purposes) of the gigantic 626 flatbush building that's being built by the park, towering over the rest of the neighborhood.

i don't think that's her strategy. but i've got no fucking clue. maybe she'll coherently explain it tonight.

I guess the idea is that demand actually increases with new development, as the neighborhood character changes, but I think that what's more likely is that demand increases regardless, like in heavily gentrified neighborhoods of past decades in which little new development occurred.
new development seems unlikely to halt that process either, just possibly slow it a little, which makes it hard to point to it as an effective approach to those who are skeptical (like it's not very convincing to say "yeah, prices went up, but it could have been a lot worse!")

xpost again

If the strategy was "no new construction, and also serious rent control," then it would make sense to me. not that it would help with the housing crisis in the city overall, but at least I'd understand what the goal was.

Ms. Glen said that the city will target a broader area and look to strike the right balance between promoting affordable housing and allowing developers to build enough market-rate that it is still lucrative to build.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/de-blasio-housing-push-faces-hurdles-as-neighbors-politicians-raise-questions-1423016386

WHY WE NEED PUBLIC HOUSING, I SWEAR TO GOD. STOP THIS IDIOCY.

I don't want it to be lucrative to build! Housing a goddamn human right, it SHOULD be subsidized!

Anyway, they never mean "lucrative to build" they mean "lucrative to own".

That era of the American state is gone with the wind, io. certainly you're never getting the modern Democratic party to fight for it, unless liberals stop voting for them.

the common terminology - 'market-rate' vs. 'affordable housing' as mutually exclusive - is kind of amazing. awful but amazing.

some of this discrepancy tho is bc NYC is desirable real estate, which brings the market-rate above 'affordable housing,' in other places market-rate may very well mean affordable (nb this is why i left NY).

i mean ^ seems really obv so i feel silly saying it but it's not surprising that market-rate would be different than affordable housing in highly desirable areas

Yeah, well, the market for WHOM. Those estimations are based on the Area Median Income, which I believe covers the whole city? Instead of being locally determined. So it's artificially quite high for NYC because high earners are fucking us. According to HUD: "The AMI for 2014 is $83,900 for a family of four." lolololololol

the "market" is for the tribe who live in the aircastles a la Fritz Lang's Metropolis

oh, i totally get the difference between the two terms, it's more like once the city administration shouldn't be able to use the two terms without recognizing the absurdity and doubling over in a psychotic breakdown.

and as IO alludes to, the way the market-rate is calculated can and should be changed.

The median income for Brownsville & East New York in 2011 were around $32K btw.

oh they mean lucrative to build too. xpost to you, io

And when I say $32K I mean HOUSEHOLD. Not individual!

i don't know anything about how they calculate market rates so i'm going to assume from what u guys are saying it's not just an attempt to indicate how much it would cost the average person to live in a particular area? (and is instead... an average of how much ppl spend to live in a particular area?)

Market rate is whatever ppl will pay in rent for a roughly equivalent unit in that area.

NYC being unique as an international city doesn't help either, the housing market includes a whole extra strata of rich people from around the world who'd want to have property (if not really live) there

like, i bet the already vertiginous inequality of NYC residents doesn't really capture it

Yeah, well, the market for WHOM. Those estimations are based on the Area Median Income, which I believe covers the whole city? Instead of being locally determined. So it's artificially quite high for NYC because high earners are fucking us. According to HUD: "The AMI for 2014 is $83,900 for a family of four." lolololololol

― Orson Wellies (in orbit), Wednesday, February 4, 2015 5:56 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

HUD uses county AMI, not citywide, I think. That's still not great for residents of brownsville/ENY, but it's better than a mix that includes Manhattan. HUD puts Kings County AMI at $62,000 for a family. I'm guessing it works out a little more favorably in the Bronx where you don't have as many gentrified neighborhoods skewing the mix.

Also it's median not mean, so yes, high earners can skew things to an extent, but not to the extent they would if it were just averaged. Still agree that the calculation is flawed.

This stuff gets complicated because there are a variety of federal/state/city programs sometimes intermixing, but
http://portal.hud.gov/hudportal/HUD?src=/program_offices/comm_planning/affordablehousing/training/web/lihtc/basics/eligibility

Basically to get Low Income Housing Tax Credits, you have to have either (1) 20% of your units (or more) occupied by people with 50% or below the AMI, or (2) 40% of the occupants with 60% or below of AMI.

I think an equally big issue is whether whatever gets built under these formulas is at least replacing (in number) the affordable units that were there. In my New Brunswick days, I saw the scummy mayor tear down giant housing projects and replace them with low-rise Hope VI housing. It was painfully obvious that most of the former projects residents would have to leave town and it wasn't even clear that any of them would get placement in the new housing. But the mayor got to pretend he was an advocate of affordable housing.

https://fbcdn-sphotos-e-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xfp1/v/t1.0-9/p350x350/10981162_330685640450762_9042055009670016941_n.jpg?oh=e9baf5d7903a7321886fa9f7b3b89ce6&oe=55641A9A&__gda__=1431948714_adefb4c4d3cd0d5ceb4dd38958c23a79

Judging by past lotteries there will be 50K+ applications for 30 or 40 open apartments, and the standards for income and high credit ratings will be so strict that people with numbers in the 200 and 300s will be getting call backs bc everyone with a lower number has already been disqualified.

