Let's Talk about Gentrification and Race

In the last month the Washington Post has published 3 stories about race and gentrification.

The first detailed a man who put up anti-gentrification signs in his Brightwood yard.  When a Washington Post reporter asked him why he put the sings up he explained, "I don’t want people to come in and diminish the affordable housing stock for black Americans, because [black Americans] have nowhere else to go,   There are plenty of places for white Americans to go.”

The second detailed the changing demographics of DC's Chinatownn neighborhood.  Basically, Chinatown isn't very Chinese anymore.  Only 300 Chinese people live in the neighborhood, down from 3,000.  And, the last building still housing a significant number of Chinese people--many of them low income tenants--is up for sale.   

The third was a column in yesterday's paper by metro columnist Courtland Milloy.  Milloy observed that there is something vital missing from the revitalization of 14th Street--black people.

Although I usually avoid the comments sections on anything posted on the internet, the comments in these articles tell us a lot about how ordinary citizens view gentrification.

Some people don't want to acknowledge that gentrification involves racial change at all.  It's all about the money, they say.

Others think black folks are being whiny.  One commentator dismissed Milloy's article by saying "It [14th Street] was a complete sewer" before the millennials arrived.  Others think black folks are being racist--"Racism on public display" said one commenter on the Brightwood article.  

Still others look for the bright side.  Sure, black folks often end up leaving gentrifying areas, but they profit handsomely when they sell their houses for millions of dollars.  

Then, there are the people who come at it from left field.  A reader of the Chinatown article applauded the declining Chinese population as a sign of diversity--"We are seeing here the realization of President Obama's dream to integrate neighborhoods. Washington is becoming more diverse.  We should all celebrate that."

What should we make of all of this?  Or, put another way, what are the unspoken rules that govern how we can talk about gentrification?  From the comments sections of these three articles I see 3 informal rules in play:  First, most people acknowledge gentrification involves racial change (in DC that means a growing white population and a declining black one).  Second, black people shouldn't talk about it.  Third, if they do talk about it, they'll be sanctioned politely (e.g. by being reminded that they sold their houses for a profit) or impolitely (e.g. by being reminded what a mess their old neighborhood was before the white millennials arrived). In short, we can talk about gentrification, but we can't talk about gentrification and race. 

I think this is silly and unfair.  

People form attachments to place.  Black people do this.  White people do this.  So do Asians and Hispanics.  We all do it.  

My mom still lives in the house I grew up in.  There's been a lot of turnover in her neighborhood, but I still look at every house and remember the kid who lived in it when I was young.  Three houses down is "Benny's house."  Across the street from Benny is "Lawrence's house."  It doesn't matter that Benny and Lawrence moved out of the neighborhood before I graduated high school.  That's how I see those houses. 

The couple who owned the house my husband and I bought in Silver Spring once had the previous owner stop by for a visit.  The woman wanted to see what her old house looked like inside.  She'd loved the house and wanted to make sure it was still being taken care of.  

People fall in love with places--rooms, houses, streets, entire neighborhoods.  They become a map of our heart.  The place you had your first kiss, or the place you started a family.  So, we shouldn't be surprised that black people who grew up in, or lived in neighborhoods that used to be predominantly black feel vertigo, sadness, and even anger that their neighborhood isn't the same anymore.  

We also shouldn't be surprised that newcomers aren't always welcome.  The racial shifts that occur with gentrification don't happen in a void.  Gentrification isn't a random, value-neutral resorting of the population.  Historically, black people concentrated in cities (or certain neighborhoods in them) because they had little choice.  Redlining, landlord bias, and limited resources meant their housing choices were circumscribed.  These neighborhoods might not have been the places their residents would choose in a perfect world, but that's where they ended up. And, overtime, they made those places their own.  So, when the newcomers arrive, the 'old-timers' often feel like they're back to square one.  The place they made their own is suddenly no longer theirs.  They can't afford the higher rent their landlord wants to charge.  Or, they can't cover the new, higher property taxes.  Or, they can afford to stay but now feel out of place.     

