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Thursday, July 14, 2011

Distinction without a difference

Sometimes Atrios can be one smug asshole.

Gentrification often isn't about rich people in, it's about people moving in period. And, yes, that can eventually start driving up rents and property values as the act of people moving in begins to improve a neighborhood. Existing owners may decide to cash out, and existing renters may be driven out. So, yes, there might be victims of gentrification in that sense. But if you're genuinely concerned about housing options for poor people you should be concerned about the fact that most places effectively don't let them live there, not that some students and hipsters begin reversing the depopulation trend that hit a lot of urban areas.


And the difference there would be what, exactly? I guess if you're someone who lives comfortably in a gentrified city neighborhood already, it's easy to imagine we should be concerned with some unnamed way in which cities "don't let (poor people) live there". But in the real world, poor people are forced out of neighborhoods by gentri-fucking-fication. And speaking as an actual poor person who has watched the house across my street be converted from low rent apartments to time share condos over the past year, this worries me.

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