wateroverfire posted:idk this raises some questions in my mind. Availability does not mean just raw numbers of housing units and their price. It also refers to their location and quality. A family of four having to move from a two-bedroom apartment to a one-bedroom apartment due to rising prices is moving into a shittier housing situation unless the new apartment is somehow massively better than the old one, which is unlikely, to say the least. Moving from the inner city with available public transit to a suburb where you have to drive everywhere is also a downgrade in quality, particularly if the family relied on public transit beforehand. Although there is currently a surplus in terms of housing overall, the amount of housing that fits the needs of the urban poor, the working and sections of the lower-middle class is not in a state of surplus, for reasons that are pretty loving obvious if you stop and think for a moment.
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Feb 24, 2015 18:51
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wateroverfire posted:Less trolly, the notion that the people who live in a neighborhood pre-gentrification should be expected to stay there seems like something worth examining. They're not the "original" residents except on a very arbitrary time scale, they're not being illegally displaced (if they are that's a problem that needs addressing), when they move out they´re moving into another neighborhood - maybe with a nice payout if they sold property. So what is the great wrong being perpetrated? Less trolly, the notion that the native people who live on land pre-settlement should be expected to stay there seems like something worth examining. They're not the "original" residents except on a very arbitrary time scale, they're not being illegally displaced (if they are that's a problem that needs addressing), when they move out they´re moving into another area - maybe with a nice payout if they sold property. So what is the great wrong being perpetrated? I'm being dramatic, but it's the same basic idea. Indian reservations aren't bad per se, it's just bad when you dislocate someone from the place where they lived and they get very little in return. If you uproot a people and stick them in a shithole landscape with no resources and nothing to do, they're much worse off. Likewise, if gentrification displaces people from established neighborhoods with useful social/physical infrastructure and they end up getting pushed into transient, decaying neighborhoods with a lower level of social/physical infrastrucure then you're kind of loving them over. So long as we prevent that inherent loving over then gentrification isn't a bad thing. wateroverfire posted:One, I thought the deal with gentrification is that the housing started off lovely. Nope! The housing is only "lovely" because it is in a "bad" neighborhood with "poor" people and "dingy" houses. Gentrification can be directly and causally traced to mid-century White Flight and suburbanization. wateroverfire posted:Second, I find it really hard to believe there is a housing shortage of the type you describe. I mean, maybe if you qualify it (ie: in Manhattan) but otherwise why do you believe that's a general thing? Do you have any sources? https://www.google.com/search?q=america+affordable+housing+shortage http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ralph-da-costa-nunez/low-income-housing_b_2082377.html http://fortune.com/2014/03/25/americas-thorny-affordable-housing-crisis/ boner confessor fucked around with this message at 19:00 on Feb 24, 2015 |
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Feb 24, 2015 18:56
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paranoid randroid posted:Is a middle manager more productive than the people they oversee? Give me some metric to determine productivity here, as it seems a fairly arbitrary standard. Are we defining it by how much revenue they produce? Because surely if there's one thing the past decade has taught us, its that profit and reality are not required to intersect. A middle manager is a necessary cog in an enterprise once it has gotten large enough to need cogs. Sperging out about whether they're more productive than the people they manage is missing the point. ToxicSlurpee posted:Not really. A group A with more resources than B may very well be the reason B has fewer resources by actively preventing B from getting any. That's one of the issues of gentrification and the land use/rights stuff going on in America right now. People are being displaced but have nowhere to be displaced to. Coupled with stagnating wages, rising prices, and the generally lovely employment situation we have a group A that owns everything (the 1% that Occupy was bitching about) and a group B that owns nothing and is totally at their mercy. Counterpoint: Wealth distribution is not arbitrary in the way you're describing (while, yeah, being arbitrary in a different way) and the reason B isn't getting as much has more to do with the characteristics of B than oppression coming from A.
