Monday, February 12, 2018

Chipsters "R" Gentefiers, yet Profit Still Motive


Gentrification has arrived in Dallas.  Big time.

And some new urbanists hope gentefication isn't far behind.

For years, beginning with suburbanization in the 1950's, and then fueled by white flight since the 1960's, many Caucasians have considered Dallas's central residential neighborhoods undesirable.  And not simply for racist reasons.  Like every other city in America during those decades, bigger suburban lot sizes and single-family homes were prized totems of the American Dream, while dense, zero-lot-line urban neighborhoods simply couldn't compete for affection.

Now that our urbanization tide has turned, however, newer generations of all skin colors and ethnicities are discovering what their parents and grandparents had deemed outdated:  the "inner-city."  Smaller lot sizes are now desirable because both husbands and wives now work outside the home, and have little time for - or interest in - tending a sprawling yard.  Trends shift, after all.  Plus, increasingly grueling commuter drive times now encourage many urban workers to live closer to work.  And, frankly, America's inner cities feature a housing infrastructure that has decayed over the years to the point where it's becoming economically feasible to profitably redevelop aging neighborhoods.

The problem, of course, is that these aging neighborhoods full of decaying housing aren't empty.  While whites and affluent minorities have been ensconced within suburbia, the urban poor have continued living in these grim urban neighborhoods.  And the reason inner-city housing is now prime for economic renewal rests entirely on the fact that the urban poor have been unable to pay for the type of maintenance that would have kept this aging housing stock in prime condition.

But that doesn't mean the urban poor haven't developed their own types of community within America's inner cities.  The urban poor may have been marginalized in the eyes of relatively affluent suburbanites, but they never disappeared.

So now, imagine how indignant the urban poor are to see new, white hipsters and empty nesters eagerly invading city neighborhoods; neighborhoods through which most whites wouldn't have dreamed of driving ten years ago, let alone purchasing a home.

It sure looks like another racial attack on minorities, doesn't it?  Except this time, in reverse?  Instead of whites fleeing "invading" minorities, the whites are now the invaders.

For folks who see racism behind every tree, that's the obvious scenario.  But what we want to see isn't necessarily reality.  Because at the root of gentrification lies not racism, or skin color, or ethnocentrism, but economics.

Think about it:  If whites who are moving back into the inner cities were such racist bigots, why would they be willing to live next-door to people who don't look like them?  Wouldn't whites instead be moving into heavily-fortified gated communities surrounded by moats and turrets?

Besides, while gentrifiers today may be mostly white, many are also black, Hispanic, and Asian.  They're not "invading" urban America to reclaim it for their particular race, they're moving back downtown because it's closer to where they want to work and play and live - and THEY CAN AFFORD TO.

Ka-ching!  It's about the money, folks.  Not racism.

Still, some folks seem almost eager to paint this new-found popularity of formerly dying cities as some sort of pall on the very urbanity in which newcomers are obviously eager to reinvest.  In a way, this sounds like a new form of reverse racism, in which some blacks and Latinos seem unwilling to admit that whites can be less sensitive to skin color and ethnicity than they are.

Witness the newest trendy term to preoccupy gentrification's opponents:  "Genteficiation."  In Spanish, "gente" is the word for "people", and the inference here is that Hispanic gentrifiers can be intrinsically more beneficent to the "indigenous" people populating inner city America than whites.

According to The Dallas Morning News, "the center of gentefication is the idea that Latino entrepreneurs may be more likely to preserve a barrio’s integrity, the cultural institutions of a neighborhood."  Experts on gentefication have even contrived further terms like "Chipster," an abbreviated form of "Chicano" and "Chicana" hipsters.

Gentefication is believed to have been coined in Los Angeles, where young, entrepreneurial Latinos - the "Chipsters" - are being either blamed for or credited with fueling rapid gentrification in Boyle Heights, one of the city's largest Hispanic neighborhoods. 

Henry Cisneros, the former mayor of San Antonio and member of the Clinton administration, says gentefitication involves “respecting the people who are there and their heritage, their right to be there" in these aging urban neighborhoods undergoing gentrification.  He claims Latino entrepreneurs have an incentive to protect the cultural distinctives within their neighborhoods from the type of sanitized gentrification whites apparently perpetrate.

Funny how anybody who said similar things about whites protesting the black and Hispanic integration of previously white-majority neighborhoods were called racists.  What makes that same attitude less racist today?

White flight involved the premise that blacks and other minorities were inferior to whites, and therefore a destructive force that decimated property values - a theory that seemed to prove itself because it evolved into a self-fulfilling prophecy.  Yet today, with whites predominantly portrayed as the prototypical gentrifiers, is it fair to paint whites in a similarly disparaging brush?  Who's to say that a thirst for economic victory is somehow blunted in Hispanics, whose love for some intangible nostalgia for their barrio is curiously stronger than their desire to make money through increasing property values?

