NYC Gentrification Watch
You know, just as I think that Big Development couldn’t sink any lower, along comes an even worse new low. It’s the type of low that has me now certain that there has got to be a Big Development think tank cooking up talking points and then disseminating them to dopes in the media too dumb to question what they’re told and too eager to virtue signal what wonderful progressives they are.
There’s no question in my mind that this is what’s happening now when it comes to gentrification. I say that because funny how every so often, a talking point having absolutely no basis in reality will seem to have popped up out nowhere and get repeated among several media and social media outlets.
Especially interesting about it is how it never has any clear origins. It’s just this mysterious thing that emerged out of the blue one day, yet keeps getting stated as if it’s this long established, self-evident, indisputable fact that everyone has known for ages.
Take this talking point, for example–single-family houses/single-family house zoning is racist against blacks and therefore should be eliminated for their benefit. This is one that’s been been picking up steam over the past 4-5 years, to the point where now it’s spurring legislation. As of 2018, municipalities across the country have begun pushing for or have actually gone ahead with banning single-family housing in an attempt to “free” po’ black folks from the racial oppression that is single-family home ownership.
Try to do research on where this talking point originated and like every other suspicious talking point of unknown origins, there isn’t a specific person or entity we can trace it back to. It’s as if it came out of thin air just a few years ago. But of course it’s as if it came out of thin air. The reason why is that this “single-family houses are racist” talking point is bullshit–Grade A, top of the line nonsense that was cooked up and then surreptitiously disseminated to the public, courtesy of useful idiots in social and mass media. But before I expose this cynically crafted talking point for the manure that it is, let’s play Devil’s Advocate by explaining the “logic” behind it.
The logic is that single-family houses and single-family house zoning were invented as a form of racist segregation. For example, say the racist white guard in the town of Shelbyville are getting nervous that blacks are beginning to move into middle class, lily white neighborhoods. How to keep the darkies in their place? No problem-o: zone the areas you want to “keep white” by designating certain areas of Shelbyville as exclusively single-family house zones. The idea is that since houses are too cost-prohibitive for blacks but affordable to whites, they will have no choice but to live in segregated neighborhoods outside of these zones.
How do we know that single-family housing is racist? Why, look at the decades of redlining against blacks when they tried buying houses! Look at the decades of all sorts of other chicanery designed to prevent blacks from owning property! Isn’t that more proof than you need that single-family house zones are racist and need to be abolished? Hell, they’re so racist, let’s not even call them “single-family house zones” anymore. Call them what they really are–exclusionary zoning. So, let’s save black people from exclusionary zoning. Let’s get rid of single-family house zones today!
Sounds logical, doesn’t it? Except there’s a problem. The problem is that it’s based on a gross oversimplification of the complex relationship between housing and racism in the United States. It’s about as dumb as claiming that trees are racist because blacks used to be lynched from them.
12 comments:
They are doing it in other ways too now.
A friend of mine on City Island rented to a former veteran who has now become a nasty deadbeat slob tenant who refused paid rent in 6 months, wont even take "cash for keys" The guy drinks and has prostitutes and drug addicts (he calls cleaning lady's) getting off the bus and coming to the house and says "go ahead-take me to court"
After over $5000 in legal expenses, 4 months for due process servers and such, 6 hearings, to get and eviction order, the sheriff dept will not enforce the judges physical eviction order due to no shelters available in the area for the deadbeat.
The sheriffs department is now wearing its own handcuffs with Cuomo II's and deBlasio's "Homeless Emergency Declaration" to prevent more homeless on the streets.
I believe this homeless and housing emergency was engineered to handcuff sheriffs, handcuff enforcement and open more sec 8 housing to bust nice neighborhoods the mayor doesn't like.
The landlord is now being told to eat the loss and get on board with a section 8 contract for his private 2 family home to receive 8 payments or "be stuck with the deadbeat"
The landlord is now being ordered to turn the heat and electricity back on his dime.
These Marxist scumbag tactics of both the governor and mayor never ends. Thank lazy and stupid voters for that!
I wonder what people in middle class black neighborhoods like Uniondale or Wakefield think of single family zoning. Pretty sure they're happy to keep their property rights.
Side note: why are African "refugees" being dumped off in rural Maine, Minnesota and Montana? Where housing density is so low that zoning isn't even necessary?
Who's pushing these initiatives? Is there a particular group that fosters these forced diversity narratives more than any other group? Oh well, guess we'll just have to go along with (((the plan))).
It's not just black people who are suffering from no single family houses, its every young person who is suffering now. Queens has become overrun with foreign investors who build multi family houses but they only rent them out to their own people. We need to get foreign investors out of our housing market and then maybe usa citizens of every race can actually have a crack at houses in certain areas like new York and California. I've known plenty of black people who have owned houses and apartment buildings in New York. They need to take the initiative to afford the houses just like everyone else but first the government needs to start giving Americans in general a fair shot again at owning houses.
