shaftoe, as a thought experiment consider why the neighborhood is run down. Did the people run down the neighborhood because that's what they like? How was the economic situation for these people? How were the schools, the hospitals, the law enforcement? Was there housing discrimination? How were their politicians? What was the funding like compared to other neighborhoods?
In other words, how was the neighborhood before it was crappy and how did it become so?
... And how is it helped by a £2 beer now costing £5, and a burger costing £20? Thats the problem with hipsters - they buy the property out from under some residents, then make it impossible for those that remain to afford anything. They are like locusts. Eventually (as we see in London) they even price themselves out of an area, then move onto the next to destroy. E.g. from Stoke Newington to Dalston. What about the people there already, who can't afford to shop at Wholefood Market?
Why do you target your rage at the hipsters paying £5 for a beer rather than the bartender charging £5 for that beer? Or, perhaps, his landlord, for raising is rent to the point where he needs to charge £5? I guarantee that the hipster would rather pay £2. The whole issue of gentrification seems to always come around to blaming the people who move in rather than the people who profit off of them, be they existing home owners, local businesses or real estate developers.
If the displaced want to cast this as a class war, follow through on the metaphor. Profiteering is considered criminal in times of war. Those profiting from the influx of money need to be held accountable.
Your last paragraph makes me unsure where you're actually standing on this, but I think that the issue with the hipsters is that they are financially indifferent. Since they're wealthy compared to the locals, they have the interesting condition of wanting to look like bohemian beatniks while enjoying modern luxuries. You end up with the kid who wants to live in a little loft in Harlem but also wants wifi for his laptop. And he's willing to pay for it. Also, since he's not strapped for money, he's willing to pay extra if it means that he gets the ambiance he's looking for. That's why formerly dingy dive bars start selling $5 Pabst Blue Ribbons, shitty apartments start adding amenities and increasing the prices, and everything follows from there.
Personally, I don't really blame anyone, although I chuckle at the fact that there are people who want to pretend that they're poor while demanding luxuries used by 1% of the world.
Exactly - they want a Disneyfied experience, playing at being poor in a fake attempt at "authenticity" but unwilling to forego their luxuries. It's not that the working class shouldn't have good coffee - it's that the greasy spoon charged 20p for a polystyrene cup and the artisanal roaster charges £10 for an espresso and a cupcake, so the honest folks, in practice, have nowhere to go once the hipsters take over. Coffee, beer, groceries, then rent and then the swarm has completely won. But where do the former locals go?
I don't really have a position when it comes to gentrification in general, as I believe circumstances are different in each area. But in the area where I'm from (SF bay area), I believe the majority of the fault lies with property owners and local/state government. Current homeowners in San Francisco lobby hard to limit development of new housing and have basically succeeded in limiting new development to SOMA and Mission Bay. They do this out of self interest to drive property values up under the guise of maintaining the character of their neighborhoods. They're able to do this because of Proposition 13, which prevents their property taxes from increasing along with the value of their property. Local policies like rent control and below-market-rate properties only serve to further limit the available housing and make it harder for the working poor to afford to live in San Francisco.
We're seeing regular protests against tech workers, but I believe these are naive and targeting the wrong people. Expecting to continue to rent in a desirable location as demand for housing in that area increases and new construction is blocked is just ignorant of the basic laws of supply and demand. You either need to increase the supply or demand will push the prices beyond what the poor can pay and they'll be forced to move. Blaming people for wanting to live somewhere is counterproductive and lets the profiteers (current property owners) off the hook. Ironically, the same people protesting against Ellis Act evictions (landlords evicting long-time tenants so that they can convert properties to condos/TICs) are the same ones arguing to maintain the character of their neighborhoods. It's a position that can only be explained by a denial of reality.
One comment about what you wrote:
> That's why formerly dingy dive bars start selling $5 Pabst Blue Ribbons, shitty apartments start adding amenities and increasing the prices, and everything follows from there.
You say that as if it's a natural phenomenon devoid of any human involvement. But there are humans making the choice to make more money servicing the wants of the wealthier population while ignoring the wants of their previous patrons. It's an understandable choice, but it's a choice none the less and one that they need to be held accountable for. My point was that the displaced population wants to blame only the new residents and not the businesses and landlords that choose to service those new residents to the detriment of the long-time residents. That those businesses and landlords are making a choice for significant financial gain and escaping all criticism seems wrong to me. For better or for worse, they're the ones that actually changing the neighborhoods. If current property owners and businesses refused the financial temptation and maintained the status quo, there would be no gentrification. Every change is voluntary and the result of a landlord choosing to sell or rent for more money or a business owner choosing to make more money by changing their service.
I see the same misplaced rage against foreign buyers of real estate (or the perception of foreign buyers inflating real estate prices). There is a whole lot of blame to go around.
Foreign buyers are a different matter; they usually have no intent to live in the properties they buy, and often no intent to lease them to tenants either. For example, the Hyde Park neighborhood in London is basically becoming a rich ghost town (http://www.bbc.com/news/business-26980299).
It really depends on what you mean by improving. It might mean something directly quantifiable like crime rates, or it might be something intangible, like it just being cool and fashionable to live there. The hipsters see the latter and descend like vultures on it. In the process, they do improve the neighbourhood in a quantifiable way - house prices. But they destroy what brought them there in the first place.
And here's the thing: the hipsters don't need to do this. They already live somewhere. Why not stay there and live their hipster lives? That's what makes people angry - they just invade and colonize, destroying communities and driving people out of their homes for fun.
"That improvement is unfair to the people who ran it down"
Assumption 1: The residents are the people who ran down the neighborhood.
Assumption 2: Gentrification improves the neighborhood.
My previous comment addresses the first assumption. Feel free to disagree.
If a neighborhood is just real estate, assumption two is valid. If a neighborhood is a community of people, and gentrification moves a lot of the people, you have not improved the neighborhood, you displaced it.
Once we question these assumptions, perhaps we can address the root problems.
"If a neighborhood is a community of people, and gentrification moves a lot of the people, you have not improved the neighborhood, you displaced it."
Maybe; maybe not. If crime and other social and environmental ills are reduced after the previous inhabitants have been displaced, I'd contend it's an improvement.
I agree, any reduction is an improvement. I have no problem admitting that I just don't know if we fixed the problem or moved the problem.
On one hand, overall crime in the U.S. is down and crime in New York City is really down.
I just wonder, is the goal of gentrification to fix neighborhood's ills or cheap rent in a cool area that happens to be a fantastic real estate investment?
I'm having a hard time understanding how moving people from the suburbs to the inner city and back improves anything aside from a specific geographic area for a while.
In other words, how was the neighborhood before it was crappy and how did it become so?