Originally posted by ggwâ?¢:
The notion that hordes of people are "pushed out" by gentrification is largely a falsehood born of misplaced white guilt.
Oh, brother. :roll: Certainly true for a small pocket but that sounds a whole lot more like a reply from someone with hardcore neo-con guilt. However, I suspect you may be just pulling a Rhett and trying to get a rise out of us rather than making a real personal statement. But maybe I'm wrong.
After reading through a lot of these posts, I think that many of us are really pretty much on the same page but gettiing lost in the details. Certainly $17 entrees are quite common everywhere and are on the low end of the excess that this article was highlighting. Personally, if what some of you are saying is true about Creme, it sounds to me like it's a much better value, all in all, than Ben's. (In my opinion, especially since I believe that Ben's isn't all that great of a value for the price.) It's just that the middle and lower classes who are gradually being pushed aside are not the ones who will be able to
frequent a lot of these places enough to keep them all in business for all that long. Meaning, that
a lot of them couldn't survive. Only several could continue to maintain an ongoing income to keep up with expenses. Here's where the well off can contribute to keep them in business. Just don't force everyone else out in the process by upping prices, values and taxes amongst the entire community.
Whomever noted what has happened to Polly's hits the nail right on the head!!! Wouldn't be surprised if their prices raised not to keep up with the others but just to cover their ever increasing property taxes. The same basic reasons why DC can't hold onto decent record/cd stores.
As far as one class of people being more 'interesting' than another, I can't really go along with that. Personally, I find the wealthier just as interesting. They just tend to stay more to themselves (or be tied up at work) which makes it much harder to get to know and enjoy their company. In some cases, I'd much rather have them as neighbors than a few of the others who I don't want to run into on a dark corner when I'm alone in the middle of the night.
I suspect that a lot of those insanely over-priced condos are purchased by very well off people as investment properties to lease to well off students and young professionals moving into the city. Not all, of course. Either way, the average person can't afford to either lease or own such a place. It truly scares me as, yes, these are the going rates in many of these places and a very large majority of us can't ever think of owning property without some strange lucky piece of fate coming our way. Rents aren't far behind.
Have to fully agree with those who mentioned those self-rightous asses who buy in such areas only to bitch about noise, etc.. The same thing happened many years ago in Fells Point but on a much lower class scale. Even dumber, we had the same bitch by idiots who purchased homes right next to BWI airport! Christ, the airport was there first!!! WTF did they expect!?!?!?
