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Old Posted Mar 14, 2014, 1:33 AM
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Reverberation Reverberation is offline
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Join Date: Jun 2006
Location: Diaspora
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Quote:
Originally Posted by AviationGuy View Post
Yeah, although for the most part, major office, hotel, and high rise residential is still occurring within established nodal "downtowns" or along major thoroughfares. Midrise condos and apartments are definitely taking over neighborhoods that many people think needed to be razed anyway and are serving as good infill. Unfortunately, some historical neighborhoods have been damaged, and poor people have been displaced. What really makes headlines, though, is when highrises pop up in affluent neighborhoods (e.g., the famous or infamous Ashby highrise residential and at least one other controversial high rise). The NIMBY syndrome is alive and well.
The NIMBY syndrome may be alive but in Houston it isn't all that prevalent. Most people's reaction to the whole Ashby high-rise controversy has been "F**k em'. They live in the middle of the city. If they don't like high rises they can move out to Bellaire, West U, or any of the dozens of master planned communities and neighborhoods that have strict deed restrictions or are incorporated and have zoning." If you don't like dense development, you move to where these is none and where there can never be any. You don't get all pompous and self righteous and start suing real estate developers to dictate the economic terms of their investments.

As for the poor getting displaced, I don't have much sympathy. It's happened to me twice in the last 5 years. I just moved to a cheaper place. If you own and are forced to sell because property taxes are too high, that's upsetting. It happened to my grandmother recently. If you rent and are forced to move, that is simply a risk you take. I chose to pay unbelievably below market rents for the neighborhood I was in. The risk was that the owner would sell because the rental income barely covered more than property taxes. When they notified me that the building was going to be demolished, they gave me 60 days to move, returned my security deposit, and gave me an extra month's rent on top of that to put towards moving costs and a new deposit. I, as a renter had no right to force the owner to let me stay as long as I wanted so I found a new home and moved. I wouldn't consider it "displacement" as that has a real negative implication. The volcano displaced the villagers. The tsunami displaced the people. I moved from an apartment to another apartment nearby.
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