In Praise of Gentrification

[lio45]

Originally Posted by llamaorama

It’s pretty simple. If your rent goes up and your income doesn’t you have to move.

Actually, there's a simple explanation that reconciles the data Khantilever is referring to and your remark...

Say 20% of the people in a bad neighborhood decide to leave it for a nicer/safer one (or any other reason than "financially, I can't afford this area anymore") per unit of time, while 20% of the people would be displaced by increasing rents per identical unit of time if it were undergoing gentrification...

... the data shows there's no displacement, as yearly moving rates have remained unchanged.

In other words:

Bad neighborhood - losing 20% of its residents every X years because they're fed up while other newcomers (immigrants, illegals, anyone tolerant of such poor living conditions) arrive;

Gentrifying neighborhood - losing 20% of its residents every X years because they can't afford it anymore while other newcomers (yuppies, retirees) arrive;

Utopian combination of the two - a magical neighborhood losing 0% of its residents because it's improving (so no one leaves for greener pastures) without any increase in cost of living (so no one leaves because they can't afford it). Which in reality does not exist. In practice, we're comparing the other two, above, to each other, and finding no "net" displacement.

[Pedestrian]

Originally Posted by mhays

You've said nothing that even attempts to counter anything he said.

Then I guess you need reading glasses.

Originally Posted by Pedestrian

There are all kinds and forms of gentrification. I'm not for the kind we saw in the 1950s and '60s where block after block of old Victorians (in SF) or row houses (in eastern cities) were bulldozed. Those could have been renovated which is another form of gentrification of which I approve.

Originally Posted by coyotetrickster

That wasn't gentrification. That was Racist Asshat Justin Herrman's war on the Western Addition (in the East as well?).

Originally Posted by Pedestrian

You can't blame it on a single person. It was national policy at the time. I watched the same thing happen in Washington and Baltimore at the same time.

Originally Posted by coyotetrickster

Actually, you can. Urban Renewal was actually driven by racial animus and greed, but Hermann's assault on the Western Addition was driven by racism.

Originally Posted by Pedestrian

Your viewpoint is as limited and provincial as most "born/raised" San Franciscans, clearly. I didn't know Justin Hermann so I don't know how racist he was or wasn't but I do know that there were people actually doing the same things he was doing all over the country at the same time because the Federal Government was providing money to subsidize it.

That should help you follow the conversation. My point was never so localized as speaking only about SF and to blame what happend in SF on racism of one man totally misses the general point and the grander national policy and its substantial funding from Congress (as, apparently, did you).

What may well have happened is that SF had a racist (maybe he was, maybe he wasn't) in a governmental position to take advantage of what the Federal Government was offering and use it for his purposes, but, as I said, the same sorts of things were happening all over the country, bulldozing "slums" that happened to be mostly minority homes, many of which could have been successfully renovated, and building bland structures including a lot of "public housing" that was subsequently torn down. Maybe all concerned were racist. It was a time in America when there was a lot of that. As I said in the first comment here, I'm not for what they did.

[mhays]

So you REALLY don't understand logic as a concept. Let me spell this out.

Based on your discussion, everything you say about urban renewal being national can be true even while everything coyote says about one guy being racist, and SF's local UR being racially-driven, can also be true. In fact your post seems to make his more likely. If the national program was racially driven then it's no surprise if the local one was too, and the Hermann guy might have been a really bad guy eh?

If you study logic (just take 101) you'll learn that saying it's true nationally says nothing about the local situation.

We see your "logic" in the political section all the time. So no surprise here.

[LouisVanDerWright]

Originally Posted by llamaorama

It’s pretty simple. If your rent goes up and your income doesn’t you have to move. There are probably different cohorts or low income renters in gentrified neighborhoods too. The more transient ones leave, the ones with outside support stay. You might eventually get down to a core group that stays forever and gets every type of benefit imaginable.

I wonder if these findings take into consideration rent control, affordable subsidized units, and housing benefits like section 8.

Also what counts as displacement? Do renters self report their reason for not renewing a lease ? What about attrition, where the poorer residents leave of their own choice and then their landlord or building raises the rent after they leave, resulting in a net loss of affordable housing.

