Housing gentrification clearly has winners and losers, but the rest of this piece is a joke. The entire strength of America is cross cultural pollination and has been throughout our history.
6
On the other hand the adoption of ethnic foods by the wider American public makes them available everywhere. If you are a pho-loving Vietnamese-American college student in Maine, you can find pho pretty easily. Probably in the dining commons, sometimes. It may not be the pho your mother makes, but it is pho. Key ingredients are available, too.
Isn't that a service to the ethnic groups from which the food originated, not a theft?
9
Gentrification has been occuring at varying levels since the Dutch arrives hundreds of years ago!
7
Gentrification is a heavy word. I’m a 3rd generation white brooklynite renting a home in Fort Greene from an African American family that lives outside of NY and exists on the high rent I pay. It seems in my neighborhood, which I love, benefits from gentrification. I understand it doesn’t always work like that. I also think that “hipster” and “ironic” doesn’t have to be attached to every white person in brooklyn. If a white person can adopt collard greens in a different direction, then shouldn’t we all try it without an eye roll? It’s not about race in my world. It’s about neighborhoods and people traveling up and down the economic ladder. New York is an expensive place. It affects a lot of us so let’s do it together and let’s do it over white guy collard greens.
8
I thought the more"appropriate" term was cultural appropriation.
2
Very well written with a poignant sociological focus of how gentrification has evolved and overarchingly followed the same process it has for decades. Staly didn't mention how many have referred to 'urban renewal' as a substitution for the term gentrification. Either way it's classify, it's a global phenomenon, from St. Louis to St. Petersburg...
5
Neighborhoods are dynamic, they change as people live and die, marry and move, divorce or depart. In general, people who occupy homes which they own, and hence have incentives to maintain, do in fact provide better upkeep on what was for them, and society, a significant use of scarce resources. If you want to see great societal waste of finite resources, come to Baltimore and see rows of abandoned houses which are rapidly deteriorating once the water gets in. Home ownership is the answer to, and also the consequence of, gentrification. Please, readers, come and gentrify more of my city.
10
Some readers seem upset that this essay moves away from gentrification as a force that prices out and displaces the poor. But everyone stands to lose when entire neighborhoods become so homogenized that they look just like other heavily gentrified neighborhoods, even in other cities. I was born in Brooklyn and now live in Chicago. And when I visit Williamsburg I see Logan Square. While the architecture is a little different, everything else is essentially the same. Many of us will generally agree that Levittown is soulless, but that's not unlike what we're manufacturing today. The aesthetics are different, the effect is the same.
6
Gentrification of food is nothing New. This started many years ago. About 20 years ago I was in trendy restaurant and on the menu was Pasta with Pesto price at the time was around $12.00. I laughed this was an Italian peasant dish like Pasta with Peas, and now it's Trendy.
4
This has happened time and time again. A vibrant neighborhood. Lots of economic activity. Lots of street culture and high culture. Low rent. And then the rich move in with their money and start buying up real estate. Rents go up and landlords of all kinds start demanding their pound of flesh for the right to be in that neighborhood. People can't afford to work there, to park there, to do business there. Absentee landlords just sit on their property as an investment, like money in the bank. Urban blight. Slums. The money moves on to other neighborhoods, towns, cities, countries. And then taxpayers are asked to renew the blight and then it starts all over again.
In the meantime, there are massive fortunes built and countless lives destroyed. And it is all a big waste when it could have been really nice. Really cool.
You might read "Progress and Poverty" by Henry George.
6
I don't know about anyone else but nothing makes me feel better than sitting on my front porch in my formerly working class part of town and spit peas at bearded bunheaded, lycra-adorned, baby carriage pushing yups on a Sunday morn.
3
I really enjoyed this article. It demonstrates how grand the immigrant experience is. Our language is the most descriptive, most colorful and most inventive of all cultures.
Hip-hop could have only begun in the United States.
Rapper’s willingness to reshape language, set it to anybody’s music and rhythm could have only been possible by the avail-ability of a language pallet formed by so many cultures. Finding innovative uses for words whose meanings the poets may not have fully understood—or even cared what the words meant—only that everybody had an inkling of what the completed a word picture means.
If we lose this linguistic input that new immigrants bring, the only thing left is cultural cannibalism.
1
Cultural Gentrification. I feel this term sees the American Melting Pot idea as cultural destruction as opposed to the continueing creation of a global culture. Understanding other people can begin with an appreciation of a good meal.
3
I enjoy making coq au vin this time of year. So...when i use chicken breasts instead of legs and thighs, i guess i am guilty of some gentry-based sin.
2
We’ll ever since the rich began wearing worker-drag, Levi’s, while having not touched a horse,a farm or a piece of machinery other than a car and never, ever touching that car beneath the hood where grease lives...we’ve been playing the gentrification game. Working class call themselves Middle Class, fiercely. Middle Class ? What Middle Class? There’s the haves and the have nots. They both wear Levi’s. They are both living in a “state of confusion” and spout “false consciousness” at every opportunity. Life itself is so reified by media nobody knows what it is anymore. Though they are sure it’s no doubt somewhere else, that certain other place, yes, it is found in N Brooklyn and long ago, it was the Upper West Side when for a summer I lived with Jason Blair on 86th. Jason Blair worked for The NY Times and he understood it’s not ‘reality’ that people want. It’s merely a story about reality that they want.
