Ytlaya posted:

What political ideology is the Corolla supposed to correspond to here?


I feel like the woman writing that article is also using a somewhat different definition of "elite" that includes people like teachers who technically have "professional" jobs but don't make much money, even though that's usually not what people are referring to when they talk about "elites" (particularly if it's liberals using the word).

Control Volume posted:

SeattleGentrifier posted:

Much is made of the ills of the infiltration of high-earning transplants to the Seattle area, or even migration within the area. As someone who contributes to the gentrification of a Seattle neighborhood, I'm somewhat puzzled by the arguments surrounding the phenomenon, and I'm currently of the opinion that gentrification is in general quite a positive thing for me.

However, I don't want to live in a bubble, so I seek out your arguments to convince me that gentrification is a Bad Thing, and not simply something which benefits some and does not benefit others.

Good and bad cannot be meaningfully discussed without first asserting prior values, so please include those in the argument.

For example, things which I do care about in my neighborhood:

Clean areas/no litter or needles, low crime, low density/relative privacy, access to nice parks and bike paths, no graffiti or vandalism, grocery stores within a short drive or walk.

Things which I do not care about in my neighborhood:

That my neighbors look a certain way or are from any specific background, "hip" venues/art galleries, festivals, etc.

Feel free to state your opinions on gentrification according to your values, but what I'm mostly interested in is whether or not gentrification is bad for me given my values. I suspect that when people say things are good or bad, we talk past each other because we're starting from very different value systems, but I'm open to the idea that it actually is bad for me in either case.

GalacticAcid posted:

Reddit user SeattleGentrifier: Convince me that gentrification is bad for me.

Truga posted:

i had to google what gentrification is and it's basically lebensraum mk2?

e: german wikipedia has the word lebensraum literally in the article so I'll just go with this, lmao

Truga posted:

i had to google what gentrification is and it's basically lebensraum mk2?

SSJ_naruto_2003 posted:

Richer people move in, raise rent prices, try to get the 'undesirables' to move out, make it too expensive for people who have lived there for years to continue living there. Stuff like that.

Old Binsby posted:

bless you but no it's the reverse: <snip>

Truga posted:

I mean, all I'm reading here is "use the resources we have (money) to drive those dirty <less privilegeds> out of our trendy neighbourhood", which reductio ad absurdum is "lebensraum for our people". Not as bad as straight up genocide, but still extremely lovely imo.

GalacticAcid posted:

Reddit user SeattleGentrifier: Convince me that gentrification is bad for me.

ghettomilkshake posted:

It's a bad thing in that it furthers economic inequality which on the macro scale is bad. Some of the issue is that gentrification is actually good for local governments because by replacing poorer residents with wealthy ones and increasing property values the city increases the amount of taxes it can draw and gives it more money to spend within city limits. The negatives of that are that public funds end up getting spent on the people who need it the least while the poor residents forced out because they no longer can afford the area are driven further into the cycle of poverty because they get pushed to areas that don't provide the necessary services for them to survive on their budget and their new localities don't have the tax base to draw from to provide these services. If you want a good book on the subject check out How to Kill a City by Peter Moskowitz.

Edit: My personal feelings are that it is important to recognize the inherent inequality in the system and recognize your place in it. I cannot help that I was born a cis white male. The system has been engineered to benefit me and I don't think that it is necessarily amoral to take advantage of those benefits. However I do think it is an issue if you take advantage of the benefits and not use that position of privilege to try and lift up others who do not have those advantages.

seattlegentrifier posted:

This is a great comment. Thank you. This is just what I was hoping to see.

I think there are ways to ease those effects within a market, but they have to be kept in the front of our minds or else we will suffer the consequences long term.

I'll check out the book.

Truga posted:

I mean, all I'm reading here is "use the resources we have (money) to drive those dirty <less privilegeds> out of our trendy neighbourhood", which reductio ad absurdum is "lebensraum for our people". Not as bad as straight up genocide, but still extremely lovely imo.

Coolness Averted posted:

Another distinction is gentrification is a little more conplex and insidious because it often is inadvertent. Like people just making a place cool and livable then attracts more interest and those richer than them can easily begin displacing the poorest.

Truga posted:

I mean, all I'm reading here is "use the resources we have (money) to drive those dirty <less privilegeds> out of our trendy neighbourhood", which reductio ad absurdum is "lebensraum for our people". Not as bad as straight up genocide, but still extremely lovely imo.

Larry Parrish posted:

If being a cis white male is so awesome how come im so drat poor. Riddle me that liberals.

Main Paineframe posted:

a lot of the time it was land they gave up in the first place. it's a cyclical thing

...

