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What's wrong with yuppification?
By adamg on Thu, 05/18/2006 - 1:47pm
You may have seen the Globe Magazine article complaining about how Boston's becoming a city of the ultra-rich.
John Keith says it's time to stop blaming rich people for the exodus of the middle class, in part because the middle class started fleeing after World War II, long before anybody'd ever heard of "yuppies," in part because the rich neighborhoods pay the bulk of the city's taxes, in part because what they replaced wasn't all that good anyway:
... As I sit here in my Ivory Tower on Union Park, looking out at the neighborhood below me, what do I see? I see a fancy restaurant across the street, where a goddamn liquor store used to be with drunks lying in their own piss around the front of it (circa 1989, people). I see building after building rebuilt, restored, and now, reinhabited by a class of people you haven't seen in Boston since H.H. Richardson sat down and drew himself a church, since the Charles River was a mess of smelly mud flats spewing raw sewerage, where today people spend a million dollars on a thousand square feet of living space.
More importantly, I see families, yes, families, moving into the city - husband, wife, baby. INTO the city, not out of. Rich, white families who not only appear willing to pay their property taxes (from which they receive practically nothing), but are even willing to pay the added expense of sending their own children to private daycare, pre-school, and day school. ...
He also wonders whether Boston Proper (the city north of the Fenway, east of Kenmore and on the left side of the Harbor, basically) should just break away from all the "netherlands" of places like Roslindale, Hyde Park and Dorchester.
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Comments
The Boston Globe and newcomers
No surprise that the Globe prints yet another criticism of certain kinds of newcomers to Boston neighborhoods. It happens all the time.
um...
No one else has a problem with his millenial social-darwinism? He literally wants to get rid of all the projects and let the rich white people take over...um...I'm pretty sure there's a better way of dealing with crime than getting rid of 'the coloreds'.
wished it was social satire
Well, there's already enough Luxury Condo space in Boston for all his rich white friends to move into and spend all day happily chatting about rich white people stuff that the lower classes just wouldn't understand.
Complete wipeout of neighborhoods for upscale housing? Look at how well it worked for the West End!
'Netherlands' ??
Netherlands? Think about that word for a minute. It means "low lands". As in, land that used to be water. That describes the Back Bay, Fenway, and South End a lot better than it does Rozzie or Dot or Hyde Park.
I didn't know that was the definition of netherlands
I will change what I call it - perhaps "outerlands" is a better name for what I mean.
Roxbury has toyed with the idea of calling for secession at least once. However, based on its historical relevance to the city of Boston, I'd want to keep it. Same is sort of true for Charlestown, although I'd prefer that to split off, too.
I'm glad it only took a matter of minutes before someone broke down my comments into racial terms.
there's a country called the
there's a country called the Netherlands, you know, and it's called that for a very good reason.
the word you are looking for is "hinterlands".
You put it in racial terms, John
I'm glad it only took a matter of minutes before someone broke down my comments into racial terms.
YOu don't have a leg to stand on there, John. You yourself wrote happily in your initial post about how rich white families were moving into the city. You have only yourself to blame in getting called for that.
At least you say it openly instead of hiding behind nice language. But it's still shameful.
Class
I agree with some of the things John Keith says. I do have some disagreements, however. I didn't have time to write a fluid essay and completely support all of my ideas, but my initial reactions to the issue in general is:
- The probelm boils down to class. People of richer class have a broader choice in where they want to live, while people the lower income class are forced to make housing choices based not on quality of life, schools, convinience to work, transportation, etc, but on housing prices. I agree, the real problem isn't the rich people moving in - the problems are the lack of a safety net for poorer residents who are being priced out of their homes and neighborhoods and the fact that younger generations can not establish themselves in the neighborhoods they grew up in.
- Who cares if the Back Bay and Beacon Hill pay 33% of the city's residential property taxes? How many of those paying property taxes are residents versus corporations or out-of-city landlords renting to the nomadic, high turnover student/young profesional class, who have no ambition of starting a family in those neighborhoods anyway? Not to mention, what a resident is or is not required to pay in property taxes does not and should never determine the level of city services.
