Black-trimmed homes, tiny libraries and other signs of gentrification

[sopas ej]

I don't know if this is LA specific, but I thought it was kind of funny---because it's true!



From the Los Angeles Times:


Black-trimmed homes, tiny libraries and other signs your neighborhood is about to be gentrified


BY JACK FLEMMING | STAFF WRITER
DEC. 7, 2023 3 AM PT

A shift in demographics. Affordable apartments transformed into luxury condos. A coffee shop called something like “Brew Slut.”

The signs of gentrification take many forms. A newly opened art gallery can serve both as a communal space and a harbinger of the displacement to come. Remodeled homes might boost a street’s curb appeal but then drive up rents in the ensuing months and years.

There are plenty of ways to tell when gentrification is coming to a community; rising home prices and an influx of trendy shops are classic omens. But in the modern market, developers are flipping houses at the highest rate since 2000, and the houses they churn out are often homogeneous: boxy, black and white, minimalist. They’re adorned with trendy house number fonts and chic drought-tolerant gardens, and they can be an obvious sign of gentrification on the way.

[...]

[TWAK]

Going around Pasadena it's exactly like that (I go there every 4 months or so) and all that greenery sponsored by Lake Oroville/the state water project .
Trying to think if you can get that sorta style in Nor Cal, but for sure it seems the lots are larger down there in the urban areas.

[Obadno]

I got some:

1. Neighborhood gets cleaner
2. People leave furniture out overnight in their front yard/porch without a lock or Teather
3. WHOLE FOODS
4. The police actually make homeless people vacate the area.
5. Better kept and maintained landscaping.
6 House values increase.
7. White women in Athleisure clothing and dogs
6. Apartment complex gets a new paintjob and gets a name like "The Wexler on 11th"
8. Boba Tea

I could go on.

[ilcapo]

What type of gentrification are we talking about here? The hipsters, the single professionals, the ones just looking to get return on investment, the gay community?

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by ilcapo

What type of gentrification are we talking about here? The hipsters, the single professionals, the ones looking to get return on investment?

The little birdhouse lending library thingies in the parkway out front is a hallmark of "family gentrification".

My neighborhood on the Northside of Chicago has plenty of them.

[JManc]

The black/ white/ grey paint is pretty common in Houston too. Even my stodgy neighborhood, some are painting their brick houses neutral colors. They look cool now but They're in for a surprise 10-15 years from now when it's passé and they find it's virtually impossible to undo painted brick so it will be another fashionable color.

[Steely Dan]

People who paint vintage Chicago brick flats white are some of my least favorite people on the planet.


STOP PAINTING FACE BRICK, YOU BRAINDEAD FUCKWITS!!!!!!!


the entire reason that builders a century ago went through the exorbitant expense to import all of that delicious St. Louis face brick to adorn the front facades of Chicago's vintage housing stock was specifically so that NO ONE, EVER, FOR THE REST OF FUCKING TIME, would need to paint it.

Leave it alone, you HGTV-addicted morons.

[TWAK]

Originally Posted by JManc

The black/ white/ grey paint is pretty common in Houston too. Even my stodgy neighborhood, some are painting their brick houses neutral colors. They look cool now but They're in for a surprise 10-15 years from now when it's passé and they find it's virtually impossible to undo painted brick so it will be another fashionable color.

We are kind of deprived out here in California of all the cool brick buildings and these jokers go and paint it?

[JManc]

Originally Posted by TWAK

We are kind of deprived out here in California of all the cool brick buildings and these jokers go and paint it?

I never thought about it but yeah, not a lot of brick in CA. Not sure why. Lots of wood and stucco.

[Bailey]

Originally Posted by Obadno

I got some:

1. Neighborhood gets cleaner
2. People leave furniture out overnight in their front yard/porch without a lock or Teather
3. WHOLE FOODS
4. The police actually make homeless people vacate the area.
5. Better kept and maintained landscaping.
6 House values increase.
7. White women in Athleisure clothing and dogs
6. Apartment complex gets a new paintjob and gets a name like "The Wexler on 11th"
8. Boba Tea

I could go on.

EXACTLY!

The only people who oppose Gentrification are those who either A) want to keep a segment of the population down so they can control them for political reasons or B) fail to understand that cities develop IN LAYERS and the hope is that each layer improves as time moves on, especially through each generation.

Lower Manhattan has many examples of gentrification, for the better, before it was even a term.

Today, there would be a segment of the population crying that the deplorable living conditions of the Five Points should be preserved at all costs.

Luckily, they demolished those inhumane conditions and future generations of Irish-Americans were allowed to thrive because of it.

[homebucket]

Originally Posted by JManc

I never thought about it but yeah, not a lot of brick in CA. Not sure why. Lots of wood and stucco.

THE DANGER OF UNREINFORCED MASONRY BUILDINGS IN AN EARTHQUAKE

An unreinforced masonry building is a building constructed of bricks or blocks and mortar. There’s no rebar, and there’s no steel. During an earthquake, the mortar cracks and the bricks separate. The walls peel outward, falling to the sidewalk. The floors previously held up by the brick walls then collapse. Because of these safety hazards, unreinforced masonry buildings are not allowed to be built in California.

