Gentrify or die? Inside a university's controversial plan for Baltimore

[tablemtn]

so, everyone with the potential means to help the situation should just throw in the towel and walk away?

It means that co-factors ought to be addressed if the goal is actually to help redevelop the city. If the city has specific obstacles (corrupt/incompetent leaders), then the redevelopers need better strategizing to prevail against those obstacles. Consider all the rumors about how powerful interests in the Detroit area used private investigators and other means to collect evidence against then-mayor Kwame Kilpatrick to get him sent to federal prison. He was an obstacle, they wanted him out, and they got him out. Hopkins has a lot of resources - how many current Baltimore city officials have potentially committed federal crimes? Something to think about...

[mousquet]

Segun, I think you're sweating this a bit too much... Look around and within yourself, I'm sure you'll find some salutary peace.

You don't have to struggle so much on your own, the most charismatic and influential will relieve you from time to time.

I know some White leftist hipsters here who pretend to love the Blacks, Africa, Palestine or whatever that seems poor enough to them to be easily manipulated.
I don't like them. They are hypocritical. They only want their votes cause they've lost the working class whose a majority went to the far right, after having been deceived by the left-wing hypocritical, materialist bourgeois.

When I see Black immigrants here - those same who get up at 5 am in the morning, every week day to clean up the offices of the little bourgeois - I don't want their votes. I don't care. I could certainly be harsh to them, cause I want them educated and to take over.

[Segun]

Mosquet, I'm part of a network of Community leaders, business leaders, poets, MCs, teachers, etc...I don't buy into any of that left wing/right wing garbage. Maybe it had some merit in its beginnings, but now its a psychological trap. Hell, I've been told that I think more like a conservative than liberal. Anyways, I do have plenty of people, It's just my day off and I happened to be on SSP and see this, it triggered my inner Malcolm X.

You're right though. It's 420 and it's my day off. Woosah.

[the urban politician]

Originally Posted by Segun

My stepfather is African, so I was married into a Ghanian family. African and Afro-Carribean immigrants are more likely to start businesses because they've immigrated with the intent of doing so. While there's no comparison to the poverty one can find in Ghana to nearly anywhere in the US, the mentality is different. For one, starting your own business is a much easier process. There's almost no bureaucratic tape to go through. If there is, it's often time simple as bribing someone a small fee. If you want to sell something on the street, you just go out on the street and sell it. The average mentality about business is different. You're raised knowing that the system works, albeit corrupt, slow and incompetent at times.

Furthermore, the family structure is much more intact.

Black American families inherit years of generational poverty and institutional racism. We're conditioned to believe that the system not only doesn't work, it actively works against you. There's enough evidence to support that thesis also.

In slavery, families were forced apart so they couldn't form a unit and revolt, or they were forced apart for reasons of gaining capital (strong Black Men were treated like workhorses and Women like vessels for producing babies). That tradition of de-masculinization of Men, that tradition of misogyny, objectifying and de-sexualization of Women continued well after slavery. Throw in mass incarceration, drug abuse, crime, racial violence and you have a situation of hopelessness and disenfranchisement.

My stepfather genuinely believed that all White people were friendly and had his best interest in mind until the first time something racist happened to him.

I’m with you (partially) until I hear people moaning about how unfair it is to go be in jail.

If you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime.

[Segun]

^ That's until crime includes things that aren't really that different from what those behind the law do (i.e. selling harmful drugs Vs selling harmful drugs via the pharmaceutical industry). We're just supposed to pretend that doesn't exist?

[the urban politician]

^ I get the argument.

But to be honest, I've got my own problems. I don't really care about the plight of people who sell drugs.

[Jonesy55]

Originally Posted by Docere

Isn't Paris social geography split more east-west (west being the favored direction) than core-periphery?

I think it's more of a patchwork than any easy geographical divide from my admittedly limited experience.

I lived for a short time in the very far Eastern suburbs of the Paris area and that was all newly built apartments and houses with few social problems that I could notice. On the train into Central Paris there were some more gritty areas but I'd often stop off in those places to visit shopping malls, supermarkets etc and they were fine to visit for those things.

Then again there were other areas on that route which were mostly middle class houses, and getting to the city proper there are also richer and poorer districts too,. It's not like the city proper of Paris is totally inhabited by rich people at all, there are plenty of people living in outer areas whether east or west who are much better off than many inhabitants of the core city I think.

[Pedestrian]

Originally Posted by Segun

I think a better, more long-term, sustainable option would be if John Hopkins invested in mental health facilities and job creation programs.