- Not to mention, anyone choosing to pay millions of dollars for a home knows that they will be responsible for the bearing the brunt of the tax burden before hand. If they don't like it, there is always Newton and Weston.
- "When was the last time the Mayor (a resident of Hyde Park) had to walk over a drunk, or grab his wallet in fear it would be taken, or look for a parking space?" - These are realities of city life. I am not saying ignore the above problems, but they aren't exactly well kept secrets. Anyone moving into "Boston proper" knows the pros and cons of city living. It's like moving to Park Drive in January then complaing in June about Red Sox noise and traffic.
- One of the main draws of a city is intergration. The intergration of classes, cultures, tastes, traditons, etc. I am not saying stop gentrification; I believe that cities are fluid in nature and neighborhoods should evolve (the north end was Jewish and Irish befroe it was Italian). But much of the attraction of certain neighborhoods stem from the character given to it by the locals who have lived there for generations.
- The key is comprimise and intergration, not displacement. It seems as though the loudest opponents to gentrification, etc need to be as loud and agressive to effect comprimise. Asking politely to not ask developers to build affordable housing along with new luxury condos never really works, does it?
he never mentions the word
he never mentions the word dorchester in the piece. he says rozzy, h.park, and w.rox, but not dorchester. a little bit innacurate in the front page.
Spoken like a realtor
The more of John Keith's stuff I read, the more turned off I get. From his discussion here about how glad he is that a certain "class of people" is moving into his neighborhood to his comment months ago about the crazies (I may be forgetting exactly what he said) in Copley Square, he seems to drip contempt for poor people.
Before you accuse me of naivete, John, I live in Dorchester, and I know that it isn't cool to find a drunk person lying in piss outside a liquor store (to use the image you brought up). But y'know what? Those people don't just disappear when property costs go up and rich folks move in. They're forced to find another place, and unless there's econoimc development that offers them opportunities, they're likely to be just as miserable. They just won't be a burden to your delicate eyes, John.
But should I be surprised? Keith is a realtor--when prices go up and people have to move out, he can make commissions. Is that part of the beauty he sees in gentrification and displacement?
WWII and now=Apples and oranges
in part because the middle class started fleeing after World War II,
Comparing the urban-to-suburban exodus after World War II to the middle class leaving cities today is quite ahistorical. The suburbs were just being built then, and there were culturla forces promoting suburban living which barely exist today. If you read history of the period, like Elaine Tyler May's Homeward Bounds, you'll see how the suburban home was framed as a bulwark against everything from shifting gender roles to Communism. It was just a very different period from now, and it's a REAL stretch, at best, to connect middle class urban exodus then to now.
You are all too kind
The word I used was "nut-jobs", not "crazies".
I did a very poor job of explaining myself in the "infamous" Copley Square post on my blog. Then, I tried to squirm my way out of defending what I had written. It was simply that I don't think the Square succeeds, because it doesn't have a natural flow of every types of people (the mentally ill, skate punks, and drug addicts seem to outnumber the office workers and tourists), partially because of its location and partially because of its neighbors (monolithic buildings).
I was attempting to analyze the Square from an educated point of view, yet my comments were seen as insensitve and narrow-minded. embarrassed by how I came off in the post, so I deleted it.
Regarding the Realtor comment and commissions, yes, my goal in life is to force people out of the city, just so I can make a buck. You caught me.
I am not in real estate to make money, I am not driven by profit (much to the chagrin of my boyfriend, I can tell you that).
Please read more of the 1,000 posts in my blog to get a better understanding of what I believe. I have been a strong advocate of MORE housing, not less, in the belief that more housing is the only way to reduce the cost of buying (simple supply and demand). I am as unhappy as anybody else by the high cost of housing. I have been pretty clear on this.
I wasn't trying to compare the post-WWII exodus to today's middle-class movement. In my blog entry, I say that there has been an outward flow ever since WWII, not that the two are similar. Every decade has brought its own troubles, from urban unrest and blight to busing and, now, the high cost of housing.