Instead of ignoring, scolding, or deriding people unhappy with gentrification, we should have some empathy.  We've all felt a connection to a place.  Gentrification often rips that apart.  I know empathy alone won't solve the problems that accompany gentrification, but it's not a bad place to start.  Based on the comments sections of these three articles, it is in short supply.

Stereotyping the Suburbs

White and wealthy.  Car-dependent.  Monotonous uniformity.  A Stepford Wife lurking behind every door.   

That's the suburbs for you.


Unless you look at the data.  In many parts of the the DMV, these stereotypes simply don't apply.   Bethesda and Silver Spring--both in Montgomery County--are more public transit oriented than many parts of neighboring DC.  Montgomery County is also just as ethnically diverse as, if not more so than DC.  While whites and African Americans are the two dominant ethnic groups in both counties, Asians and Latinos account for a much larger share of MOCO's total population (14.9 and 18.3% respectively) than they do in DC (3.9 and 10% respectively).

Strangely, the stereotypes persist.  And, as usual, it seems to boil down to our collective obsession and hysteria about Millennials.

A May 8th blog post on the Washington Post's Digger blog is a case in point.  The post (The Real Challenge for Cities: What Happens When Millennials Have Babies and the Suburbs Beckon?) covered a panel held at the Urban Land Institute.  I didn't attend the panel, but if the blog review is any indication, the goal of the panel wasn't to answer the question 'will they stay or will they go?' so much as brainstorm how to get them to stay.  

I get it.  Everyone wants a piece of the millennial pie.  They are a large demongraphic with a lot of money to spend.  Right now they spend most of it (at least in DC) on overpriced rents and craft beer.  But, they are about to spend a lot more money.  That's right, millennials are now beginning to do 'adult' things like buy houses and have kids, which entails a whole new category of purchasing (beware the plastic crap you accumulate and trip over at night, inadvertently teaching your kids their first curse words).   

I'm also sympathetic to wanting to keep/attract more families in the city--millennial or otherwise.  One of the biggest unintended consequences of city leaders' millennial fetish is that cities are becoming uniform in their own way, as places rebuilt for wealthy people without kids.  The micro-unit trend is just the most obviouis example. 

But..and there's always a but isn't there?...I resent the smug undertone that often underpins the whole millennial fetish.  The effort to keep them in the city when they're ready to have kids, for example, is often legitimized as a movement to save said offspring from the presumed horrors of the suburbs.

One of the panelist at the Urban Land Institute, Sarah Snider Komppa, described her life growing up in the suburbs as "unfulfilling."  "You’re shuttled from one place where everyone is the same as you to another place where everyone is the same as you.”

I have no doubt Komppa's description captured her actual experiences.  My suburban childhood wasn't all that different, except for the quirky southerners that populated it (bless their hearts, every last one).  However, the suburb I grew up in is not what it used to be.  Nor, I suspect, is Komppa's.

And, that's the problem.  The suburbs are a convenient bogeyman for urban boosters.  The suburbs that Komppa and other urban boosters bemoan is really a small slice of modern suburbia--the so called exurbs.

The intellectual fuzziness of the 'making cities work for millennials' movement is annoying.  But, mostly it just feels underhanded.  Like a mask for something that feels, underneath it all, a lot like a push for consolidating gentrification.   





 

Are We Asking the Wrong Question about Where Gentrification Happens?

For the most part, when we discuss gentrification we talk about neighborhoods.  Neighborhood X got a yoga studio, or Neighborhood Y got a new Whole Foods.  If multiple neighborhoods gentrify at the same time, we might also talk about its affects on the city as a whole.  But, the city line is usually the spatial perimeter that bounds our discussion. 

But, what if we are asking the wrong question?  What if gentrification is actually a process that affects the nation as a whole, creating gentrifying cities and disinvested cities instead of  gentrifying neighborhoods and disinvested ones?  

At this point, you might be thinking--"What you talkin' about Willis?"  