But sure, keep pretending that it will help ppl to hold "application workshops."

NY State Lottery almost as good an option

this is one of the best things i've read recently. it happens to focus on the prospect lefferts gardens battle, but it uses it as a case study for the larger issues:

http://truth-out.org/news/item/28934-progressive-gentrification-one-community-s-struggle-against-affordable-housing

Good link! I'm not done w it yet but

The discrepancy was exposed after MTOPP filed a Freedom of Information Act request for Miles' handwritten count of the vote in September and cross-referenced it with video footage of the meeting.

Miles said she had miscounted because of the noisiness of the September meeting, and a new vote on the resolution is scheduled for early February. MTOPP is currently suing Miles and the entire CB9 executive board for their immediate removal, charging, among other things, violations to parliamentary procedures that it claims limited public input. They're also asking that Hunter College study a rezoning plan for Empire Boulevard instead of City Planning, which Boyd claimed was "perfectly legal."

...makes me think #1: That vote count sounds HELLA shady. And #2: Those particular MTOPP demands don't actually seem unreasonable. But holy shit if they're FOIAing shit they're kind of more serious than I thought.

And #3 if Imani Henry is working with them, that bumps MTOPP up in my estimation a lot actually.

I will say, annual summer block parties are THE EVENT of the year for a lot of blocks in my neighborhood, and they are a ton of fun and very very much open to all, with communal food and grills and events all day long (so it's not like if you don't know everyone, you won't be welcome). And the block next to ours apparently faced resistance from some of their new residents last year, that they didn't want a party that happens ONE DAY A YEAR because it was too...noisy? Not to their taste? Come the fuck on.

There were some very intrsting comments made at the BRIC Arts discussion panel last week on gentrification. One of them was that it's not just about money, it's about power over "space"--who feels empowered to take up public space, psychological space, commercial space, etc of a geographic area and make it into what THEY want. Who assumes the power to decide what a place will be about.

More on Henry: http://ditmasparkcorner.com/blog/neighbors/equality-for-flatbushs-imani-henry-on-gentrification-educating-yourself-the-urgency-of-documenting-modern-brooklyn

And their campaign called "Before It's Gone // Take It Back" is having this event soon: https://www.facebook.com/events/1539933826267815/?ref_dashboard_filter=upcoming

Sorry, those links are crappy. Here.

https://fbcdn-sphotos-f-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xpf1/v/t1.0-9/10982707_916250798419754_5680346043803153002_n.jpg?oh=f74fc358242c6cc3ad701564875d05b5&oe=554CF06A&__gda__=1430894336_59cc59bebede14b0dd5afc84fe928d71

xp Yeah, that's how class operates. "Oh, I don't have a problem with (black/dominican/poor/etc/) people at all." "The kids play right in the street, it seems dangerous!" "The loud reggaeton gives me a headache!" "All those cookouts, can't stand the smell!" "All these guys hanging out on the stoops make me uncomfortable" etc.

There are real considerations to SOME of those things, some of the time. For inst: for women, men hanging out in groups, frequently drinking (which I know because when I sit on my stoop I am probably ALSO drinking, so I'm not judging for that alone), and contributing to catcalls/street harassment as a fun group activity, are a BIG factor in feeling unsafe. Buuuuut it's important for the first response to that NOT to be based in assuming their criminality, involving the police, or assuming other women don't feel exactly the same way--maybe talk to women! Find out the deal instead of assuming your right to dictate social behavior.

Like, it's the CATCALLING that's the problem--you can't make people not socialize on their own property as the solution.

http://cityobservatory.org/lost-in-place/

tl;dr just skip this if you don't care about MTOPP or NYC-specific stuff

i attended the meeting last night. it was chaotic, it was disappointing in many respects, and i'm really really glad i went. i was disappointed (but not surprised) by MTOPP's conduct, and disappointed (and a bit surprised) at ULURP's complete, pathetic incompetence and cowardice.

sorry for this long post but it was one of the most engaging things i've witnessed in a long time, i've been thinking about it ever since, and it changed my mind on the entire issue.

it was a ULURP meeting, ostensibly to collect community feedback on the proposal to work with City Planning (DCP) to do a zoning study. i learned that from a website describing the purpose of the meeting. i would not have learned that had i relied only on what i saw at the meeting, which was conducted in the most incompetent and sketchy way possible.

the meeting was scheduled to begin at 7:00pm. for 40 minutes those of us in attendance sat around and talked with each other, with no one at the table at the front of the room with a microphone. finally, someone in the crowd shouted "It's 7:42! Get on with it! Come on!". literally 5 to 10 seconds later, someone trudged up to the front table and began speaking. i mean, i'm glad they finally started but were they just waiting for someone in the audience to scream at them? not a huge deal in the larger context of the issue, but a bad way to start.