Regarding the Back Bay and absentee landlords: Zip Code 02116 and Zip Code 02108, which cover much of Beacon Hill, the Back Bay (and parts of the South End) has more owner-occupied units than the South End, Zip Code 02118. That wasn't the point of your post, I realize.
You want to remove the
You want to remove the affordable Cathedral housing development and replace it with $400,000 lofts. That's going to reduce the cost of housing how?
Don't Hold Your Breath for the Free Market
John:
One thing about building more housing and the reduction of prices: you're far too optimistic about the power of the free market. Until the fixed costs of building are reduced, prices aren't going to go down. The building of luxury condo towers doesn't have any effect on the price of housing on Savin Hill in Dorchester. Furthermore, large developers, who might be able to achieve some sort of economy of scale, are building for the high end. Why build a $200,000 condo when you can build a $400,000 condo?
If it were my city, I'd try to get more of the vacant and underused land into the development pipeline but instead of putting in into the hands of hack developers, I'd set the various schools of architecture in the area onto the case of finding innovative lower cost building designs and techniques. Boston could and should be a model for housing solutions, not crappy condos built in faux-Victorian/Second Empire/Colonial styles.
this is eeka - it won't let me log in
26.2% of Americans have mental illness (NIH, 2004). So anywhere with natural makeup of humans is going to have a lot of people with mental illness. If you're looking to find an area where no one has mental illness, you'd have to create an unnatural elitist enclave by purposely excluding a lot of people.
Of course, you also mentioned how happy it makes you that more white families are moving into the South End. So it seems you don't like places to have a natural human makeup in general -- you'd like them to be artificially white, able, affluent.
Diversity makes the world beautiful.
My neighborhood is more diverse than yours ...
I'm not sure where people got the idea that I was saying I would prefer a neighborhood made up of white people. Huh? I was talking about the demographics of who was moving into the city - much like the Globe did, in their story. If I'm happy about something, it's that people are moving here who can afford to pay their taxes, buy a home, and ask for very little in return. Sounds like a win-win for all of us!
I think a bunch of $400,000 condos WOULD improve our city, considering that the average price of all condos for sale in the entire city is currently over $550,000. A nice, 800 square foot, two bedroom condo at $400,000 won't break the bank for a couple earning the median income for the city. I realize it would be better if we built more $200,000 or $300,000 condos, but I don't think that's realistic, given the high cost of land, building, and, of course, the desire for big profits by developers.
People are definitely trying to corner me, which is very disappointing. No, it's not my own words that are being used against me, it's people twisting the words to fit their own pre-conceived opinions.
For example, regarding race. I live in one of the more diverse neighborhoods in the city. In the South End, the majority of the population is made up of "minorities", if that even makes sense.
Zip Code 02118, in the South End, MY neighborhood, had a population that was 48% White, 26% Black, and 10% Asian, in the 2000 US Census.
Zip Code 02130, in Jamaica Plain, where some of my critics live, was 61% White (the majority), 15% Black, and 12% "some other race".
You're the pot calling the kettle black.
And, I think people who say I'm against "natural human makeup" or looking to build an "unnatural elitist enclave" are completely misreading what I am saying. I'm all for "natural human makeup". That's what's happening in some of our neighborhoods, isn't it? People invest, and improve the housing, then others buy and settle in. That's completely "natural".
On the other hand, there's nothing "natural" about forcing a developer to build affordable housing as part of a new development, or putting up artificial barriers to entry, like landmarking neighborhoods to limit growth.
What exactly does "more diverse" mean anyway?
You neglected to mention what portion of each race identifies as Latino or what religious and cultural groups are active or what professions are represented or or or. I don't think you can really quantify "diversity" with a little bit of incomplete census data. Both neighborhoods are diverse; no one's arguing that. But you're the one who said you like that rich white people are moving into your neighborhood and that people driving up housing costs improves a neighborhood.
John, who in this thread is from JP? Granted I don't know everyone here, but of the more vocal people who spoke here, Ron lives in Somerville, Adam lives in Roslindale, Goat lives in Dot, and I live in Roxbury.
Why the JP comparison? I'm curious. tblade, are you from JP?