Don’t you know it, Jason, my lost friend, don’t you know it.
2
I'm waiting for them to gentrify carp as a desirable food source.
1
Ever try some forms of Gefilte fish?
1
I thought they already had a name for this already: "cultural appropriation". It's anthropology 101.
1
The Gentrification of Food? Youv'e got to be kidding me. Folks I know who work on homeless and affordable housing issues know what "gentrification" means - it means lower income people are forced out of their homes - they are pushed to the margins and this all impacts access to employment, access to schools - and basically turns their lives upside down. To talk about the gentrification of collard greens seems to diminish the full impact of neighborhood gentrifcation.
6
Help me understand why the working class is being pushed out of their homes: Do they own the houses or do they rent? The answer is very significant except to someone ignorant of the importance of private property which has significant financial advantages over generations and has established rights in common law.
7
Kudos to your photo editor. This illustration is brilliant.
6
Mr. Staley is confusing the words gentrification with "slumming" at various times in the article. Slumming is living in a shoebox, living in a van, drinking water from a well - but knowing you could end the game at any time. It becomes poverty and a burden when you have no other options.
14
Is gentrification a synonym for "better"? It seems so.
3
Hmmmmmm. Oh, the calamity of inclusiveness, leading to philosophical thought exercises of romanticized poverty.
4
Apparently within the context of Brooklyn, it seems gentrification is synonymous with hipsters. What's rather sad and ironic about his development is how while said people often embrace causes such as " black lives matter" they are also somewhat responsible for the black and Hispanic male emigration from aforementioned borough. If anything, it lends much fuel to the caricature of the disingenuous liberal.
11
The same people who complain about food gentrification will also complain about segregation and lack of diversity. Basically, we should integrate different races and classes, but each race and class should never ever think about enjoying the food culture from the other races and classes that they are integrated with. See how stupid this is?
16
The very notion of "cultural appropriation" is simplistic, to the degree that it assumes cultures have sharp, impermeable boundaries.
Here in Oakland, we hear talk of "displacement" in neighborhoods where the only local groceries have long been corner liquor stores specializing in junk food, alcohol, and cigarettes -- and where a shop selling artisanal sandwiches is regarded as an affront (not so much because of the price, but because according to the "social justice" crowd, "white people" -- themselves coming from a multiplicity of ethnic backgrounds -- don't have souls).
Then, too, there are the Asian and Latino mom-and-pops that are patronized by their respective ethnics, and eventually "discovered" by hipsters and their ilk. They're best during early stages of the transition, when the clientele is mixed -- with their newfound popularity funding better hygiene (and ingredients the owners themselves covet), before pretension and higher prices set in.
Ultimately, the author's right: "Global flows of capital course through your metropolis, wearing down every bump and cranny... until the day it’s finally as smooth and featureless as a river rock." The interesting part, however is what's in between -- before it hits the pages of The Times. ;-)
11
from wikipedia: "Gentry (from Old French genterie, from gentil, "high-born, noble") are "well-born, genteel and well-bred people" of high social class, especially in the past. Gentry, in its widest connotation, refers to people of good social position connected to landed estates (see manorialism), upper levels of the clergy, and "gentle" families of long descent who never obtained the official right to bear a coat of arms."
"gentle families", or in today's terms "people with good manners". in the old days of might makes right--submit or be killed, raped or plundered--good manners meant basically non-violent. (french and british histories are very violent.) that implies you should not need a coat of arms. for today's class signifiers, please say "please" and "thank you" and "excuse me" instead of using a sword or other forms of violence, whenever possible.
as for a balanced diet, you are on your own, but i heard that whole foods is overpriced. i also heard that costco offers bargains, but try not to eat too much.
...
"...a city becoming more modern and affluent. This came with certain ills: Commutes were getting longer, traffic worse, middle-class jobs more specialized..."
wealth creation comes from specialization. see adam smith, who might have been a member of the gentry in his day. (he was definitely intelligent.) pollution, congestion and other ills (like obesity) are costs of a modern lifestyle. but again, try not to eat too much.
3
also, if christian clergy practiced what they preached from the new testament, they would have also been considered non-violent, "gentle" or "gentil", which literally means kind, amiable or nice.
Oh, dear. Where to begin? Let's appropriation, shall we? Are you English? You certainly write (and probably speak) as if you are. If not, you have just appropriated a culture's most intimate and salient marker--its language--and therefore its history, sociology, expressions, art, its very culture, its soul. Clearly, if you are not English, you have appropriated. Or perhaps, since I'm reading this online, you have appropriated both the internet and a computer. Did your culture invent those items? If not, you have clearly appropriated. The list goes on and can get fairly exhaustive. Do you play a sport or watch your favorite team on television? Did your culture invent basketball? Football. Television? Do have a light bulb in your house? Are you appropriating? No? Okay, so let's put the fairy tale of appropriation to rest here and now.
