Brooklyn 'Gentrification'

[acme54321]

So what is your alternative to "gentrification"?  Convince the city to allow no development in an area and leave it a wasteland?  Even complaining about it is a little ridiculous because there isn't much you can do about it.  If some developer goes and buys up a block west of Park St so what?  People sell out for enough $$$.  Supply and demand.  Maybe you can convince the property owners back there to hold out, but I doubt it.  Seems like a lot of wasted energy for nothing in this case.

[finehoe]

Riverside has never been a truly distressed community in my eyes, so that perspective is probably clouding my judgement. But yes, property values have jumped over the last decade.

Why? Because the neighborhood is a destination. People want to be able to walk to restaurants, parks, schools. West Riverside recently was deemed a "B" school, King street is an alcoholic's dream, the entire Riverside Avondale area is a place where people want to live, so much so, that Murray Hill and Brooklyn are now seeing overflow.

Yet we're constantly told (often by folks on this very forum) that people only want Nocatee-type places, that "the market" demands developers only build sprawl, that only auto-centric developments are viable. 

[Kerry]

Under the premise "Gentrification is Bad" - how do you prevent it?   And, no, this is not a "defense" of gentrification - I am truly curious how something perceived as bad for the neighborhood could be stopped.

This is usually accomplished a couple of ways.  If the resident is a home/property owner they directly benefit from increased property value - in some cases measured in hundreds of thousands of dollars.  With many states having caps on property tax increase they get the benefit of the increased value without the increase in property tax.  They can take out an equity loan, sell, or even do a land swap with a developer.  In some cases the owner is even offered a place in the new development for free in exchange for their land.

If the resident is a renter then 'work housing' is an option.  OKC does this.  In downtown and downtown adjacent housing at least 10% of a development is reserved for low income housing.  The City pays the difference between market rate and the reduced rate (the reduced rate is determine by the renters income with some kind of minimum payment required - it is 'worker housing' not Section 8 housing).  It is important to note that specifics units are not marked for low income.  No one knows who is and isn't the low income resident.  In a place like 220 Riverside there would be at least 28 low-income units available with at most 71 units.  Many cities cap the low-income units at 25% (meaning 75% are market rate).  The worst thing to do is what Jax does - 100% low-income and 100% market-rate with nothing in between.

[ProjectMaximus]

^Growing up in the late 80s we weren't supposed to go to the riverside area.  Friends' families who lived nearby were trying to get farther away. I don't remember much else.

Growing up, how was Riverside viewed locally in comparison to say.....Moncrief, Brentwood or the Eastside? As a kid in the 80s, we'd visit Jax every year or so but we pretty much stuck to the Northside. Riverside looked like money to me back in those days, compared with the across the tracks environments I was used too in various cities of the south.

Honestly it was probably the same. To clarify my comment, when I said "we weren't supposed to go there" it has some of the same overtones of suburban folks today not wanting to go to downtown or Springfield. To some degree it was a mix of ignorance, racism and over-protection. Now that said, one of my friends went to fix a guy's computer (it was high school so around 2000) somewhere just off King St and it was a crackhouse. He was pretty frightened, there were people strung out looking like death and guns lying around. Heard a few other anecdotes like that, and for sheltered teens that'll leave an impression.

[Captain Zissou]

Riverside has never been a truly distressed community in my eyes, so that perspective is probably clouding my judgement. But yes, property values have jumped over the last decade.

Why? Because the neighborhood is a destination. People want to be able to walk to restaurants, parks, schools. West Riverside recently was deemed a "B" school, King street is an alcoholic's dream, the entire Riverside Avondale area is a place where people want to live, so much so, that Murray Hill and Brooklyn are now seeing overflow.

Yet we're constantly told (often by folks on this very forum) that people only want Nocatee-type places, that "the market" demands developers only build sprawl, that only auto-centric developments are viable.

In fact one of the two who keeps saying that is the very poster you are responding to.

mtrain's stance on restaurants in Avondale is absurdly inconsistent.  I was going to call him out, but I've already done it so many times it's just getting sad.  According to him:
Orsay- all things good and right with the world.  Mellow Mushroom- Just plain evil.  Brick- Best restaurant on earth.  Roost- One of the 4 horsemen of the apocalypse. 

[finehoe]

However, as a whole, Jacksonville is decades behind its peer cities in dealing and addressing issues like this. We really haven't had the experience of distressed neighborhoods changing demographically overnight like DC's U Street and Columbia Heights. 

This is very true.  Even in the 70's, Riverside wasn't a minority-majority neighborhood, and it certainly wasn't a ghetto. It's been a much more slow-motion upscaling there that has spanned decades rather than years.  I think the closest example Jacksonville has to the gentrification going on other cities is Springfield, but that too has been a much longer (and still incomplete) process compared to what's happening other places.