there were about 5 people at the front table. the designated spokesperson mumbled a few sentences that no one could hear, and then they called out the first speaker from the audience (the structure of the meeting was just to listen to the public, 3 minutes per person, with a sign-up sheet in the back). as the person was walking up, Alicia Boyd stood up and screamed "WHO ARE YOU?!" to the committee. "WHO ARE YOU?! WHO DO YOU REPRESENT?!" it was disruptive and...totally a legitimate question. who the fuck were they? no one in the audience knew who they were, even though they were supposed to represent the community. absurdly, no one on the committee responded. they all looked at their feet. this went on for a very, very long time - Boyd screaming WHO ARE YOU?! IDENTIFY YOURSELVES!", and the committee staring at their feet. completely cowardly. at some point the first speaker spoke for 3 minutes. the moment she stopped, Boyd stood up and again demanded that they identify themselves. not just Boyd - also her entire crew, about 30-40 strong, yelling "WHO ARE YOU?!!?". no exaggeration, this process repeated 5 or 6 times, with a speaker walking up to the front of the room, MTOPP demanding that the committee identify themselves, no response from the committee, and then a member of the community speaking for 3 minutes.

finally, one of the committee members stated her name and where she was from, and received a round of applause. none of the other committee members chose to state their name.

halfway in the meeting, one of the committee members suddenly announced that no more than 2 people from a single organization were allowed to speak. this rule, clearly designed to prevent MTOPP from speaking, came out of nowhere and was met with deserved outrage. total incompetence. then they abandoned the new rule and let MTOPP people keep speaking.

at this point, Boyd and MTOPP were gaining my sympathy. i naturally recoil from screaming at people in public meetings, but they were on the right side of the issue. but then people that weren't from MTOPP started speaking. and Boyd shouted down nearly all of them. if they disagreed with her, they would be shouted down. and that's reprehensible bullshit. these were members of the community who signed up on a sheet to speak their mind for 3 minutes, speaking reasonably and making points substantiated by evidence (a key thing that Alicia Boyd and MTOPP often fail to do), and they shouted them down repeatedly. the people getting shouted down were on the same side, ultimately, as MTOPP - they wanted downzoning, not upzoning, they wanted to limit the heights of buildings. their sin was that they thought the way to do this was to work with DCP on the zoning study rather do what MTOPP wants to do, which is...not clear to me. but either way, same goals, members of the community, and getting shouted down by MTOPP. fuck that.

then the fireworks started. a hasidic man spoke and said that (like everyone else at the meeting) while he generally agreed with MTOPP's goals, he strongly objected with their "inserting race into the issue". he should have been more careful about his words. what he was referring to, i think, were the recent flyers that went up that we discussed upthread, the ones with "UNCLE TOM" at the top, and "calling a spade a spade" about the zoning plan's exclusion of Jewish neighborhoods. but MTOPP, justifiably and correctly, balks at the idea of removing race from the discussion because gentrification is in large part about racism. MTOPP howled for a few minutes, pandemonium ensued.

a CB member rose to speak and was shouted down more than anyone else. he runs a local blog that takes a hardline stance against Boyd and MTOPP. before he was completely drowned out, he said that MTOPP had called him a KKK member just before the meeting. chaos. pandemonium.

somehow all of the speakers had their turn. at one point, while someone was speaking, a MTOPP person in the audience loudly complained that she was thirsty, so Alicia Boyd made a huge show out of walking up to the ULURP committee table and grabbing their water pitcher and pouring a cup for the woman, who then loudly said something about how wrong it was that water was not provided to the audience. i really hate that grandstanding bullshit. i mean, it makes me mouth "shut the fuck up", i just can't help it.

then city council member Laurie Cumbo (district 35 came up) and really let Boyd have it. they yelled back and forth for a few minutes, then Cumbo said something like "I have the feeling you want to take this argument beyond words, Alicia" - the insinuation was that she wanted to physically fight. the city council handlers in attendance got really nervous at that and everyone came up front to calm things down. pandemonium, chaos. at this point a large man that i can only compare to Hodor started chanting "BOOOO!" every 3 seconds, non-stop, for a few minutes straight. the man sitting in front of him grew enraged, and finally stood up and said "SHUT UP!!!!! SHUT UP!!!!!!!". Hodor stopped for a moment, then resumed his steady booing. The man in front of him loudly proclaimed that Hodor was an animal. it was an ugly night.

i did learn a lot though. i hadn't realized the extent to which the entire issue hinges on a lack of trust between the community and the city administration. the way the meeting was conducted by the committee was absolutely incompetent and absurd. they were too cowardly to even identify themselves. they were sketchy as hell. i can see why MTOPP doesn't trust them.

it seems like it all comes down to two options:

1) status quo: luxury high-rises continue to move in, unabated. it's already happening. a dozen more are on the way.
2) rezoning study, leading to ultimate rezoning by DCP. in the dream scenario, it leads to downzoning (recently neighborhoods, mostly white, in park slope were able to accomplish this) and an update to the outdated 1961 zoning that currently exists. in a more likely scenario, it might lead to upzoning among empire blvd where it's currently just stretches of storage facilities and fast food joints, in exchange for downzoning in other parts of the area. in the worst case scenario, it's a corrupt process that leads to upzoning everywhere and the rezoning ends up accelerating gentrification.