Now, gentrification. Let's. Housing in London. Did the poors build those houses? No, decidedly not. The mercantile class did. Then, as they became more successful, moved on. The poors then moved in. Appropriated them. No one begrudged them. I could go on and on. Many neighborhoods in California have been deemed gentrified when, in reality, they belonged to someone else to begin with. What you seem to lack, Mr. Willy, is a sense of history--or--want to present is a more applicable and convenient type of history that only travels back so it that fits your particular interpretation of it. How...smarmy of you.
10
It is always good to get varied historical perspective and critiques on important urban issues. To that end, I would like to add Nigerian author China Achebe's 1958 book: "Things Fall Apart". The Gentrifiers here are pre and post colonialist, impacting with new customs a traditional african village. My thought, is that it might be helpful for those who don't understand but want to understand, how they are perceived and to what degree disruptive when entering a long established community.
1
This sentence seems to sum up most anti-gentrification statements (like this article): "But what seems most galling isn’t that they’re taking dollars off the table. It’s that they’re annoying."
Gentrification does cause real harm to some people. But most people who rant against it aren't truly harmed -- they're just annoyed.
And when they purport to speak on behalf of the truly harmed -- who are generally poor and often people of color -- they commit the same act of appropriation that they decry in gentrifiers: They take someone else's experience and turn it into something to benefit themselves: In this case, an article published in a prestigious magazine, for which they are well paid.
4
Exactly! I think the psychic toll, metaphorical stealing, and annoyance were the point of this article, though.
It is a very real problem, and this piece does it a disservice.
1
Put aside, colorful though they make this article, the peculiar cultural affectations of affluent hipsters, yuppies, and instant tech multi-millionaires. Raw water, tiny houses and renamed and repurposed cuisine choices.
This is about simpler issues. Housing/shelter for different economic classes. Safe streets and a decent quality of life. A local government that functions for all, and not just the investor class and mega-millionaires hiding money in real estate.
Cities are never stagnant nor are neighborhoods fixed and immutable places. From the height of the Gilded Age to the 1930's, Fifth Avenue in Midtown, Riverside Drive, and other neighborhoods had the mansions of millionaires and carriages with their livery. Then in a short time, all was swept away. Department stores and upscale apartment houses replaced gilded palaces of wealth. The Bronx has been through evolution from farms to working / middle-class housing to its "The Bronx is burning" days. Brooklyn had its white flight decades, which makes it difficult for anyone to argue white faces in the old neighborhood are "invaders".
Weep not for change. Instead
7
My comment was cut off by my software. The last sentence actually read "Instead, let's work on zoning changes and incentives for mixed housing favoring cities with opportunities for middle class and working class residents."
9
So gentrification is people improving decrepit areas into nice ones, and then foreign interests buy it all up and it sits empty due to high rent. I think I see where the problem is here...
3
No. Sometimes it's people moving into areas that aren't decrepit, just middle class or failing factory towns. People who left more expensive declining areas and can't afford Park Slope. They're middle brow, aspiring to hipster. Definitely white, not foreign. Feeling smug and condescending toward the aging people (they might have been foreign) whose homes they now own, the old ladies who still tend small gardens by their subsidized apartments, put up pickles and relish, bake fresh bread, show up in the doctors office handing out their bounty to staff and docs, and confused by all the buzz is about the 'food co-op' that's going to turn around the town.
1
Really? All those characterizations are true, not contrived to make some point? Which might, in simple English, be........?
But let's play with caricatures awhile longer.
Old ladies with gardens have no more moral right to rent than a black musician who does not give a damn about pickles. Or the Chinese family that runs a corner store with the clear plan to save and move to a place they own.
Renters have fewer rights than owners. Rather than trying to obscure this legal and financial fact, you try to make the renters some species of victim deserving accommodation at others' expense.
2
what are you talking about? the question was whether all gentrification involved foreign money moving in and stockpiling real estate. The answer is that not all 'gentrification' involves empty units or black or Chinese people priced out. Sometimes it involves resentment over low income housing inhabited by former homeowners on the part of people who picked up cheap real estate for their own use and don't want to see old, frail or poor people on the streets.
Myths rich people promote: poverty is "endless" and therefore unstoppable. The truth is that poverty is a direct result of wealth concentration into the hands of such as Jeff Bezos, and to a lesser extent, the author of this article.
Avoiding the appearance of gentrification is just another way for the better-off to dodge the shame of not helping the worse-off, and being slighted by a surly barista in no way simulates the suffering of the bottom quintile.
This is modern hair-shirts, made from alpaca.
3
If living in a van or drinking raw water are a form of gentrification, because it robs the poor of their 'pride', then we are one step away from empathy being a form of gentrification. After all, if you have empathy towards someone that makes less than you, you are robbing them of their right to feel the indignity, helplessness and anger that they have cultivated towards you.
4
Gentrification is good. Nobody wants to live in a poor community, especially poor people. So improvements help everyone. But people still want to live in a community and getting squeezed out is bad too.
