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There are ways that people talk about gentrification that always makes me slightly uncomfortable. As a non-white person, something always feels like gentrificat

There are ways that people talk about gentrification that always makes me slightly uncomfortable. As a non-white person, something always feels like gentrification is something that “good” white people like to blame “bad” white people for doing, when the real problem tends to be wider and more systemic. In this particular instance I find myself asking why it matters that the Weaver residents were originally not from Austin. If you’re born in Chicago, shouldn’t you still have the same rights as someone who was born in Austin? That includes the right to complain. However it doesn’t mean anyone has to listen to you. As other users have pointed out, it’s not exactly a new situation for people to move to a neighborhood and immediately try and kick their neighbours out. It’s just that most of the time they’re told to kick rocks. It seems to me the real crux of this issue is that rich white people are so much more prioritized by the law that a couple of irate Karens can overrule an entire neighbourhoods opinion. It has nothing to do with where they’re from or gentrification. Not that gentrification doesn’t cause it’s own problems. But the way some people talk about it, as though existing residents are entitled to a higher set of rights, leads down some pretty dark paths, especially when newcomers are of a different nationality, or race than current residents. It reminds me of something that used to be said a lot in jest when I was younger in the 90’s and 00’s and working in fast food. Whenever people gave me extra work to do, they justified it by saying something like, “well, he should just be grateful he isn’t working in a rice paddy” (I’m from Singapore originally, but ok). There seemed to be this view that because my parents chose to move to Canada when I was young, I was somehow entitled to fewer rights, even as a citizen.

