8 ms·

This police-assisted murder is a shame but I don't understand why we expect neighborhoods to remain frozen in time forever, never changing their racial or socio

This police-assisted murder is a shame but I don't understand why we expect neighborhoods to remain frozen in time forever, never changing their racial or socioeconomic makeup for as long as the area exists. It's a given that neighborhoods, especially in the city, will change over time. The real issue isn't whether people who don't look like the lifelong residents will move in, it's if those new neighbors will treat the area and neighbors with the same reverence and respect that those before them did. I don't think people resent a changing neighborhood so much as they resent people with different values settling down and expecting the neighborhood to bend to their preference. This is clearly what's at stake in the death of Alex Nieto.

Joe8Bit 11y ago
I don't think many people would argue with the evolutionary nature of cities. I think what people would say, however, is that when cities change those with the least economic muscle tend to be the most adversely effected (e.g they lose their homes/tenancies when they can't afford to pay inflated rents). Again, that in itself might not be a problem if there were other places to move that poor communities could afford and wouldn't detrimentally affect their lives. I can speak from experience in London, poor communities have NO WHERE to move if an area is gentrified and they are forced out. Prices are city wide too high, gentrification has left no where 'cheap'. What that means is moving further from central London, which means moving further away from the main source of work and increasing expense of travel. Which all in turn means an even greater slip into poverty.
- cbeach 11y ago
  Those doing low-paid work in London are obviously important to the city, but I'd argue that those doing high-paid work make more sense to live in the city because theirs is the work that benefits most from the agglomeration that big cities provide. If low-paid workers have to travel further, then their wages will be forced upwards as a result. Employers are forced to pay prevailing market rates to get the staff they need.
  - UVB-76 11y ago
    The situation in London is complicated by a large influx of workers from elsewhere in the EU, who are willing to live in sub-standard conditions (many to a room, sharing beds, sheds in back gardens, etc.) and work for minimum wage, or even less. Some larger employers pay a "living wage" on principle, but nobody feels the need to raise wages for unskilled workers for lack of supply.
    - switch007 11y ago
      This is a very salient point about London. It's not widely known about just how squalid and cramped the living conditions are — though just ask any recently arrived migrant. It is not as black and white as poor people living in zones 3-9 and rich people living in 1-3.
  - Joe8Bit 11y ago
    In a theoretically perfect economic market you're right, but there is little if any evidence to suggest there is a causal link between economic displacement and wage growth. In fact wage growth at the low end has stagnated in London[0] despite the advancing economic displacement of it's low paid workers[1]. [0]: https://www.london.gov.uk/sites/default/files/Economy%20Committee%20Fair%20Pay%2011%20Feb%2014.pdf https://www.london.gov.uk/sites/default/files/Economy%20Comm... [1]: http://www.londonspovertyprofile.org.uk/indicators/topics/low-pay/ http://www.londonspovertyprofile.org.uk/indicators/topics/lo...
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
  - branchless 11y ago
    Those doing the high-paid "work" are often those abusing state granted powers to issue credit. They say to the poor "pledge more of your working life to me in exchange for the right to exist or I will banish you". There is no relationship between value added and money gained in London.
    - 11y ago
- eli_gottlieb 11y ago
  Housing would be cheaper if they built more of it. Rents in Seattle actually declined this year.
  - Joe8Bit 11y ago
    Broadly speaking you're right, but in London in particular housing stock growth has been significant in the last 10 years but it has had consequently little effect on housing price deflation[0]. There are many theories as to why that is, but a personal pet one is that London is lacking in housing stock across the market and as such it is economically more viable to build at the middle and top end of the market where profits are higher than at the low end. When this is combined with a record low investment in local government social housing in London you get London's extreme housing market e.g. demand is high, but supply has all gravitated to the place where returns are highest [0]: http://data.london.gov.uk/housingmarket/ http://data.london.gov.uk/housingmarket/