But here's the issue with your perspective: the facts don't back up the notion that rising rents actually displace people. Read the article, read the studies they cite. Displacement of low income residents actually drops when neighborhoods gentrify. This happens because being low income is already a high displacement condition. If you are poor you are already forced to move extremely frequently. It's not hard to reduce displacement for that group because it's already a condition of extremely high displacement. So every time areas improve like that, studies show that displacement among that group falls overall, it does not increase. The causes for that aren't entirely clear, but the effect is consistent and measureable.

Part of the effect is that gentrifiers don't actually compete with low income residents for all that much housing, many of these areas already have low housing stock utilization rates where a much higher than normal percentage of the housing stock is decrepit or vacant. Those tend to be the first to be targeted by developers. Filling an abandoned building with condo quality new units displaces no one. This has been the case with my business as I've bought almost solely vacant buildings because I can't justify the higher prices of serviceable occupied buildings.

But again, actually read the article, the ancedotes of people being displaced are great and all, but they aren't facts. Unfortunately people don't want to discuss facts, they want to paint a narrative that fits their political beliefs.

[llamaorama]

It sounds to me like these studies are defining gentrification and displacement in a particular way, which doesn't line up with how the general public, media, and political and social activists define it.

To most people, gentrification means a populated and healthy neighborhood experiencing a drop in the absolute number of affordable units available due to high demand and scarcity. This causes people who choose not to renew their leases and also makes the neighborhood inaccessible to low and middle income households. The reason why this is a problem is because our civic, social, and physical infrastructure can't keep up with these changes. For example, people who used to need transit to get around can no longer afford to live close to it.

I find your claim of painting a narrative to fit political beliefs ironic. To get these results, a study would have to include neighborhoods full of previously abandoned land or buildings. Building all new units on vacant lots is usually not considered gentrification. Displacement is not just evictions and people not being able to renew leases after receiving the minimum legally required notice from a landlord planning to convert their building to

This happens because being low income is already a high displacement condition. If you are poor you are already forced to move extremely frequently. It's not hard to reduce displacement for that group because it's already a condition of extremely high displacement. So every time areas improve like that, studies show that displacement among that group falls overall, it does not increase. The causes for that aren't entirely clear, but the effect is consistent and measureable.

This makes sense, but not in a way that somehow disproves that gentrification isn't an issue.

In an ungentrified, affordable neighborhood, there could be a large number of low income people living in market rate housing. Some percentage of these people are going to experience personal turbulence(a couple breaks up, a job is lost, etc) and they are going to have to have to forfeit their lease or get evicted because they can't make rent. Every time one of these people has to move, it adds to the displacement tally. But this isn't displacement caused by gentrification.

In a fully gentrified place like Manhattan, low income people usually don't live in market rate units or get their rent subsidized, because otherwise they wouldn't be able to live there at all. Maybe some of them belong to a special class, like elderly or disabled vet or public employee. Their lives and their benefits-supplemented income is more stable and so is their tenure as renters. Their housing units rarely get knocked down and ordinances that require affordable unit minimums increase the numbers available.

[Khantilever]

Originally Posted by llamaorama

It sounds to me like these studies are defining gentrification and displacement in a particular way, which doesn't line up with how the general public, media, and political and social activists define it.

To most people, gentrification means a populated and healthy neighborhood experiencing a drop in the absolute number of affordable units available due to high demand and scarcity. This causes people who choose not to renew their leases and also makes the neighborhood inaccessible to low and middle income households. The reason why this is a problem is because our civic, social, and physical infrastructure can't keep up with these changes. For example, people who used to need transit to get around can no longer afford to live close to it.

What's fascinating is that, for many gentrifying areas, the absolute number of low-income residents actually increases. The poverty rate is falling, but the population is rising much faster--implying an absolute increase in poor households.

This is a quick analysis looking at Portland finds 22 of 36 gentrifying tracts saw an absolute increase in poor:
http://cityobservatory.org/longer-governing-response/

This report shows how gentrifying neighborhoods in NYC largely saw an absolute increase in the number of poor residents between 1990 and 2000, then a fall from 2000 to 2010-2014--though that period also saw an increase in poor residents in high-income neighborhoods, which is also helping in socioeconomic integration:
http://furmancenter.org/files/sotc/P..._9JUNE2016.pdf

Anyway, the main point is that "churn", or the rate of rental unit turnover, is the same--or lower--in gentrifying neighborhoods. It's hard to reconcile this basic fact with the idea that significant displacement is occurring. So it's not just about showing what's happening to the share or absolute number of poor, because that can change for a multitude of reasons; but displacement almost certainly would lead to a higher measure of "churn" in the rental market.