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Feb 24, 2015 18:58
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ToxicSlurpee posted:OK, then. Why? When you accept that neither the Bs nor the As have an inviolable right to live, this ceases to be a problem. Either the Bs rise up and take what they need, the As genocide the Bs, or the As and Bs come together to form some kind of agreement where the Bs perform some sort of service for the As in return for the things they need.
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Feb 24, 2015 18:59
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Popular Thug Drink posted:Less trolly, the notion that the native people who live on land pre-settlement should be expected to stay there seems like something worth examining. They're not the "original" residents except on a very arbitrary time scale, they're not being illegally displaced (if they are that's a problem that needs addressing), when they move out they´re moving into another area - maybe with a nice payout if they sold property. So what is the great wrong being perpetrated? If you're talking about American poor they don't own the land and aren't being given any sort of payout. Moving also costs money and time. One of the reasons the poor have trouble breaking out of being poor is because of the extra costs that being poor often entails. One of which is the cost of moving. There is actually a range of poorness between "literally homeless" and "poor but stable." Some people aren't homeless exactly but end up moving around a lot because they just flat out can't afford to stay in one place. They go wherever is cheapest and that tends to shift while at the same time among the housing the poor can afford there is typically a cousin/uncle/friend crashing there temporarily. That's the other issue with the poor being funneled into worse and worse housing. As wages stagnate and there are more poor people you have more and more of them being crammed into smaller and smaller areas. Something doesn't necessarily need to be illegal to be wrong. Deliberately pricing the poor out of a neighborhood or doing so indirectly without giving them some kind of option is terrible no matter which way you slice it. These are people who might not be able to get to the job they currently have from a new neighborhood or might be closely tied to the area they live in for some reason or another but can't afford to be there anymore. The poor are being afforded fewer and fewer options.
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Feb 24, 2015 19:00
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wateroverfire posted:A middle manager is a necessary cog in an enterprise once it has gotten large enough to need cogs. Sperging out about whether they're more productive than the people they manage is missing the point. alas, i doth sperg *dies, spergily*
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Feb 24, 2015 19:01
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TwoQuestions posted:When you accept that neither the Bs nor the As have an inviolable right to live, this ceases to be a problem. Yes, if you accept the premise that society doesn't exist and we live in a barbaric anarchy where the strong do what they will and the weak do what they must, a lot of things stop being problems.
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Feb 24, 2015 19:02
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paranoid randroid posted:Yes, if you accept the premise that society doesn't exist and we live in a barbaric anarchy where the strong do what they will and the weak do what they must, a lot of things stop being problems. I think we should introduce TwoQuestions to the Europol thread.
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Feb 24, 2015 19:03
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ToxicSlurpee posted:If you're talking about American poor they don't own the land and aren't being given any sort of payout. This is not axiomatically true - homeownership rates are lower among the urban poor, but not as low as you think. In 2005: "While 69 percent of all households are headed by homeowners—a record high reached in 2004—many are left out. Only half of the households in the lowest fifth of the income scale are homeowners, and the homeownership rates among both blacks and Hispanics are slightly under fifty percent." http://www.urban.org/uploadedpdf/311184_improving_homeownership.pdf Of course mortgages don't really own the land etc. so on and things have changed in the last decade but my point is that a larger proportion of urban poor are homeowners than common knowledge would believe. ToxicSlurpee posted:Something doesn't necessarily need to be illegal to be wrong. Deliberately pricing the poor out of a neighborhood or doing so indirectly without giving them some kind of option is terrible no matter which way you slice it. uh i agree with you
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Feb 24, 2015 19:09
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Popular Thug Drink posted:Less trolly, the notion that the native people who live on land pre-settlement should be expected to stay there seems like something worth examining. They're not the "original" residents except on a very arbitrary time scale, they're not being illegally displaced (if they are that's a problem that needs addressing), when they move out they´re moving into another area - maybe with a nice payout if they sold property. So what is the great wrong being perpetrated? I was going to be all snarky but tbh I don't disagree with you. Planning so that people can move into areas that meet their needs as neighborhoods change is a thing we should do. I don't think people are getting hosed over - there's no one doing the uprooting, nobody doing the loving, unless we view people moving into the neighborhood from outside it as doing something wrong and that seems like a weird way to look at it. That doesn't mean there aren't consequences we should think about, though. Popular Thug Drink posted:Nope! The housing is only "lovely" because it is in a "bad" neighborhood with "poor" people and "dingy" houses. Gentrification can be directly and causally traced to mid-century White Flight and suburbanization. I mean, that's a pretty big simplification, right? The housing is lovely because it's poorly maintained, in areas where crime is high, etc. To hold the people who moved out 60 years ago responsible for that seems kind of questionable when the group of current residents is absolutely, directly responsible for that state of affairs. Popular Thug Drink posted:https://www.google.com/search?q=america+affordable+housing+shortage Interesting reads. I think the standard of 30% of your annual salary being affordable is maybe questionable.
