Quote:
Originally Posted by LandofFrost
http://www.alternet.org/culture/five...ng-poor-people
Interesting blurb about Sacramento.
2. Sacramento, California
Thirty percent of Sacramento’s poor neighborhoods are gentrifying, and black neighborhoods like Oak Park are seeing the effects. Businesses catering to African-American residents are being replaced by places like Capital Floats, where you can float in a flotation tank for an hour for $65. Health bars, coffee shops and high-priced boutiques are peppering the neighborhood. A two-bedroom apartment can now cost $1500 a month, and some houses over $400,000. While true that urban blight is being removed, chain link fences replaced by white picket fences, so to speak, and home sales are increasing (by 10% last year), higher prices are threatening to price out the longtime residents. “If you stand on 35th and Broadway, you see the renaissance of a community. You see everything that sends a signal that this is a community in transition,” former NBA star and current Sacramento mayor Kevin Johnson told the Sacramento Bee. “On one hand that’s a great thing. On the other hand, we can’t be a victim of our own success.”
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It seems like this debate always come down to a choice making shitty neighborhoods nice vs letting them stay shitty. When you look at it from the perspective of trying to appease the small number of people that are negatively impacted, it becomes a lose-lose situation.
Obviously this "problem" only effects poor long time renters. I haven't heard any complaints from home owners in Oak Park who's properties have increased 4x value in the last 5 years.
It seems the renters want the benefits brought to the neighborhood but only if it benefits them directly. If the neighborhood stays poor and dangerous with drugs sold and people getting shot on the street, then it's the city's fault and the police need to fix it. The city doesn't care about the neighborhood!
But when gentrification moves in, they're fine with the streets getting cleaned up and new businesses moving in, but only as long as it's at the expense of someone else. They want their homes and apartments renovated and updated, but want to pay the same price that they always have to continue living there.
The economy doesn't work that way. When you rent, you take on none of the responsibility yet see none of the benefit, and leave yourself at the mercy of the market.