Gentrification

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VAStationDude
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Re: Gentrification

Postby VAStationDude » October 30th, 2015, 2:26 pm

I'd better have a serious talk with my buddy who accused me of being in Ricky Rubio's back pocket after I glowingly praised his leadership and defense.

No, I don't think anyone at any level of government is on the take unless they're proven to have been. I do think certain individuals and institutions have a lot invested in the current housing policies. Whether it's money, a desire to preserve the status quo or stubbornness driving the push back against the hud complaint, I don't know. I do know, as has been clearly demonstrated by results, our current housing policies have been an absolute disaster for poor minorities. I do believe naive people with honest, but horribly wrong, views about housing are being used in the effort to preserve current affordable housing policies.

People use hyperbole all the time. Geez.

WHS
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Re: Gentrification

Postby WHS » October 30th, 2015, 2:42 pm

various stuff
So a few things: first, I get where VAStationDude is coming from. At best, you can say that Cano's ward is divided on this issue, but she has so far pretty consistently sided people representing affordable housing industry interests. And the industry manages to snake down into the debate in ways that aren't always obvious. At Cano's own forum one of the speakers was a registered lobbyist for a housing group (and you better believe this was not disclosed) and another one had spent his entire career working for community developers (also not disclosed). Cano's certainly seems politically close to a lot of people with connections to the industry, so yeah, I understand why people might be concerned. At the very least, she occasionally seems to conflate the interests of this industry with the interest of her constituents.

With that said, I'm sure there's nothing malicious about it. She's just representing her community as she thinks is best. She's just (in my opinion) very, very wrong about what would most help that community.

Finally, I was at the event today and it's worth saying that, for all the debate here, the viewpoints that Cano is expressing were very much in the minority. A solid majority of the speakers talked about segregation and access as serious ongoing problems. Most notably, Gary Cunningham, who, as a member of the Met Council, is actually a respondent to the ongoing housing complaint, got pretty fired up talking about low black homeownership rates and the region's racial disparities, and pointed out that these disparities in education, income, and opportunity all have segregation as a root cause. The mayor of Richfield and VP of the Saint Paul NAACP talked about the need for strong housing enforcement and a regional housing policy that looks at factors like schools, and pointed out past misdeeds by the state and local governments.

Even the head of MHFA -- also a respondent to the complaint -- walked a middle road, defending her agency's work. But the discussion wasn't really empirical enough to go far down that road. Paul Williams of Project for Pride in Living was just about the only person representing what I'd describe as the affordable housing industry perspective, and fairly predictably, his take was that organizations like PPL should get more resources so they can keep doing what they're doing and also build affordable housing in the suburbs. Since this was bookended by lengthy discussion of how few resources are actually available, this was not an especially convincing argument.

There was minimal talk of gentrification, even during the public comment period. One of Cano's previous panelists actually mentioned it, but most of the discussion was about the difficulty of finding and keeping affordable units anywhere in the region, which is a totally reasonable point when landlords are able to discriminate against low-income tenants without facing any real consequences.

So while it's frustrating seeing Cano going to bat for developers, I don't think it's malicious, just misguided, and ultimately I think the wind may be blowing the other direction.

WHS
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Re: Gentrification

Postby WHS » October 30th, 2015, 2:48 pm

And to help bring this discussion back around to gentrification, I suggest everyone read this blog post that FISHMANPET linked to: http://cityobservatory.org/whats-really ... hborhoods/

Here's a summary: gentrification doesn't displace people (demographics change through a natural process of resident turnover), gentrification raises incomes for low-income people who stay in gentrifying neighborhoods, and perhaps most importantly, incomes in non-gentrifying neighborhoods don't stay stable but instead fall. This last point in particular is fairly ironic, given the present debate: as a result of falling incomes, people may be displaced from neighborhoods that are not gentrifying at a greater rate than from those that are.
Last edited by WHS on October 30th, 2015, 2:57 pm, edited 1 time in total.

acs
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Re: Gentrification

Postby acs » October 30th, 2015, 2:55 pm

As the saying goes; "the road to hell is paved with good intentions". Remember, freeways through the urban core was considered "progressive" at the time.

WHS
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Re: Gentrification

Postby WHS » October 30th, 2015, 2:56 pm

Of course Edina and Woodbury (and southwest Minneapolis!) should have more affordable housing. But if this complaint went through, would something like South Quarter at Franklin and Portland have been possible? That's a lot of affordable housing plopped in an RCAP, but I think its benefits outweigh that.
A bit out of sequence here, but just out of curiosity, what do you see those benefits as being? Because they're extremely difficult to identify empirically.

EOst
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Re: Gentrification

Postby EOst » October 30th, 2015, 3:15 pm

A bit out of sequence here, but just out of curiosity, what do you see those benefits as being? Because they're extremely difficult to identify empirically.
Right now, this is (arguably) the most vibrant and pleasant intersection on Franklin Avenue between 11th Avenue and Nicollet, maybe even to Hennepin. That's had a definite impact on this area and the eastern part of Stevens Square.

I certainly would've preferred a greater variety of incomes, and I know it will exacerbate other problems, but on the ground this is miles better than what came before.

EOst
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Re: Gentrification

Postby EOst » November 8th, 2015, 11:58 am


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FISHMANPET
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Re: Gentrification

Postby FISHMANPET » November 8th, 2015, 10:43 pm

Not that that's not terrible and illegal, but I feel like that's one of the side effects of an economy where our largest asset also happens to be the place we live.