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Feb 24, 2015 19:18
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wateroverfire posted:I don't think people are getting hosed over - there's no one doing the uprooting, nobody doing the loving, unless we view people moving into the neighborhood from outside it as doing something wrong and that seems like a weird way to look at it. That doesn't mean there aren't consequences we should think about, though. Society is doing the loving. It's like saying racism isn't a systemic problem if you can't identify particular racists pulling the strings. wateroverfire posted:I mean, that's a pretty big simplification, right? It's a well accepted fact, if you have some substantive theory that says otherwise I would like to hear it. wateroverfire posted:The housing is lovely because it's poorly maintained, in areas where crime is high, etc. To hold the people who moved out 60 years ago responsible for that seems kind of questionable when the group of current residents is absolutely, directly responsible for that state of affairs. [img-fry-not-sure-if-trolling-or-stupid] wateroverfire posted:Interesting reads. I think the standard of 30% of your annual salary being affordable is maybe questionable. If you have questions, ask them. 30% is a well accepted standard by experts in housing policy.
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Feb 24, 2015 19:21
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If you go by the idea that in order for a human life to matter it must produce something that matters then babies are completely useless and should all be murdered because all they produce is poop and tears. End of the human race GG useless babies.
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Feb 24, 2015 19:22
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TwoQuestions posted:When you accept that neither the Bs nor the As have an inviolable right to live, this ceases to be a problem. Hi TwoQuestions, A lot of people hold certain beliefs as to what constitutes moral or correct behavior on the part of humans. Some of these beliefs are more important or deep-seated than others, and some people might even characterize certain values as "fundamental". Although questions like "how does gentrification actually harm people" and "what can be done to minimize harm done by gentrification" are ones which people are more likely to change positions on based on evidence and rhetoric given, questions like "why should we care if people get hurt" or "why do many people assume that there is an inviolable right to live" (or why people hold any such concept such as 'inviolable rights') are ones which involve these more deep-seated values, and are thus unlikely to be answerable within the scope of this thread. In short, your questions about the basic rights and duties of people and society deserve their own thread where they can be more thoroughly discussed than is likely to occur in a thread where a lot of people still want to talk about the causes and effects of gentrification. I hope you do create a thread for that discussion, because I think it could be interesting to read over, and I hope you understand I'm not trying to bag on you here. 
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Feb 24, 2015 19:22
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Farmer Crack-rear end posted:Hi TwoQuestions, You're right, my topic isn't in this thread's scope, my bad. Here's the thread: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3702861 TwoQuestions fucked around with this message at 19:58 on Feb 24, 2015 |
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Feb 24, 2015 19:31
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wateroverfire posted:Less trolly, the notion that the people who live in a neighborhood pre-gentrification should be expected to stay there seems like something worth examining. They're not the "original" residents except on a very arbitrary time scale, they're not being illegally displaced (if they are that's a problem that needs addressing), when they move out they´re moving into another neighborhood - maybe with a nice payout if they sold property. So what is the great wrong being perpetrated? Well typically the area had previously been under-served with city services, and they tend to have to move out to other places that are also under-served just as their original location is starting to get more due to the tax base. Additionally, it tends to break up informal networks of mutual help between long time residents that helped to make up for lacking governmental services, and it can take many years to build one up or integrate into those networks in wherever they move to. Thus they end up worse off, especially as they don't tend to get the higher prices in the area when they're bought out, especially if they'd never been able to afford more than renting. Now this negative consequence can be easily negated by ensuring there's sufficient city services including public transport and housing all over the city so that the moving will not be detrimental. Unfortunately a lot of cities are run by people that don't like to raise the necessary taxes and have patterns of under-serving various areas.
