Gentrification

[quote]So when locals get priced out of their hometowns, where do they go? What do they do?

I'm trying to decide.

It's a real problem in London. Particularly central London. I feel a little sad when I watch old British films that are set in London and you see the city as it used to be, with real character and a proper social milieu. As opposed to now, where it's mostly a lifeless, overpriced, craphole with no character or purpose.

I grew up in Notting Hill in West London. It was a great mix of classes with a large migrant community from the West Indies. That mix helped give birth to the punk movement, and a small local theatre (The Mercury)was the venue for affordable cultural nights out and ballet classes for local kids. That theatre is now a private home to a multi-millionaire and the area is awash with the jaded super-rich, playing at being bohemian. London is dying as a vibrant creative city.

You want to see a meet of LGBT activists turn ugly? Bring up gentrification.

Gentrification is a symptom of a larger problem.

Assuming this is a reference to the cafe story, London has a lot of separate issues - it's surrounded by a greenbelt that prevents expansion, the population has grown by millions in just a few years, much of the available land is held by developers in land banks, and the UK has a Byzantine system of planning regulations. None of which the government has any plans to fix.

Gentrification is nothing more than house prices in bad areas increasing to a point that the poor can no longer afford them. That's not the fault of the people that buy them, it's a systemic problem in the market. Few wea;thy people would choose places like Shoreditch if they didn't have to.

Washington DC now has fewer African-Americans than it did a decade ago. And huge swathes of the city burned down in 1968 are now Yuppieville.

[R3] You can move to East London . Lot of vibrant ethnic middle class community is there

In LA, Gentrification occurred after large swaths of the city were colonized by foreign immigrants, leaving only slivers where Anglos could live happily. So now, they are targeting the weakest of the immigrants -- Latinos -- to take their neighborhoods, and to hopefully sell them out to better heeled colonizers such as the Chinese.

I am in the USA. Being pushed out of the only place I could afford means I must relocate far away, very far away. Basically, I have to start all over again as a stranger in a strange place. Even rents are impossible when gentrification occurs. Whereas if the place didn't gentrify, I could at least get a fixer-upper, or rent cheap. And I do not like hipsters and the spoiled rich who move in and re-invent the place. This brings me no benefits.

I am a "middle-class", gay, college educated person who has been both an agent and mostly a victim of gentrification. Usually I was part of the first wave of people to start to "gentrify" a neighbourhood I could barely afford. Later the neighborhood would be solidly, completely gentrified by people far rich that I. People like me, who never had the cash to buy something in the beginning of a gentrification process - get pushed around. We can't complain as much as the poor who get completely squashed but I was closed to squashed a few times.

Finally gave up on NYC and my roommate moved to Turkey and I moved to Switzerland. Geneva is unaffordable to the young bohemian class. I am no longer young and I am not bohemian anymore. Also I can't afford Geneva. The only "biggish" city in Western Switzerland that has enviable housing stock at affordable prices is La Chaux de Fonds which is an odd big town in the Jura Mountains and one of the coldest cities in Western Europe Beautiful art nouveau and art deco apts but its really not close to anything. It would be like New Yorkers deciding Schenectady is the best new place, if Schenectady had amazing housing stock. (Does it?) Geneve, Nyon, Morges, Lausanne, Vevey, Montreux, all on the Swiss "riviera", all lovely, are impossible for modest incomes.

[quote] And I do not like hipsters and the spoiled rich who move in and re-invent the place. This brings me no benefits.

Only if you bought a place before gentrification, sold it and moved on to a cheaper town, with a big fat profit in your pocket.

Laughed my ass off when I read an article that Detroit was being gentrified by racoon and possums. Here comes the neighborhood.

No pity from us.

[quote] Washington DC now has fewer African-Americans than it did a decade ago.

Same thing happened to New Orleans.

After Katrina hit and the AA residents were forced to move, the rich people came in and saw it as an opportunity to take over the city and build expensive housing.

The city has basically lost all of the character that made New Orleans what is once was.

I swear, gentrification-ers are like vampires. They suck all the life out of a city.

[R14] What character enrichment AA people were giving to New Orleans?Can you please explain?

If you want to avoid it come to Phoenix. There is no chance this place will ever be hip.

The greater Phoenix area is filled with Latin-Americans and the doddering, Fox News-addicted, liver-spotted racists who hate them.

Meanwhile, in LA's Gentrification Central:

[quote] London has a lot of separate issues - it's surrounded by a greenbelt that prevents expansion

I assume that you're referring to the old plague pits in Greenwich? I'd not want to stir up anything that might be released by digging them up and building housing.