What is getting “rid” of single-family homes in some areas?
Greed.
Current owners are demanding prices that their area and quality of house can’t reasonably expect.
Already, we see multiple ‘families” living in houses that are totally inadequate for them. But that is the only way towards the “American Dream” –as they see it.
Everyone of barely working age must do-so.
Every occupy-able and rentable space is used. In winter they wear parkas like little Eskimos to save on heating costs.
I know some of these people; I’ve been to their houses. I’ve lent downpayment and repair money (at no interest) to them. Some are friends going back to 1989-90.
All of this with the hope that they too will someday cash-in.
When/if they do, some developer will be the buyer.
One way, or another, sooner or later, single family houses in working & lower middleclass areas are going away if they are anywhere near a desirable city.
No one is blameless in this mess; it is capitalism at it’s rawest.
Rob in Manhattan
Actually doing away with the American way of life, like single family houses, cars is more like Agenda 21 style communism, has nothing to do with racism. Of course the elitist, like "I invented the Internet" Al Gore lives in a 50000 sq/ft house drives around in Chevy Suburban. The rest of the "entertainers" never take regular flights, they fly about in private planes. So no big surprise here. Bring on Greta the true representation of your fucking mental illness.
It is high time we started tearing down apartment buildings and subways like they did in the 1950s. Tweeders want to build a city the size of Seattle inside New York to block bust our votes. It is time we didn't just protest the buildings, but brought down all the blight projects and put two family private homes there. Resembling soviet collectives, union teachers parade their students in the halls, imploring residents to vote their way. Leonidas and his 300 Spartans begat the agrarian warrior glory of western civilization while Huntington’s Clash put Athens in the Islamo-Soviet zone. Sparta colonized Sicily hence begat Rome, while Athens colonized Scythia hence begat Russia. Alexander’s dad choked Athens by grabbing Besant to choke Scythian wheat. Athenians are the source of all leftist ideas like globalist commerce, Delian central banking, cowardly philosophers and socialist taxation.
>Who's pushing these initiatives? Is there a particular group that fosters these forced diversity narratives more than any other group? Oh well, guess we'll just have to go along with (((the plan))).
I know what you're implying, and you're astoundingly wrong. Why do you pretend that it's the fault of a secret conspiracy of all members of an ethnic group (especially one so infamously unable to agree on anything) when it's so blatantly being pushed by political and economic interests? You're falling for the same identity politics that so many other suckers are. When it's time for you to be exploited, you'll happily bend over and spread for those same neo-liberal interests as long as they pay lip service to your racial delusions.
Wake up! Buying into your delusion makes you easily exploitable.
Sorry but this is how communism works: Destroy the fabric of stable neighborhoods, demoralize and create a crisis. There are lots beautiful almost-exclusively black neighborhoods with single family homes (think St. Albans). If the commie elites can't destroy the neighborhood through up zoning, they'll do it with a homeless shelter or jail.
the blog author put together a compelling and disturbing scenario:
"'Eight, nine years down the line, another talking point gets floated that home ownership is for the birds, that it’s somehow racist and maybe environmentally unfriendly for anyone to own a house, and argues that we should all be living in cities that look like something out of Blade Runner. The privately owned house–whether one, two, or three family–is eliminated except for one-percenters, who will continue to enjoy the luxury of living in sprawling mansions. Big Development then completely monopolizes real estate so that nobody except the richest people and big name developers can buy and rent out property. This not only phases out one more avenue of entrepreneurship for the average person but creates an entire new generation of renter-serfs completely tied to developer-landlords and for whom home and private property ownership will become an alien concept."
I looked at the source she was critiquing (that Stranger article) and their approach really is some fabricated illogical nonsense. Houses are racist, wtf? But she barely acknowledged the very real history of 'redlining' and racially restrictive covenants in her essay. This was completely a real tactic explicitly written into area covenants, from Long Island to Seattle.:
"No property in said addition shall at any time be sold, conveyed, rented or leased in whole or in part to any person or persons not of the White or Caucasian race."
That said, her other points were well said, and completely plausible.
TommyR you are a total moron. Why not link the laws that made slavery legal?
^anon: What a brilliant comment, we all bow to your superior intellect for generously sharing such sagacious insight. 👍
@TommyR I bet you would like this. Found it on "Shite" Twitter !
THE "NEW" NEW YORK CITY!
1) Do whatever you want.
2) Go wherever you want.
3) Say whatever you want to whoever you want.
4) Sell whatever you want anywhere you want.
5) No laws.
6) No fares.
7) No tickets.
8) No rules.
9) No order
10) Everything is free.
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