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Feb 24, 2015 19:32
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Nintendo Kid posted:Now this negative consequence can be easily negated by ensuring there's sufficient city services including public transport and housing all over the city so that the moving will not be detrimental. Unfortunately a lot of cities are run by people that don't like to raise the necessary taxes and have patterns of under-serving various areas. There's also the issue of jurisdictional fragmentation, as metropolitan population movements can be regional. So you can end up displacing people from Capital City to the outlying suburb of Rotsville, a completely independent city beholden to no regional planning oversight, which because of its lack of employment and subsequent poor tax base just so coincidentally happens to have terrible service provision and therefore the cheapest housing around! And if the Rotsville City Council doesn't see any need to provide more services, welp
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Feb 24, 2015 19:35
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icantfindaname posted:This thread went to absolute poo poo real fast I don't know why the mods don't just ban trolls this obvious. The forums have really gone down hill from the days when you could get probated for lack of capitalization.
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Feb 24, 2015 19:38
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Ending probations for the heinous crime of not using the shift key was a positive development, I feel, as discussion is poorly served by rigidity.
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Feb 24, 2015 19:42
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Popular Thug Drink posted:There's also the issue of jurisdictional fragmentation, as metropolitan population movements can be regional. So you can end up displacing people from Capital City to the outlying suburb of Rotsville, a completely independent city beholden to no regional planning oversight, which because of its lack of employment and subsequent poor tax base just so coincidentally happens to have terrible service provision and therefore the cheapest housing around! And if the Rotsville City Council doesn't see any need to provide more services, welp Most of the places where gentrification is happening, though, are relatively large cities that have been around for a while and annexed significant chunks of their surrounding areas long ago. Many of the places that suffer severely from jurisdictional fragmentation haven't had time for flight-and-return cycles to happen yet. The places with gentrification happening also tend to have surrounding areas with long-term incorporated governments rather than random county hell going on, several decades of infrastructure investment including in public transit and to have experienced at least some densification as compared to when they were originally built in the 30s-50s. Things like much of the inner ring suburbs of DC, Philadelphia, and NYC are like that, especially due to long standing regional transport authorities that extract funding from both city and outlying area. There will be hell to pay when those fragmented as hell metros come due, of course. A few of them are starting to actually do it.
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Feb 24, 2015 20:01
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Nintendo Kid posted:Most of the places where gentrification is happening, though, are relatively large cities that have been around for a while and annexed significant chunks of their surrounding areas long ago. I would be very entertained if you could even attempt to back this statement up with facts. Gentrification is happening in every major metro city in America, which exist on a spectrum from centralized to fragmented.
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Feb 24, 2015 20:03
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Would it be fair to say gentrification is only a problem, or much more of a problem, in the more politically fractured metro areas?
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Feb 24, 2015 20:10
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Popular Thug Drink posted:I would be very entertained if you could even attempt to back this statement up with facts. It doesn't seem like there's room for gentrification in say Phoenix where more than half the city didn't exist 40 years ago. A lot of the supposed gentrification you hear about from there turns out to be straight up "actually use the empty land we left while we rushed to make Phoenix sprawl 50 miles". icantfindaname posted:Would it be fair to say gentrification is only a problem, or much more of a problem, in the more politically fractured metro areas? No, because selective downgrading of city services also happens in super-annexed metro areas. Like when that one New York mayor intentionally did a city service brownout in much of the Bronx years back.