before attending the meeting, my take was that the most likely result of the rezoning study was the middle option - a compromise, some upzoning in exchange for downzoning elsewhere and height restrictions. not the best outcome, but better than the status quo.

but after witnessing what went down, and learning more about the history of the interactions between the community, their purported leadership in the CB, and the DCP - the CB9 "miscount" that was only exposed because of MTOPP's FOIA request, broken promises from city planning officials and CB on whether or not upzoning would be included - i can see why MTOPP doesn't trust them, and would rather blow up the whole process. that tactic leads to the continuation of the status quo, which is awful. but from their perspective, that might be preferable to a city-sponsored rezoning plan that accelerates gentrification. i'm still undecided about how likely that is - but now i have a better understanding of why so many people would believe it to be true.

and i also understand why Alicia Boyd has so many followers - she was the only leader in a room that was supposed to be filled with leaders. the ULURP committee was incompetent and cowardly. Boyd was confident and courageous (albeit often wrong).

That is EXTREMELY INTERESTING. Thank you for the account.

There was a piece in the Imani Henry profile from the Ditmas blog that I tried to quote (but couldn't highlight any text on that page for some reason) about how community boards are totally not equipped to hold officials accountable or upset the status quo. They TRY, but ultimately their power in the community is dependent on how much backing they get from elected officials and corporate/business interests in their district. One should never confuse CBs with "the voice of the people."

http://flatbushed.com/you-down-with-mtopp/

oh, no problem. the more i learn about this, the more i'm changing my mind about supporting the zoning study.

one more important thing that i somehow didn't mention: Boyd mentioned that MTOPP wants a re-zoning study that would be produced by an Urban Studies professor at Hunter College, rather than the DCP. i think this is potentially a really great idea - it would go a long way toward improving some of the issues with trust by having a competent 3rd party take it on, most likely with more community involvement than would the case with a DCP-led study. i just wonder how feasible it actually is. if a college does a rezoning study, will the DCP accept it (all roads to rezoning lead through DCP, as i understand it) and build off of it? is it actually an option? or just a distraction? if it is truly an option it merits serious discussion, but unfortunately it doesn't seem likely that it will receive the attention it deserves because these meetings are pure chaos.

xposts

Karl's report reinforces my feeling that every ounce of power is with the bought pols, and resistance is futile. "Cynical" i know, but where's the evidence to the contrary?

Now that we have the New Stadium - Barclay Stadium, I can't wait to see what free goodies we will be exposed to from that Venue.

xxxp Things that don't seem like options can become options with smart organizing & sustained pressure. That's what community organizing is actually about, forcing the system to open past where it is structurally intended to, challenging existing power relations.

Sorry, that's probably a big "DUH" to you, zs, but I meant that the idea of an independent study feels like something that a group could push for and build support for, in a way that, like, "stopping all development forever" obviously isn't.

yeah, totally! and sadly that kind of smart organizing and unity doesn't seem possible. although boyd has a real following and influence, she is ultimately the most polarizing force in the whole battle - she has split a community that is unified in its anti-gentrification goals into two camps that now spend more time battling each other than tackling the issues at hand.

Somebody needs to do some power analysis over there maybe and figure out how MTOPP can push other levers--it may be that because of the strength of development interests and the tacit approval of electeds, the only power they have at the moment is disruption. "Unity" isn't necessarily a general good if it softens your position and it was actually the radicalness of your position that was its strength.

fwiw, about an hour ago one of the members of the CB (the one who got accused of being in the KKK) essentially said that the battle is over and MTOPP "won":

It's over folks. Plain and simple. It's clear that consensus is not on the horizon. City Planning will walk away from this one...

...People seem to forget that doing this through the Community Board is the only chance we have of having ANY say in the process. Look at East New York. That plan was designed top down. When I was talking with Winston from Planning it was very clear we were going to be able to help design a plan, as long as it met certain goals. Most were reasonable, given the City's current growth projections. But nobody seems to want to be reasonable right now. Anxiety is too high, tensions are too high. Reasonable doesn't sell. I know it's nice to imagine a calm and rational consensus emerging. But I'm really close to the fire and I'll tell you in all my years on the planet I've never seen more chaos and dysfunction.

...Though you haven't asked, I'll give you my analysis in a nutshell. You can always count on me for an honest appraisal.

1. There will be no study through the Community Board
2. MTOPP will declare victory and try to "lead" the community. No one will follow.
3. The City and Cumbo/Adams/Eugene etc will go case by case - spot rezoning buildings and projects they like
4. The gutting of the neighborhood will continue
5. I'll have to find something else to write about on my blog - new businesses, art shows, the weather, business closings, new ugly buildings, etc etc

more: http://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20150205/crown-heights/racially-charged-shouting-match-heats-up-crown-heights-rezoning-debate

Following Boyd, community board member and local blogger Tim Thomas asked MTOPP members to “tone it down” in his remarks before being silenced by the group’s shouting.

“We’ve got people in the neighborhood who are calling people Uncle Toms, [saying] they’re race-baiting Jews, they’re also — I see you right there,” Thomas told Boyd, who was standing a few yards away jeering at him. “You’re the one who called me KKK.”

