It is quite possible to deplore white flight and gentrification, thank you very much.

This is such a thorny issue. I thought a lot about it when I read Charles' article last year on the subject. I brought up the subject to some of my African American friends, and we never really reached an acceptable conclusion. I think I am a gentrifier, but it's not something I like to admit to. On the other hand, the reason I love my neighborhood is because of the diversity.

Many of the poor people being displaced in the CD are making a killing, financially. They're not all renters. And not everyone who is buying a home in the CD today for 500K—a home that the non-white owner paid maybe 50K for twenty years ago—is white. Again, we're back to class.

Still, I'm with you SA: the poor shouldn't be displaced. So building affordable housing in the city is the way to make sure they're not. Decrying gentrification does nothing—you can't stop the wealthy from buying houses in the city, can you?

Conversely, New Urbanist types like Dan don't much care about the effects that upzoning (in the name of the great God of density) has on existing businesses and residents who are forced out by deliberate government actions that raise their rents. I guess you all think it's just fine that longtime residents of neighborhoods such as the Central Area and Rainier Valley are being forced to move to S.King County.

And old-Seattle types like me think gentrification sucks because we've had our fill of places like Starbucks and Whole Paycheck driving out longtime businesses that we like, or that it sucks when we get a shitload of new parking tickets because some developer got to build an oversized new project without adequate parking so they can push their costs onto existing businesses and residents (not to mention the fact that Seattle is turning into an overpriced version of anytown USA)

I remember when some African-American families moved into Ballard - from my viewpoint, it was great finally seeing the walls start to crumble.

Ok, this is how i see it... It seems to me that the original arivals of a gentrification trend may come to a neighborhood for it's diversity, density, character et al, but once there in siginificant numbers the neighborhood becomes more attractive to the kinds of investment that lead to economic gentrification... enter Starbucks. Once starbucks is there, the neighborhood is now acceptable to the kinds of "whites" that would have left in the original "flight" and as costs of living rise to greet these newcomers the economic and ethnic charcter of a neighborhood is lost. In a way it's the suburbanization of an urban neighborhood unwittingly brought on by those who orginally sought to escape the suburbs.

or maybe not, i dunno, like ginger said, it's "thorny", like a porcupine in a bryer patch getting acupuncture.

One thing: Though not all the poor people displaced are renters unable to afford rising rents, not everyone is moving because they want to. A lot of times, you'll have older poor folks forced to sell their houses (and yes, make a killing) because they can't afford property taxes anymore. So yeah, a lot of folks being displaced are making money, but they don't always want to move.

I'd encourage folks to go back and read Mudede's article from last year (http://cgi.thestranger.com/2005-03-24/feature.html). I usually get bored halfway through the longer articles, but this one really got me--it challenged a lot of the assumptions I make re: gentrification and its effects on Seattle neighborhoods.

I am white (is that my sin?)

I have lived in the CD for 12 years. I was a renter for 4 years, and then bought a house on the very same street that I was renting on. I liked the neighborhood, liked my neighbors of all races and sexual orientations. So, I bought a house that had been vacant for 10 years, but had been purchased and remodeled.

So, now I'm a gentrifier.

Tell me...how would any of you fix this situation? Forbid white people from buying homes in predominantly black neighborhoods? That would do wonders for the economic vitality of their investments in their homes.

This feels, as Dan has pointed out, a damned-if-I-do and a damned-if-I-don't situation.

(BTW...Westneat did use the term gentrification in his article last week which was the impetus for the article today.)

Bad idea. In a single family zoned neighborhood, all you can build is single family housing - so this just creates an incentive to tear down older houses and put up new (and yes, more expensive) ones.

OTOH, if you change the zoning to multifamily, you still wind up tearing down older single family structures (which provide some of the more affordable rental units in town for people willing to share a house) and putting up new units which, economics being what they are, rent for more than the ones there now.