There's no obvious reason to postulate that Hispanics are somehow more virtuous when it comes to gentrification.  To claim so betrays an ignorance about the phenomenon that only perpetuates racism against whites.

Remember, gentrification is not a racial dynamic.  It is an economic one.

Gentrification can appear to penalize a particular race or ethnicity that may be dominant in a neighborhood being affected by gentrification.  But the phenomenon itself is colorblind.  So, in terms of trying to couch such neighborhood change in trendy nuance, why should Hispanic gentrifiers be more beneficent than Anglo or black gentrifiers?  What is it about the economics of gentrification that should make Hispanics less eager to realize a profit - because that's what new urbanists are implying.  Will comparatively wealthy Hispanics feel more personal conviction at pricing out long-time poor Hispanics?  Will Hispanic entrepreneurs price their new products - whether it's restaurant fare, housing, gym memberships, etc - within reach of longtime locals, or more affluent newcomers?  Or should they offer discounts to long-time Hispanic residents?

Or will they operate within our new urban dynamics as free market players, looking to optimize every opportunity?

How could you explain doing business any other way to your lenders?

You see, the big angst over gentrification isn't that crime rates tend to drop, or that city services tend to improve, or that economic redevelopment often results in more jobs, albeit in the low-paying service sector.  The most significant impact of gentrification is that long-time residents of an aging community - often poorer, less-educated, and more reliant on city services than gentrifiers - get forced out of their long-time neighborhoods.

Before gentrification results in a renewed sense of neighborhood stabilization - which does ultimately happen, when the new demographics are once again economically homogeneous (now at the higher end of the scale) - there is a painful transition period characterized by destabilization, as poor residents get displaced by wealthier ones.  It's a transition that nobody has been yet able to tame.  Because at the end of the day, it's all about money.  Dinero.

Remember, this is not a racial issue.  Landlords raise rents not to attract newer, whiter tenants, but because they want to exploit the rise in property values gentrification triggers.  Landlords also stop renewing rents so they can sell out to redevelopers who want to create higher-priced housing for newcomers, whether they're white, Latino, black, or purple-polka-dotted.  Money is doing all the talking here, and the accent isn't cultural, it's green.  As in greenbacks.  Dollars.  Bucks.

It's all about money.  And, speaking of money, where do these long-time residents go, especially if they can't afford higher rents?  And if they can afford higher rents, how well will they integrate with newcomers who have a much different lifestyle and standard of living?

These are some of the legitimate drawbacks to gentrification.  And they need far better answers than what we've currently got.  AND continuing to play racist cards resolves nothing.

Even if a Hispanic landlord might want to keep rents artificially low, to help their low-income tenants, what happens when rising values cause property taxes to rise?  And why should a poor Hispanic family, after spending years in their little old house, surviving high crime rates and a dearth of local amenities, refuse to capitalize on their newfound fortune, suddenly owning a property that is worth so much more than they ever hoped it would?  Just because they're Hispanic?  If you're talking racism here, couldn't that be seen as a double-whammy against them?

Hey, there's very little piety to go around when it comes to rising property values.  Even though, yes, it sure would be nice if somebody could find a way of cushioning the impact of gentrification on a neighborhood's tenured and poor.  But genteficiation is simply sloppy wishful thinking.

Dallas already has proof of that.  Just last year, in the city's hyper-gentrifying Bishop Arts District, long a gritty enclave of poor Hispanics, a historic Mexican restaurant building was torn down.  The building had been owned by the Cuellars, an influential Hispanic family, purveyors of the well-known El Chico Tex-Mex brand.  Who better to preserve a beloved icon of Hispanic heritage than the Cuellars?  They were already wealthy, and could have easily afforded to absorb the costs of maintaining their old building, even if they didn't want to keep a restaurant in it.

But no, they sold out to CVS, the national drugstore chain, which is building a modern yet generic store.  City leaders pleaded with the Cuellar family to at least keep their building's quaint character intact and force CVS to customize their store within the building's 1940 exterior.  But the Cuellars couldn't be bothered, and CVS didn't want the hassle of fitting its corporate operations within a unique venue.

So much for gentefication.  Hey, money talks - even to Hispanics.

1 comment:

  1. Tim,
    My name is Lewie Clark and a church planter in Chicago. I'd like to set a phone appt with you if possible. I wasn't sure how else to contact you. My email is lewieclark@gmail.com.
    Thanks

    ReplyDelete

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