I spent the entire day in D.C. with the director of Public Service and a former student today. I have agreed to lead a Service-Learning trip during the winter break in D.C., focusing on poverty issues. So, we headed into DC so I could see the various sites students could volunteer at and get ideas of places and people they can speak to about policy/advocacy.
Our first stop was the DC Central Kitchen, which is one of many "providers" housed in the largest shelter in the world. My students will work at the DCCK for two weeks in the mornings. We next spoke to a director of the shelter, which was very inspiring to me. The shelter has become "private" so that it can take in people that shelters who get government money cannot take in. I wondered what this meant? Did it mean that a "private" model was better at addressing the homeless population than government solutions? No. What it meant for this shelter is that they were running on a budget of $182, ooo.00 a year when they really needed something like $69 million to cover the expenses of all their services. To make this work, then, they depend a great deal on volunteers.
I was hopeful about the world that there are people in the world committed and compassionate enough to dedicate themselves to restoring the lives of the most battered and broken human beings on the planet. The men, women and children who become the "homeless" in our country have often seen the absolute worst in their lives: abuse, violence, poverty, mental illness, addiction, etc.
In order to rebuild their lives, the basic requirement is some stable foundation, some place they can rely on to be their home. Without a home, people spend the whole day in survival mode: walking quite a distance for meals, trying to protect their only belongings from being stolen, or braving the indifference of the people that pass them by on the street.
So many people think, write about, and act to eradicate homelessness. And, boy, do we need them during this administration. But, I started thinking about how radically things would have to change to begin to make affordable housing available to this growing population of homeless people.
In the "district," the neighborhoods where a majority of the poor have lived for at least a couple of generations are being gentrified. We spent a great deal of time around the Dupont circle/Adams Morgan area today, which is turning into a sleek, hip "urban" neighborhood. I was completely blown away when we walked by a "new restaurant" in the area: Hamburger Mary's (which is a longtime favorite restaurant transplanted from San Francisco). We walked by a huge Whole Foods, across from two cafes, a jazz club and newly built "condos." If you walk one block away, you will see what this neighborhood looked like before: convenience stores, greasy spoons, hair salons, and dive bars.
The contrast is something. The real estate in this neighborhood, because of all the gentrification has skyrocketed. Rent for a one-bedroom is probably $15oo.oo. There are outdoor cafes, yummy ethnic restaurants, fancy "garden supply" stores and pet daycare facilities. Why am I mentioning all of this?
Well, what is the cost of this gentrification process? A great deal more homeless people, displaced from their neighborhoods with less opportunities for livable wages. And, yet, can you imagine what it would take to reverse this? Why on earth would landlords, making a windfall on high real estate market value, agree to lower rents for low income folks? All of the young, yuppies don't want to live around these folks anyway.
I asked one of the men I met today (who works for the National Low Income Housing Coalition) what the current administration's solution is to making affordable housing available. He reminded me that what the President is always touting: "creating an ownership society." I passed by a huge Countrywide office (a mortage lender for "high risk" clients).
But, I don't get it. How can you buy a house if you don't make enough money to pay rent in the district? Where would you buy the house? What happens if you need to fix the roof in a year?
The other casualty of this strategy is "community." Yes, there it is again, that damn theme popping up in my ramblings. Gentrification destroys neighborhoods and their informal support networks--sharing in watching kids, building up local schools, knowing when a neighbor is in need. You replace neighborhoods with glossy and gleaming buildings occupied by workaholics who wouldn't put their kids in DC schools anyway. They shove the low income folks into smaller corners of their former neighborhoods and try to avoid eye contact with them as they swiftly walk by them toward the Starbucks.
And yet, let's be honest, I love this part of D.C. I love the restaurants, I love Whole Foods, and I love the lovely landscaping. I am part of the problem. I am the one of the people that needs to weigh how important that funky neighborhood is to the lives of the people it displaces. The transformation required in my own bleeding-heart-self is dramatic.
I know there must be creative ideas out there about how to save neighborhoods without sacrificing Whole Foods. Or, am I deluding myself?
I remember sitting on a bench at an upscale Montgomery County strip mall a couple years ago. It was summertime and the ice cream shop was having customer appreciation day -- handing out free ice cream cones to whoever walked by. My wife was breastfeeding our daughter on the bench with no one passing looks, two young girls, clearly best friends, walked by -- one African-American and the other white and in a wheelchair, a lesbian couple came out of Whole Foods with organic produce holding hands, everyone smiling and enjoying ice cream. It was one of those surreal moments when you get a glimpse of what you hope for. And all I could think was "does it require goddamned Rockville to get there?" Rockville with its traffic and wealth and attitude.