Well, according to a new study by Rebecca Diamond highlighted on the Washington Post's wonkblog, that is what is happening.  The dual affects we often associate with gentrification--investment in some areas and disinvestment in others--are are national in scope.  To use a locally inspired metaphor, some cities are like Logan Circle while others are like Langley Park. 

Instead of income, however, Diamond uses education to measure gentrification on the national scale, with the key metric being college degrees.

Turns out,  people with college degrees tend to flock to places where there are lots of other college grads.  Over time, you get a sort of path dependency.  A city manages to attract college grads, which in turn attracts more college grads.  This trend also puts upward pressure on salaries, which in turn drive an increase in restaurants, museums, and other cultural fare. Streets get safer too. San Francisco, Boston, Philadelphia, and Washington DC are good examples of this trend.  In the early 1990s, for example, DC recorded over 400 murders.  Last year, it recorded 103, even though the city is much larger today. 

On the flip side, places that don't attract college grads see their relative, and in some cases real status decline.  Their wages are lower and they have fewer amenities.  Crime takes a turn for the worse.  Toledo, Detroit, and Baton Rouge are good examples.


I think Diamond's work is fascinating (if ultimately depressing).  It means Americans are becoming even more segregated (in this case along class lines).   

But, none of this means local-scale gentrification will go away anytime soon.  It is easy to look at 14th Street in DC and see the DMV as a booming metropolis full of good jobs, good eats, plentiful entertainment, and safe streets.  But, someone still has to work in the low wage jobs that clean the office buildings where those good jobs are located, bus the tables at the fancy see-and-be-seen restaurants, wash the beer glasses recycled many times over in hipster bars, and police the drunks that come out of them at night.  Low wage workers aren't teleported in for the job.  They live in the DMV too, and the growing gap between their salaries and those of the folks noshing at Le Diplomate continue to leave its mark.

If you want to see how this plays out in your own world, ask the person who cleans your office building where she lives the next time you get the chance.  Chances are she lives in a suburban, and quite likely exurban location.  By the way, when I asked this question at my workplace, the answer was Gaithersburg.          

Who is the 'New' DC for Anyway?

Who does DC belong to and who is it being remade for?

When I moved to DC in 1998 no one asked these sorts of questions. The city wasn't in good enough shape for there to be any real scrambling for pie pieces.  In 1995, 3 years before I arrived, the city hit rock bottom when then Mayor Marion Barry approached Congress for help covering city expenses.  Instead of a bailout Congress ordered an austerity plan.  The Financial Control Board took over the city's budget, and not surprisingly, lots of slashing and burning ensued.*  

These questions matter now, though, because the work that began in 1995 to remake the city has borne fruit.  Lots and lots of people want to live in DC.  As a result, rents are high, vacancy rates are low, and houses on the market don't sit for a spell.

Suddenly, a lot more people want pieces of the pie than there are pie pieces to be had. 

There's been a lot of coverage of what this means for the city's African American population, who used to comprise a majority of city residents.  Many mourn "chocolate city"--the affectionate nickname the Parliaments gave the city in the 70s--and resent the appropriation of black culture to sell cocktails and even entire neighborhoods.  

Here, I want to discuss what this means for the city's class makeup.  And, as usual, it was a Washington Post article that prompted my thoughts. The article, which showed up this weekend, describes the attempt to turn City Center, a new development in Penn Quarter, into a luxury shopping area equivalent to Rodeo Drive in Los Angeles. Can TMZ be far behind? 

So, who exactly are developers hoping to woo to Penn Quarter?   

Sorry bureaucratic cubicle dwellers, it's not you.
My apologies underpaid denizens of NGO land.  This is way above your pay grade.
Professors?  You can't be serious--did Chomsky teach you nothing?   
Excuse me Mr. Firemen, but you know the drill.  We let you work 72 hour shifts because you already live in West Virginia.   
I hate to pile on, dear DCPS teachers--first Michelle Rhee, then Common Core--but you're out too. 
DC United fans--snap out of it!  This relationships has been going no where for years.

