September 9, 2007
Gentrifact and Gentrifiction
Former Editor-in-Chief Ryan Avent writes a weekly column about neighborhood and development issues.
I don’t suppose it would surprise most District residents to hear that there are sharp differences in income between the city’s neighborhoods and racial and ethnic groups. We see it all around us, but especially in those parts of the city where the lives of the haves abut and intermingle with those of the have-nots. These gentrification frontiers are often a locus for crime and social unrest, as well as hand-wringing by residents and their leaders about how best to reduce the negative impact of neighborhood change (or forestall it altogether). But Washington, such change is largely out of our hands. We can only hope to mitigate such population shifts, but we should do so carefully. Serving low income families successfully very well might accelerate the process of gentrification.
The evidence of income divisions in the city has been confirmed, once again, with the latest release of income and poverty statistics from the Census Bureau. The Washington region enjoys the highest median income of any metropolitan area in the United States, but behind that number lurk some unpleasant figures, for the District especially. As of 2006, the median income for a non-Hispanic white Washingtonian household was a whopping $91,000, while the median black household earned a mere $34,000, with Asian and Hispanic households in between. What’s more, median incomes in D.C. have grown fastest in recent years for non-Hispanic whites. Asians and Hispanic households have made impressive but slower gains, and black households, already the poorest, have experienced the slowest income growth.
The comparison between groups is imperfect, however, without taking into consideration numbers for the rest of the metro area. Looking at Greater Washington, one finds that median income for whites is slightly higher than it is in the District (and is still the highest for all groups), but median household earnings for minorities are far higher than in D.C. While blacks in the District remain very poor relative the population at large, black household incomes in the suburbs are some of the highest in the nation.
These statistics are perfectly in line with nationwide trends in income and settlement patterns. Data suggest that households nationally generally fall into one of three groups. The first contains the rich and the young and upwardly mobile. This group has a high lifetime earnings potential and is able to accept, ignore, or work around high housing costs in the center of large cities in order to take advantage of the production, consumption, and cultural goods in those places. The second group is the squeezed middle, which values those same amenities but is nonetheless filtered by high housing costs into the outer suburbs of large cities or into sunbelt towns where vast and rapid sprawl has kept housing costs down. The third group is the immobile poor, stuck by low returns to their work in concentrations of urban poverty.
In the Washington area, we see these group dynamics in action. The young and rich generally live where they like. Middle income households, including many black families who have done well enough to escape the enclaves of urban poverty but not so well that they can easily afford life in Northwest Washington, increasingly populate the outer suburbs of the region. The poor are stuck. They can’t afford to escape eastern D.C. or western Prince George’s County, and so they remain behind.
Photo by Captain Easychord
Many in the city remain concerned about gentrification, but it’s important for those individuals to understand these underlying trends. If the city succeeds in shifting individuals out of poverty, it’s highly likely that those individuals will then leave the city. The best tools at the city’s disposal for improving the lot of those in poverty—improving schools and reducing crime—are also sure to boost property values in downtrodden areas, increasing pressure on mobile families to depart. Worst of all for the city, when success stories depart for the suburbs, they take with them their tax revenues, enriching the coffers of places like Charles County, Maryland, where revenue demands aren’t nearly as intense as in the District. The District, by contrast, is left to deal with the most difficult poverty cases, and the job of handling a wide and broadening income gap.
By no means should District leaders throw up their hands in defeat, but in many ways, the city has its hands tied. Nationally, wage distribution is polarizing, making it difficult to support a middle class anywhere; until the federal government changes its attitude toward tax cuts for the rich and reduced bargaining power for the poor, this will not change. Federal transportation funding, moreover, is strongly biased toward road construction, meaning that most new housing supply is built around new roads in outer suburbs and sunbelt boomtowns. It should be no surprise to find that households constrained by housing costs are following the new supply.
Within the metropolitan region, similar factors are pushing those in the middle outward. Without regional coordination of tax revenues and planning, there’s nothing the District can do but hope that the tax payments of the wealthy allow it to do its best by the remaining poor.
