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Only 2 Ways to Fight Gentrification (you’re not going to like one of them)

gentrification

Gentrification is the result of powerful economic forces. Those who misunderstand the nature of the economic forces at play, risk misdirecting those forces.  Misdirection can exasperate city-wide displacement.  Before discussing solutions to fighting gentrification, it is important to accept that gentrification is one symptom of a larger problem. Anti-capitalists often portray gentrification as class war.  Often, they paint the archetypal greedy developer as the culprit.  As asserted in jacobin magazine: Gentrification has always been a top-down affair, not a spontaneous hipster influx, orchestrated by the real estate developers and investors who pull the strings of city policy, with individual home-buyers deployed in mopping up operations. Is Gentrification a Class War?   In a way, yes.  But the typical class analysis mistakes the symptom for the cause.  The finger gets pointed at the wrong rich people.  There is no grand conspiracy concocted by real estate developers, though it’s not surprising it seems that way. Real estate developers would be happy to build in already expensive neighborhoods. Here, demand is stable and predictable.  They don’t for a simple reason: they are not allowed to. Take Chicago’s Lincoln Park for example.  Daniel Hertz points out that the number of housing units in Lincoln Park actually decreased 4.1% since 2000.   The neighborhood hasn’t allowed a single unit of affordable housing to be developed in 35 years. The affluent residents of Lincoln Park like their neighborhood the way it is, and have the political clout to keep it that way. Given that development projects are blocked in upper class neighborhoods, developers seek out alternatives. Here’s where “pulling the strings” is a viable strategy for developers. Politicians are far more willing to upzone working class neighborhoods. These communities are far less influential and have far fewer resources with which to fight back. Rich, entitled, white areas get down-zoned. Less-affluent, disempowered, minority […]

Zoning as a Tool of Class Exclusion

In regards to zoning, Discovering Urbanism has a nice post up about early 20th century urban planner Charles Mulford Robinson and his planning textbook.  It includes the following corrective to the notion that zoning originated as a way to separate polluting industry from places of residence and commerce: There’s a common narrative about how zoning unfolded in America. First, planners needed to find ways to separate dangerous and unhealthy factories from the places where people lived. Once the legal basis for this tool was secured, it was eventually employed to separate businesses from residents. The final stage of zoning was to segregating different kinds of people from each other. That’s how we reached where we are today. However, the Robinson textbook indicates that this progression was, if anything, reversed. In reality, residences at the time couldn’t be separated much from industry, because many of the working classes had to be within walking distance from their jobs. On the other hand, some of the very earliest uses of zoning were explicitly intended to separate “exclusive” neighborhoods from the lower classes, whether by requiring minimum densities or barring anything but detached single-family housing. Originally posted on my blog.

Landlord Finally Free to Live in His Own Home

After battling in court since 2003, this family is finally able to turn their 60 room apartment building into one gigantic home for themselves. Of course, the beneficiaries of the rent-controlled apartments don’t believe the owner’s family should have the right to live in their own building. New York Post – VILLAGE TENANTS ‘HOUSE BROKEN’ The Court of Appeals found that Alistair and Catherine Economakis can go ahead with eviction proceedings against their low-income tenants at 47 E. 3rd St., as long as they plan to use their apartments for themselves. “We’re all working people, your typical, moderate-income working people. For them to want to kick us out so they can have a luxury mansion – it’s ethically and morally unconscionable. I don’t know what other word to use,” said David Pultz, 56, who’s lived in the building for the past 30 years. Pultz said he pays $625 a month for his one-bedroom apartment, and is concerned that if he gets booted, he’ll have to leave the city. (that’s about 1/4 -1/3 the market rate for that neighborhood) “At a time of a really grave housing shortage, it’s a matter of serious concern that an owner can be permitted to obtain 15 apartments for his own use,” he said, adding that in the rest of the state, owners can’t claim more than two apartments for themselves. As I described in Rent Control Part 3, rent control creates this type of class tensions between the property owners and the “entitled” class tenants. It seems completely silly that the landlord has to go to such extremes to get out of the burdens of rent control, but can you blame him? Compared to buying a new home, it probably cost him next to nothing in lost revenue to evict the tenants. Here is […]

Rent Control Part 3: Mobility, Regional Growth, Development and Class Conflict

Part One of this series was a refresher on the Microeconomics of Rent Control and touched on how it encourages hoarding Part Two discussed rent controls influence on the black market for apartments, rental property deterioration and housing discrimination. Here in Part Three, we will discuss how rent control hampers mobility, regional growth, tax revenue, apartment development, and becomes a catalyst for class conflict. Mobility As mentioned in Rent Control Part One, duration of residence in a rent-controlled apartment has been observed to be three times as long as duration at market-rate apartments. One can see that the incentive to hoard rent-controlled apartments is also disincentive to relocate. The mobility of both the tenants and newcomers are drastically hampered by rent control. Unless the tenant has the money to rent a second apartment (or Governor’s mansion), it will be difficult for him to relocate closer to better employment. The tenant may rather endure a very long commute in order to maintain the rent-controlled apartment. As Walter Block put it, "They are, in a sense, trapped by the gentle and visible hand that keeps them where they are rather than where they might do better." Difficulties are multiplied if the local economy takes a turn for the worse. A downturn in local employment would not be relieved by people relocating for jobs, thus making the unemployment and poverty situation worse. Employees looking to relocate in the city with rent control are hurt the worst as they will have a difficult time finding available apartments. The drawbacks to the local economy are discussed in the section on regional growth and adaptation. The reduction in mobility is especially burdensome on families with children, since public schools tend to be local. If the local school is under performing, a family under rent-control will lose […]

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