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Feb 24, 2015 20:12
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icantfindaname posted:Would it be fair to say gentrification is only a problem, or much more of a problem, in the more politically fractured metro areas? I'm not sure I'd say its a partisan issue. Low-income housing NIMBYism cuts across political boundaries.
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Feb 24, 2015 20:15
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icantfindaname posted:Would it be fair to say gentrification is only a problem, or much more of a problem, in the more politically fractured metro areas? No, gentrification is a problem anywhere you have a large income disparity as well as concentrations of poverty in places with relatively good levels of physical infrastructure. Gentrification tends to impact larger metros over smaller, more populous metros over less populous, and areas with a heavy reliance on automobiles over metros with relatively more mass transit. Political fragmentation only matters in as much as it precludes active regional planning to mitigate the harms of gentrification-related population displacement.
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Feb 24, 2015 20:18
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Effectronica posted:I think we should introduce TwoQuestions to the Europol thread. Fucks sake, are the existing sociopaths not enough for you there?
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Feb 24, 2015 20:22
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TwoQuestions posted:You're right, my topic isn't in this thread's scope, my bad. Don't post in this thread.
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Feb 24, 2015 20:44
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I worked a local political race last fall, and gentrification came up occasionally in the context of city demographics, and I've thought a bit about it since then. At least enough to come to despise the tortured liberal soul-searching that comes with the word gentrification. I guess I must arrive at the conclusion that I am a gentrifier and therefore am part of "the problem;" but the devil is in the details. I live in a historically black part of the city that has seen a lot of change over the past few years. When I moved in there was an open drug and prostitution market about four blocks from our house, and I've had to call 911 about gunshots from our backyard. Break-ins were not unknown, nor was public consumption of crack on the streets, I've been stopped by the police twice in one night in the area (the cops targeted white people i.e. "drug buyers" leaving the area, in probably what was the sole incidence of racial profiling against whites I've heard of) and frankly, this was widely regarded as the bad part of town, and not without cause. So why live here? Basically it comes down to economics, which is the crux of the gentrification conundrum. Rent is about as cheap as you'll find in our increasingly expensive city, and it's close to the city center and university. The area is attractive to students, people getting started in their careers, and young families looking to settle. It's kind of daring or exciting too to live in the "bad" part of town too (think Chelsea in NYC in the 80's and 90's). Added to that is the urban blight in the form of condemned houses, of which there are many in the neighborhood. One neighbor, a woman who had lived in the same house for 60 years, said that some of the older black residents would refuse to pass their houses on to their kids because they knew they would waste it on drugs. Urban Blight + Yuppies = Gentrification it seems, because now the neighborhood has completely changed. There are four monstrous modern houses being built in about a block's radius; either McMansions with no yards, or two stand-alone houses that will likely serve as rental properties. New bars and restaurants have come in, and white women push jogging strollers down the streets with impunity. The black people who were initially forced to this side of town (where they kept the landfills and cemeteries) by means of racial segregation are now leaving for other cities because they can't afford to live here. Nothing can be done about it however, because of the freedom to contract and recognized property rights. Someone comes in with the financing to buy and develop, and there exists little that anyone else can do about it. It is a contract between two private parties, and the economic finality of the situation. I've heard the hand-wringing about gentrification, and frankly I have to note that the people who seem most concerned with it look very similar to my new neighbors. The tone of this post may seem a bit strong, but I have learned to hold white liberal hypocrisy in contempt for the deception it is. Kumo fucked around with this message at 20:58 on Feb 24, 2015 |
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Feb 24, 2015 20:44
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Kumo posted:I worked a local political race last fall, and gentrification came up occasionally in the context of city demographics, and I've thought a bit about it since then. At least enough to come to despise the tortured liberal soul-searching that comes with the word gentrification. I guess I must arrive at the conclusion that I am a gentrifier and therefore am part of "the problem;" but the devil is in the details. Gentrification is like horrible working conditions in Chinese factories. Yeah, you're complicit by owning things, but there's really not much you can do about it except agitate for a safety net. Except where we have very little control over Chinese labor conditions we do have some level of control over local government planning and politics.