In a perfect world, the jurisdictions in the center of the metropolitan area would commit themselves to investing heavily in education, in dense housing growth, and in transportation solutions to facilitate that housing growth. Too often, central neighborhoods fight dense growth, limiting supply and contributing to high housing costs, while the suburban states focus on transportation and development strategies that encourage housing supply to move out, dragging middle-income families with it.
The District doesn’t get to choose the national economic environment or the federal policies that make addressing its own internal inequities more difficult. It doesn’t get to veto moves by suburban neighbors that entice middle-income families and their tax revenues away. All it can do is invest in its schools and neighborhoods and lobby its neighbors for their support. Washingtonians need to understand that improving the lives of the District’s poor citizens is going to mean neighborhood change. Our concern should be for the welfare of individual households; we should care about how they're doing rather than where they are.
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Am I the only one who loves gentrification and all it does? Better trendy neighborhoods, luxury condos, hot young professionals who like to drink ... its my dream really, imagine a whole wealthy city without a scary/dangerous part?
Nice post. Some feedback:
-You write like gentrification is something new. Its been going on for ages. Many phases. Not so simple.
-Don't try to tie so many things together in one posting. Gentrification, Transportation Funding, Wage Distribution- dude, these things are so complex and your posting without references has more holes than a JFK conspiracy story.
-Re: "The poor are stuck. They can’t afford to escape eastern D.C. or western Prince George’s County, and so they remain behind." If you actually spoke to some of the lower income people, you might actually learn that a majority of those people don't want to move to the suburbs- don't want to leave DC period! From my 83 old neighbor who gets tremendous house tax deductions to free transportation and health care to the others who simply love DC. Don't brush them all in the "Oh, they are too poor to flee". Ever occur to you that some District residents don't want to leave their home?
This article raises some interesting questions. But I don't buy the idea that the poor 'cant flee DC'. As Guest 2 points out, many don't want to leave DC, even when it's obvious that there are better job and housing and school opportunities in the burbs. And I don't really see the logistical barrier to moving, especially to PG County. PG has a lot of fairly cheap housing, cheaper than in many parts of DC.
Dear Guest- I understand your gentrification dream. But I assume you also know it means that many people of color are also removed from the picture... Now I am a fiftysomething black man, so the possible notion that a white person thinks a monochromatic city/world is perfectly fine is not news to me . Guess you are at least honest about it. Yippee
Nationally, wage distribution is polarizing, making it difficult to support a middle class anywhere; until the federal government changes its attitude toward tax cuts for the rich and reduced bargaining power for the poor, this will not change.
Define "rich."
Also, do you consider not raising taxes on people making more than $50k a year a "tax cut?"
I disagree with Guest #2 in that gentrification/transportation/wage distribution are all interrelated and interdependent. When it comes to picking a place to settle down, it's like Dillinger said when they asked why he robs banks: that's where the money's at. You live where you can afford it, in an environment that reflects the lifestyle you choose. Yet that affordability is contingent on employment; when you can't afford that lifestyle, you either get a better job or cut lifestyle expenses. It's like an elaborate game of Jenga where all the players are on crank, where if you pull out the gentrification block, the crime block collapses. Prop up the transportation block, and the tax revenue block flees to the suburbs. Lousy metaphor I know, but I haven't had any coffee yet.
The problem with getting from that home to that job is that in a post-industrial society, everybody taking the streetcar to the factory is no longer an option. Because employment is dispersed among thousands of locations in and around the region, owning a car is the most convenient option for a majority of workers. And when it comes to getting Ma and Pa Sixpack to two different job sites, their kids to gradeschool and highschool, picking them up, dealing with all that afterschool extracurricular crap, groceries, chores, etc., again, doing that via public transit isn't an option. Sucks that people have to get up at 4am to get all that nonsense done on time, but even if Metro were open that early, I don't see the Sixpacks using it. Still, it makes sense to encourage density at Metro stations, but that's putting Band Aids on sucking chest wounds. Choosing between public transit and the "convenience" of sitting in traffic is like choosing whether you'd like a vampire or a werewolf to suck your blood.