    - ido 11y ago
      Very dense residential areas still seem rare in London, compared to other cities of comparable size (it has lower population density than e.g. NYC, Paris, Hong Kong, Seoul, Tokyo...)
      - Joe8Bit 11y ago
        Completely agree. London really needs to embrace 'up' as a viable building solution. Apparently, a lot of it has to do with some archaic laws surrounding building in London, the 'Protected Views' one is of particular note: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_view https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_view
  - seibelj 11y ago
    No idea why you are being downvoted. Supply and demand, this is Economics 101. I have made the same arguments about SF and people downvote me too. The #1 way to decrease rent is to build more supply. If there was double the apartments in SF, the rent would not be as high.
mc32 11y ago
When middle class families move out it's called *-flight. When poor families move out, it's called gentrification. Both are due to economics, some precipitated, not so much by individual bigotry but rather by self interest (the former wanting to preserve value individually in anticipation of devaluation of property, the latter get pushed out due to economics whereby its not viable to remain in a valuating neighborhood while earnings remain flat for the individual.
- thaw13579 11y ago
  While I'm sure there's plenty of self interest at play, it's important to remember that there were explicitly racist legal practices as well. A specific example is the practice of racially restricted covenants, which literally prevents a home from being sold to a someone who isn't white: http://www.bostonfairhousing.org/timeline/1920s1948-Restrictive-Covenants.html http://www.bostonfairhousing.org/timeline/1920s1948-Restrict...
  - fiatmoney 11y ago
    And which haven't been enforceable for ~70 years, where they existed in at all. Some stuff has happened since then.
    - thaw13579 11y ago
      And after that there was the FHA: http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/05/the-racist-housing-policy-that-made-your-neighborhood/371439/ http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/05/the-raci... Yes, "stuff" continues to happen, for better or worse, but it's hard to believe that the state of housing is independent of bigotry given the evidence.
      - fiatmoney 11y ago
        And those policies ended 50 years ago! Liberals have been in charge of housing policy for literally decades.
Shivetya 11y ago
Well this phase passed through cities like Chicago ages ago when the row homes were bought up literally street by street. Gutted and rebuilt on the inside into much nicer homes. The rising housing costs would increase taxes on adjacent homes and streets accelerating the process. Likely Detroit will one day face this provided they can ever get themselves in order. It should be considered the fruit of fixing up what drove people away in the first place.
danharaj 11y ago
What is a neighborhood if all the people who live in it are completely fungible? What does it mean when a city is far more enthusiastic about spending money on neighborhoods of wealthy people and is glad to neglect neighborhoods of poor people? The most substantial funding American cities are willing to allocate for poor neighborhoods is police. > I don't think people resent a changing neighborhood so much as they resent people with different values settling down and expecting the neighborhood to bend to their preference. Honestly, that's just wrong. People resent how the schools only get better when wealthier people move in. People resent how petty violations are brutally enforced on the poor and relaxed once the neighborhood "gets a little better". People resent how a neighborhood improving implies they, the undesirables are forced out. These are all things i've learned from people speaking out about how they feel about their neighborhoods gentrifying. Where are you getting the idea that they care about "values"?
mcguire 11y ago
It all depends on who has the money and therefore the power. When the newcomers are wealthier and inclined to view the residents as undesirables, you get this sort of thing. It goes the other way, too. In Amarillo, where I grew up, some neighborhoods had an influx of Vietnamese working in the meat packing industry; near where I live now, there's a large community of Mexican immigrants doing chicken processing. In both cases, take a wild guess who the police have problems with.

