It’s wonderful that people that are ruined with hate are often unable to do anything but wish for some schadenfreude. I’ll wish you keep wishing and remain impotent. Your hopes are clearly terrible.
No elaboration?
Gentrification is about class, not race.
Turning around a deteriorating neighborhood, restoring homes, re-inhabiting abandoned retail properties, rejuvenating an area, and reducing crime is a good, desirable thing. Of course, as the desirability of the area increases, so do property values.
Increased property values financially benefit the homeowners and landlords who are already there. Yes, renters can be priced out of areas, but this is the nature of being a renter. (As stated earlier, the the ills you’re alluding to in regards to gentrification are actually symptoms, not causes, of other social ills - wage inequality being the first and foremost.)
Rest assured, if money was of no object, my home wouldn’t be where it is…
1 Like
Which has a higher population density? SF or the area around Google. More people living in the smaller community means more sprawl, people moving to the city means less sprawl.
Yes, but class is sufficiently well correlated with race that they’re practically indistinguishable.
We’re not talking about rents getting slightly more expensive. We’re talking about displacing entire neighborhoods out of the reach of certain classes. You might benefit from the higher property values, but they just serve as an insurmountable obstacle to everyone else of a lesser class. Plus, the ability to buy a property is also a privilege that speaks of a certain socioeconomic status. We’re talking about turning around a deteriorating neighborhood and taking it from the lower class so that the upper class gets it and eclipses mobility into that neighborhood. It’s monstrous.
And though it’s not illegal or immoral to want to make as much money as possible from your property, that kind of drive comes with social price. I have friends in the city who make much more than I do fearing the inevitable explosion in rent prices because of Twitter. Rents are going for 2, 3, 4 times what I pay; nay, 4 times what I make in a month, for the same square footage, in a shittier area in SF. Real estate is not a closed system and it’s not OK to raze neighborhoods in SF with skyrocketing prices just because a bunch of tech kids are now multimillionaires. These things have consequences, even if you or I benefit from them, and those consequences look like modern day colonization.
3 Likes
Hell, I think he is an arsehole, purely for what he did. Faking something like this just taints the entire campaign with untrustworthiness.
2 Likes
Everyone deserves access to healthcare, nutrition, and basic housing. Beyond that…
There is no inalienable right to be able to live in a certain neighborhood. Renters being (legally) forced out, as property values skyrocket, is a reality that won’t change. A renter being forced to relocate to housing within their price range is not a outrageous violation of their fundamental human rights.
Does it suck for you if a bunch of newly minted Twitter millionaires come in and obliterate your current corner of the world by buying it up? Of course, I’m glad I’m not in that situation. However, it seems extreme to compare this relative inconvenience to colonization, (moving and finding a new bakery, etc. isn’t “monstrous” nor on par with a practice typically wrought with murder, enslavement, rape, and oppression…)
I’d be interested to hear your suggested solutions or alternatives to gentrification. I’ll put myself out there: I’m against rent control. I believe gentrification is a symptom, not a cause, and that addressing causes, like wage-inequality would render gentrification arguments moot.
Also, I really liked the children’s book “The Little House”
It only benefits homeowners when they sell their home. Until then, the value of your property increasing just means paying more property tax.
4 Likes
OK, although property taxes are often somehow fixed and not tied to RMV.
Either way, I’d personally be thrilled if I owned a house that quadrupled in value and I had to cash out. There are financially unsound alternatives as well, such as paying the sharply increased taxes through a home equity loan or a reverse mortgage.
it is against municipal code for these shuttles to use the bus stops
Why is that a good thing? It’s a bus. Why should only people that use the municipal bus get to use the public space known as the bus stop? Where would you like the private bus to stop? Many of the streets in SF are 2 lanes with curb parking. That means the shuttles have 2 options (1) stop in the middle of the street and block traffic (2) stop at the bus stop.
Rather than enforce some law because it exists maybe the law should be changed to fit the situation?
I can’t figure out if this is a triple or quadruple negative - or whether your implication is that this is a positive or negative thing.
Are busses a bad thing in your world view?
Or are people being upset about not being allowed on their busses a bad thing?
Or are some brands of busses OK and not other busses? Are personal cars superior to one but not the other?
I can’t get who is objecting to what in that video … or in this thread.
To me it’s just street theatre on both sides (or … is there a second side? I dunno now) and …
Who thinks that protesting against busses as an urban light transport option is a sensible cause? Or is someone trying to cast this into a “Rosa Parks” movement? … cos … nah, I don’t see it.
Or shows it for what it is.
while quite poetic, that’s simply asinine.
I would hardly qualify myself as “ruined with hate”, simply justifiably angry that the city I loved was destroyed by greed.
Perhaps you’re a landlord?
1 Like
Except a lot of existing long term home owners can’t afford the rising real estate taxes or moving to a nearby (also gentrifying) neighborhood, so they get forced out to either a much more marginal neighborhood or a decent neighborhood much further away – say 40 miles – requiring a significant change in transportation needs.
How many neighborhoods in Chicago have I watched that happen to? It’s a sad, long list.
2 Likes
And then you have to find a home you can afford. Which means a significant decrease in standard of living, in most cases.
1 Like
Huh? Where is that?
Property taxes are calculated using an equation involving (presumed, because it is unrealized) current value. The numbers used can be a few years behind a major shift in value, but otherwise, it’s very much at the core of how property taxes are determined.
1 Like
It’s not the verbing that weirds me so much as the repropernounification.
1 Like
Repropernounification is appropriate for old, under-used names with lots of character. It leads to exciting blends of “mixed” language, where cutting-edge terminology blends with more established phrases. True, there sometimes are disadvantages for some original users, but they’re generally malcontents that hand-write letters to the editor of newspapers. The alternative is to accept the inevitable decline of language, and watch it collapse into a heap of unread, unspoken obscurity.
2 Likes
That’s due to Prop 13. Keep in mind that this is also used as a loophole for companies, as this applies to both commercial and residential properties.
The proposition decreased property taxes by assessing property values at their 1975 value and restricted annual increases of assessed value of real property to an inflation factor, not to exceed 2% per year. It also prohibited reassessment of a new base year value except for in cases of (a) change in ownership, or (b) completion of new construction.
Ditto for my NYC -> Cincinnati move.
… says the person who spent the time to write a nearly 200 word diatribe that doesn’t in any way add to the discussion at hand.
1 Like