As for the gentrification issue, I've bloviated on this issue elsewhere, suffice to say when your local government's primary concern is maximizing tax revenue from corporate office space that has little or no groundfloor retail, and nothing resembling affordable housing downtown, good luck attracting middle class residents. And when your tax rates on small businesses approach confiscatory levels, good luck retaining middle class consumers. Your "vibrant diverse" neighborhood become little more than the overpriced urban hiptard hellscape that Guest #1 fetishizes, full of "hot-young professionals" with more money that brains and riddled with strains of herpes that would make your crotch look like the business end of a mako shark at feeding time.
Guest #2 is right on the money. I live in a somewhat lower-income neighboorhood in Southwest, and many of the residents have been there for decades. The community is tighly knit and much friendlier than I've experienced in the suburbs. I can totally understand why someone would be reluctant to give that up.
I'm looking at the overall statistical trends, folks. So yes, I'm sure there are many individuals who are happy with their neighborhood, whether or not it happens to be generally low-income. The data show that as households get wealthier, they tend to move to the suburbs.
Hillman, please see the sentence just above the photo credit.
Monkey, I can't tell if you're defending the Bush tax cuts or not. Just in case you are: see this. But in general, good points.
It's interesting to me that certain people still think of housing costs in terms of gentrification and class; if the recent slowdown in housing has shown us anything, it is that easy access to credit for those with the worst credit histories (read: the poor and the young) had FAR more to do with the rapid increase in housing prices - stable supply + suddenly significantly larger pool of people eligible for mortgages = far greater demand and increasing prices. As prices flatten, defaults increase and credit tightens, the price of housing in DC and the metro area will drop - an estimated 30-40% between now and the end of 2009, according to the New York Times, and it will be at least 2020 before prices get back to their all-time highs. What will that mean for us? Well, for people who don't own a house, it's pretty great news - the glut in construction plus a sharp decrease in demand for purchases will result in a massive price drop not only for purchasing, but also for renting as condos are converted to apartments. For people who are long-time owners, it's not that big of a deal - the house is still the home and should be that instead of an investment. For recent buyers, you're probably smarting, but if you like your home and can afford your mortgage, you're set. For people who bought places they can't afford with the intent of flipping it, you're a leech who will get what you deserve.
But to get back on point, thinking of housing prices strictly in terms of class and gentrification is a vastly oversimplified and incorrect way of doing it. You have to look at the larger trends in housing sales, particularly who is buying and how they are buying. Housing is cyclical, and to think that DC somehow won't go through a downcycle again is absurd.
It's weird the way that race hobbles this discussion. Guest #2, for example, makes the following assumption: "Trendy neighborhoods with luxury condos and hot young professionals must by their nature be white." I'm not saying that the District is better with one type of neighborhood or the other, nor am I naive about the relationship between historical forces like redlining and the racial segregation in our metro area communities. But it is dismaying that this assumption often goes unaddressed.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not disagreeing with Guest #2. But his opinion, and its inverse, is symptomatic of a much larger problem. In DC gentrification always becomes a race discussion because we've established this geographical dynamic where black people live over here and white people live over here. In the middle, there's a wavering line. It used to be 16th Street, but it probably runs down 14th Street or Georgia Ave now. That line will never advance or retreat without one side feeling as if it has lost something.
But the problem isn't with the relative merits of West versus East. It's the fact that there's a line at all, or the fact that that line seems to be so closely aligned with racial demographics. So segregation perpetuates itself far out into the suburbs, out to mostly black and mostly white exurbs in Frederick and Charles Counties. Until we address that problem--neighborhood segregation--the gentrification debate will always devolve into a coded war of rhetoric over scarce metro area resources and historical privilege.
I don't see downtown housing prices going down any time soon. Single family home sales are levelling off, but those condos that won't sell and can't be flipped will end up as rentals. Rental vacancy rates still hover around 3 percent and no new rental units have been built in years. If anything, imploding outer suburb real estate markets will force more people into the already constricted rental supply. Combine that with the usual recession-proof-ness of the DC region, and DC real-estate values will level off, if not increase at a slower rate than surrounding jurisdictions.
Housing prices in DC are indeed cyclical. The condo market collapse of the 1980s was preceeded by decades of undervaluation after the '68 riots. But there were lots of other variables at play: declining public schools, the crack wars, the Bush 1.0 recession. All DC needs is a recurrence of those problems and the downtown housing market would indeed decline to pre-2000 levels.