4
We live in a manufactured "culture". Ever since Edward Bernays, consumerism, lifestyle, and even "culture" have been treated as trendy sales scams. This is what Andy Warhol was trying to tell us with his soup cans and celebrities. And when individuals tire of this empty, dehumanized version of things, the reduction ad absurdio to being a walking wallet to be emptied, they naturally will gravitate towards what 'feels' "real". Native Americans have been fighting this tendency towards "cultural appropriation" for centuries, but it has existed in every sphere of "subculture" in this nation, from jazz to Nirvana, since its inception. Once that 'subculture trend" has been seen to be profitable, there will of course be capitalists seeking to profit more. At which point the subcultures become coopted, disemboweled, and ostensibly castrated- there will be no human issue from such hybrids. The reason artists flee to garrets is that we literally cannot afford to live as "wallets", because we are devalued and "externalized" by the gallery system as we have it in this country. They are money-launderers, and exclusion and Market Share are their business- not culture. So the artists find a place to camp, work hard, make something of themselves and their lives, and somebody who thinks that it "feels real" moves in next door and ruins everything. Launder, rinse, repeat. If you want to end the cycles, turn off the machines. "Appropriate" the humanity, not their stuff. Value the people.
Lots of grad school angst all mixed up. Artists need space to work in and access to markets for the works they produce. That means they are willing to relocate along transportation corridors to larger structures that were originally built on those corridors for logistics or commerce. Now these commercial corridors serve to bring Gentry consumers of art to studio spaces. Why is that bad? Should one space be allocated to artists now and forever or should they be free to buy or rent where they wish?
1
People bemoan the concept of gentrification when in actuality it is the manifestation of capitalist principles. Developers follow the money of middle-class people relocating to the new "place to be". Who are we to say the building owner has to forgo the prospect of higher rent revenue so the bodega can stay open? And I think the difference between gentrifying food and simply appropriating it is an implicit spike in price with the former.
I think this article highlights the importance of what Laurence Fink at Blackrock did with his letter. People with the influence and power to save these neighborhoods have to consider the long-term cost of all that money they're making.
At the end of the day, we're asking them to ignore human nature.
1
I'm wary of arguments that transmute economic and social issues into 'identity' issues. This is a finely written article, but it seems to do just that, and dissipate in clever irony any critique of the harsh effects of urban gentrification on the lives of people it forces out and the communities it destroys. As someone of Asian descent, I can be annoyed, but also amused or even flattered by the imitation involved in what is now called 'cultural appropriation'. That imitation and play, that appropriation, I take to be how cultures learn. I 'appropriated' the English language. I am glad when someone not Chinese appropriates 'my' language (not that my being identified with it conferred upon me inalienable property rights on it in the first place.) What I can't take seriously is the conflation of 'cultural appropriation' with the economic exploitation involved in gentrification. The social and economic harm associated with gentrification is equated with the supposed rights and wrongs of 'identity politics' and worse, into the arbitrariness of taste; of what does and does not 'annoy' me in the lifestyle experiments of others. I too would be annoyed by the a plutocrat who collected his drinking water off the top of his home van; though not by his "appropriation" of the lifestyle of the poor, but by his apparent hypocrisy, by his inadvertence to the plight of the poor. That advertence isn't helped by clever translation into identity politics.
3
There is a movie being shown tonight at the YMCA on Jamaica Avenue in Cypress Hills Brooklyn, as part of the East New York Film Series: My Brooklyn, panel and discussion. Hosted by Coalition for Community Advancement and ARTs East New York.
I invite those interested to attend the event, which is open to the public.
1
But, why? What is it, in us, that makes us so reluctant to share space (whether physical or cultural) with those who are not like us? It seems so pervasive, and causal. Why are those first gentrifiers, like the first African Americans integrating a neighborhood, not simply accepting and accepted? Why are they the start of a change trend that can be measured in predictable steps?
1
Thanks for mentioning the well-meaning millenials. Let's get an instruction manual for those that care about community development, education equity, and sustainability who don't wish to replicate a white-savior mentality, but don't plan on returning to a whitewashed suburban upbringing. Furthermore, we shouldn't ignore how student debt also influences housing purchases in "up-and-coming" neighborhoods-- not simply the artists and bohemians.
This group does not include the hipsters--brilliantly noted in a previous comment as hipster affectation-- in their curated run-down homes with "vintage" furniture that screams poor people appropriation, or the 25 year-old CEOs who live in condos drinking charcoal lemonade (what?) who don't understand how to eat collard greens.
We all know that gentrification and cultural appropriation are pervasive issues. Let's begin talking about solutions beyond "stay in your own lane", if such solutions exist.
1
I think that this phenomenon happens all over our country. Any place that is unique and special (think Jackson Hole, etc). Becomes popular, the moneyed move in, second homes are built, Tiffany's arrives and the area becomes a caricature of it's former self and not affordable for most. At 60 years old, having lived in and loved much of our country there are now so many places that this has happened to that I don't go backwards. I agree that people should have to live in their homes, not collect them like so many trophies. Our homeless problem stems from our wealth imbalance. There is plenty of housing but so much of it sits empty most of the year.