deleted 6y ago
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rmetzler 6y ago
I think one important part of Gentrification means there are people with more money moving into a neighbourhood. The real estate agents just showed the building to them on the quiet day and they bought their piece of it, believing it's like this all day every day. And when they move in, they realise the quietness was rather the exception than the rule. If they were from the area before, they would have known. But because they payed this amount of money, they think they bought the right to a have the quietness they were sold on. I've seen similar things in Berlin in the 90s and early 2000s when West-Germans, mostly from Swabia moved in. They were sold apartments next to Youth clubs and the new neighbours didn't like that they had loud music on Friday and Saturday nights. But this was Berlin, this was what it was famous for. But whatever, a lot of the clubs had to shut down. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knaack_club https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knaack_club
- Anthony-G 6y ago
  Having had a few nights out in the Knaack, that was sad to read. I lived in Prenzlauer Berg for a short while in the mid-nineties and the clubs were a larger part of what Prenzlauer Berg such an interesting/happening area to live in. Before that, I had lived between Biesdorf and Marzahn – which was a quite a different experience (for a bearded, long-haired “auslander”).
- sjg007 6y ago
  Neighborhoods change so they have a right to complain!
- hef19898 6y ago
  This minority has a tendency to force these things, even by court if necessary. Clubs in cities, church bells and cows in villages. Kindergardens, schools. Heck, even shops and decade old craftsman outlets. No idea what drives these people.
- nomdep 6y ago
  No one has the right of imposing their noise unto others. Even if they have done it with impunity for quite some time.
  - compiler-guy 6y ago
    This is really not true. There are plenty of situations where noise is expected and normal.
chrisco255 6y ago
I think people abhor change in general. I grew up in Florida, and local Floridians hated the retirees and snowbirds moving in. Former rural communities with orange groves and cow pastures were replaced with massive planned communities that altered the character and culture of the area. The Austin-Statesman noted that people in Austin have been complaining about change in the city since at least 1884: "A few years hence the citizen of thirty years ago will be a comparative stranger in the home of his youth with no familiar objects to greet his eye save the eternal hills on which the capitol city sits enthroned as a queen in her royal beauty and the sparkling Colorado at her feet." In a letter (not at all dramatically) titled “Passing Away” sent to the American-Statesman 135 years ago and signed “Old Citizen,” an Austin resident expressed dismay at the news that “the buildings on the north side of Pecan Street, between Brazos Street and the alley next to the Avenue would be sold and removed.” Old Citizen lamented that “one by one the old land-marks leave us and but few of the original houses of Austin remain.” https://www.statesman.com/news/20190204/austinites-have-been-complaining-about-change-in-city-since-1884 https://www.statesman.com/news/20190204/austinites-have-been...
- LoathsLights 6y ago
  > people in Austin have been complaining about change in the city since at least 1884 It's not like the rich screwing over the poor is a new thing
renewiltord 6y ago
This is a wonderful comment. An upvote will not suffice. I need to tell you.
pasabagi 6y ago
I think gentrification is simply a vague way to put a face on something people don't like: because of fluctuating wages and rents, people are often forced to leave their communities and homes. People notice the gentrification side of it, because it involves a lot of large and imposing buildings, visible cultural artefacts, etc - and they notice the most extreme examples of it - refugees, etc. There's no clear discourse about the vast middle ground, which is much more ambiguous but also much more impactful - that because the right to live in a place is subject to market forces, and because availability of work moves, it's vanishingly unlikely that any but the richest will be able to live in a stable geographical community for more than a handful of years.
- sjg007 6y ago
  I mean, even in LA and the Bay area this is true. You are stuck renting unless you can get enough for a down payment. All of the 1950 apartments are being torn down.
JeremyNT 6y ago
"Don't hate the player, hate the game." It's almost a tautology that only long term residents are around long enough to feel the negative effects of gentrification directly. I've been in my home for 15 years and only in the last 5 or so have I come to really understand what this trend has done to the community. My initial response to the current wave of millionaire neighbors is to resent the gentrifiers with all that wealth who don't see what they're doing. But a quick look in the mirror confirms the awful truth... I was just like them when I moved here 15 years ago. Sure I wasn't as rich as the current crop, but the exact degree of wealth surely would not have been terribly meaningful to the lifelong renter residents who were slowly being displaced by middle class people looking for a bargain on a home at that time. The system we have created around real estate and home ownership is optimized to erode culture and atomize community. We like to pretend that this is somehow inevitable, the will of the market, but we need to own it - this is the world we have built for ourselves. So yeah, I do understand the anger at individuals - because there's nothing else to be angry at. It feels like being angry at the system itself is futile.
- hef19898 6y ago
  This. Recently I had a discussion with a neighbor who owns the multi-apartment building next to our house about that very topic. All around our in our quarter, old buildings get renovated or torn down and rebuilt. Small bakeries close and the whole neighborhood is somewhat changing. And then it struck me. 7 years ago we built our house here, in what used to be a slot of an old small factory. In the middle of buildings with smaller apartments, mostly rented out. And there we come, young well of couple building a house for us on a land plot large enough for, what, 6-8 appartments. In a sense, we were the first ones, or at least among the first ones.
  - silexia 6y ago
    Gentrification is a bad word for a positive outcome. When people come to a neighborhood and invest a lot of money and making it a nicer place, it benefits the current residence who can sell their homes for higher prices if they wish. If the current residents wish to stay, they benefit from the improvements.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
brightball 6y ago
> However it doesn’t mean anyone has to listen to you. IMO this is the lesson that a lot of people never seem to learn.
- dudul 6y ago
  Especially the ones who shouldn't be listening but end up bending the knee.
- clipradiowallet 6y ago
  If the offenders are violating legal constructs(like noise ordinances, traffic safety laws, littering ordinances)...they don't have to listen to you, because you aren't the entity that enforces the laws. Your time is better spent contacting the entity that enforces the laws, and encouraging them to do their job.
airhead969 6y ago
Personally (white dude here), I don't think there's good or bad white new residents per se. I think there are people with different values and attitudes that are opposed to long-time residents. Some new residents then try to force these differences on others with their relatively stronger political influences. Regardless of live-and-let-live or my-way-or-the-highway, people moving in change the dynamics, culture, and attitude textures of the area.
TheAdamAndChe 6y ago
> I find myself asking why it matters that the Weaver residents were originally not from Austin. > the real crux of this issue is that rich white people are so much more prioritized by the law that a couple of irate Karens can overrule an entire neighbourhoods opinion. There's no reason to be racist. Cultures vary regionally. Californians in general act differently than Texans in general. Rural Americans in general act differently than urban Americans. Some people like their culture and community and don't want it to change just because rich outsiders come in.
zthrowaway 6y ago
Gentrification is really encouraged by the city. It's a way to replace a low tax revenue generating populace with a higher one. People get mad at the richer people (happens to be mostly white due to population ratio), and assume it's due to racism. Nobody recognizes the city is actually to blame. These people who move into these gentrified area's aren't doing it out of malice.
mindslight 6y ago
> In this particular instance I find myself asking why it matters that the Weaver residents were originally not from Austin. If you’re born in Chicago, shouldn’t you still have the same rights as someone who was born in Austin? Not necessarily. It's not about where you're born, but about whether you've been somewhere long enough to be part of its community. You have the same natural rights, obviously. But not the same standing in the community, input into cultural norms, or right to legal enforcement contrary to those cultural norms. Going with the principle of live and let live, when you visit or move to some place with a different culture, it's on you to accept that culture. Showing up, planting yourself, and then demanding everyone else conform to your own culture will rightly create pushback. This is a conservative stance, and it can be taken to the extreme to justify a whole bunch of horrible shit as you mention ("newcomers are of a different nationality, or race than current residents"), which I am certainly not condoning. But the same goes for every heuristic turned into a political axiom - the tamer form is still valid. (edit: I changed "fit in" to "accept that culture", because the former bites off too much, and can too easily turn into an indictment of a person who others consider different even though they aren't acting to cause a problem)
- lotsofpulp 6y ago
  > Going with the principle of live and let live, when you visit or move to some place with a different culture, it's on you to fit in. Live and let live works for small things where there is no material effect on others, such as your spouse’s ethnicity or gender. For matters affecting others, such as noise, pollution, etc. live and let live is not applicable. For all of those matters, the ultimate force is might makes right, but some places have democracy that allows votes to serve as proxy for might, or frequently money serves as proxy for might.
  - mindslight 6y ago
    Things like noise are exactly what I was referencing by the local culture. My point in invoking live and let live is that things like noise do not matter when you are far enough away. So different communities can exist with different norms regarding noise (or yard maintenance, farm smells, etc), and that is a good thing. When someone used to one type of community moves into a different type, it falls to the person moving to accept the culture of where they're moving to. So for example it's unreasonable for someone who gets up early for work to move into a building full of college students, and then complain about the late night parties. The alternative is to insist that there is one "right" culture, presumably yours, and to demand that everyone else conform to it. This is wrong.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