No, in Penn Quarter, at least, here's who the new DC is for (per the Post):   

"A lawyer leaves a deposition and pops into Tumi for new carry-on luggage ($680). A tourist ducks out of the rain and treats herself to a classic trench coat from Burberry ($1,695). Two conventioneers skip the plenary session for a couple hours of power shopping: a flirty dress at Kate Spade ($448), a cashmere sweater from Zadig & Voltaire ($535), maybe a leather Le Pliage tote from Longchamp ($555)."   

I know.  I can't believe they left the lobbyists out.  Life is so unfair. 
Just don't come north.  Please.  


* None of this means, of course, that people living in DC didn't love it, or at least love it when they weren't busy hating it (as a southerner by birth I know a little about love/hate relationships with home).  It's just that a lot of outsiders weren't clamoring to join them. 

Random MOCO Pic of the Day--a Jaunt to H Street NE

We went to H Street NE for dinner on Saturday night with some friends.  In a lot of ways it feels like a flatter Adams Morgan--lots of bars without the hill to climb.  But, unlike Adams Morgan H Street has an old school art deco theater that's been revamped--the gorgeous Atlas Theater.  I snapped this picture on Saturday night.  

For newbies to the region, H Street was the site of intense rioting after the assassination of Martin Luther King Junior in 1968.  Things got so bad in DC that Lyndon B. Johnson sent the National Guard into the streets.  The Atlas managed to survive the chaos, but as the picture* below of a guardsman holding an M19 rifle at the corner of H and 7th Streets demonstrates, there was plenty of destruction to go around.

 Although the suburban exodus from DC began soon after the end of World War II, the riots hastened the decline in neighborhoods like H Street and U Street (also the site of intense rioting).  H Street was never without its charms, however.  The picture** below was taken in 2010 before gentrification hit the area like a ton of bricks.

* Photographer Unknown.  Warren K. Leffler / Library of Congress, LC-DIG-ppmsca-04301
** Carol M. Highsmith.  Warren K. Leffler/ Library of Congress, LC-DIG-highsm-09816

Can Golf be Gentrified?

I swear, this isn't a joke.  I am asking a serious question here.  And, my answer is yes, golf can be gentrified.  I came to this topic after reading a front page article in the Washington Post metro section today about the fate of the 3 public* golf courses in DC.   

Let me state for the record that I do not play golf.  And, before I moved to DC I always thought golf was a game that only rich people in country clubs played.  However, my swim team practices at a public pool adjacent to one of the golf courses (Hains Point), and since golfers and swimmers both nosh on Cheetos and drink beer at the concession standclubhouse,** I've had a chance to observe the people who golf there.  

FYI:  Hains Point is a man-made island in the Potomac.  The picture*** of the island below is from 1935.  Except for the pool (built years later), and more trees, things look much the same today.  

The golf course at Hain's Point isn't quite as proletariat as the Washington Post article suggests.  Greens fees for all three courses--$31 for 18 holes on the weekend--are still too high for anyone on a tight budget, but they are substantially lower than fees charged at other locations in the DMV.  And, you don't have to join a club and pay membership dues to play there.   

For much of their history, Hains Point and the other two public courses have functioned as defacto country clubs for the city's black elite and middle class.  Indeed, the city's history of segregation (both formal and informal) meant higher end clubs were either off limits or unwelcoming. 

The city has changed a lot in the last few decades, though, so today you'll find all races, ethnicities, and genders at Hains Point.  The vibe is laid back and inclusive.  Cheap beer tends to do that. 

So, how will Hains Point be gentrified?  Well, it turns out DC House Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, usually a defender of the 'little guy,' wants to turn one of these 3 golf courses into a mini-Augusta National.  And, since Hains Point is on the water and has fabulous views, she has set her sights on it. 

In April Norton introduced a bill that would prompt the Department of the Interior, which owns all three courses, to negotiate a public/private partnership to turn one of the courses into "a world-class golf course".  The improvements at the course slated for major overhaul could then charge market rate greens fees, which would in turn finance smaller scale improvements at the remaining courses. 

