Dept of Reality Checking White Guilt
“Go forth and Gentrify?”
Some of the naughty clout behind the ‘g’ word may not be true… nationally, anyway. Ideas of displacement of local residents caused by gentrification doesn’t pan out when compared with census data in many cities. (Poor neighborhoods have high vacancy.) But in DC, the outflux is more than myth.
“So are ‘transitional’ homebuyers guilty of class warfare? It’s easy to talk about the downside of gentrification—high housing prices, evictions, and a creeping nimby-ism that elbows out social services. But there are benefits, too.”
Upside? Inside-the-beltway whiteys are renewing the tax base. It’s also supposedly more environmentally neutral since new low-density developments use more energy than packing more people into urban cores.
But when you live in a city, that clearly pushes people out in exchange for others, we’re just passing on these negatives.
Can anyone think of a way gentrification is beneficial in DC besides bringing us a Target on the Green Line?
Source:
Go Forth and Gentrify? MotherJones
