Fastest Gentrifying Neighborhoods?

The Post discussed a report on the fastest gentrifying zip codes the US. The author of the report listed those zip codes with the largest increases in the white percentage of the population from 2000 to 2010. In the report, the fastest gentrifying zip code is in Columbia, SC, and similar zip codes exist in DC and NYC. Ideally, as the author noted, gentrification should be measured by class or income, but the Census 2010 income data is not yet public. However, technically, gentrification is the displacement of lower-income or working-class people with higher-income or professional people (the "gentry"). Therefore, it should be measured by class or income, though race directly shapes income, employment, and housing opportunities.

Several of the zip codes mentioned have so few residents, like 100 or 200, that the movement of even a handful of people can look like an exodus when put in percentages. In the #1 fastest gentrifying zip code in the country (Columbia, SC's 29202), the white population increased by 35 people over a ten year period (1). Now, it might be more interesting to ask where the 133 African Americans went; maybe they passed away, maybe they moved away, maybe they were displaced by a new business? Many of these areas with low populations, such as #1 and #4 Roanoke, seem to be commercial or industrial areas. It is difficult to say that these area are gentrifying, though industrial areas can become centers of "loft living" as discussed by Sharon Zukin and can become centers of gentrifying lifestyles with certain kinds of cafes, restaurants, entertainment, etc.

Measuring gentrification by race does not capture the essence of gentrification. Poor whites do exist and do move. The #2 fastest gentrifying zip code is Chattanooga's 37408, which overlaps with Census Tracts 16 and 2. Census Tract 16 has 25% whites and, at the same time, 97% of the households make under $30,000 and their median income has decreased 24% over the past ten years to under $10,000 (2). This is an area with many low-income elderly residents. Census Tract 2's median income has increased 15% over the past 10 years to just over $14,000. There is similar poverty around the #17 zip code also in Chattanooga, located very close to #2. These areas seem to be outside the commonly accepted definition of gentrification.

Gentrification is happening, but this kind of list does not help us to understand it. Gentrification as the movement of higher-income people into a city is not inevitable or just random, but rather is usually the result of targeted and organized investments by cities, real estate developers, and companies offering jobs and lifestyles (certain kinds of cafes, restaurants, entertainment, etc.) that lure these people to specific cities and to specific neighborhoods. We can definitely see such investments and their resulting migrations in Brooklyn, Washington, DC, and other large coastal cities, though more research is needed to say whether and how it might be happening elsewhere. If poor and working-class people are leaving cities, then where are they going? To the second-tier non-coastal cities? To suburbs? To small towns? The Census 2010 income data, as well as other wealth data, will help us understand today's gentrification much better!

(1) I am not certain whether this "white" category includes Hispanics, but I do believe it does. This data comes from the Census 2000 and Census 2010. 
(2) This data comes from the American Community Survey 2005-2009 data in the great NYT interactive map.

Building Community with Public Housing Residents

Yesterday, in Garfield Park, I spent the afternoon with former residents of Arthur Capper public housing. Garfield Park is located around 2nd and G St SE, right next to the Results Gym. "Cappers," as the former residents call it, was located just on the other side of the 395 freeway between 1958 and 2005, when it was replaced by a mixed income development funded in part by the federal HOPE VI program. 707 households regularly lived at Cappers. Public housing is often seen as lacking in civic spirit, as housing isolated individuals and crime, and as destructive to the residents and others.

Well, the Cappers group definitely complicates these assumptions. I got to know the Cappers through their Facebook page, which has 370 members. Yesterday, many of the Capper residents spoke about Cappers as one big "family"; how they knew everyone and everyone watched out for each other. I asked people when they moved out. Many grew up there and then moved out as young adults, while others lived there much longer. One man expressed the general feeling: I moved out, but I never left. Everyone talked about visiting regularly. The common refrain was that they all had grown up together and they were family, and they needed a way to reconnect with former Arthur Capper family members and keep the community alive.

Cappers residents remembered the immense number of activities and the fun that they had in their old homes. They also remembered some of the difficulties. Their rec center offered football, baseball, soccer, track, golf, and chess. There were regular BBQs and band performances, by resident bands and visitors, including Chuck Brown. There were tutors and coaches, who took a lot of time with them, which they sought to repay later in their lives.

With Cappers gone, the former residents have turned to Garfield Park as their family/community space. While living in or visiting Cappers, they spent a great deal of time in the Park. I know about the following activities they hold there during the year:

• Annual reunion on the Fourth of July
  
• Annual Labor Day picnic
  
• Horseshoes every Friday after 5pm
• Bowling throughout the winter (at a bowling alley on Pennsylvania Ave)
• Various other events (yesterday, about 25 former residents gathered for a fundraiser for their reunion).
  

The Cappers residents are very interested in building community around Garfield Park with those living around the Park and those now living where Cappers used to stand. Yesterday, I did meet four people who lived outside Cappers and maintain contact with Cappers residents. The residents want others to understand why they come to Garfield Park and to come together to learn about each other and improve the Park.