Why, you  may ask, does DC need a world class golf course?  Norton told Mike DeBonis at the Washington Post, “You’ve got a bloc of lobbyists and other rich corporate types who come from across the country to this city every year. I think we would build a golf course and a clubhouse fit for those people used to world-class golf courses. I think it would pay for the others.”

Norton may see her move as 'sticking it' to the rich guy, taking their money to improve public infrastructure, but all I see is gentrification.  All three courses are owned by the feds, so fixes shouldn't involve city residents getting economically excluded from even one of them.    

But, I'm sure those poor saps who come to Washington to lobby Congress will LOVE her plan.  The poor dears already make so many sacrifices, like commuting to Virginia or Maryland to play golf.  And, imagine having to make a meal out of a hamburger and chips.  Oh the inhumanity. 

How about this Eleanor Holmes Norton--just write a bill that appropriates some funds to improve the courses.  DC's got enough gentrification.  Do you really have to gentrify golf too?  

Notes: 

* The National Park Service (part of the Dept. of the Interior) is in charge of all three courses

** Don't worry--we swimmers only drink beer after practice

*** The picture is from the Library of Congress, digital ID cph.3c35450.  

What Does Jeffrey Thompson's Guilty Plea Mean for the Suburbs?

For two years DC prosecutors have been building a methodical case against the people involved in funding a shadow campaign to help Vincent Gray unseat incumbent Adrian Fenty in the 2010 mayoral campaign.  Today, the key architect of the scheme--businessman Jeffrey Thompson--pleaded guilty to two counts of conspiracy.  Prosecutors allege that Thompson spent upwards of 600k on the campaign, and that Gray, despite protests otherwise, knew about it. 

So, what does all of this mean for MoCo and other suburban jurisdictions of the DMV?  In the immediate, not much.  But, there could be some long term consequences if Grey doesn't win the primary.  (Remember, DC really doesn't have a Republican Party--at least not one organized enough to win elections--so the winner of the Democratic primary is the presumptive winner of the general election.)   

The most important long-term implication concerns the District's housing policy.  If Grey is out, the current policy could change.  It is too soon to know how it would change, but let's hope it changes for the better.  Under Gray, low income housing has suffered, and that has effects in the suburbs.

Gray's first mayoral campaign slogan--One City!--was on the face of it all about unity.  But, it was interpreted by many citizens as a comment on gentrification and its divisions.  Indeed,  the city's poor and minority populations saw the changes under former mayor Adrian Fenty as favoring whites and wealthy citizens.  At candidate forums in 2010 primary campaign, citizens on the eastern side of the city frequently complained about dog parks and bike lanes, which were, as Washington Post columnist Colbert I King noted at the time, code for "white influence." 

When Gray got elected, however, he didn't do much to preserve (or build new) low income housing.  In fact, a lot of people who thought he'd be an ally were deeply disappointed.  The result of Gray's approach to low income housing is that the city has been 'exporting' its poor and working class citizens to neighboring suburban districts.  People displaced by gentrification have to go somewhere, and many choose to stay in the area even though they leave the city.

The other side (the backlash if you will) of Gray's housing policy is growing homelessness.  The number of homeless families has been skyrocketing in the District.  Although no one knows exactly why--the numbers are higher now than they were at the start of the recession--we do know that among its neighbors DC has the most generous housing policy for homeless people during cold weather.  When the weather gets below freezing, homeless citizens have a right to overnight shelter.  This winter was really cold, so more people needed, and could demand shelter.  The Gray administration has struggled to find temporary shelter for all those in need of it.  It has also publicly complained that the city is housing homeless people from suburban jurisdictions. (This complaint is rich given that some of those people probably lived in the District not long ago...but I digress).     

Poverty and its negative side effects don't respect municipal borders.  So, if someone besides Gray wins election, DC's housing policy could change.  And, that will effect all of us, whether we live in the city or the suburbs.