[jd3189]

Originally Posted by jtown,man

I find zero issue understanding that whites simply did not want to live around blacks in our history(or most whites, anyways). However, lets not kid ourselves. I have black neighbors in my high-rise apartment building, off the top of my head there is a couple who are both med students and a gay couple who I end up walking my dog with their dog also about once a week. Its not about whites not wanting to live around blacks(for the majority), its about crime. Black people tend to commit more crimes in their respective neighborhoods(if this offends you, sorry). Your last paragraph reveals something very important, Caribbean and Africans commit crime at a lower level than American born blacks, therefore more whites feel safer in neighborhoods where they live.

History in the past half century is different from history from the past 200 years. African Americans had the same crime rate as European Americans back in the 1950s and 1960s. Plus, violence wasn't the main issue for white flight. Blacks that pretty much has the same economic power and class status as their fellow whites wanted to move into neighborhoods that they could afford and wanted to participate in their communities without causing any trouble. However, the whites back then believed that just the presence of blacks in their communities was wrong and messed with the "racial fabric" of the community.


Now, crime in the African American community is an issue, and I see it as such. But back then, whites were just as likely as blacks, if not more, in inciting violence and riots in American cities. You only need to look at the history of the KKK and the corruption of the police and lynching mobs in Alabama, Mississippi, Illinois, Michigan, New York, California, Oregon, Florida, and pretty much every state in the union back in the time of segregation and racial inequality. That was what led to white flight, not the current state of Black violence that is largely a result of white flight and the policies that lead to it. If it wasn't for that, most Black communities wouldn't be so violent. They got that way through a process, and can be helped through a process without abandoning the people themselves, which gentrification tends to do.

So in short, most whites want a safe neighborhood, most predominantly black neighborhoods don't provide this. I wouldn't live in any majority black neighborhoods in Chicago, for instance. I would live in majority, or near majority black suburban neighborhoods around Atlanta though, as the crime isn't high and I have never felt unsafe in those areas. Its *ALL* about safety.

I get that white people want safe neighborhoods. People no matter how they look want safety. But the blacks coming in during the mid century in American cities were not bringing violence with them. The Great Migration was about finding opportunity and safety as well from the South under Jim Crow. The idea that black urban neighborhoods are crime-infested only existed after white flight occurred and many people went to the suburbs.


Thus, to my original point, if white people were not upset that people different from them mainly in skin color were coming in to be their neighbors, the cursed urban flight we always talked about in this forum would not have occurred and our cities would have probably still been intact and would not even need gentrification to build them again. Sad how such a crappy way of viewing other people back then contribute to messing up pretty much all our major cities.

[Pedestrian]

Originally Posted by mhays

So you REALLY don't understand logic as a concept. Let me spell this out.

If you study logic (just take 101) you'll learn that saying it's true nationally says nothing about the local situation.

I started the line of reasoning and I made it pretty clear I was not addressing any local situation by giving examples on BOTH coasts and saying so explicitly in subsequent posts. I honestly don't give a fig about San Francisco's local experience on this point except as it is part of a much larger national issue and have said so. It was an effort to argue against the national issue by siting what coyotetrickster believes is a local exception, especially since it isn't actually so exceptional, that is illogical and if you'd been taking notes in your Logic 101 class you'd understand that.

1950-1960s style "urban renewal", which was intended to lead to a form of "gentrification" (meaning displacement of poor folks by wealthier middle class folks) had a variety of motives in different places and at the national level where the funding came from. Some of those motives in some places--possibly SF--may have been racist but they were all as different as the differing thoughts of the men who led them.

And by the way, you really are doing nothing but trolling here.