On the fourth of July, drop by Garfield Park and talk with the Cappers residents. You could go up to someone there and say, "I heard about the Cappers reunion. Did you live in Cappers? What was it like living in there?"

Official Statement from DCHA

Thanks to the DCHA for their comment on Potomac Garden (6/7/2012):

Ms. Bockman,

The plans you cited are from 2001 when DCHA was making a decision on which Public Housing site to redevelop. We considered several sites for our HUD HOPE VI applications. We chose Capper/Carrollsburg, which was selected and received a HOPE VI grant for $34.9M. We do not have plans to redevelop Potomac Gardens at this time.

Sincerely,
Dena Michaelson
Director, Public Affairs & Communications
DC Housing Authority

Great article on Swampoodle

The Streets of Washington has published a fascinating article on Swampoodle and the Government Printing Office up on N. Capitol near Union Station. Wonderful pictures too! More (unverified) info on Swampoodle, from website for a Swampoodle play took place last year.

Handwritten signs around Hine

These signs have popped up around Hine over the past few weeks:

I had thought that these signs had been posted by the developers to show "popular" support for a larger Hine building and to criticize those who wish to reduce the building's size as anti-renter or anti-low-income. The Hine project has very little affordable housing. Now, I am wondering whether several different people are posting the signs. Someone told me yesterday that he thought I was posting the signs. I am not, though they are a nice use of loose space (property used in a new, unintended way: light poles reused as spaces for political speech). Maybe there could be more political debate or engagement with the signs (by writing comments on them or adding other signs)? Who do you think is posting the signs? There is a poll to the right.

P.S. Regarding the last two photos in the slideshow, what is the story behind the Olivia dog signs? I found the last photo quite intriguing, another nice use of loose space.

Say Goodbye to Potomac Gardens?

*This wasn't intended as a breaking story, but rather a discussion of the problems around redevelopment for public housing residents. The plans to redevelop Potomac Gardens/Hopkins may have been terminated due to lack of funds, but there were redevelopment plans. I'm waiting for a statement from DCHA.*
The DC government is planning to redevelop Potomac Gardens and Hopkins public housing into a mixed income rental/homeownership development:

A joint venture redevelopment between DCHA and a private developer to do a one-for-one replacement of 510 units of public housing located in the present Potomac Gardens and Hopkins Plaza developments. The proposed redevelopment will be a mixed income rental and homeownership containing 510 replacements units out of a total 1,230 units located on the two public housing sites and in the
adjoining neighborhood.

A firm has been brought in as "architects of community." Have you walked around and experienced the "community" at Capitol Quarter, where the same firm planned the community? Will this redevelopment help the public housing residents? Or will the residents be displaced as too poor or not appropriate for the neighborhood? At Ellen Wilson, of the 134 households living there, only "24 families were able to make the successful transition from public housing to homeownership" (DCHA 2008). From Capper-Carrollsburg, the majority of the 707 households were displaced and replaced with those who could pay for the many townhouses starting at $662,000 or more, workforce townhouses with subsidized mortgages for those making $82,800-119,025, and affordable apartments (I was told by the developer that these were for those making around $50,000-60,000). Where did the former public housing residents go? What happened to them?

Potomac Gardens has an important history in the neighborhood as a place that helped many people move from poor agricultural life in the South and start a new life here (while maintaining connections with family in the South):


And Potomac Gardens continues to provide housing to those in great need. As I discussed in a previous post, at a meeting I attended, one Potomac Gardens resident said that she was just like everyone else in the room; she went to work and put her sons through college; she just didn't have enough money to afford non-public housing. According to the DCHA, 40 vacancies are filled there each year. Is there a way to redevelop Potomac Gardens and Hopkins without displacing the residents and without destroying the community and social connections that they have built and depend on? 

P.S. In his "Gentrification and Community Fabric in Chicago" article, John Betancur has shown that the poor rely on social connections much more than those with higher incomes: "Limited in their mobility and exchange value resources, lower-income groups depend on such fabrics far more than do the higher income. In fact, they have fewer choices and are most vulnerable to place-based shifts...the real tragedy of gentrification was not market displacement per se, but community disintegration." Could the "architects of community" be destroying one community (a group in the most need of this community) in the name of building another community for others?

P.P.S. See the official statement by the DCHA: "We do not have plans to redevelop Potomac Gardens at this time."

P.P.P.S. See my more recent post on Potomac Gardens: "Wikipedia and Community History: Potomac Gardens" and "Why is it so difficult to see in Ward 6?"

Has Racism Gone Away in Ward 6?

The short answer is: no. The problem with talking about racism is that most people view racism as a phenomenon of the distant past or as ideas and prejudices usually held by other people who are stuck in the past. The fact that people of many races may marry, be friends, and vote in unexpected ways does not mean unfortunately that racism has gone away. Therefore, we need to think more consciously about how to end racism.