London's real estate prices were jacked up by Russian oligarch trash and flashy Emirates oil money. Just as Miami has been recently by Venezuelan rich fucks who can't stand the proles taking over there.

R20 you forgot the corrupt oil-rich Nigerian government ministers who cream off all that overseas aid money that's supposed to be building sanitation and schools in rural areas.

Well, "my city" being Paris, the answer will be yes, OP.

[quote]It seems to be a real problem.

Wow, that's some really nuanced insight, OP.

The President of Cameroon pretty much lives in Geneva. Imagine that!? King Fahd did as well. Capital is borderless and its accumulation in the hands of a relative few is wrecking some cities. Oh well. There's always another one on the cusp, ready to welcome the 1st wave of gentrification.

It's all being driven by the Central Banks.

Low (zero) interest rates leave very few places to "invest" your money. People are choosing to invest their money in real estate.

It will end... badly.

It always does.

R19 No, London is surrounded by a ring of countryside called the greenbelt, which it's illegal to build on. It was implemented to prevent the city growing any larger.

The current UK government sells UK residency to foreign nationals in exchange for £1 million of government backed gilt-edged securities.

This kind offer has been unsurprisingly taken up by Albanian and Russian gangsters, the type of people who have a million pounds lying around to buy residency with, plus many millions more to purchase a second home in West London. Their dirty money, which comes from human trafficking, the child sex abuse industry, and illegal drug and arms sales, is laundered into clean money through London wealth managers and estate agents. These pigs have so much dirty money to spend that they have priced the British rich out of Belgravia, Chelsea, Mayfair, etc and those Brits are now moving East into Shoreditch and Hackney.

I sometimes lived in a royal saudi "flop house" (very elegant huge mansion) in Mayfair in the 90s so it's not new and not just the eastern gangster money.

It's a simple matter of supply and demand.

The first wave of people to come in, pass laws to restrict the second, and that is what is the real problem. For instance, in LA, until a few years ago, you had to put 2.5 parking spaces in each new housing you built. This meant you had to essentially put in underground parking, as many of this "new housing" was simply refurbished. This drove up costs, and made it necessary to build higher end apartments and condos. (This rule was revoked in a few areas of LA).

From rent control, to zoning, to NIMBY-ism, cities actual PROHIBIT new housing by making it to costly to build affordable housing. It has little to do with foreigners buying up things, except in Lower Manhattan (which has corp apts) and Florida (seasonal housing).

Why should a developer build low cost or middle class cost housing when for a few thousand more he can double his profit? That is how things work. Don't like it? Get your city councils to remove housing restriction that would make it profitable to build lower cost housing units.

The Saudis have been in West London since the 1970's, yes, R28. But the problem of the global super-rich - many of whom are criminals - buying up property and forcing up prices sky high is new, it began 12-10 years ago. And it is a disaster for the city.

ok i see your point. as if the saudi royal money isn't "criminal".... degrees......

I retired a few years ago, and because of my lack of financial responsibility, never accumulated assets, like real estate. Always rented. It's not a regret, as I don't equate happiness with material wealth. I never wanted to be a slave to home ownership. Going to Rio for a vacation, and driving an Audi was more important to me. I do have a pension for life, and on retirement, could no longer afford to live in Vancouver, Canada. The average single lot house is priced at $1.2 million, and that gets you an older, very basic house. Rents are $1,300 for a one bedroom apartment. Off shore money from Asia has made the city unaffordable for middle income earners. So, I moved to Central America. . .

Who is doing this gentrification? I don't know any gentry (other than the divine Bobbie, of course) -- do you?

the world is topsy turvy

I fail to understand why you are calling this a problem, OP.

R35 - It's a problem when modest populations can't have some stability in their residence.

You should have bought a building when the neighborhood was still a shithole.

I've lived in Boston, NYC, DC, Chicago, and Philadelphia --- all in neighborhoods that became gentrified. I'm an artist and designer so it's par for the course. But at least those cities have something wonderful about them. About 20 years ago, I visited a cousin in Denver. He was buying a "loft" in a "hip" part of lower downtown (which, of course, Denver people called "LoDo"). Anyway, since I was at the time an architect, my cousin took me to his new home. It cost twice what it was worth and it smelled like urine. It had been a horse stable in the early 1900s. My cousin said, "Oh, the agent said the smell will go away" and I told him, "If it still smells 90 years after the last horse left, there is no hope." But he was hell-bent on living a hip life. In Denver. In a smelly stable.

R38 I heard the whole city smells like that.