ReplyDeleteHans Reichenbach argued that social change could only come from the middle class. The upper class has every reason to want to keep the status quo and the working and lower classes don't have the power or the educational background to know how to effectively challenge the power. Only the middle class has the education, the wealth, and the disattachment to set out on a course for change.
Those people are the ones we see in our classrooms. They also are the one's who after graduation move to Adams Morgan (think Tom S., Christine and Zac,...)
There is no doubt that gentrification tears up communities that have enough troubles as it is and causes hardship for people who already have things hard enough. But remember where these communites come from -- they are not that old. Before our cities were desegregated just a couple of generations ago, poor and particularly African-American communities were much more of a mixed bag of wealth and education. Because African-Americans could not live wherever they chose, the doctors and civic and business leaders of the community were living side-by-side with those of lesser means. But the subsequent decades have seen utter wealth flight from the areas and a brain drain of sorts. This has left these communities without their most able advocates. Without being pollyanna about the whole thing, the hope is that the gentrification tide will lift all boats. I'm sure much social sceince research has been done on managing this re-integration of wealth into urban neighborhoods that saw it leave decades ago. When done wrong, it can be disasterous for our citizens most in need; but the hope is that when done well, it could lead to better schools, safer neighborhoods, higher paying jobs, more open green space, and a better life for ALL who live in these areas. The question doesn't seem to be "gentrification: good or evil?" but "gentrification: well thought out or not?"
The other side of "gentrification" is that the middle class is being priced out of its own neighborhoods as well. In NYC, from 96th street up, areas that used to be made up of mostly lower/lower-middle class puerto-rican and other latino cultures and african-americans have become a "hip" area to live for young middle-class whites simply because they can afford no other place to live. Instead of yuppies living it up, they're living as roommates crowded into two-bedroom apartments with one person sleeping in the living room, and so on. And they're commuting to the other end of town to work where they cannot afford to live. The middle class in urban areas are the new poor. And, when the educated but unwealthy middle class moves into an area, the demand for certain shops and services increases, and you get a "hip" area (think Williamsburg, Brooklyn, as well).
ReplyDeleteNow, of course the people who get booted out entirely are the working poor and the absolutely destitute. My point about gentrification is not to deny the problem but to challenge the (at least in NYC) 1980s supposition that gentrification is all about Yuppies looking for a "deal" or "steal" so that they can live high on the hog. (Not that you were exactly claiming this, of course, but I do think the worm has turned a bit on this since the 1980s.)
One way that NY has dealt with gentrification problems is to demand that, in some new high-rises that are built, a certain amount of apartments are reserved for low-income renters. In a sense, the more wealthy, because they pay higher rents, are helping the poor to actually live in the city in which they work. Not a perfect system, but it is a way to try to maintain class integration in transitioning neighborhoods.
You are exactly right to bring up another aspect of this issue -- the housing bubble. No doubt, it is part of this whole equation. Take San Francisco as a case study.
ReplyDeleteAny of them there economists hanging around to explain that side of the coin?
SF too, for sure! I remember friends living in the Western Addition (another "transitional neighborhood) whose "room" was a bay window in the living room with a tapestry drawn across it. Now of course, these were not young professionals, but they were college grads! And this was back in the early '90s. It's gotten much worse, yes?
ReplyDeleteSomeone call for an economist? I think the root cause of gentrification and unaffordable housing is the deterioration in the income distribution in the last few decades. The richest 10% or so of Americans have seen their income soar since the 1970s, while incomes for the poorest -- I don't know -- 60% have pretty much stagnated or fallen. That 10% is not a small number of people -- around 30 million. Those people are looking for nice places to live, and they want to live where others of their ilk live, so in just about every urban area in this country there are trendy areas where housing prices are going through the roof, squeezing the poor and middle class out. (The bubble is a different issue -- a bubble occurs when housing prices rise above their "true" value because of speculation, i.e. if people are buying in Adams Morgan with the intent to sell when the price rises. If there's a housing bubble, it's a phenomenon of just the last few years.) I'm all for bandaid approaches to the problem like requiring developers to set aside apartments for low income people, but ultimately the solution has to be a return to economic growth that benefits the majority of people rather than the few at the very top. I wish I knew how to accomplish that.
ReplyDeleteSidenote: I went to college in DC in the early 1980s and got to love Adams Morgan. When I graduated in 1985 I got an apartment on Euclid St. Even then rents were outrageous and you could see signs of gentrification everywhere. Adams Morgan was funky and trendy, but whoo-boy you didn't want to go too far east and end up in Mt. Pleasant, lest you end up in a crossfire at an open-air drug market. Now my upper-income, over-educated buddies and their families are buying townhouses in Mt. Pleasant for $500K a pop.
You nailed the changes going on in this city perfectly.
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