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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]NP here.  I live in the area PP defined as "urban core" - specifically in Bloomingdale.  I've lived there 10 years now, and certainly haven't displaced any older AA residents - though I have renovated a blighted home that was previously unoccupied.  In 10 years on my block I don't know of any older AA residents who have been "displaced".  I know several who have died, some who moved to situations where they could have their health needs met (with family, or in care homes), but none who have been displaced.  In fact, in many conversations with said "older AA residents", they have welcomed the changes in the neighborhood.  Remember, these are people who lived through the crack years, heavy crime and a time where people but bars on their windows and boarded up the skylights/roof access hatches to keep out intruders.  These are stories they have shared with me, along with descriptions of how everyone knew each other and looked out for each other back before crack hit, and that earlier last century (and some families have been there that long) in the 40s or so, the neighborhood was predominantly white.  Times change.

But what second PP is missing is that it's not just "white careerists" who are staying in the city, or buying up homes in areas like Bloomingdale.  Gentrification isn't a "white" thing.  Many of the new home owners on my block are affluent African Americans.  Bloomingdale in particular attracts many Howard graduates, for example.  The "new" residents who are supposedly "displacing" the older residents (who, BTW, generally own their homes outright and are now sitting on a small fortune and property prices have sky rocketed) are of all races and ethnicities and national origin, not to mention a variety of ages, gay, straight, with kids and without.  What they are less likely to be, is poor.[/quote]

The white population in Bloomingdale went from 6% to 33% in 10 years, and the displacement of black renters was absolutely part of the equation.  From the Washington Post earlier this year: "Ten years ago, Bloomingdale was a largely middle-class African American neighborhood filled with families and older adults."  Now:  "Streets and sidewalks are filled with hipsters on bikes, 20-somethings toting yoga mats and couples pushing strollers."

Lovely rowhouses, but I'd never want to live in a neighborhood where I knew so many people had been pushed out, and with such an [b]undercurrent of tension between the newcomers and the people trying to hang on to their community.   [/b] [/quote]

:roll: 
[/quote]

BS.  Try going to Columbia Heights if you are so hell bent on seeing tension.[/quote]

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