Councilwoman Laurie Cumbo also joined the fray, describing the communication at recent CB9 meetings on the rezoning issue “disgusting” and “disrespectful,” before calling out Boyd directly.

“Talking over people, talking about people, the accusations that are being made...you can’t substantiate them and you cannot back them up,” she said to Boyd, who booed and shouted throughout Cumbo’s remarks.

“I want to say to you, personally, Alicia: What do you want to have happen here? You want to have fisticuffs right here?”

wow, i didn't hear the part about "fisticuffs"! 100 bonus points for using the word 'fisticuffs' in a public meeting

I want to like Ms Cumbo but I give her the side-eye for a bunch of reasons. Right now basically she and the CB are on the same side. Her defending their "respectable" codes of behavior that Boyd and MTOPP are flouting is just the right hand washing the left tbrr.

Former Council Member Charles Baron explains that when developers came to him because they needed a variance to build in his district, he was able to get them to build much higher ratios of affordable housing (sometimes even getting all-affordable buildings) and to give the community other benefits as well. Developers often cried poor at the beginning, but, he said, in the end they still wanted to build and so the community was able to get much more of what it wanted and needed out of the project.

I'm sure if I worked for him my feelings would be more complicated but as it is, if Charles Barron said jump, I'd jump. I think his efficacy might be limited by his refusal to pretend to be moderate or w/e but he certainly hasn't lost any elections over it, and he and his wife are a widely acknowledged political powerhouse.

I love the thought of Laurie taking off her earrings at a community discussion though.

haha, yeah it was pretty intense!

i still want to know more about who was on the ULURP committee, though, and how they were chosen. they really were hilariously pathetic. if one of them admitted that they just responded to a craigslist ad and they were getting paid $50 to sit there for two hours i wouldn't be surprised in the least.

If I were responsible for actually getting anything done through these community meetings I'm sure I would be pulling my hair out over MTOPP but as it is, these "community feedback" things are so often just for ppl to blow off steam when their questions won't be answered directly, or the people answering them won't be the ones actually with the power, or some other bullshit. When the events are basically just theater anyway, and have the added negative effect of seeming to make the community complicit in their own demise (because they were there but unable to stop the juggernaut), I kinda feel like your own choice of theatrical performance is not a terrible response.

I wonder if anyone ever actually called Ms Boyd and said, let's sit down together in a neutral place with neutral observers so this goes on the record, and I will actually answer your questions. I realize her seemingly extreme behavior is a barrier to anyone "taking them seriously" but then being "taken seriously" by power structures is usually just a sop to your vanity, not a substantive advantage. So....

i'm assuming that she's burned every bridge with an elected official (or community-elected representative) in the continental U.S. (she might have a shot in Hawaii!). she's burned bridges with a lot of civic-minded people in the community, too.

my barely-informed take is that she has enough power and support to blow up the rezoning thing in our neighborhood (she already did), but not enough for her to be invited to the table as a stakeholder (whether or not she could calm herself down enough to make a coherent and persuasive argument is another matter).

Anger is a tactic too though, and if they can silence you, you lose. I've seen her in some level of action (not like last night, through!) and I still would be EXTREMELY hesitant to apply descriptions like "irrational" or "incoherent" or, you know, variations on "hysterical" basically. Anyway. I'll def have my eye on whatever the Crown Heights Tenant Union and Imani Henry's Equality for Flatbush project are doing--they may be able to do more in coalition with MTOPP in a way that uses the latter's strengths more strategically?

I mean if she can stall development plans that the city basically greenlights decades in advance and doesn't need your approval for, she's ALREADY a "stakeholder"--just no one wants to admit it.

i don't know if she is stalling development plans so much as guaranteeing that the CB will have no role in them. and yeah, the CB doesn't represent the community as much as it should anyway, so maybe that's not such a loss.

lol

i made a comment on one blog and it was used as a pull quote in a piece in another blog. i guess i'm supposed to represent the always-desirable middle ground in the debate.

http://www.brownstoner.com/blog/2015/02/shouting-little-apparent-progress-at-latest-plg-zoning-meeting/

lol I misread that url as "pig zoning"

MTOPP maniac sounds like "a leader" the way Sharpton (former paid Republican spy and FBI informant) is.

i'd move to the woods before i'd work with Chas Barron.

i missed last night's ULURP meeting because i was enjoying some drinks with the doctor himself, but apparently alicia boyd and a few others in MTOPP were escorted out by the police, held in a van for the duration of the meeting, and issued a summons for disorderly conduct.

http://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20150212/crown-heights/video-police-remove-activist-leader-from-crown-heights-rezoning-meeting

can't believe they didn't call it the Standardized Land Use Review Procedure

p4reene reviews The Edge Becomes the Center, an oral history of (mostly Brooklyn) gentrification.

The landlord, a twenty-six-year-old Brooklyn Hasid, hides behind a pseudonym, which is probably for the best, as he openly admits to breaking the law. “Ephraim” makes explicit the racism, violence, and contempt that are supposed to remain sub rosa in the real-estate transactions that drive gentrification in Brooklyn. Ephraim’s “trick” was originally to purchase the titles to foreclosed properties and then, rather than buy them outright, rent them out in the long intervals before the banks finally seized them. He is now a more traditional owner of various midsize rental-apartment buildings around Brooklyn.