But you could just as easily be swindled out of any large asset.

David Greene
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Re: Gentrification

Postby David Greene » November 9th, 2015, 8:43 pm

IA lot of the discussion about fighting "gentrification" seemed to be focused on keeping people out.
I don't know how you come to that conclusion. The discussions I've been a part of are focused on keeping people in.

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FISHMANPET
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Re: Gentrification

Postby FISHMANPET » November 9th, 2015, 9:10 pm

I came to that conclusion by going to Cano's public form on Gentrification where the overwhelming implied sentiment is "keep these people out of our neighborhoods." Also with someone in the comments section of the event who accused me of being a tea party libertarian for thinking that maybe we needed more housing.

Also, you actually, indirectly, by disagreeing with the notion that at a fundamental level that our housing issues stem from a lack of supply.

WHS
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Re: Gentrification

Postby WHS » January 15th, 2016, 9:44 am

https://www.minnpost.com/cityscape/2016 ... al-problem
[A] new study from the Institute on Metropolitan Opportunity released this week seeks to debunk gentrification concerns. According to the data going back 15 years, by nearly any measure gentrification isn’t actually happening in core areas of Minneapolis and St. Paul. Instead the report argues that the cities’ poor and middle-class neighborhoods, the places often invoked in gentrification conversations, are growing even more removed from our region’s wealthier communities.
Full study here: https://www1.law.umn.edu/uploads/51/3c/ ... an2016.pdf

MNdible
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Re: Gentrification

Postby MNdible » January 15th, 2016, 10:11 am

Not that I think that the study is necessarily wrong, but I'm always suspicious when an academic publishes research that so strongly mirrors the academics pre-existing worldview.

LakeCharles
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Re: Gentrification

Postby LakeCharles » January 15th, 2016, 12:04 pm

Not that I think that the study is necessarily wrong, but I'm always suspicious when an academic publishes research that so strongly mirrors the academics pre-existing worldview.
Maybe they have that worldview because they've been doing research and readings on this topic for decades.

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Tiller
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Re: Gentrification

Postby Tiller » January 15th, 2016, 12:11 pm

Gotta love that chicken-and-Egg. ;)

trigonalmayhem

Re: Gentrification

Postby trigonalmayhem » January 15th, 2016, 12:57 pm

Gentrification is a byproduct of restrictive zoning, pure and simple. If we'd actually kept up with housing demand in urban areas you'd have way less displacement going on and a lot more natural changes happening over longer timescales that are less disruptive. The whole inner-city crime epidemic disappearing relatively quickly helped too (thanks leaded-gasoline http://www.motherjones.com/environment/ ... k-gasoline). Change is inevitable and 'gentrification' is generally just when that change happens too quickly in one direction. Since we've got so much pent-up demand it's pretty hard to avoid side-effects like this once you finally uncork the bottle.

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Nathan
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Re: Gentrification

Postby Nathan » January 15th, 2016, 1:14 pm

Gentrification is a byproduct of restrictive zoning, pure and simple. If we'd actually kept up with housing demand in urban areas you'd have way less displacement going on and a lot more natural changes happening over longer timescales that are less disruptive. The whole inner-city crime epidemic disappearing relatively quickly helped too (thanks leaded-gasoline http://www.motherjones.com/environment/ ... k-gasoline). Change is inevitable and 'gentrification' is generally just when that change happens too quickly in one direction. Since we've got so much pent-up demand it's pretty hard to avoid side-effects like this once you finally uncork the bottle.

Aside from the inner city crime leaded gas stuff (since I haven't looked into it) I completely agree with this. Couldn't have said it better.

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Tiller
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Re: Gentrification

Postby Tiller » January 15th, 2016, 1:20 pm

It would be pretty great if we let-up on zoning. Not only would it help supress housing prices, help us meet our current housing demand, and reduce volatility in our housing market, but the resulting lower housing prices would mean more people would move here due to relatively cheap housing, which would help with our pending demographic problems, and otherwise feed into the positive feedback loop of urban development.
/choir preached to and potential run-on sentence

amiller92
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Re: Gentrification

Postby amiller92 » January 15th, 2016, 1:52 pm

Well, guys, we've got it all figure out. Everyone is going to agree with us, right?

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FISHMANPET
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Re: Gentrification

Postby FISHMANPET » January 15th, 2016, 1:54 pm

Cano had some thoughts and RTed some people on twitter in response to Bill and honestly I don't know what she thinks. It was the mansplaining response of "Well actually..." but that's literally all there was, nothing followed the actually.

I just don't know what Cano is about on the scary G word.

WHS
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Re: Gentrification

Postby WHS » January 15th, 2016, 2:19 pm

I think that to vulnerable populations, neighborhood change can be inherently frightening, because any form of instability is frightening when you're sufficiently economically stressed. Slow neighborhood change is for all intents and purposes a constant in major cities. Those slow changes tend to get read as gentrification, for a variety of reasons -- e.g., a lot of people in poor neighborhoods are rhetorically primed to believe gentrification is a problem; it's an explanation that provides a convenient outgroup to blame; certain interested parties such as affordable developers have a real financial stake in propagating the myth of incipient gentrification.

I think this dynamic is responsible for some of the less coherent gentrification narratives that crop up in the face of skepticism, like the idea that the term is inherently undefinable and neighborhood changes are so slow and so insidious that they cannot be discerned through any quantitative or empirical measure.


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