Also, where do you get the idea that a couple making the median income ($66,100 for a couple in 2005) can afford a $400K condo? Definitely not as a first-time home buyer. Or do the median income earners you're familiar with have trust funds?
02124
I live in Dorchester.
02144
and Spatch lives in Somerville, not far from me. So I don't know who that leaves in the JP zip codes.
Oh, I thought some of the people were from JP
My mistake.
Again, I hever said "I like that rich white people are moving into the neighborhood." I said, "Rich white people are moving into the neighborhood, and they like buying expensive homes, paying their taxes, and getting little in return." Believe me, when I wrote "white" I thought about it, realizing what I was saying.
Hmm, wait, if I said, "Rich, African-American people are moving in", would we even be having this conversation?
I made a point about demographics. I understand that you all think otherwise, but I disagree with your disagreement.
However, whatever I say doesn't seem to matter to you, so I'll drop it.
I know for a fact that someone making $66,000 can qualify for a purchase of a $400,000 condo. Let's see, who is more likely to know about this, you or me? Jesus.
A $400,000 purchase, with 5% down ($20,000) gives you a monthly mortgage loan payment of $2,400 per month, at a fixed rate of 6.5%. Taxes and condo fees will be extra, of course. The payment comes out to 43% of gross income. You can get a bank to okay that loan.
Should a person making $66,000 buy a $400,000 condo? I think you'd be crazy to, since you wouldn't have any income left over. But, isn't it the case that most first-time homebuyers are low on cash, after they buy? Hasn't it always been that way?
The data I've read says the median income is higher than $66,000 for a couple. I thought I read it was something like $77,100 (different data from different sources, perhaps?).
You all want the good (nice, safe neighborhoods) without the bad (high housing prices). I want lower housing prices, too, and not simply because I'll sell more houses that way. I have spent years living in Boston, reading about its history and thinking about its future. I am committed to it. Do you think otherwise?
The 1000 posts in my blog give a pretty clear picture of what I believe and what I feel. If it makes you feel good to say I'm racist and against the mentally ill, then god bless you and have a good day. The truth is far different from that. In fact, the opposite.
I thought we were all discussing what makes a livable city, but perhaps I'm mistaken.
So, whatever.
slow down
Well, my issue isn't that you want developers to build $400,000 condos; it's that you want to remove existing affordable rental housing (namely the Cathedral development) in order to do so.
I figured as much.
So in order to qualify for $400K with a $66K income, someone does need to have a trust fund to put down.
I make about $70K and had to really push it to qualify for $279K (with 770 credit score) because I didn't have a trust fund so was doing 100% financing. Sure, with $20K lying around I could have qualified for $400K, but I thought we were talking about normal working people here.
Also, your use of the term "the mentally ill" shows exactly how little you value people with mental illness.
In the event that you do want to educate yourself about how to avoid labeling people... http://www.apastyle.org/disabilities.html
John:
John:
I'm not trying to corner you or twist your words, I'm just trying to bring a different perspective to the debate.
I have to disagree with your comment that "there's nothing 'natural' about forcing a developer to build affordable housing as part of a new development". Throughout the history of Boston people have recognized that allowing one group the right to do something--build a mill, a bridge, a large development project--is a benefit to the builder to the possible detriment of the community. In other words, by granting the request to build, the community is giving an economic benefit to a developer. The clearest example of this is the granting of a zoning variance, which means a developer receives something of value that they normally would have not been able to have. To get this benefit, the city has every right to extract something in return for the people--and remember, the government is the people--who give the developer this benefit. Developers do not have the unfettered right to do whatever they wish with a property they own. In this sense they are not being "forced" to do anything, they're being required to play by the rules which the community has established. If they don't like the rules, they don't have to be developers in Boston. And despite all the complaints I read about Boston, I certainly haven't noticed much hesitation on the part of developers to build.
One can only wonder what property values would be like in the Back Bay, Beacon Hill, and the South End, if those areas did not have historic district protections. Boston derives great benefit from the historic character of these neighborhoods and I'm not quite sure how exactly they're going to grow anyway--they're pretty much built to the hilt.