rmetzler 6y ago

I think one important part of Gentrification means there are people with more money moving into a neighbourhood. The real estate agents just showed the building to them on the quiet day and they bought their piece of it, believing it's like this all day every day. And when they move in, they realise the quietness was rather the exception than the rule. If they were from the area before, they would have known. But because they payed this amount of money, they think they bought the right to a have the quietness they were sold on. I've seen similar things in Berlin in the 90s and early 2000s when West-Germans, mostly from Swabia moved in. They were sold apartments next to Youth clubs and the new neighbours didn't like that they had loud music on Friday and Saturday nights. But this was Berlin, this was what it was famous for. But whatever, a lot of the clubs had to shut down. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knaack_club https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knaack_club

Anthony-G 6y ago
Having had a few nights out in the Knaack, that was sad to read. I lived in Prenzlauer Berg for a short while in the mid-nineties and the clubs were a larger part of what Prenzlauer Berg such an interesting/happening area to live in. Before that, I had lived between Biesdorf and Marzahn – which was a quite a different experience (for a bearded, long-haired “auslander”).
sjg007 6y ago
Neighborhoods change so they have a right to complain!
hef19898 6y ago
This minority has a tendency to force these things, even by court if necessary. Clubs in cities, church bells and cows in villages. Kindergardens, schools. Heck, even shops and decade old craftsman outlets. No idea what drives these people.
nomdep 6y ago
No one has the right of imposing their noise unto others. Even if they have done it with impunity for quite some time.
- compiler-guy 6y ago
  This is really not true. There are plenty of situations where noise is expected and normal.

