urbanMSP

Bold headline, but good article:

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016 ... -francisco

It takes the position that Nieto died because newcomers to the area (the gentrifiers) saw him as a "menacing intruder in the place he had spent his whole life."

I read that last night and was more than a little shaken by the whole thing. Of course, it's equally relevant in the "Police Brutality" thread, but I find the "g word" angle interesting because SF does find itself in a very interesting position in which hoards of rich young people are moving into long-established neighborhoods on a scale unlike most anywhere else.

Gentrification is official policy of the City of San Francisco now, since new housing is so hard to construct. Techbros are an easy scapegoat but can't bear complete blame.

But would this story have been much different if these techbros had lived in a newly constructed high-rise in Bernal Heights? They would have displaced fewer people, but would they still view the previous (and current) inhabitants of the neighborhood as dangerous menaces?

Good article. The first comment I saw was really on-point though:

Part of me is pissed off at the attempt to portray a clearcut case of police brutality as gentrification. And part of me is already calloused and indifferent over yet another statistic in the toll of deaths at police hands.

Maybe the people who interacted with Nieto, and called the cops were tech-boom gentrifiers. That is immaterial. Police and their dispatchers should be able to see past racial bias of the people they serve in a multi-cultural city like San Francisco (or New York for that matter).
Yeah high rents suck, and gentrifying assholes who whine about things they don't like in the area they just bought a condo in are lame. I also hate all those trendy artisanal boutiques and restaurants that have erased half of the Mission.
But they did not kill Nieto, police bullets did.

I agree, and had a similar thought upon first read. But I think trying to tie things back to just police brutality will not result in an effective dialogue. Who killed Nieto? The police. But why were the police there on edge with guns drawn? Because of the calls they had received. If those people hadn't treated Nieto as a criminal, he'd be alive today. So while police brutality is a major issue, it's not the only issue.

If that's the case then Gentrification is only barely an issue.

To blame this on gentrification is kind of implicitly saying that the solution is to keep the white people out. Regardless of whether or not that would have prevent this, that's not possible. San Francisco tries REALLY HARD to keep new comers out, and it doesn't work. And regardless again, is mandatory exclusion really the correct response to the way our cities are changing?

Being a racist jerk isn't illegal. While it's morally reprehensible to look at someone with darker skin and assume "gang member" and "criminal," it is not a crime to think it. Society needs to change and be more accepting etc etc, but that's not an overnight fix. Police brutality is also a hard problem, but in comparison I think a much easier problem. These four officers testified about what they saw and how what they saw justified their actions. But there's evidence that what they said they saw isn't what happened. Body cameras would have solved this easily. They would have shown us exactly what the officers saw. And maybe in this specific case it wouldn't have changed what happened to Nieto (though it certainly would have changed what happened to the officers afterwards), but I'd sure hope that the next time officers respond to a call about someone being "sketchy" in a public park that they act as if their actions will be directly broadcast to the world if something bad happens. And if what the officers said was somehow true, that he was pointing his taser at the officers etc etc, then the body cameras would corroborate their story.

At the end of the day, Gentrification is another scapegoat for society's problems. We don't want to take a long hard look at race relations in this country, we don't want to deal with the ways our cities our changing. So instead of dealing with those hard issues, we put our heads in the sand and scream gentrification, implying that the way to solve all our problems is to not let anything change ever.

Alex Nieto had a history of being mentally unstable. At the time he likely was not in a frame of mind that most would recognize as normal. When the officers asked him to show his hands, he responded by asking the officers to show their hands. He ended up drawing and shooting his stun gun at the officers.

The real tragedy is that in our society when someone is having a mental health breakdown the only action an ordinary person can reasonably take is to call the police. The police are not trained in identifying people who are mentally ill, the police are not mental health workers. Police misapply force in communities of all types, gentrifying or not. I think Rebecca Solnit used this tragedy to push her narrative of anti-gentrification, which I would say is in bad taste.

When the officers asked him to show his hands, he responded by asking the officers to show their hands. He ended up drawing and shooting his stun gun at the officers.

That is what the cops claim, but the evidence does not back those claims up. The taser expert said the taser was not fired, and was not even on. The witness also said that did not occur.

At the end of the day, Gentrification is another scapegoat for society's problems. We don't want to take a long hard look at race relations in this country, we don't want to deal with the ways our cities our changing. So instead of dealing with those hard issues, we put our heads in the sand and scream gentrification, implying that the way to solve all our problems is to not let anything change ever.

I agree with this, but I think police brutality can be a "scapegoat" for those problems as well. I put it in quotes because it is a huge problem, but it is also used to obscure other problems. Our society is racist, and ending simply at "Cops kill too many civilians, they need body cameras" is not a solution to the broader problem. I am not claiming you or anyone else here is saying that, but I do feel it is one that gets put forward. And the thing I liked about this article is that it told the story from earlier, including the interactions with citizens that got the cops called in the first place. I feel so many of these types of articles start from the moment the cops arrive until the person dies. And those are important stories to tell. But it's also important to take a step back and look at the other factors.

http://www.tcdailyplanet.net/agreatcity ... ent-404611

The debate continues.

I like the article. Specific and to the point.

Muddled, more like. I agree that there are major issues with some of the so-called affordable housing being produced in Frey's ward but there is just no evidence of the wide-scale displacement that she's talking about. The Crossroads affair is big news precisely because it's so unusual. The issue is not the conversion of poor neighborhoods into rich ones, it's the maintenance of the lines between them. The idea that the problem with Minneapolis is that there's too much wealth and investment in North is, frankly, insane. The North Loop wasn't a poor neighborhood, it was largely unpopulated.

My point was this article is more specific than the last 25 Minneapolis gentrification articles combined. Faint praise, but a move in the right direction, if one wants to talk about gentrification at least have some specifics and possible remedies.

Well, that's fair. It's not really a genre known for its clear policy prescriptions ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Speaking of Crossroads, a similar situation is happening in Burnsville with the Meridian Pointe (formerly Nicollet Ridge) apartment complex:

http://www.startribune.com/rent-hikes-t ... 381262081/

Five myths of gentrification.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... story.html

Ha: http://www.clickhole.com/article/fighti ... live--4964

Peter Callaghan for MinnPost: How luxury apartments in Uptown affect low-income tenants in Frogtown
https://www.minnpost.com/politics-polic ... s-frogtown

The Green Line Blues: Housing prices spike in Central Corridor’s poorest neighborhood
http://www.twincities.com/2016/10/21/th ... ghborhood/

W. Broadway is around $1100-$1300 for a 3 bdrm too. There's no train there.