Compared to what exists now, nothing you build in Seattle is affordable to most lower-middle class folks on down the ladder without public subsidies...

But if you change the zoning of those neighborhoods, you can't rule out the possibility of housing contruction for those of lower income: In recent years, King County has been awarded grants and loans to pursue development of affordable rental housing and first time home buyer housing in the city. I've seen these projects under construction up in west seattle and white center. So yes it may be possible assuming public subsidies to spread this to other areas of the city with the proper zoning change.

While forcing elderly or lower-wage home owners out of their houses only because of their inability to keep up with property tax is not a good thing, the Central Area had / has another set of residents that have not been good for either the new or old community. Have people seen the 2 or 3 homes on 23rd that still act as makeshift junk yards? On my block in the CD a former "house" that really was more of a trailer was littered with trash and No Trespassing signs is now torn down to make way for new (and, yes, I'm sure expensive) homes, but I can't say that this is a bad thing for the block as a whole. Seattle is simply too desirable of city to carve out an entire neighborhood and leave it in disrepair in the name of preservation.

As far as businesses, as Mudede mentioned in his article, one of the striking things about the "old" CD was that there was no where to go to get anything of value. There never was some thriving business district of cafes, coffee shops and food stores. Based on the article, convenience stores, mini-marts and seedy bars were basically the only retail in the area 15 years ago. So I don't really see what Starbucks (or maybe someday Whole Foods) is pushing out. Deano's? I hope so.

Complaining about gentrification is ridiculous to me. Its the liberal version of the "stop the mexicans from coming in or we'll have no america" argument.

If history tells us anything, its that no one is owed anything. No one owns a district. If you grew up in a district that you love and had the bad luck/poor decision-making skills to not set up enough roots to buy a place there, well oops. Pick a neighborhood in any major u.s. city and chart its history. You'll notice they change. Bitching about gentrifying isn't getting you into your ideal community faster.

When people say Seattle is becoming anytown, usa, they might want to look around. Maybe, its becoming anyCITY, usa, in some ways, but it sure ain't like the vast majority of america. Seattle really only feels somewhat close to three cities in feel (to me). Vancouver, Portland, San Francisco. And its easy enough to see the differences between it and those other three.

The reason these residents get so angry is because developers rip up their neighborhoods and then replace the buildings with more expensive places of residences and more expensive shops, which drives rents and the prices of everything in the neighborhood up, making living more difficult. That, and not some irrational hatred of Whitey, is why residents get so angry about gentrification.

Get a clue, Editor.

BTW - while the term gentrification is usually used to refer to displacement by race, poor and working class folks of all colors and creeds are getting pushed out of Seattle.

Are you really 41?

Oh my God!

I am SO amazed. You look so young! I'd think you'd be all saggy and stuff by now.

Thank GOD you're in shape. I hear you're even biking now! Wow!

Still hearting you,

Sam

Whole Foods has been known to drive other health food stores out of business in the past but I noticed that PCC got a whole lot better after Whole Foods first landed here about 6 years ago...it typically was those old hippy den health food stores that did go under in the past, and I say good riddance to those places.

http://evans.washington.edu/research/psclinic/pdf/02-03dp/RebeccaAndrewsDP.pdf

"African-Americans remain highly segregated from whites. While segregation has decreased overall, African-Americans are much more segregated from whites than Asians or Hispanics."

Here's the report...
http://www.seattle.gov/civilrights/documents/housing_seg_in_seattle-2005.pdf

Shouldn't the "frustration" should be considered not only understandable, but justified?...

He should have fumigated the smelly, self-absorbed, simplistic orthodoxies of the Left.

My neighbors made me feel welcome. My city did not.

After 7 years, I moved to unincorporated King County (Fairwood). Here, I feel welcome. Oh, and, by the way, I'm a minority here, too, as a gay man in super-straight suburbia. No one here seems to mind that I improve my property, work hard, and try to be a good neighbor. Go figure.