Joe8Bit 11y ago

I don't think many people would argue with the evolutionary nature of cities. I think what people would say, however, is that when cities change those with the least economic muscle tend to be the most adversely effected (e.g they lose their homes/tenancies when they can't afford to pay inflated rents). Again, that in itself might not be a problem if there were other places to move that poor communities could afford and wouldn't detrimentally affect their lives. I can speak from experience in London, poor communities have NO WHERE to move if an area is gentrified and they are forced out. Prices are city wide too high, gentrification has left no where 'cheap'. What that means is moving further from central London, which means moving further away from the main source of work and increasing expense of travel. Which all in turn means an even greater slip into poverty.

cbeach 11y ago
Those doing low-paid work in London are obviously important to the city, but I'd argue that those doing high-paid work make more sense to live in the city because theirs is the work that benefits most from the agglomeration that big cities provide. If low-paid workers have to travel further, then their wages will be forced upwards as a result. Employers are forced to pay prevailing market rates to get the staff they need.
- UVB-76 11y ago
  The situation in London is complicated by a large influx of workers from elsewhere in the EU, who are willing to live in sub-standard conditions (many to a room, sharing beds, sheds in back gardens, etc.) and work for minimum wage, or even less. Some larger employers pay a "living wage" on principle, but nobody feels the need to raise wages for unskilled workers for lack of supply.
  - switch007 11y ago
    This is a very salient point about London. It's not widely known about just how squalid and cramped the living conditions are — though just ask any recently arrived migrant. It is not as black and white as poor people living in zones 3-9 and rich people living in 1-3.
- Joe8Bit 11y ago
  In a theoretically perfect economic market you're right, but there is little if any evidence to suggest there is a causal link between economic displacement and wage growth. In fact wage growth at the low end has stagnated in London[0] despite the advancing economic displacement of it's low paid workers[1]. [0]: https://www.london.gov.uk/sites/default/files/Economy%20Committee%20Fair%20Pay%2011%20Feb%2014.pdf https://www.london.gov.uk/sites/default/files/Economy%20Comm... [1]: http://www.londonspovertyprofile.org.uk/indicators/topics/low-pay/ http://www.londonspovertyprofile.org.uk/indicators/topics/lo...
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
- branchless 11y ago
  Those doing the high-paid "work" are often those abusing state granted powers to issue credit. They say to the poor "pledge more of your working life to me in exchange for the right to exist or I will banish you". There is no relationship between value added and money gained in London.
  - 11y ago
eli_gottlieb 11y ago
Housing would be cheaper if they built more of it. Rents in Seattle actually declined this year.
- Joe8Bit 11y ago
  Broadly speaking you're right, but in London in particular housing stock growth has been significant in the last 10 years but it has had consequently little effect on housing price deflation[0]. There are many theories as to why that is, but a personal pet one is that London is lacking in housing stock across the market and as such it is economically more viable to build at the middle and top end of the market where profits are higher than at the low end. When this is combined with a record low investment in local government social housing in London you get London's extreme housing market e.g. demand is high, but supply has all gravitated to the place where returns are highest [0]: http://data.london.gov.uk/housingmarket/ http://data.london.gov.uk/housingmarket/
  - ido 11y ago
    Very dense residential areas still seem rare in London, compared to other cities of comparable size (it has lower population density than e.g. NYC, Paris, Hong Kong, Seoul, Tokyo...)
    - Joe8Bit 11y ago
      Completely agree. London really needs to embrace 'up' as a viable building solution. Apparently, a lot of it has to do with some archaic laws surrounding building in London, the 'Protected Views' one is of particular note: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_view https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_view
- seibelj 11y ago
  No idea why you are being downvoted. Supply and demand, this is Economics 101. I have made the same arguments about SF and people downvote me too. The #1 way to decrease rent is to build more supply. If there was double the apartments in SF, the rent would not be as high.

mc32 11y ago

When middle class families move out it's called *-flight. When poor families move out, it's called gentrification. Both are due to economics, some precipitated, not so much by individual bigotry but rather by self interest (the former wanting to preserve value individually in anticipation of devaluation of property, the latter get pushed out due to economics whereby its not viable to remain in a valuating neighborhood while earnings remain flat for the individual.

thaw13579 11y ago
While I'm sure there's plenty of self interest at play, it's important to remember that there were explicitly racist legal practices as well. A specific example is the practice of racially restricted covenants, which literally prevents a home from being sold to a someone who isn't white: http://www.bostonfairhousing.org/timeline/1920s1948-Restrictive-Covenants.html http://www.bostonfairhousing.org/timeline/1920s1948-Restrict...
- fiatmoney 11y ago
  And which haven't been enforceable for ~70 years, where they existed in at all. Some stuff has happened since then.
  - thaw13579 11y ago
    And after that there was the FHA: http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/05/the-racist-housing-policy-that-made-your-neighborhood/371439/ http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/05/the-raci... Yes, "stuff" continues to happen, for better or worse, but it's hard to believe that the state of housing is independent of bigotry given the evidence.
    - fiatmoney 11y ago
      And those policies ended 50 years ago! Liberals have been in charge of housing policy for literally decades.

Shivetya 11y ago

Well this phase passed through cities like Chicago ages ago when the row homes were bought up literally street by street. Gutted and rebuilt on the inside into much nicer homes. The rising housing costs would increase taxes on adjacent homes and streets accelerating the process. Likely Detroit will one day face this provided they can ever get themselves in order. It should be considered the fruit of fixing up what drove people away in the first place.

danharaj 11y ago

What is a neighborhood if all the people who live in it are completely fungible? What does it mean when a city is far more enthusiastic about spending money on neighborhoods of wealthy people and is glad to neglect neighborhoods of poor people? The most substantial funding American cities are willing to allocate for poor neighborhoods is police. > I don't think people resent a changing neighborhood so much as they resent people with different values settling down and expecting the neighborhood to bend to their preference. Honestly, that's just wrong. People resent how the schools only get better when wealthier people move in. People resent how petty violations are brutally enforced on the poor and relaxed once the neighborhood "gets a little better". People resent how a neighborhood improving implies they, the undesirables are forced out. These are all things i've learned from people speaking out about how they feel about their neighborhoods gentrifying. Where are you getting the idea that they care about "values"?

mcguire 11y ago

It all depends on who has the money and therefore the power. When the newcomers are wealthier and inclined to view the residents as undesirables, you get this sort of thing. It goes the other way, too. In Amarillo, where I grew up, some neighborhoods had an influx of Vietnamese working in the meat packing industry; near where I live now, there's a large community of Mexican immigrants doing chicken processing. In both cases, take a wild guess who the police have problems with.