3
Carefully and engagingly written, but I'm not sure this actually advances our understanding of gentrification. The G word has always been about more than housing; I suppose that's why Ruth Glass coined a word to describe it that referred to the people behind it, those as-yet unnamed 'gentrifiers', not the transformation of the housing market itself. But then, housing is always about more than housing. It's complex, and it's usually easier and more satisfying for people to seize upon specific features of the process rather than underlying abstractions. But I'm not sure if that means people confuse, say, annoying hipster affectations with gentrification itself. At least I hope not.
1
"But unlike housing gentrification, this isn't about rent or displacement, it's about something psychic..." Actually it IS economic harm and displacement, because business ownership is one of only two proven ways to bring large numbers of poor in to the middle class. The other is high wage blue collar labor, e.g. manufacturing work and mining or oilfield work. Neither one involves a college degree, and every affluent middle-class country on this planet was built on one, the other, or some combination of both. In particular, while the white middle class was primarily built on manufacturing (the British/Japanese model), the black middle class was almost exclusively built on small business ownership (the Dutch/Hong Kong Chinese model).
"Unlike housing, poverty is a seemingly infinite resource" Actually you can make housing seemingly infinite too by building taller.
From my understanding, this isn't entirely new. Shrimp were once unwanted catch consumed by the families of fishermen, but now fetch a price above most traditionally desirable fish.
1
So true and yet no one ever gets this. Soon we'll all be priced out of everything ... except the developers and/or the wealthy.
2
Food gentrification is more of a new term for an old concept. If you want the best example you need look no further than lobster, which used to be "dirt cheap" and feed to/ate by the poor. That is until when in the later part of the 19th century some wealthier diners became fans of it. Here we are a bit over a century later with $1000 lobster rolls: https://www.boston.com/culture/restaurants/2017/11/20/a-north-end-restau...
1
Great photo and 'worth' the proverbial thousand words. I miss all those Greek coffee shops which seem to have disappeared from New York.
It's fascinating to me that "cool" is now a more hotly contested point of debate in this matter than inequality.
I can remember my mother laughing when she went into a restaurant and saw pasta ala’olia or polenta on the menu. Not because they weren’t delicious but because they were sold for way more than the pennies they cost to make. Peasant or working class food has always be appropriated . I also remember being in downtown Newark recently and seeing a sign for Italian hot dogs, a deep fried hot dog on a half “pizza” roll smothered in onions peppers and potatoes that had been cooking in olive oil. This was a staple of my youth. I walked in and the owner, cooks and patrons were African Americans. All agreed Italian hot dogs were great.
2
Gentrification isn't always about class or cultural appropriation. Sometimes, as in the small New England factory town where Ralph Nader grew up, it's about the nearly well-to-do wanting to disappear the clearly poor, the frail or the remainders of times past. It's a guy who came to town a dozen years ago and is railing about subsidized housing. Self-satisfied and self-congratulatory he & crew toast their status at a wine auction, in a factory turned art space, opining that the elderly widows, former homeowners, business owners, former middle class who now occupy most of the 262 low income units in 6 different sites, are a blight. The homes they could no longer maintain in their 70's became bargain housing. Down-sized to apartments with elevators, safety features, a sponsored van for shopping, wonderful services from visiting nurses and day care for a demented at-home spouse, they old-timers remain independent in the town where they raised their families.
A few innovative small employers remain, but the large employers/factories, book shop, grocery store are gone. The clothing stores, where 50 yrs ago you could find a Pendelton shirt, hippie skirt, the ugliest tie in creation, even a school uniform, are gone. Along with the half the school-age population.
This town always had poor people. Burned out schizophrenics, tended by locals who knew them before disease. Low paid people whose unplumbed homes the '55 flood swept away. We're getting a food co-op.
2
Mencken once opined that daily journalism was literature...in a hurry. The comment cuts both ways of course, but at its best, words arranged a certain way, with a certain sound and sense, can move us at depth, reach us, reveal us. Your comment followed the American trajectories, and there’s only two paths for too many...1/2 will find their way to the promised land (we are by far still the largest and wealthiest of entities!), but these days, unlike life in the 70’s when a janitor could buy a home with 100 dollars down, without advanced degrees the beautiful future declines. Fades.
That green light at the end of Daisy and Tom Buchanan’s dock still pulsates with envy and invidious comparison. Americans worship success, and money is shorthand for it. We still chase as Gatsby futilely chased that ghostly thing. It’s just that the ‘orgiastic’ light has moved from books to T.V., that inexhaustible beast, and all that glitters there in that infernal box (flattened now and hung on walls, thin as a dinner plate) all that catches our desires, our needs, our wants, our anxious fears...it’s all driven hard at us in the hardest of hard sells, in the hottest of all man’s technologies, as Marshal M. said about t.v., the postmodern air conditioned nightmare that tells you all you need to know about man’s place in this pre-apocalyptic era: tv is a perfect little world that doesn’t need you.
(with a nod to Laurie Anderson)
As a moral equivalent of war, what's so terrible about shopping?
Let's not take ourselves too seriously.