In the Post a couple of Sundays ago, David Alpert of the Greater Greater Washington blog argued that DC was no longer divided by race. Alpert mainly focused on how DC politicians and residents are voting less along racial lines than in the past. He did recognize that there are income and educational inequalities among residents, which correlate strongly with race, but he suggested that these divisions created by "a legacy of segregation and discrimination" have been overcome as demonstrated by DC's "large black professional population" and the fact that all races and ethnicities are having trouble finding affordable housing. The article seems to suggest that racism is over or nearly over in DC because class inequalities are the real issue. Alpert warns that those who bring up race and racism "stoke division...for personal gain." The main dichotomy used in this article is that either you are for one city or you are using racist language for your own personal (political) gain.

Most sociologists would argue that race and class, in fact, work together. University of Wisconsin-Madison sociologists Matthew Desmond and Mustafa Emirbayer have written an extremely helpful article on racism. They argue:

While it is true that poor Whites experience many of the same hardships as poor Blacks, it is not true that poverty somehow de-Whitens poor Whites. In other words, though they are in a similarly precarious economic position as poor Blacks, poor Whites still experience race-based privileges, while poor Blacks are oppressed not only by poverty but also by racism. In a similar vein, well-off people of color cannot “buy” their way out of racism. Despite their economic privilege, middle- and upper-class non-Whites experience institutional and interpersonal racism on a regular basis...

How do whites benefit no matter their class position? As I wrote about in a previous post, GWU sociologist Gregory Squires and his colleagues conducted a study of DC/VA/MD residents and found, among other things, that Blacks were about half as likely as Whites to obtain their first-choice housing unit. Real estate agents, landlords, and banks implement discriminatory practices, such as "racial steering, misrepresentation about the availability of homes, differences in rental rates for the same units and the number of units that were shown, disparities in mortgage interest rates, differential application of particular stands, and others." A recent Post article reported that SunTrust Mortgage's "minority borrowers in 75 geographic markets from Virginia Beach to San Francisco paid more in loan fees or higher interest rates based solely on race or national origin." More generally, Desmond and Emirbayer state:

Social scientists have amassed a significant amount of evidence documenting institutional racism, evidence that demonstrates how White people—strictly because of their Whiteness—reap considerable advantages when buying and selling a house, choosing a neighborhood in which to live, getting a job and moving up the corporate ladder, securing a first-class education, and seeking medical care (Massey 2007; Quillian 2006). That Whites accumulate more property and earn more income than members of minority populations, possess immeasurably more political power, and enjoy greater access to the country’s cultural, social, medical, legal, and economic resources are well documented facts (e.g., Oliver and Shapiro, 1997; Pager 2003; Western 2006).

Amazingly, whites have continued to benefit from being white in a city that has many African American city officials and politicians. So, no, racism has not gone away in DC or Ward 6. Instead of arguing that discussions of race and racism are divisive, we should study how racism and especially institutional racism works in DC and Ward 6, so that we can act to end racism, as well as reduce class inequality, to create "one city."

P.S. Based on an extensive literature review, Desmond and Emirbayer point out five popular fallacies about racism that should be avoided:

• the ahistorical fallacy views the "legacy of segregation and discrimination" as in the distant past and no longer relevant to the current situation.
• the fixed fallacy measures racism as increasing or decreasing quantitatively over time and thus seeing a decrease or disappearance in racism in comparison to the Jim Crow past. In contrast, Desmond and Emirbayer argue that there are new forms of racism: "we certainly cannot conclude that there is 'little or no racism' today because it does not resemble the racism of the 1950s. (Modern-day Christianity looks very different, in nearly every conceivable way, than the Christianity of the early church. But this does not mean that there is 'little or no Christianity' today.)" For the new forms of racism, see sociological discussions of racial apathy and color-blind racism.
• the tokenistic fallacy "assumes that the presence of people of color in influential positions is evidence of the eradication of racial obstacles."
• the legalistic fallacy "assumes that abolishing racist laws (racism in principle) automatically leads to the abolition of racism writ large (racism in practice)." Desmond and Emirbayer explain: "By way of tangible illustration, consider Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark case that abolished de jure segregation in schools. The ruling did not lead to the abolition of de facto segregation: fifty years later, schools are still drastically segregated and drastically unequal."
• the individualistic fallacy understands racism as conducted by individual "racists" with racist thoughts and intentions. By saying,“He is a racist; I am not,” we treat "racism as aberrant and strange, whereas American racism is rather normal. Furthermore, intentionality is in no way a prerequisite for racism. Racism is often habitual, unintentional, commonplace, polite, implicit, and well meaning (Brown et al., 2003). Thus, racism is located not only in our intentional thoughts and actions; it also thrives in our unintentional thoughts and habits, as well as in the social institutions in which we all are embedded (Bonilla-Silva 1997; Feagin et al., 2001)" (Desmond and Emirbayer 342-343).

Which fallacies does Alpert's Post op-ed implicitly endorse? How might we end racism?