10 ms·

Nobody "has" to try living in Mountain View. It's not like commuting to Mountain View from Sunnyvale or Santa Clara or, hell, San Jose is some kind of unbearab

Nobody "has" to try living in Mountain View. It's not like commuting to Mountain View from Sunnyvale or Santa Clara or, hell, San Jose is some kind of unbearable hardship. Where does this right to live exactly where you want to end? I'm a fairly wealthy software developer who lives in San Francisco, but I can't afford a home in Monterey Heights. If it's rank injustice for someone poorer than me to not be able to afford my neighborhood (Outer Mission) and they have to move to Daly City, is it also rank injustice for me not to be able to live in a swankier neighborhood? What if I really just want that house over there? Can I do that? These are serious questions -- I genuinely don't know where this line is supposed to be drawn.

mbrock 11y ago
Resisting gentrification is not about the right to live "exactly where you want." Often it's about the ability to keep paying an increasing rent in an apartment where you've lived for many years. It's also about entire city cores becoming entirely reserved for wealthy people. That doesn't mean lower income people want to point at a house and say "gimme." Doesn't have anything to do with wanting to live somewhere "swanky." Often it's about neighborhoods transforming from "livable and affordable" to "swanky," which increases landlord profits and is very nice for wealthy people, but also destroys communities. Aside from that, there are the larger questions... like, how the whole gentrification process is tied up with income distribution... we software developers tend to be relatively wealthy, because of market forces, and this money becomes a powerful reason for landlords to keep increasing rents... etc etc...
- raldi 11y ago
  > It's also about entire city cores becoming entirely reserved for wealthy people. If that were true, rent control and Prop 13 would have means-testing, and leave seniority completely out of the equation. Because they do not, they're actually about benefitting the establishment (even if wealthy) at the expense of newcomers (even if poor).
  - mbrock 11y ago
    I don't deny that there are other forces at work too... and I'm not only talking about California.
    - raldi 11y ago
      Do you know of any city that uses means testing?
      - mbrock 11y ago
        No, but I don't claim that rent control regulations are specifically or well designed for resisting the type of gentrification-induced problems I described.
- yummyfajitas 11y ago
  Often it's about the ability to keep paying an increasing rent in an apartment where you've lived for many years...That doesn't mean lower income people want to point at a house and say "gimme." You just contradicted yourself. Also, what's wrong with "entire city cores becoming entirely reserved for wealthy people"? The problem is N people want to live there, but there are only K < N houses. N-K people don't get what they want, by simple arithmetic. Why is allocating by willingness to pay a bad way to go? (There is an obvious solution - legalize increases in K. Good luck with that.)
  - mbrock 11y ago
    Would you point out the exact contradiction, so I can explain the misunderstanding? Whether there's anything wrong with reserving the city core for wealthy people only, I didn't really make any normative claims about that. There are of course many reasons to consider it problematic: cultural segregation, justice, etc, but you probably don't care about those things, so I won't waste my time. Oh, and "willingness to pay" is a pretty yucky way to put it.
    - yummyfajitas 11y ago
      The low income person you describe, attempting to continue living "in an apartment where you've lived for many years" is a poor person pointing at a specific house and saying "gimme".
      - mbrock 11y ago
        That's just your ideologically motivated redescription of the situation. Not interested.
      - iakh 11y ago
        Except in the first scenario they actually already live and own the place? It's unfair to compare not wanting to lose [lifelong] sentimental value with just any other house outside their means.
- aetherson 11y ago