This is a first for me: experiencing the act of being annoying while reading an article on gentrification. I'm not drinking $5 coffee, or buying up property. I'm reading. It's irony upon irony to write and read about class appropriation and culture and, in doing so, dissect poverty and division in our communities - without being the least bit self-conscious (as the writer is not) about the position of privilege they speak from.
Before we break things apart like this (without intending to do so, of course), first, let us try harder to confess our histories relative to each other, to open up and make our selves vulnerable to each other in ways that may sometimes feel unsafe. I'm a white man; I read the New York Times, I drink water from the tap - for example.
18
You can have that discussion if you want, but you will find yourself coming full circle. We are much more alike than we are different. The differences are meaningless. Few of us are the very wealthy and few of us are the very poor. The vast majority of us go to work, love our family, and manage day to day.....just like those others we try so desperately to label. Our histories are meaningful only to give context to our present.
The poor don't need your vulnerability, they need the Love of God. The less about you it is, the better.
"Researchers are now concerned that the high cost of housing is a drag on our whole economy"
Well, the rest of us have been "concerned" about this all of our adult lives.
I guess it's trendy to worry about this now?
39
Thank you! This was a very well-written article. The force of international capital is monstrous relative to the power of discrete apartment-hunters. Articles like this is why "First Words" is one of my favorite NYTimes columns.
I'm not the one best-equipped to do this, but I think further survey should be done on how local municipalities conspire to gentrify: What role do police precincts (and their enforcement priorities) play? Do community boards emphasize people or property in their decision making? How do landowners and developers conspire with elected officials, both passively and actively?
I think we need more articles like this and more discussion!
3
The problem is not international capital, the problem is local opposition to the things that lead to cheaper housing: building up (higher density zoning, multifamily developers), and building out (freeways, residential developers). In both cases, actually, capital is PART OF THE SOLUTION, not the problem.
Perhaps we could stop feeding the capitalist monsters. If we didn't insist on that 2000 sq ft house when our 1200 sq ft is comfortable, we would control housing costs. If we didn't need to drive that big SUV with those expensive wheels, they wouldn't be so expensive. The market feeds that capitalist monster. If every American adult refused to buy the next latest and greatest iPhone, it wouldn't cost $2000. We squander our power because we are just as greedy as the capitalists we blame.
1
While this piece deftly describes how the realities of the poor are romanticized and fetishized by the comparatively well to do, the article fails to persuade that those whose culture and practices are appropriated are necessarily alienated by this phenomena. It can also be met with a combination of amused bewilderment (that the under-informed would settle for overpriced knock-off versions of things people know well) and pride and opportunity (think of the whole in the wall that is celebrated for its authenticity). The author also fails to consider what meaning we might make about scarcity even among the more affluent. Many fashion trends-- blue jeans, work clothes-- lifestyle movements-- tiny homes, van living-- or food trends also reflect that even somewhat more privileged folks, particularly younger people, have more limited opportunity and mobility.
8
Initially I was hoping the author was going to introduce some new ideas or insights to this very hoary topic, maybe even drop a little bombshell here or there to shake things up or de-calcify the subject.
Alas, no. Instead, its just one more iteration of 'us' sitting two inches in front of a mirror wailing and harumphing about our blemishes.
Yawn.
15
It was a great concept for an article, but poorly executed, and I believe the author's fatal mistake was simply following a party line without understanding.
Of course, New York and other major cities could solve this problem with a simple fix: force people who own or rent within a city reside in their home for a certain percentage of time (say 80%). The fear is that it will hurt the economy is unfounded and shows once again that rich people have convinced themselves that what is good for them is good for everyone. In the meantime, let the homeless live in unoccupied apartments.
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The government artificially inflates rental costs through HUD Section 8 programs. The govt pays market rate for Section 8 housing......even those that are dumps, even those in blighted, high crime areas. If the govt pays $1000 for a dump, the owners of nice rentals will charge $2000 for theirs.....some because they don't want to rent to Section 8, some because it just makes sense that if the dump is worth $1000, their place that is twice as nice is worth twice the rental. Then, of course, the area median rental rate increases, HUD pays more, and the cycle spins on.
Well, Kevin Burke:
1). And who pays for any damage / mess, the administrative costs / government oversight/regulation/enfocement, and the insurance costs (plus others I'm probably not thinking of off the top of my head) for the cost to house the homeless when apartments are unoccupied. YOU? No, I didn't think so.
2). How about stopping the practice that reduces supply for building more apartments? Yes, confiscating real estate profits via rent control. Or even better, have those who purport to know what to do with other people's money - like you, pay the differential between the rent control prices and the market prices, so builders will be more willing to build more apartments for those you want to help.
In his famous (and distinctly unpopular in the day) rejection of the Great Project of Progress in his day - building railroads, and all that went with that - Henry David Thoreau asked a penetrating question that echoes to this day.
"Do we ride on the railroads, or do the railroads ride on us."
Even further into antiquity, Jesus responded to accusations of "violating" the Sabbath when his followers munched on ripe grain as they walked along on the holy day by probing his accusers logic rhetorically, "Was man made for the Sabbath, or was the Sabbath made for man?"