Hasidic Jews, Ephraim says, are “holding Bed-Stuy like this—he squeezes at the air in front of him, strangling it.” He admits to “tricking” a tenant into vacating his apartment by promising him money he didn’t intend to pay him. And Ephraim explains why displacement isn’t just an unfortunate side effect of gentrification, indeed, is essential to the success of the process: “That’s why we don’t usually buy buildings with tenants. They actually bring down the value of the property almost 60 or 70 percent.”

Ephraim blatantly admits to racially discriminatory lending practices. He brags of taking ownership of a building full of tenants paying $1,300 to $1,400 a month. “And we got them out of the building and now we have tenants paying $2,700, $2,800, and they’re all white. So this is what we do.”...

“People have a right not to be displaced from their homes against their will" may sound anodyne, but in the twenty-first century it’s a radical notion. And any defense of gentrification as it’s practiced in New York and our other urban-real-estate playgrounds rejects it.

http://www.bookforum.com/inprint/022_01/14360

p4reene cannibalizes The Edge Becomes the Center, an oral history of (mostly Brooklyn) gentrification.

Think I'll buy that book. Our 7 person house on the border of the 80s in E. Oakland is being cleared out for sale right now. Whether it's stronger rent control, stronger eviction protection, windfall taxes, or anything else, I don't know of any politically feasible means to curb displacement and increase the supply of affordable housing here.

Our district 3 council member, Gibson McElhany ran on an anti-gentrification platform and operated a nonprofit whose purpose was/is to provide low-income residents and veterans with affordable housing in Oakland, yet this same nonprofit invested in properties for flipping, and Gibson McElhany's sister got the tip-off and invested cash in the same properties.

really killer extract from this in last month's harper's, sounds great

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2015/04/baltimore_s_failure_is_rooted_in_its_segregationist_past_the_city_s_black.2.html

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2015/04/baltimore_s_failure_is_rooted_in_its_segregationist_past_the_city_s_black.2.html🔗

re first post, i lived on Rivington btwn Suffolk and Clinton in '94-95. You're welcome.

xp woops, that's what happens when i look at ilx things on my phone

move back into your comfy room

http://www.truth-out.org/speakout/item/32306-decolonization-and-gentrification-confronting-the-gentrifier-in-all-of-us

If we want to stop the high-speed gentrification, maybe we should do it ourselves. Maybe we should do what I teach students at PeopleSkool at POOR Magazine: to de-gentrify you must go back home. To decriminalize, you must set up systems of accountability and community care-giving. To stop displacement, you must stop seeking out places that are "fun," "trendy," exciting or convenient, but rather stay in your cities and towns of origin, embracing the comfortable rooms that your parents have or had for you.

dear god

it's me, Margaret

I can sort of see how that advice works to curb gentrification but it doesn't seem very feasible? Also the well off and entitled are never going to stop going anywhere they want so we'd just be ceding everywhere they want to be to them. Idk maybe we are anyway.

I kind of feel the sting of the criticism of going to a place that already has the qualities you want because someone else built or grew them, instead of staying where you are and supporting it in growing into those qualities. I know the logical extreme of that doesn't really work bc everyone wants something different from their place and they can't all get what they want and so on.

Also staying where I was from might have killed me (and if it didn't my parents certainly would have).

lol truthout.org

Contrary to what that article suggests, most of the movement behind gentrification is driven by economic opportunities (real or perceived) and not by "trendiness." Trendiness might be what makes a 20-something pick bed-stuy over bayside, but it's not what makes people decide to leave the nest.

embracing the comfortable rooms that your parents have or had for you.

did anyone ask the parents what they thought of this solution?

comfortable rooms where your parents beat you. stick around, do it for the people.

MY PARENTS ARE DEAD YOU MONSTER

(jk, they're still alive, <3 u ma and pa i'll be moving back into my bedroom this weekend ok)

lol at "go home". what a great thing to say to people moving into areas they weren't born in.

gentrification

Contrary to what that article suggests, most of the movement behind gentrification is driven by economic opportunities (real or perceived) and not by "trendiness." Trendiness might be what makes a 20-something pick bed-stuy over bayside, but it's not what makes people decide to leave the nest.

― five six and (man alive), Tuesday, August 25, 2015 9:59 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

*writes truth-out.org article saying the real way to fight gentrification is to end economic opportunities in cities*

well...that's at least a sound argument

incidentally I just saw this today about Todd P's space in Ridgewood:
http://www.timesledger.com/stories/2015/34/transpecos_2015_08_07_q.html

“We wanted to create a space that would continue the evolution of this neighborhood and produce different outcomes from similar spaces in Bushwick, Greenpoint and Williamsbu­rg,” Hillmer said. “We made a very concerted and deliberate campaign to get out in the neighborhood and let the people around us know that this is a place open to them.”