Modern building codes require structures to be ductile in an earthquake – to be able to move and sway without breaking. Brick buildings are just the opposite – they’re brittle in an earthquake. Steel is a ductile material, so retrofits of brick buildings often use steel to reinforce the masonry and improve the structure’s earthquake ductility.

https://blog.jumpstartinsurance.com/...ldings-part-2/

[TWAK]

Originally Posted by JManc

I never thought about it but yeah, not a lot of brick in CA. Not sure why. Lots of wood and stucco.

If you haven't noticed, a lot of places in CA have cracks in the walls. Most of my friends have them, I have them now, and the house I grew up in had them. Ditto for pavement and driveways. When I was in KC there was sooo many brick buildings and they look really cool; I was jelly.
Same with Scott Air Force Base...it looked like a quaint Midwest or Northeast college with the brick buildings. Can't have that out here...

[photoLith]

I wish my neighborhood would gentrify.

[The North One]

Painting brick should be illegal.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by The North One

Painting brick should be illegal.

Punishable by a public hanging.

You're first, Joanna Gaines.

I blame you more than anyone for this infinitely stupid HGTV home "refresh" trend.

[AviationGuy]

Originally Posted by JManc

The black/ white/ grey paint is pretty common in Houston too. Even my stodgy neighborhood, some are painting their brick houses neutral colors. They look cool now but They're in for a surprise 10-15 years from now when it's passé and they find it's virtually impossible to undo painted brick so it will be another fashionable color.

We're seeing a lot of that in my Austin neighborhood as well. Probably my favorite is brick painted black or dark gray, highlighted with stained wooden trim and garage doors, with matching front door. My new neighbors have done this, and also have white window trim. They took a bland 60s one-story brick and made it very eye-catching. I've seen many similar color schemes around the city. Not everyone likes it, but I definitely do.

I've resisted painting the brick on my 60s house. The brick is a light yellow that was actually more common in the 40s and 50s. My grandparents home in the Montrose section of Houston had this color brick, which may mean it makes me nostalgic. On Streetview, I've seen bungalows in the older suburbs of Chicago with this color brick.

[Docere]

In Toronto, the Annex and High Park area are full of these little free libraries.

[xzmattzx]

You won't find much of that white, gray, or black housing in Delaware. There are maybe a few examples scattered here and there, like these two houses on the way from Hockessin to Newark (and check out the security gate in the 2023 Streetview). Most new housing in the state looks like this or this.

You also don't see security fences much. That is more a California thing. What is more common here, since new housing replaces vital farmland, are wide open expanses of just grassy lawns with no trees and no fences.

Glass garage doors are a new one to me.

Obviously there are no drought-tolerant gardens around here.

There are little libraries in some places. They tend to be either in urban neighborhoods, like in the city of Wilmington, or in newer developments trying to be hip. You won't find them in inner ring suburbs or subdivisions built 30-60 years ago, for the most part.

[TWAK]

^Living in CA my whole life till 18, I couldn't fathom the lack of fences in so many parts of the country.
The backyard football games must be legit.

[FromSD]

Originally Posted by sopas ej

I don't know if this is LA specific, but I thought it was kind of funny---because it's true!

I had a much less positive reaction to this article. I thought it was just a festival of cliches about the evils of gentrification. There are no doubt serious discussions to be had about the problems associated with gentrification, but this article did not address any of them.

I don't have access to the neighborhood-level census data for LA. I just wonder how much gentrification has actually taken place in the neighborhoods that the LA Times cites as ground zero for that phenomenon. Have Highland Park, Atwater Village and Echo Park actually gotten significantly wealthier in the last 20 years? And since the author implies that gentrification means whites replacing non-whites, have these areas gotten noticeably less non-white? Maybe they have, but a new cutesy coffee or cupcake shop is not proof that that is happening. In any case, gentrification often entails wealthier non-white people moving into a neighborhood, which is a detail that the LA Times rarely highlights. Given that non-Hispanic whites are an ever smaller proportion of LA's population, I wouldn't be surprised if most gentrifiers do tend to be non-white.

The black and white paint scheme that the real estate columnist obsesses over in this piece is not a mark of gentrification. It is just a mark of new infill construction more generally. The house flippers and small contractors that put up these houses are not cutting edge architects or urban designers. They are just following the current trend that favors the black and white color scheme. When they build or remodel a house in Highland Park they tend to use those colors because that's what's trendy now. Many of the new McMansions currently replacing more modest post war housing in places like Manhattan Beach or Redondo Beach are using the same colors. These are not gentrifying neighborhoods. They are already solidly upper middle class. Same point about horizontal front yard fences, which the author appears to envision as a bigger threat to social justice than the Koch Brothers. Will the columnist be unsatisfied until every horizontal slat wood fence is replaced by a ratty looking cyclone fence?

I would just conclude by saying that gentrification is not the biggest problem facing LA.