[Pedestrian]

Originally Posted by jtown,man

I find zero issue understanding that whites simply did not want to live around blacks in our history(or most whites, anyways). However, lets not kid ourselves. I have black neighbors in my high-rise apartment building, off the top of my head there is a couple who are both med students and a gay couple who I end up walking my dog with their dog also about once a week. Its not about whites not wanting to live around blacks(for the majority), its about crime. Black people tend to commit more crimes in their respective neighborhoods(if this offends you, sorry). Your last paragraph reveals something very important, Caribbean and Africans commit crime at a lower level than American born blacks, therefore more whites feel safer in neighborhoods where they live.

You're wrong.

I remember the late days of segregation, both legal and de facto very well.

I remember having a birthday party in Rock Creek Park in DC around age 4 or 5 and a black family was doing something similar with their kids my age and I wanted to play with their kids and my parents were horrified. I doubt they thought the black 5 year olds or their parents were going to commit some crime against me.

Later on, I remember the fight to integrate public swimming pools which were segregated, not because black people swimming in them would commit crimes but because of some indescribable white feeling that black people were dirty and disease-ridden . . . or something.

Which is just the point. Back then it wasn't crime, actually. It was SOMETHING that no one could really put a finger on. But what it actually was was tribalism. One tribe can't really say, often, why they hate other tribes. They just do, maybe because their parents wouldn't let them play together at age 5 and made them feel like something was wrong with those other people.

Incidentally, while all this was going on, it was well known in DC that black African diplomats were invited to all the best parties and could swim in the best private pools or live in most any neighborhood. It was just those American blacks that had something wrong with them.

Finally, jd3189 is absolutely right that the crime issue arrose in the 1960s along with general influence on blacks of the "black power" philosophy, the adoption of what I call
"pseudoAfricanism" (everything from hair styles to clothing) and a rejection of mainstream culture as something for white people only. American blacks began to honor rebellion against white society in many ways, large and small and to develop their own social values. The importance of education became "a white thing" and selling drugs became OK if you had to to get by. Cooperation with police, at that time mostly white, became something not to do and so on.

Not all black Americans bought into this, of course. Mostly it was the marginalized in inner cities which were then crumbling. America's black middle class held onto the mainstream values but they didn't live in those crumbling neighborhoods and public housing. And unfortunately, middle class whites weren't very good at judging who they wanted to live next door to "by the content of their character."

Amazingly, it's been over 5 decades--half a century--since those times and we are all getting a bit better. Hence people like us don't mind who moves into our condos as long as they don't play loud music at night and their dogs don't sh*t in the hallway (and yes, they don't deal drugs in the lobby).

[LouisVanDerWright]

Originally Posted by llamaorama

It sounds to me like these studies are defining gentrification and displacement in a particular way, which doesn't line up with how the general public, media, and political and social activists define it.

So I can see why you would think that, but again, it's just not reality. There may be the occasional reasonably healthy area that improves significantly, but that's not what people are talking about when the refer to gentrification either. I think the areas you are referring to are areas which were previously "working class" so not totally impoverished, but also not middle class either. These areas may appear fully utilized to the naked eye because they are indeed extremely lively places, often livlier than gentrified areas, but that doesn't mean the housing stock is anywhere near maximial utilization. You see the street life, but you don't notice the 1 out of every ten buildings that's slipped into uninhabitable condition. You don't notice that some buildings have one or two vacant units in them that the owners have given up on bringing into habitable shape ever since that pipe burst 4 years ago despite all the other units in the property being just fine. These things exist in working class and poor neighborhoods. If they didn't exist then they wouldn't be working class or poor, they would be already gentrified.

Chicago's SW side is a great example of this. Pilsen and Little Village are pristine areas of vintage housing that looks great and have insanely vibrant street scapes loaded with businesses and pedestrians, but if you really look at the buildings on each block you will really that "holy cow, the last three buildings on this block are totatally empty except the occasional Satan's Disciples gang party." That's where the majority of gentrification is occurring. The rest of it is happening when long time owners (who are almost always long time residents) get fed up with the grind of trying to keep a building that hasn't been updated in 100 years operational. That's not exactly displacement either when a previously working class immigrant family gets a high six or seven figure payday for their slowly crumbling building.