And I thought that was a nice sentiment, but then I looked at their booking and it's all the same avant noise indie etc stuff you'd expect at a Todd P venue, and I was thinking what if they took it a step further and actually booked acts that (non-hipster) people *from the neighborhood* would actually come see? Like what if they did mixed bills of the standard Todd P stuff and like Polish or Dominican musicians? Because the reality is that no matter how much you espouse openness, art/music/food choices in a gentrifying neighborhood are kind of softly exclusionary in themselves.

yes they are

and saying "oh this is a place for everyone" because you don't explicitly exclude is sooo lame

Oh, so to be fair, I guess there's also this stuff:
http://www.thetranspecos.com/community/

I still think my mixed-bill idea is a good one!

Feel like I can't see public art things anymore without thinking here are a bunch of volunteers that could be building shelters or collecting food rather than selling drink tickets at another fundraiser. Here are all these community resources being put towards and mural on the side of a ruined building.

Yet they add value to the community, they bring in the patrons and put on a good show, making it safe for developers to build that Urban Experience condo. And of course the whole time they complain about all the gentrification even though they played a large part in setting the stage.

It's a weird line, you want to help your community, but you don't want to do anything for anyone that is outside of your social circle, cos then you won't see the benefits. So community/public art scenes are good places to be if you think like this.

"Building shelters" -- uh, no they couldn't.

This isn't rural Louisiana, you can't just get some volunteers together and build people housing.

Unfortunately, that's the zero sum game of capitalism - if I send $50 to an animal shelter instead of something that helps people, part of me wonders if it was the right choice; if a billionaire donates to a fund for an art museum to acquire a new work part of me wonders if that's the right moral choice. Animal shelters and art museums are important and in the age of austerity the state isn't going to support them, in that same age the plutocrats are going to ensure that the state doesn't help the poor either - in a more socially democratic mode it wouldn't be as harsh a choice, donating to the art museum wouldn't have as stark an opportunity-cost of "could have provided shelters for people."

artists as pioneers of gentrification is something that i think a sufficient number of people in that world are aware of. but what alternative is there? a place were you can open an affordable art space in a major city will inevitably be somewhere ripe for "re-generation". and your opening an art space there will only encourage that process.

most of the movement behind gentrification is driven by economic opportunities (real or perceived) and not by "trendiness." Trendiness might be what makes a 20-something pick bed-stuy over bayside, but it's not what makes people decide to leave the nest.

For instance in my city there has been a steady decline in the number of homeless shelters at the same time there has been an increase in public spending on 'street art'. One of the biggest organizations in this realm was founded by someone who was in the local scene not as an artist but as a promoter. Which is fine, artists need promotion. But over the years this organization got bigger and bigger and chances for community artists to be involved dried up completely, unless you wanted to volunteer.

Recently I ran into an artist who was HUGE in the local scene, beloved by so many, a multi-disciplinarian who was involved with other artists in his field from around the world. He moved away after having no professional luck, and I asked him, why doesn't he contact that huge organization? The one we all worked with and knew the founders and all that? He had, only he had been told that he was not a big enough name for them to support. I am presuming this is because as the organization grew and more funding came into the picture, they had to provide monetary value. In order to make the community more attractive to investors they want known names.

So I think trendiness is def a factor. There is a huge difference between a wall of graffiti by local/unknown street artists and a mural painted by someone famous that the art world knows. I bet at these community meetings and planning sessions that the bigger names thrown around means more attractive for investors.

this is why we can't have nice things

This is really, really good:

http://www.wnyc.org/shows/neighborhood/

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/07/11/is-gentrification-really-a-problem?mbid=social_twitter#correctionasterisk

kalefah on gentrification and "ghettoes"

kelefa* obv

owners/landlords are going back to convenient arson as a way to get around rent control/tenant protections

bushwick is being gentrified with zubats and doduos now, from what i hear

the new housing being slapped up in bushwick rn is absolutely the worst shit. 'luxury' marketing and price points that drive gentrification, but so badly-built, leaky and underdesigned that even as it depreciates it will never be suitable housing for the non-1%, even setting aside that all the units are organized for single stockbrockers/'creatives' living with friends and would be very ill-suited for families with kids, etc.

misallocation of capital in the pursuit of profits is at the very heart of capitalism

http://www.laweekly.com/news/boyle-heights-activists-demand-that-all-art-galleries-get-the-hell-out-of-their-neighborhood-7134859

the new housing being slapped up in bushwick rn is absolutely the worst shit. 'luxury' marketing and price points that drive gentrification, but so badly-built, leaky and underdesigned that even as it depreciates it will never be suitable housing for the non-1%, even setting aside that all the units are organized for single stockbrockers/'creatives' living with friends and would be very ill-suited for families with kids, etc.

― 'they pelted us with rocks and garbage' (Doctor Casino), Monday, July 11, 2016 1:39 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is an issue that agitates me a lot when I think about the future of NYC, like what the fuck happens to huge parts of Williamsburg/Bushwick in 10-20 years, especially if there is an economic downturn, with all these slapdash buildings falling apart and potentially not even fit to be slums.

Not that they're the sole culprit, but I really think tax abatements for condos did a lot of damage to this city that will take a long time to repair.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CqTuRhtXYAYSyqw.jpg

photo from https://twitter.com/Theo_Inglis

http://blog.sfgate.com/ontheblock/2016/08/19/rent-increases-slow-dramatically-as-increased-construction-catches-up-with-demand/

so dumb

Attracting foodies from all over Montreal and around the world, Notre Dame St. has become the place to go out to eat, with an explosion of restaurants -- 16 new eateries have opened in five years, many of them high-end hot spots.