Re mental health:

The Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Johns Hopkins Medicine has occupied a distinguished place in the field of psychiatry since the opening of the Henry Phipps Psychiatric Clinic in 1913. Today, we continue our long tradition of excellence in patient care, teaching and research.

https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/psychiatry/index.html

Existing clinics: https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/psyc...t_clinics.html

Our department -- the only department dedicated to mental health in a school of public health -- brings together leading researchers across multiple disciplines joined by their passion for understanding, preventing, and treating mental health and substance use disorders. Faculty, students and community health leaders in Mental Health are dedicated to educating the next generation of public health workers and scientists about the importance of mental health, the specific skills needed to address public mental health issues and the integration of mental and physical health.

https://www.jhsph.edu/departments/me...lth/index.html

In other words, for a long time they have invested an extraordinary amount in mental health, both clinical care and research, and have had numerous famous names in psychiatry on staff.

Re jobs:

53,352 employees worldwide in FY 2010, including 46,128 regular and 6,050 student employees working in Maryland, making the Johns Hopkins Institutions by far the state’s largest private employer
• Purchases of goods and services (including construction) from Maryland companies in FY 2010 – $1.17 billion, directly supporting more than 6,400 jobs with these companies
• Purchases of goods and services (including construction) from minority and woman-owned businesses in FY 2010 – $179 million; nearly 15 percent of all construction spending in FY 2010 was paid to minority and women-owned businesses
• Total impact of Johns Hopkins and affiliated institutions in Maryland in FY 2010 – $9.98 billion, 96,861 jobs
• State income taxes withheld from salaries and wages of Johns Hopkins employees – $170.9 million
• More than 20,000 students – including more than 8,300 who live in Maryland
• Provided more than $47 million in financial aid to Maryland students
• Value of uncompensated care provided to Maryland residents in FY 2010 – $128.6 million
• Spending on research and related programs in 2010 – $2.3 billion, almost all of it financed from sources outside Maryland – the most by any U.S. university
• The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory – with more than 5,000 employees and a budget of more than $1 billion, one of the largest university-affiliated, government-supported research centers in the U.S.
• Johns Hopkins Hospital – rated first among U.S. hospitals by U.S. News and World Report
• Collaborating with state and federal agencies, local communities and the private sector on major community development and economic development projects in East Baltimore and in Montgomery County

http://web.jhu.edu/administration/gc...interProof.pdf

[jtown,man]

Originally Posted by Segun

So what was it? I want numbers.



Where's your statistical proof of this?

What was it? That is so incredibly complicated and all I have heard are competing theories. But I find it funny you now want numbers.

I'll go Segun style:

You want numbers. Try living in America in the 1970s as a white man, you dont know the answer because you werent white in the 1970s>>>>>or something along those lines.

Fact is a lot of crap happened to hurt black Americans after 1960. A lot. Its too complicated for some SSP post and deserves better analyzation than I am willing to put into this right now. You seem to put everything as external excuses while I see some putting everything as an individuals problem. The truth, I am sure, is somewhere in the middle.

I do know that today, if we don't turn things around, we will just have another generation of black Americans who are bitter and pissed about a situation people are trying to figure out instead of just either getting over it or seeking real help. If youre doing that help, good for you man(really).

[10023]

Originally Posted by Segun

^ Forcing the poor out will only force the poor to go to more extreme methods to not be poor, such as traveling to rich neighborhoods to rob, steal and or kill. I'm also describing the World as it is.

Yes, some people do turn to that. And then they go to jail.

But very few actually do, because they’re good people and we live in a civilized society.

Empirically speaking, gentrification leads to less rather than more crime.

[10023]

Originally Posted by eschaton

If we want poor people to stop being poor, it's much more efficient to provide access to living wage jobs - or just cut them checks - than it is to offer a potential meritocratic release valve to their children.

No it isn’t.

Let’s start with the definition of “poor”. Obviously it’s relative, and poor in the US is not like poor in Malawi. But someone is always going to be poor, even if everyone enjoys increasing levels of material wealth.

You’re not going to cut anyone a big enough check to lift them out of poverty. That would be absurd. If state payments were enough to take someone out of the bottom 10-15% of the income distribution, then there are a whole slew of jobs that people would just stop doing, because it’s more appealing to just collect the check.

Low-wage jobs should offer higher wages (at least $10 nationally and quite a bit higher in more expensive cities). But they’re never going to be high enough that a person who works at McDonald’s for 40 hours per week* as their only source of income won’t still be poor. Again, it’s relative, and those sorts of low- or zero-skill jobs are always going to sit at the bottom of the income distribution, with good reason. Even with a subsidy in the form of a minimum wage.

The real problem is, what does one do with an uneducated adult? Do you send 30-something men and women back to school (and I don’t mean college, I mean school)? What about people who just don’t have the intelligence or other talents to do more valuable jobs? Some people just get the short end of the stick.

The simple fact is that there will always be poor in society, and there will always be someone to resent. An accountant making $100k in SF might resent the tech millionaires, but that doesn’t mean he’s going to rob them. If you do that, or try to justify that behavior, then you’re no better than an animal.


* and really we should be talking about 50+ hours per week, because that’s what someone can and should be working if they’re trying, and what most professionals in white collar jobs work.