Again, I renovate buildings in areas like this for a living. I made a video a while back about one of my projects and it ended up getting over 100k views on Facebook as the anti gentrification people went nuts. Their main complaint was that I said the area was a good place to invest because there are lots of "underutilized" properties. And they were all like "Little Village isn't underutilized, there's people living here already". Which of course is a total head scratcher when the context of the video was me showing how I took a beautiful corner building that was under construction after being vacant for two decades, got a stop work order for having no permits, then was foreclosed on, then stripped by scrapers, then sent to demo court and was about to be demolished before I stepped up and bought it for a dollar and then poured $650k into it restoring it to operating condition. The other two buildings I showed under construction in the video were also vacant (except for one holdout tenant who I paid $2500 and moved into another more affordable building I own nearby) for a decade and then burned (also setting a 3rd building next door on fire) after homeless squatters broke in and caused a fire. THAT is displacment, the condition of vacancy caused three families to be forced from their homes in a dangerous fire. My renovations caused a net increase of 5 units in just those two buildings. My building i saved from demo court caused another increase of 6 units. That means a total net increase of 11 units on the block from just my actions alone. Again, meanwhile the buildings having been left to sit dangerously vacant caused a fire that displaced 3 families.

To most people, gentrification means a populated and healthy neighborhood experiencing a drop in the absolute number of affordable units available due to high demand and scarcity. This causes people who choose not to renew their leases and also makes the neighborhood inaccessible to low and middle income households. The reason why this is a problem is because our civic, social, and physical infrastructure can't keep up with these changes. For example, people who used to need transit to get around can no longer afford to live close to it.

That's the thing though, most poor and working class people don't need access to transit in Chicago, they need access to unskilled manufacturing jobs in the inner suburbs. All you need to see is the capacity utilization of train lines in these areas. Again, take the SW side of Chicago. The line (Pink Line) serving this area only runs 4 car train sets and those still don't fill up. That's despite this being one of the densest parts of town. Meanwhile the Blue Line on the rapidly gentrified NW side has seen 100%+ ridership increases and is packed to the gills at rush hour despite 8 car sets.

This makes sense, but not in a way that somehow disproves that gentrification isn't an issue.

In an ungentrified, affordable neighborhood, there could be a large number of low income people living in market rate housing. Some percentage of these people are going to experience personal turbulence(a couple breaks up, a job is lost, etc) and they are going to have to have to forfeit their lease or get evicted because they can't make rent. Every time one of these people has to move, it adds to the displacement tally. But this isn't displacement caused by gentrification.

But that's just it, this HAS been studied and people in non gentrifying places are forced to move far more often. You are discounting things like I mentioned above like living in a perfectly fine house next to an abandoned building and then BOOM your house is gone because the next door building caught fire from neglect. You also are ignoring the other issues of disinvestment where units just gradually become uninhabitable. This can be stemed by occasionally doing a half assed renovation, but if you don't fix the building systems the unit will go bad again when a pipe bursts or something. Again, that's displacement resulting from disinvestment. So when people come in and start treating these hazards (vacant and dilapidated buildings) as opportunities you massively decrease displacement. You can say "that's a tiny percentage of the buildings" but it's not. Just on my little block alone there are four vacant lots. There would be eight or nine now if I hadn't bought and rehabbed those buildings. On a block with 24 lots that's going from 15% vacant lots to 33% vacant lots. Now extrapolate that across entire neighborhoods and tell me that's a small number of buildings.

By the way, I own two of the four vacant lots on the block as I picked them up from $5k each when I bought the last package of properties. If prices ever rise high enough, I'm not going to waste my time buying occupied functioning buildings for $100s of thousands, I'm just going to build a building on each lot FURTHER increasing the supply of housing and reducing displacement. And this is just me, on just one side of the street, on just one block. Over a dozen units returned to the market. I know it's happening on all sorts of blocks around me because I see the vacant buildings being bought up and gutted. They aren't displacing residents unless you include gangbangers party houses or junkies who break into buildings and eventually set them on fire...

[cjreisen]

I think what the gentrification conversation, namely opponents, fails to address is the nature of cities. How any growing city with a poor population near its core will in time naturally have to displace those core residents. As a city grows, so do its needs to house people centrally. And generally with gentrification, a greater concentration of people end up living where maybe a single family was living, as high-density apartment buildings are built in place of single family homes. So in the end, from a purely pragmatic perspective, gentrification serves to improve a city by allowing a greater concentration of people to live closer to the core of the city.