Why we as citizens of a "free" democracy submit to this kind of community-and-soul-crushing Capital-First logic is beyond me. If this kind of clear cut case is insufficient to cause us to rethink our values and then rework our laws then its hard to see what might.
Then again almost half (enough as it turned out) Americans saw fit to install a kleptocratic, small-souled, Gilded Age robber baron, and creature made purely out of money, into the White House.
Do people vote this way because they deeply believe that one day the Universe will recognize their deep and unalloyed Dream Allegiance to wealth and magically shower it upon them, and so it behooves them to vote to shield their future state of being?
It is true that in any larger sense wealth produces poverty / and is produced by poverty (see Walmart, Amazon, etc.), so I suppose that is an answer of sorts. But still, can't we have some realism . . . please?
7
Dude, you are delusional. We have NEVER been capital first, not even in the Victorian Era when Britain to some degree was. There was a brief moment before the Civil War (Thoreau's Era) when THE NORTH was capital first as part of an ideological opposition to THE SOUTH, but that was closest America ever came to being capital first. The problems of our housing crisis come from government intervention, not too little government intervention, and restrictions on capital, not too much capital.
So Mr. Fretheim, you appear to be implying that the Victorian period was better in that it was "capital first" at least to some degree. And, if I follow you, would be a model for 21st c. U.S. to emulate. Correct?
H-m-m. So taxes were at what 2-3%? Most of the population had minimal education. spent their lives in some sort of servant capacity to the Capital Class, or in a lesser sense to the small middle class of shop owners, owned no property (of course), passed no estate on to their offspring meaning that this kind of non-mobile social arrangement was locked in a multi-generational pattern with only Colonialism providing a crack in its deterministic carapace.And behold, this is good.
Well, stable, and self-justifying I grant you.
Capital left to itself defies economic gravity, rises high into the "sky", and draws itself upward relentlessly. The final logical of unregulated capitalism in action would be a single, impregnable (its residents hope) fortress, surrounded by a vast, utterly wasted landscape populated by the deadened refuse of once teeming shores. ALL value of every sort would have been extracted from the land, sky, water, and people, and be stuck hoarded here.
What then? Find a new market (where?) to exploit?
Capital does some things well, and is always necessary, but never sufficient. It comes to command all valuable goods, including the process of the Law, access to education, medicine, etc. It is a means, yes, but as an end it is an incoherent devourer.
"Global flows of capital course through your metropolis, wearing down every bump and cranny," or ( Dylan) "money doesn't talk, it screams." - it always has, always will. The succession of people who occupy those areas that end up being polished and shined and divested of community life, are also in competition with one another and the municipality wants taxes. And some outside money helps revitalize areas. It's a balance.
NYC at one time had a strong working and middle class which demanded government involvement in residential housing and most of that power has been lost.
The online obsession with tiny houses - on wheels with no sewage or water, on someone else's property, seems both romantic and desperate. Housing spaces can be scaled down, be made efficient and yet meet our needs with better designs - not by an army of little wooden trailers. Well designed residences - with safe water and sewage accounted for - are something we dearly need - they are being designed, but rarely built.
Gentrification carries a sense that it is an inevitable process -or the only way to reinvigorate cash-poor neighborhoods. But how it occurs results from interlocking practices and policies: lending rates and rules; banks that launder ill gotten gains, zoning; tax rules; support for work force housing; immigration policies favoring the superrich; shell company ownership.
Buying coffee at the bodega instead of Starbucks is a nice gesture- but irrelevant when a building is sold.
20
What do you mean "immigration policies that favor the super rich"?
Well-written piece. The appropriation and the commodification of what were and continue to be cultural hardships of the poor is a different crime altogether.
As a native Bronxite, I felt for a long time my home borough was gentrification-proof. Now, I become increasingly weary navigating the South Bronx seeing more and more white faces. Interestingly enough, in a place like the South Bronx where the transition is still slow, the newly-arrived white gentrifiers navigate a very specific route and network of spaces; the one trendy cafe, that one other stylish bar; careful about the establishments they patronize during this phase of the transition and are almost wholly absent in the public engagement and processes that may occur for these neighborhoods.
Bronxites were served one particularly egregious dose of the cultural commodification mentioned in this article when real estate developer Keith Rubenstein, of Somerset partners and The Chetrit Group, whose real estate dealings include a massive waterfront development among other transactions the Port Morris community is grappling with, hosted a star-studded party named Macabre Suite. In a dark, gritty room, wealthy celebrities by the likes of Naomi Campbell, Kendall Jenner and Carmello Anthony, etc. were lavished with flaming trash bins and bullet-ridden vehicles, artifacts that would surely bring pain to the Bronxites who remember the older days of crime and arson.
35
I agree and that is what bugged me the most when I lived in gentrifying Williamsburg.
(Uncool) People would patronize the new sushi restaurant or upscale taco spot and not even notice the real cheap taco spot or rice and beans place. I came from working class Boston and worked construction while there so I wasn't scared off by these places and had to eat there for lunch on my budget and often in the gritier neighborhoods (I was helping gentrify?I).
I came to and love New York for these kinds of places and culture. Like the article states, it's just annoying when the transplanting culture has no idea about them and wishes they were gone in favor of a yoga studio.