Shit_Life, please cite the New York Times article you refer to.
Washington is changing before our eyes. There's nothing you or anyone can really do about it. Gentrification has its good sides and its bad sides. The same thing is happening to Brooklyn. Alot of out-of -towners want the city-life and who cares if the natives care; Raise the prices and try to force them out. Maybe its a change for the better, who knows only time will tell. All I know, there should be some respect for the locals cuz this is home for some of us and not just a rest stop.
Ryan,
That "whopping $91,000" household income, if it's dual income, is two people making $45,500. I doubt they consider themselves "rich." And if they're not married and filing separately, they're paying a higher tax rate anyway.
Instead of urban fiscal policy that soaks the rich, it should favor expanding the middle class. They're the ones paying the majority of the taxes anyway: poor people don't make enough to pay taxes, and the rich can afford lawyers to find them tax shelters. It's the same problem with businesses downtown; current DC tax policy seems geared towards exterminating small locally-owned businesses instead of expanding them. Meanwhile, you have corporate tax breaks that encourage chain retail, law firms, and consultant businesses downtown. Shiny office cubes that generate tax revenue that are deader than last xmas when they shut down for the night.
And they'll be even deader come the next recession/crime cycle when they move out to Reston Town Center.
move the poor to maryland
Monkey, I'm not at all talking about the District's tax policy. At all. As I state in the column, it's the federal tax policy I'm concerned about.
You should cross-reference these statistics by education. I'm willing to bet that college educated non-white households are making more than high-school educated white households.
Hi ... I'm guest # 1 ... Whoa? I never even mentioned race, I just have an affinity for hot young professionals ... race does not matter. I won't lie, I enjoy the company of educated, semi affluent people like myself ... but to bring up race doesnt make any sense to me ... I have friends from almost every race (thanks to going to AU/Living in DC) What DC needs is to better schools and the like for it locals ... otherwise they just can't compete with the transplants.
Newsletter for monkeyrotica from the people who have the real statistics about small businesses in DC.
http://www.wdcep.com/newsletter96.php?aId=266&pageId=44
Guest#1 Again ..btw, for those who care, I'm only half white
#18 - You mean the former DC Marketing Center is actually interested in spinning a web of sweet-smelling lies in order to lure more small businesses to DC?
FAIL
I think there's definitely more confusion than true understanding of gentrification and the wonderful things it brings to neighborhoods. As someone told me in 1995, "If you went to college, you're a yuppie gentrifying us." If you went to college at all you're a yuppie and you're a gentrifier. That kind of shut up my artist friends who complained about gentrification without admitting they gentrified the place when the Mom and Pop stores reopened in facilities that were boarded up since 1987. Petworth is a great example, closed stores reopened to service new clientele. How is it better to have the building boarded up? It's not. Gentrification is a positive move. That funky coffee house that opened is gentrification. That record store or nightclub is gentrification. the vegetarian restaurant? that's gentrification.
Gentrification is a positive move. That funky coffee house that opened is gentrification. That record store or nightclub is gentrification. the vegetarian restaurant? that's gentrification.
That's all fine, until the coffee house and the record store and the night club fold and are replaced by elitist members-only nightclubs and boutique charcuterie restaurants you can't afford and furniture stores that sell leather couches that cost 6 months rent and the corner bodega replaces the Miller High Life with Belgian lambic ales that taste like ASS with an overhopped chaser.
What happens when the gentrifyers get out-gentrified?
to #22
So Soul Vegetarian across from Howard U. is a sign of gentrification? Please explain.
I want to hear from the Ice Road Truckers about Gentrification ....
Can we all admit that "gentrification" is just a code word for "white"?
If well-to-do blacks started moving into city neighborhoods en masse, there would be countless stories lauding the revitalization of the city.
#22, the great thing is that there's always more, cheaper land farther out. Does it really matter if the boarded up, abandoned businesses that turn into coffee shops are in the center of the city or in the middle of nowhere? Displacement does not equal elimination. it just feels like it.