[thelakelander]

^Based on what I've witnessed in other communities and my knowledge of Jacksonville, I'd agree as well. Springfield is the closest classic local example.

[FlaBoy]

^Based on what I've witnessed in other communities and my knowledge of Jacksonville, I'd agree as well. Springfield is the closest classic local example.

What about Murray Hill?

[Adam White]

^Based on what I've witnessed in other communities and my knowledge of Jacksonville, I'd agree as well. Springfield is the closest classic local example.

What about Murray Hill?

Interesting question. A number of my friends have bought houses in Murray Hill, so it's clearly undergoing gentrification (and has been for some time now). A bit slow and piecemeal, probably.

[Non-RedNeck Westsider]

^Based on what I've witnessed in other communities and my knowledge of Jacksonville, I'd agree as well. Springfield is the closest classic local example.

What about Murray Hill?

Interesting question. A number of my friends have bought houses in Murray Hill, so it's clearly undergoing gentrification (and has been for some time now). A bit slow and piecemeal, probably.

My personal, unqualified take:

I would say MH was in the midst of gentrification in the early-mid 2000s and then was hit really hard by the housing crash in '07-'08.  Now there is a resurgence of new home buyers, but the rental market in this area is still churning. 

As the home purchases grow, along with the densification of businesses along Edgewood and the buy-in difference from just being on the other side of US-17 from Riverside/Avondale, I'd say that we're right on the cusp of another gentrification upswing.

Currently stronger than Springfield because we don't have as much of the stigma that comes with that neighborhood, but I'd say that the Springfield potential is much greater due to the abundance of commercial availability and the potential to be denser with more multi-family entwined with the SFH.

[thelakelander]

I believe there's a difference between revitalization and gentrification. Is anyone being displaced in Murray Hill?

[CCMjax]

I think a lot of anti-gentrificationers are typically the same individuals complaining about how terribly neglected a neighborhood is pre-gentrification.  Then someone does something about it other than just handing residents checks and it is like the world is imploding. 

Another point . . . I have lived in neighborhoods in other cities that were "transitioning neighborhoods."  People can be displaced in many different ways, it is not just the lower income residents being displaced in all cases.  Look at Harlem in New York, it was a largely Jewish neighborhood before it was largely wealthy African Americans, then it became more lower income African Americans, now more non-African Americans are moving in.  There are cycles.  Before the Jews it was the Dutch, etc.  Humboldt Park in Chicago used to be largely low income Irish, then it became largely Puerto Rican, when I lived there there were more whites moving back to the neighborhood and there were huge complaints about gentrification, but I'm willing to bet there were also huge complaints by the largely Irish population when the Puerto Ricans started moving in.  My grandma grew up on the west side of Detroit when it was considered nice.  They were displaced because of crime and the declining schools and decline in quality of life.  It's important to understand that neighborhoods often go through cycles and neighborhoods evolve. 

[mtraininjax]

Murray Hill prices....http://www.nefar.com/filebin/pdbdb/33/962_33.pdf

The west side of Murray Hill has seen real price increases, the east side, some, but not as much.  Currently there are 15 homes for sale in Murray Hill between 100k and 200k, nothing over 200k. Interestingly enough, only 2 properties for sale under 100k.

Compare to Avondale 100-200k only 10 homes, but 43 over 200k, interestingly enough, only 1 under 100k, so yeah, prices are moving up in the area, to the point where it is really happening, even if a Realtor cannot say so.

Riverside is worse, only 17 homes for sale without a contract or pending status over 200k. Only 1 under 100k. Not much on the market and what is there is a lot more expensive than say a Springfield, where the median price is only $37k, but this area is also roped in with Trout River, Panama Park and older communities. More opportunity for home ownership though.

[Adam White]

I believe there's a difference between revitalization and gentrification. Is anyone being displaced in Murray Hill?

When house prices rise, people are displaced. Renters are moved out, for example.

People also die off or move away. Gentrification doesn't mean forced displacement. It means a change in the makeup - due to economic reasons, of course. And I would argue that the makeup of Murray Hill is changing slowly. If rents go up, only people who make enough to pay them can live there. Or maybe if property prices go up, people start selling up and moving.

[Non-RedNeck Westsider]

I believe there's a difference between revitalization and gentrification. Is anyone being displaced in Murray Hill?

Great point.  I think the simple answer is no.

I don't feel as though anyone is being forced out because we haven't seen the increase in property values that our neighbors to the south have, but we're probably at the early stages of that cycle.