Reply to D.C. has the highest ‘intensity’ of gentrification of any U.S. city, study says

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Where did all the African Americans go?  I keep wondering this.

Are they going to PGC?  Where are they going?[/quote]

One thing that bugs me a lot about articles about gentrification is when they talk about residents being forced out or displaced and are missing some simple demographics...people are not immortal. When I moved to Petworth the vast majority of my neighbors were African Americans who owned their homes and were elderly. A lot of them had owned their homes solince the 1960s or 70s. Many of those neighbors have since passed away, and some have moved into nursing homes or in with their kids. The gentrification is happening here mainly because of the aging of the neighborhood. Nearly all of these houses are gutted and flipped when they sell.[/quote]

TL;DR - Yes there's normal turnover but there are subtle ways in which gentrification pushed it along.

There's some basic truth to that but the overall picture is more complicated.  On my block, a neighbor died and her kids who lived in another state sold the house and made good money.  Another neighbor bought his first house across the river in the credit crazy housing boom and moved out.  There was obvious turnover that occurred based on normal life occurrences.

But there were also subtle pushes that occurred due to the housing boom.  One neighbor failed to pay his real estate taxes on time for the house he grew up in.  I think that had happened before but in the past they just paid the taxes when the property was put up for sale.  But this time, due to gentrification pressures, there were companies out there taking advantage of people.  This company bought the lien and started adding penalties in the thousands of dollars and there was no way the family could ever pay it off.  (This kind of thievery was covered in the WaPo) They moved to Prince George's and lost the family home.

Another neighbor was living in the house he was born in and found his brother had taken out a loan based on the house (also part of the housing financial boom, credit was easy to get) and had not paid it back.  That neighbor was forced to move.  However, it was probably for the best.  He was disabled and didn't have running water or electricity and he was able to get into public housing.  Public housing sucks but not sure it's worse than living in a house with no utilities.

Other neighbors were flooded out in that bad rain years ago and they told me that they thought their landlord was taking their time making repairs because they wanted them to move.  They were paying around $750 a month rent.  It was also during the housing boom so they were able to buy their first house across the river in Benning Ridge area.  They resented the landlord's behavior but they did buy a house as a result.  But their old rental house is now renting for $1975.

Anyway, turnover is normal but there were ways in which some of my neighbors had to move when they didn't want to move.  It was a combination of their own and others' mistakes or bad behavior but a lot of that was brought on by how attractive the housing market was at the time.  Now I know I couldn't afford to buy in my neighborhood and my kid definitely couldn't afford to buy here. I like my new neighbors but I also really liked the neighborhood the way it was when we first moved here.  It's since lost some of the warmth it had back then.  But change happens![/quote]

These are poor examples of whatever point you're trying to make. How is it anyone else's fault that half of these people couldn't manage their finances or were fleeced by their own family? [/quote]

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