Why Do Low-Income Residents Oppose Development Even When Displacement Risk Is Low?

[M II A II R II K]

Why Do Low-Income Residents Oppose Development Even When Displacement Risk Is Low?


September 2, 2020

By Stephen Danley

Read More: https://shelterforce.org/2020/09/02/...t-risk-is-low/

For decades, activists in Camden, New Jersey, have complained that investment in their city has focused on the downtown and waterfront neighborhoods that attract suburbanites, tourists, and newer residents, to the exclusion of longtime residents in the community. It’s a familiar complaint, the type you might hear from activists in Baltimore about the Inner Harbor. Residents see downtown investment and wonder why must we depend on the theory of trickle-down economics belief that neighborhoods will be helped by investment downtown? Why can’t we invest in our neighborhoods directly?

- In Camden, after residents argued for years that there needed to be investment in neighborhoods, a funny thing happened: A vocal group of residents opposed such investment when it came, on the grounds that it would gentrify those neighborhoods. — The very thing that activists and residents had spent decades advocating for investment in their neighborhoods was now being criticized as gentrification. Why? When I spoke with some Camden activists and residents, they all pointed to the same thing: they felt unwelcome when development happened. — The residents were concerned about letters they received explaining that the grant might require the use of eminent domain in their community. Fearful of losing their homes, they packed the hospital to protest the application despite its potential to provide important neighborhood services. To make the situation even more puzzling, the city of Camden as a whole, and particularly the neighborhoods further from downtown, are undergoing very little of what would classically be thought of as gentrification.

- In 1985, Peter Marcuse theorized that displacement includes not just what we think of as classic gentrification, an increase in white population, increase in rent prices and the ensuing displacement but that it includes exclusionary displacement, in which residents are priced out of new buildings, and, critically for Camden, displacement pressure in which new businesses and development are seen as signs that residents will soon be displaced. — If you squint, perhaps a new coffee shop near Cooper Hospital is an example of displacement pressure, or a luxury apartment complex on the waterfront is an example of exclusionary displacement. But these facilities are the exceptions rather than the norm. Camden is not facing widespread displacement, making the opposition to neighborhood investment, and the ensuing fear of gentrification, even more puzzling. — When activists and residents I spoke to talked about gentrification in Camden, sometimes they were talking about future displacement. But just as often, they were talking about what new development meant for them now.

- They have another concern: that new development will exclude them, creating “bubble cities” within Camden that they cannot access. Elijah Anderson, a professor of sociology and African American studies at Yale, has spent much of his career exploring the dynamics of African-American life in mostly Black urban environments. Three years ago, he published a paper titled “The White Space,” which looked at the racial complexities of mostly white urban environments. — Anderson defines “white space” as having an overwhelming presence of white people and an absence of Black people with the result that “whites and others often stigmatize anonymous Black persons by associating them with the putative danger, crime, and poverty of the iconic ghetto, typically leaving Blacks with much to prove before being able to establish trusting relations with them.” The most notable recent case in point occurred on April 12, [2018], when a white employee of a Starbucks in Philadelphia called the police on two young Black men, Rashon Nelson and Donte Robinson, who asked to use the rest room before they had ordered anything. They were arrested on suspicion of trespassing; it turned out that they had been waiting for a business associate to join them.

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[10023]

Ignorance?

[Qubert]

IMHO, a combination of resentment and the desire to have their community remain a reflection of their own culture and values.

To the first part, many people simply abhor wealth and it's visible manifestations. It's why despite being built over a rail yard in a largely non-residential district, Hudson Yards is so widely hated. Similar sentiments are cast onto Billionaires Row. To many in the activist/cultural/city planning spears, gentrification/displacement are simply smokescreens to cover classical left-wing class disdain. This, frankly, needs to stop. The wealthy is as intrinsic to the history, culture and economic vitality of urban centers as the working class.


To the second, I am sympathetic to the fact that many African-American and to an extent Latino Americans do feel that being in "White" environments is alienating and threatening. People generally do like feeling their neighborhood is culturally responsive to them, and I think deep down many fear demographic change will leave them feeling as "strangers" in their own homes. Somehow, we need to find ways to make development a culturally responsive force that takes into account the different ways in which a community reflects the shared values of it's residents. Things like carving out space for Black/Latino cultural outlets, restaurants and small businesses would help.

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by Qubert

IMHO, a combination of resentment and the desire to have their community remain a reflection of their own culture and values.

To the first part, many people simply abhor wealth and it's visible manifestations. It's why despite being built over a rail yard in a largely non-residential district, Hudson Yards is so widely hated. Similar sentiments are cast onto Billionaires Row. To many in the activist/cultural/city planning spears, gentrification/displacement are simply smokescreens to cover classical left-wing class disdain. This, frankly, needs to stop. The wealthy is as intrinsic to the history, culture and economic vitality of urban centers as the working class.

Overreactions aside, many of very wealth sections of the city tend to be boring, empty, monotonous, devoid of urban life and that is up to criticism.

About the article per se, it seems household ownership in the US big cities is low. If you will be forced out from your neighbourhood, you have not reason to enjoy those improvements.

[The North One]

Originally Posted by Qubert

IMHO, a combination of resentment and the desire to have their community remain a reflection of their own culture and values.