11
We can not normalize poverty by removing the cutlural idea that it's acceptable and therefore not something to strive to be away from. Poor is painful, ugly and unwanted. It should stay that way while we continue to build a society that offers education and means out it, not to normalize it.
Food gentrification? Ridiculous. If people didn’t adopt the foods of other groups we’d still be hunter gatherers. If you are worried about appropriating the food of other people, give up pizza, bagels and General Tso.
61
then call collard greens collard greens.....it is NOT the new kale.
1
Well said!
As with most culture, the working class makes it, and the rich disdain it, till they embrace it, and then the workers can't afford it anymore. The social dynamic is as relentless as it is tiresome.
I call this the penthouse effect. Old Parisian apartments on the first story are spacious and have the highest ceilings. They were built for the rich who didn't want to climb stairs. The maids had little rooms, up many flights of stairs, but they had the best views.
American apartments followed this idea, but then came the elevator. Now, the exclusive use of a sliding little room whisks them to the top, most expensive, floor, where once only maids and janitors were lodged.
Transpose this to foods, and you have the lowly Sparerib, once eaten by only the poor, bar-b-que'd for hours to make it edible. Or the Lobsters which were once plowed over as fertilizer because they weren't considered food.
What's cool next? Ask the poor, working class, and the artists. Ask the Beatles from lowly Liverpool. They know. Economic diversity equals cultural richness.
50
I'm pretty well-versed in cultural commentary about gentrification, but I read this article twice, and still don't really understand what the author is getting at.
What he's describing already has a name - cultural appropriation, or perhaps hipster affectation. Attaching these phenomena to gentrification just serves to further muddle and confuse an already muddled and confused term. It also advances the problematic narrative that most gentrifiers have malicious intent, or at least are actively ignorant and insensitive, when most are just looking for cheaper rent or mortgages.
That's not to say that the collective effect of these individual decisions are not worth examining. But it shuts down conversation when gentrification critics lob these kinds of accusations.
57
I, too, had to reread the piece to better understand the author's idea, which I believe is not to highlight cultural appropriation, but rather to chide us for focusing so much on elements of gentrification like it, that we forget the chief harm of gentrification: "Minority communities are being dismantled as macroeconomic winds transform urban America."
I may have completely misunderstood the piece, but the ending to the first section highlights our distraction:
"there’s something in this new usage that obfuscates as much as it reveals, lending cover to the much larger forces that shape our lives."
The concluding paragraph returns to cultural appropriation by declaring that it has become a stand-in for gentrification, when in reality gentrification is mostly what it has always been:
"[i]t’s almost as though, in the face of unstoppable, invisible forces, we’ve grabbed hold of what we can see and control. Investors could buy and sell every building on your block without your ever noticing, but the coffee shop where the staff is mean to everybody is right in front of you."
It's our natural preference to associate the phenomenon with the visual changes it brings, but that the simple truth is far more sinister and all-encompassing than that.
10
I was thinking the same thing. He's conflating cultural appropriation with gentrification. Also, Dave Chappelle talked about cultural appropriation, WAY before the grio article, in his sketch comedy show. He was truly ahead of his team with his social commentaries.
No problem with gentrifiers if they would EMBRACE their new locales instead of reclaiming them, renaming them, redefining them then calling them THEIR OWN. You turned your nose down on collard greens and sweet potatoes until you got to Harlem, Bed Sty and Ft Green, and the South Bronx. You couldn't relate to arroz con pollo and chicaron until you figured out a way to infuse it and call it something else. Now a Bodega is a whole food mart???? Why not INTRODUCE yourselves to the neighborhood and try to COLLABORATE wiith those already there. Thats how you relocate and respect....but none of you know how to relocate and respect....just throw out and take over. Read that in the history books.
The corrosive elements of gentrification have been extensively covered in the NYT. Instead of ending with a long sigh of resignation, it would have been helpful to know what the writer thinks can be done about the depredations of wealth in NYC and other successful cities with this problem.
Meanwhile, third tier cities, like nearby Hartford, are desperate to attract their share of the urban gentry. How does America spread the wealth?
22
Nothing can be done. These people just like to whine and moan with out offering real solutions. People like clean safe streets. We don't like walking by a person who smells like an 16th century blacksmith (homeless), and we don't want to smell urine walking up the steps of our building. The endless movement to shame humans for the basic human desire for cleanliness and safety is repulsive. There is no alternative because it is all born out of basic human primalogy. There I made up a word. Primalogy, the patterns of human behavior which are tethered to our primal nature.
Another misinformed and misinforming article about gentrification’s origins. It begins with public policy, zoning, incentives given to developers, tax abatement, etc. Yes it’s about class, but not the class of those moving or staying. Class of politicians masterminding from a distance. A clear sample can be seen in the documentary MyBrooklyn about the destruction of formerly vibrant downtown Brooklyn, available free on Kanopy.com with your library card.
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AFM I agree with your comment 100%.
"The destruction of formerly vibrant downtown Brooklyn"?
"Vibrant" (currently the most abused word in urban planning) is in the eye of the beholder.
1