A Buttery Pastry posted:

But how does the Chinese buying up the west coast fit in?

lollontee posted:

The Chinese buy any and all American capital they're allowed to buy. because they need to do something with that gigantic mountain of dollars america has saddled them with, and they can't buy anything but crap assets like real estate. because it's illegal for chinese people to buy real assets in america

Old Binsby posted:

The Chinese elite have a bit more options like using investment companies to buy large chunks of any and all things foreign. Many major European harbors are partly or wholly chinese-owned, as is half the coast of Greece, but the example below illustrates anything goes so one of those firms ended up with poo poo like the Waldorf Astoria and a bunch of small insurance companies for some reason

and then the music stops, everyone sits down and the party disappear who’s left standing for a few months while taking over on zero notice (a trial might reappear you but the guillotine is inevitable for guys like Wu)

lollontee posted:

you can't buy european harbors with american dollars

Coolness Averted posted:

Dont they skirt that a bit by doing stuff like give funds to a child and the child buys/invests in a real estate business and gets a green card?

lollontee posted:

same reason you have to use american dollars to buy american real-estate. what is it that you think currencies are used for exactly?

and regardless, the american government forbids chinese nationals from owning anything of significant value, so they have to come up with these complicated investment strategies to reinvest what little they're allowed to.

Old Binsby posted:

we’re veering off topic a bit but what’s different on a bigger scale transaction when I’m buying goods on amazon.com and paying in € (adding a surcharge for conversion to $ via my bank) vs buying an entire harbor in USD in the same fashion using some conversion rate or simply first buying an equivalent stack of EUR?

ate poo poo on live tv posted:

gentrification is a somewhat complicated subject and the blame for driving out the locals is ill-targeted on the slightly richer person moving in. the blame lies on the slumlords and politicians who had no intention of cultivating a neighborhood to begin with. they sellout as soon as the offer is large enough, then you have good old capitalism appealing to the lowest common denominator, and the neighborhood becomes McMansions. new people move in because their only other option is to not move to the city at all.


tl;dr gentrification is easy to avoid, and is arguable one of the specific tasks a city council
should address, but the gormless officials are typically not interested in making things better for everyone, preferring instead to make things better for themselves.

understand what the rentier class is, and support policies that undermine them, first and foremost. ignorant people with sophomoric ideas of what gentrification actually is aren’t the appropriate target.

Main Paineframe posted:

a lot of the time it was land they gave up in the first place. it's a cyclical thing

1) non-whites start moving into a prosperous 95+% white neighborhood with friendly neighborhood cops

2) white flight. all the white people immediately sell their homes and move to the suburbs to get their racially homogenous wonderland back, while telling everyone who'll listen that their old neighborhood is a blighted hellscape full of the "wrong sorts of people"

3) housing costs and local tax income go way down because so many people are leaving. the local government stops investing in the neighborhood, the police presence turns into a bunch of brutal fascists, the infrastructure falls into ruin, social services get defunded, local businesses shut down, etc

4) once the churn and turmoil from that rapid decline settles down a bit, the low housing costs and abundance of cheap commercial spaces tends to attract young, unattached, creative-thinking types. university students and young professionals, artists and hobbyists, and niche business ideas. the neighborhood's reputation begins to improve, the local government starts to show interest again, infrastructure and services start getting repaired, and after a few years the neighborhood is considered to have developed its own unique character and is often regarded as trendy, artsy, or up-and-coming

5) gentrification. around now, all the older people who fled the city before are starting to get tired of the suburbs, don't need the big house anymore now that their kids have graduated, are tired of the long commutes, and so on. at the same time, young people just starting high-paying careers are moving to the city and want a neighborhood with a little more flavor than the wealthy white enclaves where all their new bosses live. so naturally they all descend on this neighborhood - it's trendy, artsy, has the smell of recent urban renewal, and to top it all off, it's cheap!

6) the influx of wealthy white people suddenly desperate to live there sends rents skyrocketing. most of the existing residents, being poor, are unable to keep up with the rising rents and are forced out by the high prices. the rising rents and rapid demographic changes cause some of the small businesses and arts stuff to close down, and they're promptly replaced by the same old luxury high-priced bullshit that every other wealthy neighborhood has. this makes things even more expensive for the existing residents and forces even more out, etc.

7) the neighborhood has transformed into another generic ultra-white upper-middle-class enclave, served only by the same old luxury brands and chains. the only remaining sign that anyone but bankers and doctors and retirees ever lived there are a couple of murals. after a few years, the young rich start popping out kids and begin complaining that the neighborhood is boring and has lost its unique flavor. once prices stabilize, a well-off black person moves in. return to step 1

ate poo poo on live tv posted:

gentrification is a somewhat complicated subject and the blame for driving out the locals is ill-targeted on the slightly richer person moving in. the blame lies on the slumlords and politicians who had no intention of cultivating a neighborhood to begin with. they sellout as soon as the offer is large enough, then you have good old capitalism appealing to the lowest common denominator, and the neighborhood becomes McMansions. new people move in because their only other option is to not move to the city at all.


tl;dr gentrification is easy to avoid, and is arguable one of the specific tasks a city council
should address, but the gormless officials are typically not interested in making things better for everyone, preferring instead to make things better for themselves.

understand what the rentier class is, and support policies that undermine them, first and foremost. ignorant people with sophomoric ideas of what gentrification actually is aren’t the appropriate target.