  Obviously nobody is actually suggesting a situation where you can point at a house and say "I deserve to live exactly there" -- but my point is that it's hard to see any clear line between there and any form of "resisting gentrification." For example, you say, "entire city cores become entirely reserved for wealthy people." That's a sentence fragment replete with lineless definitions. What's a "city core"? If I can afford a house one block outside of the imaginary line that bounds a "city core," is that actually much different from my being able to afford a house one block inside that line? What constitutes a "wealthy" person? If the "city core" (however that's defined) is "affordable" (however that's defined) for someone whose income is $60,000, but not $50,000, what does that mean? I have no trouble with the sort of general intuition that it's a shame if someone can no longer afford to live in a neighborhood that is deeply meaningful to them. What I have trouble with is any way to quantify that intuition and put it into a practical set of policies that actually increase justice and do not diminish it.
  - mbrock 11y ago
    Well, nor do I have a proposed solution by way of regulation for the problems caused by gentrification and income inequality. At this point in the discussion I'm just saying that there are deep problems with "free market" rental housing. That doesn't imply that what's needed is a quantitative system of regulation. You could also, for example, just appropriate the houses from the landlords, right?
    - aetherson 11y ago
      Well, you could, yes, but it's hard to imagine a system of "just appropriating the houses from the landlords" that was justice-positive.
      - eli_gottlieb 11y ago
        No it's not. Just appropriate the houses from the landlords, justice served, job well-done. Landlording is the world's second-oldest form of straight-up exploitation, right after pimping.
thaw13579 11y ago
The challenge exists for families on low incomes--cooks, bus drivers, store clerks, janitors, teachers, etc. A lot of these people were born there, they have family there, have a community there, and they don't have the resources to move or get another job.
- at-fates-hands 11y ago
  What I've seen normally happens is that as a community is displaced, they tend to move to the same areas where other people from their community are living. For instance in Minneapolis where I live, once they put in a lot of low income housing in, a majority of the whites move out of the city, and into the first ring suburbs. Then several immigrant populations moved into Minneapolis and pushed a lot of the african-american population into that first ring of suburbs where the whites had moved. Sure enough, the whites pushed out into the next ring of suburbs. This has happened several times and now the ironic thing is they're taking out (or demolishing) all the low income housing and putting in swanky town homes and condos and guess what? All those families (and their kids) that moved out in the 60's and 70's are the prime movers for the new era of gentrification. My point here is even though communities get shuffled and pushed out due to gentrification, they tend to stick together regardless and create new communities where they move to and find like minded people who have the same common cultural traits as themselves.
  - thaw13579 11y ago
    Isn't what you're describing racial segregation and the creation of ghettos? Historically, a major component of this was explicitly racist housing law, e.g. FHA 1934-1968. But regardless of the implementation, the practical outcome seems to be worse hospitals, education, and political power for the poorer group of "like minded people".
- mc32 11y ago
  The challenge exists but there are no easy answers to it, beside "stagnation". Giving state control of resources is not an answer (as they are likely to wildly misallocate). China has a lot of poor and they have a lot of rich and the state has a lot of control over building housing and controlling inter city migration, yet they continue to have housing issues. As others have said, there is a cycle which develops --be it homogenous pops of heterogeneous populations, in vibrant economies. In stagnant economies, you pretty much get to stay where you were born as there is no upward movement or sideways movement clearing housing stock for others and giving them a chance to move in. So I both agree that no one has a "right" to live in a particular neighborhood or city, implying that housing should be available at a price affordable to anyone who works, I also believe builders should be encouraged to build for different income levels.