But a new bylaw has the Southwest borough is putting the brakes on new restaurants, forcing them to be at least 25 metres away from the nearest one.
“Every second storefront should not be a restaurant,” said Southwest borough councillor Craig Sauve, a member of Projet Montreal.

“Maybe get in some retail, grocery stores, bakeries. Get in some services. That's what people in the neighbourhood really want,” he said.

http://montreal.ctvnews.ca/new-bylaw-aims-to-curb-notre-dame-st-w-gentrification-1.3084908

this strip is like a 30 seconds walk from the second largest outdoor market in the city

and across the street is an enormous budget grocery store

Love too gentrify

the restaurant situation further west on notredame is getting seriously ridiculous tho

the effect of this will be that the restaurants that do get opened will be even more expensive/fancy

fancy = using the same reheated frozen food that the olive garden uses, but with a higher price point and different brand story.

When i first moved to st henri like 2 out of 3 shops on notre dame were boarded up and the rest were fast food places, reptile shops, deps, encans, and family-run office supply shops (one of which memorably had a single usb cable hanging on a nail driven in to a wall)... its not like there's some glorified pre-gentrified past

It's the long-term changes these developments engender, not the specific locations they replace.

Los Angeles' Boyle Heights area is undergoing a similar situation now. Formerly empty warehouses being occupied by art galleries. No residences in the immediate area but the galleries are seen as the first wave.

http://hyperallergic.com/324683/activists-in-las-boyle-heights-serve-galleries-with-eviction-notices/

y;es, it's gone way too far

I don't understand how so many progressives reconcile being anti development

maybe, just maybe, it hasn't gone far enough

I don't understand how so many progressives reconcile being anti development

― yolo mostly (sleepingbag), Friday, September 23, 2016 9:01 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i know im a progressive and i love rent hikes, renovictions, displacement, increased police presence and hassling of poors, etc.

hey this sex work is unsightly can we move it over to a more remote and industrial area so i don't have to see it?

you want to open a housing project for people with multiple barriers in this traditionally poor neighbourhood? well let me start a campaign against it because this is my neighbourhood because ive lived here for 5 years

New York's fast-gentrifying neighborhoods have contributed to an economic boom in the city over the last 15 years, with the number of new storefronts and companies increasing by 45%. But those economic gains have not been shared by all residents, according to a new report from the city comptroller's office.

From 2007 to 2012, for example, the number of black-owned businesses in the city declined by more than 30%, even as black business ownership increased in other big cities around the country. Among the 25 largest US cities with over 500 black-owned businesses, New York is one of only three to see a decline, along with Detroit and Jacksonville.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/coralewis/in-5-years-new-york-lost-30-of-its-black-owned-businesses

ppl on my facebork apoplectic about this one

http://i68.tinypic.com/2ryrgau.png

someone should pee on that

fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck

Better to own it than deny it.

headline of the month

SAN FRANCISCO: City’s Oldest Gay Bar Closes After 58 Years, Will Become Kung Fu-Themed Laundromat

Whoa, awesome!

Too poor to play: children in social housing blocked from communal playground https://t.co/opGh3LOkB6

— Guardian Cities (@guardiancities) March 25, 2019

great community cohesion here, always best to teach kids they are 2nd class citizens early doors.

This Top Boy scene about coffee, as a commentary on gentrification in east London, is a masterpiece honestly. pic.twitter.com/h6YD9dBVWD

— Chimene Suleyman (@chimenesuleyman) September 18, 2019

hahaha

https://scontent-ort2-2.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/70632145_10157707314514238_4156645310136844288_n.jpg?_nc_cat=101&_nc_oc=AQki4cqK5U4uy6BenZFiJ_aAmTlMJVHBrc6N19oIzMXnR24ozfMeNPo37FfHaY18DFg&_nc_ht=scontent-ort2-2.xx&oh=c2c0b537d639a7c3e30ac48256cc8c93&oe=5DFAB21B

Yeah that one already got in my twitter tl.

friend posted it, I assumed he snapped it but maybe it's just going around

I mean the discussion is mostly just like "Welp this has been coming for a while, what are you gonna do."

as a non-new yorker that one is still a big yikes from me

I was gonna comment on the Texas Chicken & Burgers sign in the glass and happened to look up the company -- never realized they had so many locations, thought there was just like a few peppered around queens/bronx/harlem.

yeah that is a completely shocking ad. I'm kind of stunned at the refusal to even pay lip service to POC

That coffee bit has strong old person whining about fancy coffee energy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-f_dxLiuXuw

Lol had same reaction and knew what that vid was gonna be.

That hairstyle-sideburns combo is criminal.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/dec/24/outcry-residents-london-bollo-brook-youth-centre-gentrification-coffee-shop?CMP=share_btn_tw

I feel sorry for the people who got tricked into buying a house here for £750k. They have been sold that this is going to be the next booming area when really … there’s still the core problems of South Acton here. A lot of people are dying out here man

that's way too generous... fuck every last one of these selfish rich cunts.