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San Francisco most intensely gentrified city in new rankings
- matchbok 6y agoRead another way: neighborhoods are getting investment and safer.
- rayiner 6y agoRead another way: white people are moving into neighborhoods that black people had previously been redlined into, and are reaping all the benefits of that investment and safety instead of the former residents.
- baggy_trough 6y ago"all the benefits"? That seems most doubtful indeed.
- rootcage 6y agoIn SF's case it's probably a good mix of asian and white tbh
- novok 6y agoAsians are the new white people
- desert_boi 6y agoIn most tech cities in the States, that's the main mix. https://www.economist.com/business/2020/06/20/will-silicon-valley-face-up-to-its-diversity-problem https://www.economist.com/business/2020/06/20/will-silicon-v... Facebook in this article's paywalled chart even has more asian employees than white in its tech ranks.
- stormdennis 6y agoSo is it a case of white's replacing blacks who had previously replaced whites?
- idoh 6y agoThis particular study did not cover that. From the report: "Consequently, we did not analyze displacement by race and ethnicity, a task that requires precise counts of the residents in a neighborhood. Instead, the present study focused on socioeconomic data related to income, home value and education level to assess neighborhood-level gentrification." https://ncrc.org/gentrification20/ https://ncrc.org/gentrification20/
- mtgp1000 6y agoPart of the reason for the 2008 financial crash was loans made to people who would have traditionally been "redlined" (denied credit for legitimate reasons) after a federal push for more inclusive loaning. IIRC this was a big chunk of overrated securities and at the very least contributed to instability by increasing the nationwide average probability of default.
- albntomat0 6y agoDo you have a source with additional information on this? Not doubting your information, just looking to learn more. Thanks!
- mtgp1000 6y agoI read a few paragraphs and this seems to be a good source for what I'm describing. As usual, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. https://fee.org/articles/how-the-federal-government-created-the-subprime-mortgage-crisis/ https://fee.org/articles/how-the-federal-government-created-...
- albntomat0 6y agoThanks! I'll take a look
- shakethemonkey 6y agoWhile this is not untrue on its face, the bulk of the blame should go to initiating banks, who became more willing to make untenable loans because they could package and securitize the loans and sell them off to investors, avoiding the consequences of their own actions.
- xwdv 6y agoYou snooze you lose unfortunately.
- rak 6y agoYep. DC is going through this now despite the rich history of DC being a chocolate city.
- rayiner 6y agoDC is a tragic story. During Reconstruction, DC was home to a thriving black elite: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/31/books/review/original-black-elite-elizabeth-dowling-taylor.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/31/books/review/original-bla.... Dunbar High School (where today, 100% of students are classified as “economically disadvantaged”) was an elite secondary school for black people where at the turn of the 20th century, the majority of students went to college, including many to Ivy League universities. The Shaw neighborhood had hundreds of black-owned businesses. The end of Reconstruction and the return of southern white people to political power ended that. Woodrow Wilson, a progressive southern Democrat and vicious racist, kicked things off by segregating the federal workforce, which up to that point had employed many black professionals. Segregation eventually took over the whole city, decimating the formerly thriving black elite. During the latter half of the century, Shaw was a typical disadvantaged black neighborhood. It remained that way until the 21st century, when the neighborhood was gentrified by progressive white millennials: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/black-branding--how-a-dc-neighborhood-was-marketed-to-white-millenials/2017/05/02/68b0ae06-2f47-11e7-9534-00e4656c22aa_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/black-branding--how-a-d...
- devmunchies 6y agoBay Area was mostly white and Asian anyway. My grandpa used to be an engineer at Xerox decades ago. My family helped settle San Francisco. Most of us left because of gentrification in the other direction. Whites are to blame if they gentrify a place but also to blame if they leave (white flight). No winning. 100% accountability. BUT! Your original assumption is wrong anyway. it’s not mostly whites moving in this time. SV is a major world hub for tech. Lots of immigrants from India, Pakistan, China, Europe, South America.
- pvg 6y agowas mostly white and Asian anyway. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_Americans_in_San_Francisco https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_Americans_in_San_Franc... "African Americans in San Francisco, California, comprised less than 6% of the city's total population in the 2010 census, down from 13.4% in 1970."
- devmunchies 6y agohttp://www.bayareacensus.ca.gov/counties/SanFranciscoCounty40.htm http://www.bayareacensus.ca.gov/counties/SanFranciscoCounty4... 1940 was 95% white and 0.8% black. so in the 30 years from 1940 to 1970 it went from .08% to 13.4%. that's gentrification too, which was my point.
- pvg 6y agoThe 2nd Great Migration was not 'gentrification', is my point.
- matchbok 6y agoThat is also true, and unfortunate.
- deleuze 6y agoNeighborhoods are constituted by people not just shitty new wood frame construction.
- hakka-nyu-su 6y agoAre migrants not considered "people"? Seems to me like a nativist argument.
- deleuze 6y agoI don't understand how this relates to my comment.
- AlexTWithBeard 6y agoI think the parent was asking: why do we think that people who H1B immigrants who move in will make a worse neighborhood than current "native" residents?
- deleuze 6y agoAh, I think I understand but the logic still seems a little twisted. Gentrification is an economic process, so the passport of the gentrifier doesn't really matter here. Part of the reason I was confused is because -- at least where I live -- communities with a high number of foreign born residents are actually the ones most at risk of gentrification.