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Feb 24, 2015 20:48
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Popular Thug Drink posted:Except where ... we do have some level of control over local government planning and politics. Except the real estate developers have most local government planning and politics well within their control. Perhaps your experience is different than mine.
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Feb 24, 2015 20:56
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The thing is though, the 'solution' to gentrification isn't actually to prevent rich people from driving property values up and drive out poorer people, it's to ensure that all areas have adequate access to services and employment. It's not actually desirable or possible to prevent gentrification in the first place. As always, the solution is more involvement in local government and civic issues by residents
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Feb 24, 2015 21:20
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Kumo posted:Except the real estate developers have most local government planning and politics well within their control. This is by and large true, but not necessarily true. Developers calling the shots by being buddies with planning commissioners is a thing, so are apathetic planning commissions that don't have or care to have a master plan. These are too common. But there are places that have integrity and give a poo poo, so there is hope! icantfindaname posted:The thing is though, the 'solution' to gentrification isn't actually to prevent rich people from driving property values up and drive out poorer people, it's to ensure that all areas have adequate access to services and employment. It's not actually desirable or possible to prevent gentrification in the first place. 
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Feb 24, 2015 21:27
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icantfindaname posted:The thing is though, the 'solution' to gentrification isn't actually to prevent rich people from driving property values up and drive out poorer people, it's to ensure that all areas have adequate access to services and employment. It's not actually desirable or possible to prevent gentrification in the first place. As always, the solution is more involvement in local government and civic issues by residents But if we did that it would take away the poor's incentives and they'd just get even lazier. Check and mate, libtard. 
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Feb 24, 2015 21:51
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What a non-facile observation, "everyone should have a good living situation that way we wouldn't have this problem". How about unpacking that a little and talking about how, tactically and specifically, you're going to ensure people have access to employment near their shelter.
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Feb 24, 2015 23:20
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Radbot posted:What a non-facile observation, "everyone should have a good living situation that way we wouldn't have this problem". Since when does being near matter when there's robust transit?
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Feb 24, 2015 23:36
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Nintendo Kid posted:Since when does being near matter when there's robust transit? Because people value their time. Even robust transit is far from instant.
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Feb 24, 2015 23:44
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Nintendo Kid posted:Since when does being near matter when there's robust transit?
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Feb 24, 2015 23:45
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Doctor Spaceman posted:Because long commutes suck? What does that have to do with good public transit? I understand you're probably from some lovely place where being on the transit line means taking 2 hours from your sprawl-hell but that's not how it works in cities with good transit. PT6A posted:Because people value their time. Even robust transit is far from instant. Neither is driving or walking, genius.
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Feb 24, 2015 23:55
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Nintendo Kid posted:What does that have to do with good public transit? I understand you're probably from some lovely place where being on the transit line means taking 2 hours from your sprawl-hell but that's not how it works in cities with good transit.
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Feb 25, 2015 00:03
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Doctor Spaceman posted:Good public transport still does not have the capability of warping space and time. You don't need to warp space and time for public transit to take a short time to get you where you need to go. You just need funding and planning beyond the next quarter. If you absolutely demand living right next door to where you work than feel free to pay ridiculous money and be strange to do so while everyone else is happy enough taking 10-20 minutes to get to work due to being a few miles away. You'll still be hosed over if you need to change jobs though, because then you won't have your precious right next to work location. Nintendo Kid fucked around with this message at 00:10 on Feb 25, 2015 |
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Feb 25, 2015 00:06
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Doctor Spaceman posted:Good public transport still does not have the capability of warping space and time. A broader transportation network means a wider dispersion of jobs as well as residences, reducing the net problem of spatial mismatch. You can easily make the same complaints about private transportation not being instantaneous. I mean really: PT6A posted:Because people value their time. Even robust transit is far from instant. What is this but decrying any/all non teleportative modes of travel?
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Feb 25, 2015 00:07
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