To the first part, many people simply abhor wealth and it's visible manifestations. It's why despite being built over a rail yard in a largely non-residential district, Hudson Yards is so widely hated. Similar sentiments are cast onto Billionaires Row. To many in the activist/cultural/city planning spears, gentrification/displacement are simply smokescreens to cover classical left-wing class disdain. This, frankly, needs to stop. The wealthy is as intrinsic to the history, culture and economic vitality of urban centers as the working class.

People dont abhor wealth, they abhor inequality. This is a horrible take.

[ckh]

Originally Posted by The North One

People dont abhor wealth, they abhor inequality. This is a horrible take.

This and it may speak to the fact that people in these communities have tried to make change to no avail, with their input. then, development comes in without their input and in turn, makes the people feel that they have no say in their current community.

[10023]

Originally Posted by The North One

People dont abhor wealth, they abhor inequality. This is a horrible take.

It’s the same thing, in practice, since most people will never be wealthy. The existence of wealth implies inequality.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by 10023

It’s the same thing, in practice, since most people will never be wealthy. The existence of wealth implies inequality.

Not really. I think most people are fine with inequality if they believe that most people have a reasonable shot at class mobility. But, for obvious reasons, the hoi polloi will always hate structural inequality.

[DCReid]

"Why Do Low-Income Residents Oppose Development Even When Displacement Risk Is Low?" - can we name one neighborhood where this is true? Seems eventually the neighborhood is upgraded and they are displaced because most are renting. Now if they owned, that would be another story as they could sell their place at a hefty profit.

[Jasoncw]

I think there's an assumption that activists represent what the average person thinks.

[Qubert]

Originally Posted by The North One

People dont abhor wealth, they abhor inequality. This is a horrible take.

It's an accurate take. If people abhor inequality, they'd be equally as appalled over things like NYCHA or places like Youngstown, OH.

But they're not.

I can't take a lot of these activist seriously because when grinding, acute poverty has existed in these communities for decades there is either silence or the same boilerplate of "community investment" which often doesn't truly address structural inequities. I'd be moved for a plan that genuinely focuses on improving access to capital for marginalized communities, increasing entrepreneurship, and more focus on education reform.

Poverty, and it's pervasiveness, doesn't really seem to bother many of these activists.

[eschaton]

I don't think there's any reason to really single out low-income people here. Whether it's a white upper-middle class neighborhood or a poor black neighborhood, it's still NIMBYism. Most people are conservative (in a small c sense) when it comes to their own neighborhoods, not wanting anything to alter the status quo to much. Most of those who are either indifferent to or in favor of change tend to be transient and less active in local politics. The "housing activists" who are most active in poor neighborhoods are probably about as representative as the retired busybodies who tend to attend zoning meetings in middle-class areas.

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by eschaton

I don't think there's any reason to really single out low-income people here. Whether it's a white upper-middle class neighborhood or a poor black neighborhood, it's still NIMBYism. Most people are conservative (in a small c sense) when it comes to their own neighborhoods, not wanting anything to alter the status quo to much. Most of those who are either indifferent to or in favor of change tend to be transient and less active in local politics. The "housing activists" who are most active in poor neighborhoods are probably about as representative as the retired busybodies who tend to attend zoning meetings in middle-class areas.

I'd point out, wealthier people would benefit from their neighbourhood become more expensive as they are more likely to own their houses. Poorer districts have lower ownership rates and improvements might make impossible for people keep living there.

[benp]

Originally Posted by eschaton

I don't think there's any reason to really single out low-income people here. Whether it's a white upper-middle class neighborhood or a poor black neighborhood, it's still NIMBYism. Most people are conservative (in a small c sense) when it comes to their own neighborhoods, not wanting anything to alter the status quo to much. Most of those who are either indifferent to or in favor of change tend to be transient and less active in local politics. The "housing activists" who are most active in poor neighborhoods are probably about as representative as the retired busybodies who tend to attend zoning meetings in middle-class areas.

This. I live in an up and coming middle class neighborhood, and attended a neighborhood info meeting last week to hear a proposal for apartments and bike path through a former railroad ROW, vacant for decades, which is currently an overgrown illegal dump. Of course there were people who opposed it, as the "wrong" type of development (as opposed to a decades old junkyard), as a "parking" issue (its not), will be a "pedo path" (actual words used) for undesirables (as if an empty and junk filled area is better than a lighted and monitored path), or will "take away" services such as police/fire/ambulance from the rest of the neighborhood.

And of course the loudest opponents did not live adjacent to the affected land.

[Handro]

Originally Posted by eschaton

I don't think there's any reason to really single out low-income people here. Whether it's a white upper-middle class neighborhood or a poor black neighborhood, it's still NIMBYism. Most people are conservative (in a small c sense) when it comes to their own neighborhoods, not wanting anything to alter the status quo to much. Most of those who are either indifferent to or in favor of change tend to be transient and less active in local politics. The "housing activists" who are most active in poor neighborhoods are probably about as representative as the retired busybodies who tend to attend zoning meetings in middle-class areas.

Yep.

90% of people aren't interested in the intricacies of economic development--rightfully so; it's pretty boring unless it's your profession or you're a nerd on forum dedicated to urban centers. They see a place familiar to them changing into something unfamiliar, and it's jarring. No matter if it's a rundown gas station or an overgrown, empty lot getting replaced; it's been that way for a long time and now a new type of person (whether that person is poor coming to a wealthy neighborhood or wealthy coming into a poor neighborhood) wants to come in and change it? Get the hell outta here.