[Investing In Chicago]

Originally Posted by llamaorama

It sounds to me like these studies are defining gentrification and displacement in a particular way, which doesn't line up with how the general public, media, and political and social activists define it.

To most people, gentrification means a populated and healthy neighborhood experiencing a drop in the absolute number of affordable units available due to high demand and scarcity. This causes people who choose not to renew their leases and also makes the neighborhood inaccessible to low and middle income households. The reason why this is a problem is because our civic, social, and physical infrastructure can't keep up with these changes. For example, people who used to need transit to get around can no longer afford to live close to it.

But many on the "anti-gentrification" believe that preventing additional housing from being built will some how alleviate the pressure on affordable housing. When in reality it makes it worse; when in reality, the opposite is true - if you upzone where it makes sense and build more new housing units in a particular neighborhood, it will put less pressure on the existing housing stock.

[maru2501]

^ see Chicago, where the center is covered with cranes and leadership doesn't seem too upset with poor, violent, underserved and disaffected neighborhoods emptying out.

the net census effect has been slightly down to flat

[coyotetrickster]

Originally Posted by Pedestrian

I started the line of reasoning and I made it pretty clear I was not addressing any local situation by giving examples on BOTH coasts and saying so explicitly in subsequent posts. I honestly don't give a fig about San Francisco's local experience on this point except as it is part of a much larger national issue and have said so. It was an effort to argue against the national issue by siting what coyotetrickster believes is a local exception, especially since it isn't actually so exceptional, that is illogical and if you'd been taking notes in your Logic 101 class you'd understand that.

1950-1960s style "urban renewal", which was intended to lead to a form of "gentrification" (meaning displacement of poor folks by wealthier middle class folks) had a variety of motives in different places and at the national level where the funding came from. Some of those motives in some places--possibly SF--may have been racist but they were all as different as the differing thoughts of the men who led them.

And by the way, you really are doing nothing but trolling here.

Since you seem comfortable in interpreting my disdain and disgust at Justin Herman's as me making the tragic abuse of the Western Addition redevelopment a local exception, let me clarify. I am more than aware of how the Federal policies of the 50s-70s impacted cities across the country, especially with regard to the damage to previously functioning minority neighborhoods in close proximity to the traditional city core.

Herman's racist views were revealed in letters and conversations after his removal from the Redevelopment Agency over the destruction of the Western Addition. His 'redevelopment' efforts are responsible for the lifeless stretch of Geary from Franklin to Divisadero and the unfortunate Japantown Malls that profoundly ignore Geary (and let's not forget the fugly our lady of St. Maytag at the top of Cathedral Hill), and the sad blocks of ugly mid-60s/early 70s stucco-ugly flats that disrupt and mar the street grid on the blocks bound by divisadero and Gough, Fulton to Geary.

[McBane]

What are we talking about - whites don't want to live amongst blacks and then citing incidents that occurred in 50 years ago? And this is, in a thread about gentrification, which often involves whites moving into black neighborhoods. Is there not an element of racism when blacks fight against whites moving in "their" neighborhoods?

[LouisVanDerWright]

Originally Posted by Investing In Chicago

But many on the "anti-gentrification" believe that preventing additional housing from being built will some how alleviate the pressure on affordable housing. When in reality it makes it worse; when in reality, the opposite is true - if you upzone where it makes sense and build more new housing units in a particular neighborhood, it will put less pressure on the existing housing stock.

Yeah geniuses like Carlos Rosa seem to think you can legislate lower rents. That's not how it works, you can't stop people from moving where they want to move. They will find a home in a neighborhood they like whether it's in a new TOD tower or in a two flat where they kick two families out. If you disallow the TOD, then you gurauntee that demand will be satisfied in the smaller, older, more affordable existing housing stock. Then you will get displacement once the area runs out of abandoned stock because you have banned the alternative.

[LouisVanDerWright]

Originally Posted by McBane

What are we talking about - whites don't want to live amongst blacks and then citing incidents that occurred in 50 years ago? And this is, in a thread about gentrification, which often involves whites moving into black neighborhoods. Is there not an element of racism when blacks fight against whites moving in "their" neighborhoods?