- jeffbee 6y agoYou've never been to SF, I take it. The neighborhoods are in fact not getting any investment because all that's happening is the very oldest homeowners are getting massive payouts after decades of falling-in-real-dollars taxation. Furthermore the new people who move in, whose tax bills are absolutely astronomical because they paid five million dollars for their houses, are so burdened by the cost of their housing that they have little left to invest in their neighborhood, in terms of both money and time, since they are so busy working to pay off that house that they bought from Grampa Flowerchild for, again, five million dollars. Random example, 120-year-old wooden house, price quadrupled in only 6 years. Was assessed for only $63k in 2014/2015! https://www.redfin.com/CA/San-Francisco/164-Belvedere-St-94117/home/1659932 https://www.redfin.com/CA/San-Francisco/164-Belvedere-St-941...
- pmdulaney 6y agoImagine if San Francisco had not been lumped in with Oakland!
- shuckles 6y agoRead past the headline and it is in fact Oakland that is gentrifying. San Francisco was almost entirely too rich to be considered.
- viscanti 6y ago5 of the 41 gentrifying areas were in SF. The rest are all of East Bay or in South Bay. It's incredibly misleading to call that SF. SF had completed it's gentrification process much earlier.
- omarhaneef 6y agoAh, that probably explains why Seattle isn't in there. I just expected to see a list of cities with the fastest rising prices, but its probably a list of cities that still have some capacity to go up.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- albntomat0 6y agoHow does a community (edit: geographically defined, not the people living there at time X) receive investment while avoiding gentrification? There seems to be a logical pattern of receiving investment -> community gets more resources/becomes better -> more people want to live there -> prices increase -> gentrification and the original residents being forced out. What am I missing?
- deleuze 6y agoDoes the community actually receive "investment" if the investment causes the community to no longer exist? I think you're mistaking the process that happens here. Investment targets a geographic area, but that doesn't mean that it's intended to benefit the inhabitants of that area at all.
- albntomat0 6y agoI was using "community" as synonymous with a geographical area. Your comment matches my thought of particular geographical area receives money -> the folks in that area get pushed out some period of time later.
- nickff 6y agoGentrification is a symptom of limited supply. The way to reduce housing prices in the face of increased demand is to flood the market with supply, by increasing high-density zoning, and loosening requirements such as parking. SF will probably respond with even more rent control, which won't work.
- jjoonathan 6y agoWell, it will work for the intended purpose, which is to drive up rents even further, it just won't work for the stated purpose.
- topher515 6y agoYes, yes, a thousand times yes! The number 1, 2, 3 and 4 problems the Bay Area specifically (and CA generally) faces are an undersupply of housing. Fixing this problem will be huge steps towards addressing homelessness, gentrification, desegregating schools, and general wealth inequality. If there is a focus on high density housing near public transit, then this will also have a positive impact on greenhouse gas emissions
- usaar333 6y agoFor anyone wondering, gentrification in the study is defined as increase in median income and house value as well as college educated levels.
- idoh 6y agoIn that case this report is figure out. From the report, "Do Opportunity Zones benefit or gentrify low-income neighborhoods?" If one is looking just at socioeconomic indicators, and after an investment they go up, and that's defined as bad ... I have trouble following the logic from the report. Don't we want investment to improve the numbers?
- ed25519FUUU 6y agoI’ve always wondered why we have two pejorative words for opposite effects: when rich people move in, it’s gentrification. When the rich leave it’s “white flight”. Is there some kind of equilibrium term here where a neighborhood is staying exactly the same, getting neither richer nor poorer?
- smccully 6y agoStagnation
- anw 6y agoI no longer live in SF, but I found it funny seeing the dissonance of people new to the Bay Area who moved there for a high paying tech startup and then talk about how bad gentrification was while being blind to the fact they were doing exactly what they were saying was wrong. Not an exact conversation, but along the lines of what I've run into: Rob: "It's terrible what's happening to these communities. The Mission used to be a haven for artists. Now those people are moving out and it's losing its history" Mayk: "dude, didn't you just move here 2 years ago and have a $2,500 studio in the Mission?" Rob: "Yeah, but it's not like any of those people could have afforded it anyway, so I'm not taking it away from somebody else or anything". SF is a boiling melting pot of many different communities and cultures, and it's interesting to see which cultures people ascribe to while also being part of others that run counter to what ideals they say they believe.
- ironmagma 6y agoThe thing is, the fault of all of that rests with the people and the system, but mostly the system. Any individual is not responsible for gentrification, least of all one who just moved to the area. It’s the same principle as that citizens can rightfully criticize the overuse of fossil fuels, even though shutting off their AC would lead to a possible heat stroke.
- nick_ 6y agoThis is an example of, as they say, "liberal bullshit". Knowing enough not to be ignorant, but behaving exactly as if they were.
- ironmagma 6y agoThe key that people who call it “liberal bullshit” never seem to understand is that you can believe there is a problem while being part of the problem. The fact that your existence is evil does not mean you cannot, or should not, advocate for reduction of evil while still existing.
- nick_ 6y agoI fully agree. I just meant that "liberal bullshit" is how conservatives view this kind of thing. In other words, they only see it as hypocritical.
- fataliss 6y agoTo the risk of being naive, I'd imagine that gentrification can be at least somewhat mitigated by adding housing as the location becomes more desirable. This can take various shapes and forms depending on where. In the Bay, open space is mostly inexistant in desirable areas, so (one of) the main solution would be increasing density.