chrisco255 6y ago

I think people abhor change in general. I grew up in Florida, and local Floridians hated the retirees and snowbirds moving in. Former rural communities with orange groves and cow pastures were replaced with massive planned communities that altered the character and culture of the area. The Austin-Statesman noted that people in Austin have been complaining about change in the city since at least 1884: "A few years hence the citizen of thirty years ago will be a comparative stranger in the home of his youth with no familiar objects to greet his eye save the eternal hills on which the capitol city sits enthroned as a queen in her royal beauty and the sparkling Colorado at her feet." In a letter (not at all dramatically) titled “Passing Away” sent to the American-Statesman 135 years ago and signed “Old Citizen,” an Austin resident expressed dismay at the news that “the buildings on the north side of Pecan Street, between Brazos Street and the alley next to the Avenue would be sold and removed.” Old Citizen lamented that “one by one the old land-marks leave us and but few of the original houses of Austin remain.” https://www.statesman.com/news/20190204/austinites-have-been-complaining-about-change-in-city-since-1884 https://www.statesman.com/news/20190204/austinites-have-been...

LoathsLights 6y ago
> people in Austin have been complaining about change in the city since at least 1884 It's not like the rich screwing over the poor is a new thing

renewiltord 6y ago

This is a wonderful comment. An upvote will not suffice. I need to tell you.

pasabagi 6y ago

I think gentrification is simply a vague way to put a face on something people don't like: because of fluctuating wages and rents, people are often forced to leave their communities and homes. People notice the gentrification side of it, because it involves a lot of large and imposing buildings, visible cultural artefacts, etc - and they notice the most extreme examples of it - refugees, etc. There's no clear discourse about the vast middle ground, which is much more ambiguous but also much more impactful - that because the right to live in a place is subject to market forces, and because availability of work moves, it's vanishingly unlikely that any but the richest will be able to live in a stable geographical community for more than a handful of years.

sjg007 6y ago
I mean, even in LA and the Bay area this is true. You are stuck renting unless you can get enough for a down payment. All of the 1950 apartments are being torn down.

JeremyNT 6y ago

"Don't hate the player, hate the game." It's almost a tautology that only long term residents are around long enough to feel the negative effects of gentrification directly. I've been in my home for 15 years and only in the last 5 or so have I come to really understand what this trend has done to the community. My initial response to the current wave of millionaire neighbors is to resent the gentrifiers with all that wealth who don't see what they're doing. But a quick look in the mirror confirms the awful truth... I was just like them when I moved here 15 years ago. Sure I wasn't as rich as the current crop, but the exact degree of wealth surely would not have been terribly meaningful to the lifelong renter residents who were slowly being displaced by middle class people looking for a bargain on a home at that time. The system we have created around real estate and home ownership is optimized to erode culture and atomize community. We like to pretend that this is somehow inevitable, the will of the market, but we need to own it - this is the world we have built for ourselves. So yeah, I do understand the anger at individuals - because there's nothing else to be angry at. It feels like being angry at the system itself is futile.

hef19898 6y ago
This. Recently I had a discussion with a neighbor who owns the multi-apartment building next to our house about that very topic. All around our in our quarter, old buildings get renovated or torn down and rebuilt. Small bakeries close and the whole neighborhood is somewhat changing. And then it struck me. 7 years ago we built our house here, in what used to be a slot of an old small factory. In the middle of buildings with smaller apartments, mostly rented out. And there we come, young well of couple building a house for us on a land plot large enough for, what, 6-8 appartments. In a sense, we were the first ones, or at least among the first ones.
- silexia 6y ago
  Gentrification is a bad word for a positive outcome. When people come to a neighborhood and invest a lot of money and making it a nicer place, it benefits the current residence who can sell their homes for higher prices if they wish. If the current residents wish to stay, they benefit from the improvements.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

brightball 6y ago

> However it doesn’t mean anyone has to listen to you. IMO this is the lesson that a lot of people never seem to learn.

