What are you doing to play a part in preventing gentrification?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: This thread doesn't even matter since your privilege moves where you move. If it's a black neighborhood, the real estate values are low...until white people decide they like it. The one-off profit a decades long Black owner are nothing when compared to the benefits your parents (and you) had in there (likely) non diverse enclave.
Many gentrifier's say they want diversity, while acknowledging that their very presence increases property values beyond the reach of many, if not most people of color. Sadly,you are the death knell of urban diversity. Your social and political leanings don't really matter, as individually it's not your fault; it's just how ya'll have been rolling for hundreds of years.
Like it or not, it's a fact that whenever you show up (choose your own historical year up to 2023), wherever you show up (pick any culture i.e. Petworth locally), non-whites suffer.

....Queue the whataboutisms

Queue the tiny violins.

[Anonymous]

I like gentrification. And it's not an exclusively white thing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You can play a role today. Did you protest today? Did you donate to a mutual aid organization?

I encourage gentrification, as you call it, because it improves neighborhoods and makes them safer.

This.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You can play a role today. Did you protest today? Did you donate to a mutual aid organization?

OMG, this is so quintessentially DCUM. I have to wonder if it's satire?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Gentrification is amazing. We should be encouraging it, especially when it results in more building

100 percent. Why wouldn’t you want a bigger tax base? If development causes gentrification, more please.

[Anonymous]

I help local people start and grow their businesses. These businesses hire people in our community. I help long-standing business owners negotiate better rent terms or buy their buildings so they can stay open.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You can play a role today. Did you protest today? Did you donate to a mutual aid organization?

You need to have sex more often.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You can play a role today. Did you protest today? Did you donate to a mutual aid organization?

- When I lived in DC and MD between 2016-2020, I did pitch in to mutual aid many times. The main way that helped to prevent gentrification was by being neighborly and supporting the mutual aid/communal safety net. A homeless couple lived with us for two months. I bought groceries for people who needed them, like the large family who lived in two hotel rooms. Gave money to get out of homelessness to a former co-worker (3x rent deposit on an apartment). Paid bail for a falsely accused man. Paid someone's dental bill for a long-term pain. For two years, 10% of my take-home pay as a reparations payment to a Black mutual aid group.

- I have moved away from DC and back to NOVA, lived in the area since childhood. Here, I'm the person who would be gentrified out because renting on a relatively low salary. I buy almost exclusively from locally-owned businesses and small farms, with the exception of loving Costco - they are union, very good at what they do.

- If we buy a house in a small town as we plan, then I may be the gentrifier/remote worker pricing out a local. There, wanting to do some kind of community service like teaching/ sharing my skills to be useful to the community.

[Anonymous]

Fudge off.

Moving to the most expensive part of DC. Good?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:In some DC neighborhoods, they're at a point where gentrification is desperately needed. The homes need to be gutted and redone or they won't be habitable. It's been a long time with no maintenance and they need everything. If those neighborhoods don't gentrify they'll end up like the abandoned homes in Detroit--boarded up and empty. The "original" habitants just don't have the money to do the needed work. Gentrifiers are able to pay for the work to be done. It's part of the lifecycle of a neighborhood.

Hold on a second. What you're talking about there isn't gentrification that makes a neighborhood safe and attractive - it's displacement. The most dramatic example I can think of is the development in Southwest/Waterfront. It seems most of that place has been razed. For a local history lesson, watch the 2007 documentary about gentrification of DC - Chocolate City - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1NkfATQvj4

[Anonymous]

I fully support and encourage gentrification.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In some DC neighborhoods, they're at a point where gentrification is desperately needed. The homes need to be gutted and redone or they won't be habitable. It's been a long time with no maintenance and they need everything. If those neighborhoods don't gentrify they'll end up like the abandoned homes in Detroit--boarded up and empty. The "original" habitants just don't have the money to do the needed work. Gentrifiers are able to pay for the work to be done. It's part of the lifecycle of a neighborhood.

Hold on a second. What you're talking about there isn't gentrification that makes a neighborhood safe and attractive - it's displacement. The most dramatic example I can think of is the development in Southwest/Waterfront. It seems most of that place has been razed. For a local history lesson, watch the 2007 documentary about gentrification of DC - Chocolate City - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1NkfATQvj4

PP. Sharing videos from learning about DC tonight:
https://arthurcapper.omeka.net/
Welcome to the website of the Arthur Capper Public Housing Oral History Project. The Arthur Capper and the Carrollsburg public housing projects were collectively known to their residents as "Cappers." They housed 707 households until the HOPE VI program demolished the buildings, replacing them with a mixed-income development. This website presents the oral histories and memorabilia of those who lived in Cappers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asvZjiaxIdE = Greenleaf Gardens Public Housing Community: Past, Present, and Future
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uG9_VgYM-tw = Interview remembering Arthur Capper Public Housing Oral History Project in the past. Footman Final Portrait
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFgFZBiPRHM = lecture "Gentrification in DC"

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: Like it or not, it's a fact that whenever you show up (choose your own historical year up to 2023), wherever you show up (pick any culture i.e. Petworth locally), non-whites suffer.

....Queue the whataboutisms

How much of this "wherever you show up" harm has roots in money rather than in skin color?

Would this effect happen if the white people who moved in were of the same socio-economic level as the original residents, so there was no us vs. them, haves/have nots? What if said white people made an effort to live in community with the original residents instead of pricing out/exploiting/excluding them?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m continuing to live in my home in Columbia Heights and not sell it to a developer who would chop it up into overpriced units. I also continue to send my children to public school.

What did YOU do today to prevent gentrification, OP?

OP here. Exclusively patronizing very local businesses, sending my children to public school, not calling the cops over a party.

NP here. So you're not actually willing to dive in and "get your hands dirty" with your neighborhood. Are you taking real action? Are you volunteering in your neighborhood? Are you mentoring youth to keep them on the right path? Are you attending neighborhood meetings, city council meetings? Working with the homeless? Or are you just throwing your money around at your local business and patting yourself on the back. You sound like the people who put a sign in their yard and are so proud of themselves.

SMH at your self righteous ignorance, that does zero.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: This thread doesn't even matter since your privilege moves where you move. If it's a black neighborhood, the real estate values are low...until white people decide they like it. The one-off profit a decades long Black owner are nothing when compared to the benefits your parents (and you) had in there (likely) non diverse enclave.
Many gentrifier's say they want diversity, while acknowledging that their very presence increases property values beyond the reach of many, if not most people of color. Sadly,you are the death knell of urban diversity. Your social and political leanings don't really matter, as individually it's not your fault; it's just how ya'll have been rolling for hundreds of years.
Like it or not, it's a fact that whenever you show up (choose your own historical year up to 2023), wherever you show up (pick any culture i.e. Petworth locally), non-whites suffer.

....Queue the whataboutisms

After hundreds of years, you are what you are. Some of us take a bite out of life, and some of you let life take a bite out of you.