Well honestly I'm waiting for an "anti gentrification" law to be challenged in court under the Fair Housing Act. Carlos Rosa, an alderman near where I live, has had multiple staffers get busted saying openly racist things again "too many white people moving in the neighborhood". If he passes a law to "stop gentrification" it could get struck down under the Fair housing act as, no matter how much he masks the dog whistle with "it's about income", his staffers have made multiple comments in public letting it be known it's at least partly about keeping white people out. This would be a very similar case to when Donald Trump's Muslim ban got struck down because, no matter how much you squak and say it's about security, he was on the record saying we gotta keep these Muslims out.

[mhays]

Originally Posted by Pedestrian

I started the line of reasoning and I made it pretty clear I was not addressing any local situation by giving examples on BOTH coasts and saying so explicitly in subsequent posts. I honestly don't give a fig about San Francisco's local experience on this point except as it is part of a much larger national issue and have said so. It was an effort to argue against the national issue by siting what coyotetrickster believes is a local exception, especially since it isn't actually so exceptional, that is illogical and if you'd been taking notes in your Logic 101 class you'd understand that.

1950-1960s style "urban renewal", which was intended to lead to a form of "gentrification" (meaning displacement of poor folks by wealthier middle class folks) had a variety of motives in different places and at the national level where the funding came from. Some of those motives in some places--possibly SF--may have been racist but they were all as different as the differing thoughts of the men who led them.

And by the way, you really are doing nothing but trolling here.

You told him he was wrong. You were incorrect, as you've basically admitted without admitting. Who's trolling?

[jtown,man]

Originally Posted by Pedestrian

You're wrong.

I remember the late days of segregation, both legal and de facto very well.

I remember having a birthday party in Rock Creek Park in DC around age 4 or 5 and a black family was doing something similar with their kids my age and I wanted to play with their kids and my parents were horrified. I doubt they thought the black 5 year olds or their parents were going to commit some crime against me.

Later on, I remember the fight to integrate public swimming pools which were segregated, not because black people swimming in them would commit crimes but because of some indescribable white feeling that black people were dirty and disease-ridden . . . or something.

Which is just the point. Back then it wasn't crime, actually. It was SOMETHING that no one could really put a finger on. But what it actually was was tribalism. One tribe can't really say, often, why they hate other tribes. They just do, maybe because their parents wouldn't let them play together at age 5 and made them feel like something was wrong with those other people.

Incidentally, while all this was going on, it was well known in DC that black African diplomats were invited to all the best parties and could swim in the best private pools or live in most any neighborhood. It was just those American blacks that had something wrong with them.

Finally, jd3189 is absolutely right that the crime issue arrose in the 1960s along with general influence on blacks of the "black power" philosophy, the adoption of what I call
"pseudoAfricanism" (everything from hair styles to clothing) and a rejection of mainstream culture as something for white people only. American blacks began to honor rebellion against white society in many ways, large and small and to develop their own social values. The importance of education became "a white thing" and selling drugs became OK if you had to to get by. Cooperation with police, at that time mostly white, became something not to do and so on.

Not all black Americans bought into this, of course. Mostly it was the marginalized in inner cities which were then crumbling. America's black middle class held onto the mainstream values but they didn't live in those crumbling neighborhoods and public housing. And unfortunately, middle class whites weren't very good at judging who they wanted to live next door to "by the content of their character."

Amazingly, it's been over 5 decades--half a century--since those times and we are all getting a bit better. Hence people like us don't mind who moves into our condos as long as they don't play loud music at night and their dogs don't sh*t in the hallway (and yes, they don't deal drugs in the lobby).

Maybe I should have been more clear, the vast majority of whites who want to live in an urban area have zero issues with blacks or majority black areas. Their main issue is crime, in 2018.

[jtown,man]

Originally Posted by McBane

What are we talking about - whites don't want to live amongst blacks and then citing incidents that occurred in 50 years ago? And this is, in a thread about gentrification, which often involves whites moving into black neighborhoods. Is there not an element of racism when blacks fight against whites moving in "their" neighborhoods?

Yes. Search for some of these activist groups on Instagram. They are very explicit and seem to forget most of their neighborhoods were majority white just 5 decades ago