dudul 6y ago
Especially the ones who shouldn't be listening but end up bending the knee.
clipradiowallet 6y ago
If the offenders are violating legal constructs(like noise ordinances, traffic safety laws, littering ordinances)...they don't have to listen to you, because you aren't the entity that enforces the laws. Your time is better spent contacting the entity that enforces the laws, and encouraging them to do their job.

airhead969 6y ago

Personally (white dude here), I don't think there's good or bad white new residents per se. I think there are people with different values and attitudes that are opposed to long-time residents. Some new residents then try to force these differences on others with their relatively stronger political influences. Regardless of live-and-let-live or my-way-or-the-highway, people moving in change the dynamics, culture, and attitude textures of the area.

TheAdamAndChe 6y ago

> I find myself asking why it matters that the Weaver residents were originally not from Austin. > the real crux of this issue is that rich white people are so much more prioritized by the law that a couple of irate Karens can overrule an entire neighbourhoods opinion. There's no reason to be racist. Cultures vary regionally. Californians in general act differently than Texans in general. Rural Americans in general act differently than urban Americans. Some people like their culture and community and don't want it to change just because rich outsiders come in.

zthrowaway 6y ago

Gentrification is really encouraged by the city. It's a way to replace a low tax revenue generating populace with a higher one. People get mad at the richer people (happens to be mostly white due to population ratio), and assume it's due to racism. Nobody recognizes the city is actually to blame. These people who move into these gentrified area's aren't doing it out of malice.

mindslight 6y ago

> In this particular instance I find myself asking why it matters that the Weaver residents were originally not from Austin. If you’re born in Chicago, shouldn’t you still have the same rights as someone who was born in Austin? Not necessarily. It's not about where you're born, but about whether you've been somewhere long enough to be part of its community. You have the same natural rights, obviously. But not the same standing in the community, input into cultural norms, or right to legal enforcement contrary to those cultural norms. Going with the principle of live and let live, when you visit or move to some place with a different culture, it's on you to accept that culture. Showing up, planting yourself, and then demanding everyone else conform to your own culture will rightly create pushback. This is a conservative stance, and it can be taken to the extreme to justify a whole bunch of horrible shit as you mention ("newcomers are of a different nationality, or race than current residents"), which I am certainly not condoning. But the same goes for every heuristic turned into a political axiom - the tamer form is still valid. (edit: I changed "fit in" to "accept that culture", because the former bites off too much, and can too easily turn into an indictment of a person who others consider different even though they aren't acting to cause a problem)

lotsofpulp 6y ago
> Going with the principle of live and let live, when you visit or move to some place with a different culture, it's on you to fit in. Live and let live works for small things where there is no material effect on others, such as your spouse’s ethnicity or gender. For matters affecting others, such as noise, pollution, etc. live and let live is not applicable. For all of those matters, the ultimate force is might makes right, but some places have democracy that allows votes to serve as proxy for might, or frequently money serves as proxy for might.
- mindslight 6y ago
  Things like noise are exactly what I was referencing by the local culture. My point in invoking live and let live is that things like noise do not matter when you are far enough away. So different communities can exist with different norms regarding noise (or yard maintenance, farm smells, etc), and that is a good thing. When someone used to one type of community moves into a different type, it falls to the person moving to accept the culture of where they're moving to. So for example it's unreasonable for someone who gets up early for work to move into a building full of college students, and then complain about the late night parties. The alternative is to insist that there is one "right" culture, presumably yours, and to demand that everyone else conform to it. This is wrong.