mbrock 11y ago

Resisting gentrification is not about the right to live "exactly where you want." Often it's about the ability to keep paying an increasing rent in an apartment where you've lived for many years. It's also about entire city cores becoming entirely reserved for wealthy people. That doesn't mean lower income people want to point at a house and say "gimme." Doesn't have anything to do with wanting to live somewhere "swanky." Often it's about neighborhoods transforming from "livable and affordable" to "swanky," which increases landlord profits and is very nice for wealthy people, but also destroys communities. Aside from that, there are the larger questions... like, how the whole gentrification process is tied up with income distribution... we software developers tend to be relatively wealthy, because of market forces, and this money becomes a powerful reason for landlords to keep increasing rents... etc etc...

raldi 11y ago
> It's also about entire city cores becoming entirely reserved for wealthy people. If that were true, rent control and Prop 13 would have means-testing, and leave seniority completely out of the equation. Because they do not, they're actually about benefitting the establishment (even if wealthy) at the expense of newcomers (even if poor).
- mbrock 11y ago
  I don't deny that there are other forces at work too... and I'm not only talking about California.
  - raldi 11y ago
    Do you know of any city that uses means testing?
    - mbrock 11y ago
      No, but I don't claim that rent control regulations are specifically or well designed for resisting the type of gentrification-induced problems I described.
yummyfajitas 11y ago
Often it's about the ability to keep paying an increasing rent in an apartment where you've lived for many years...That doesn't mean lower income people want to point at a house and say "gimme." You just contradicted yourself. Also, what's wrong with "entire city cores becoming entirely reserved for wealthy people"? The problem is N people want to live there, but there are only K < N houses. N-K people don't get what they want, by simple arithmetic. Why is allocating by willingness to pay a bad way to go? (There is an obvious solution - legalize increases in K. Good luck with that.)
- mbrock 11y ago
  Would you point out the exact contradiction, so I can explain the misunderstanding? Whether there's anything wrong with reserving the city core for wealthy people only, I didn't really make any normative claims about that. There are of course many reasons to consider it problematic: cultural segregation, justice, etc, but you probably don't care about those things, so I won't waste my time. Oh, and "willingness to pay" is a pretty yucky way to put it.
  - yummyfajitas 11y ago
    The low income person you describe, attempting to continue living "in an apartment where you've lived for many years" is a poor person pointing at a specific house and saying "gimme".
    - mbrock 11y ago
      That's just your ideologically motivated redescription of the situation. Not interested.
    - iakh 11y ago
      Except in the first scenario they actually already live and own the place? It's unfair to compare not wanting to lose [lifelong] sentimental value with just any other house outside their means.
aetherson 11y ago
Obviously nobody is actually suggesting a situation where you can point at a house and say "I deserve to live exactly there" -- but my point is that it's hard to see any clear line between there and any form of "resisting gentrification." For example, you say, "entire city cores become entirely reserved for wealthy people." That's a sentence fragment replete with lineless definitions. What's a "city core"? If I can afford a house one block outside of the imaginary line that bounds a "city core," is that actually much different from my being able to afford a house one block inside that line? What constitutes a "wealthy" person? If the "city core" (however that's defined) is "affordable" (however that's defined) for someone whose income is $60,000, but not $50,000, what does that mean? I have no trouble with the sort of general intuition that it's a shame if someone can no longer afford to live in a neighborhood that is deeply meaningful to them. What I have trouble with is any way to quantify that intuition and put it into a practical set of policies that actually increase justice and do not diminish it.
- mbrock 11y ago
  Well, nor do I have a proposed solution by way of regulation for the problems caused by gentrification and income inequality. At this point in the discussion I'm just saying that there are deep problems with "free market" rental housing. That doesn't imply that what's needed is a quantitative system of regulation. You could also, for example, just appropriate the houses from the landlords, right?
  - aetherson 11y ago
    Well, you could, yes, but it's hard to imagine a system of "just appropriating the houses from the landlords" that was justice-positive.
    - eli_gottlieb 11y ago
      No it's not. Just appropriate the houses from the landlords, justice served, job well-done. Landlording is the world's second-oldest form of straight-up exploitation, right after pimping.

thaw13579 11y ago

The challenge exists for families on low incomes--cooks, bus drivers, store clerks, janitors, teachers, etc. A lot of these people were born there, they have family there, have a community there, and they don't have the resources to move or get another job.

at-fates-hands 11y ago
What I've seen normally happens is that as a community is displaced, they tend to move to the same areas where other people from their community are living. For instance in Minneapolis where I live, once they put in a lot of low income housing in, a majority of the whites move out of the city, and into the first ring suburbs. Then several immigrant populations moved into Minneapolis and pushed a lot of the african-american population into that first ring of suburbs where the whites had moved. Sure enough, the whites pushed out into the next ring of suburbs. This has happened several times and now the ironic thing is they're taking out (or demolishing) all the low income housing and putting in swanky town homes and condos and guess what? All those families (and their kids) that moved out in the 60's and 70's are the prime movers for the new era of gentrification. My point here is even though communities get shuffled and pushed out due to gentrification, they tend to stick together regardless and create new communities where they move to and find like minded people who have the same common cultural traits as themselves.
- thaw13579 11y ago
  Isn't what you're describing racial segregation and the creation of ghettos? Historically, a major component of this was explicitly racist housing law, e.g. FHA 1934-1968. But regardless of the implementation, the practical outcome seems to be worse hospitals, education, and political power for the poorer group of "like minded people".
mc32 11y ago
The challenge exists but there are no easy answers to it, beside "stagnation". Giving state control of resources is not an answer (as they are likely to wildly misallocate). China has a lot of poor and they have a lot of rich and the state has a lot of control over building housing and controlling inter city migration, yet they continue to have housing issues. As others have said, there is a cycle which develops --be it homogenous pops of heterogeneous populations, in vibrant economies. In stagnant economies, you pretty much get to stay where you were born as there is no upward movement or sideways movement clearing housing stock for others and giving them a chance to move in. So I both agree that no one has a "right" to live in a particular neighborhood or city, implying that housing should be available at a price affordable to anyone who works, I also believe builders should be encouraged to build for different income levels.