Gentrification is not a natural, unchangeable aspect of city life [“Debate Club,” July 22], nor is it a matter of certain north end residents having a taste for fine food. Gentrification, or more accurately, displacement, results from the desire of landlords, developers and their financiers to turn the biggest profit possible, clashing with working people’s aspirations for healthy, joyful, accessible and affordable places to live.
While the north end is a hot topic, all neighbourhoods are shaped by this conflict. White collar, blue collar and unemployed workers need to join together into organizations that will set different and better priorities for our communities: expanded and improved publicly-owned housing, restrictions on growth for profit’s sake, cracking down on rent hikes and sub-standard housing and more community-owned space.
We must assert our right to shape the direction development takes in Halifax, or else our city will continue to be a developer’s playground. To do this, we must build community power to counter the interests of the wealthy and their friends in government.
In the end though, we need to challenge the system that makes it possible for the wealthy to run roughshod over the rest of us. Let’s start imagining what a better city and world could look like and start organizing to make it happen.
Evan is a tenants’ rights, anti-poverty and anti-capitalist activist. He’d love to talk to you about getting involved in the fight for better housing in Halifax.
This article appears in Jul 31 – Aug 6, 2014.
Cliche after cliche after cliche.
Anything substantial to say/write ? …………..Thought not.
I think he makes an important point, that gentrification is about ownership and not about consumer choices. Buying local sausages isn’t what prices working-class people out of the homes they’ve rented for decades.
The rise in property values (which peaked in 2012, and will soon bottom out, and then peak again) is a realization of a market made up of people making the decisions to buy those houses; they have made the decision to be a landowner.
The displacement of people in those neighborhoods that are renters and not owners will occur, but so will the displacement of the individuals owners. Regulations like rent-control mitigate the problem of non-sustainable values that will naturally occur.
The negative effects over this ‘gentrification’ is creating an anxiety that is overblown. Any urban area will be restructured over time, and demographics will shift accordingly. This is a healthy restructuring. This isn’t a ‘big capitalist machine mowing over the little guy’, it’s the people moving around, and buying houses when they can afford to do so. It’s a machine of our own making. To think that there is some evil entity behind the curtain pulling the levers is just an illusion.
What people seem to ignore is that own/live units in the North End have risen in the last 20 years – so the idea that developers are colluding to screw people is farcical. There’s more ownership today than there was 20 years ago in the NE – and live/own people ARE working people.
Yes, there are new buildings, and yes those are clearly more expensive – but they’re also built with new materials, features, and labour at its most expensive rate (i.e., construction labour is more expensive in real dollars today than before 1960, when over half the existing units in the NE were built.) You can’t build new buildings cheaply and well, unless you allow for a scope and scale that doesn’t respect those same working-class people who want to live in a neighborhood.
People who’ve lived in the North End for decades are often older folks who, no matter where they are, move out of large homes in favour of apartments, condos, or nursing homes/care facilities. These working people sell their houses and extract the money to live on – so for them, a high price means a better life and better care.
People like Evan should publish some math on how we can have suitable, modern apartments with things like heat, lights, internet, etc – and maintain them. People need to go through the exercise of planning to build a house or an apartment, and then come back with what they find in terms of cost. Then they need to look at why anyone in their right mind would invest that kind of money for zero, or near zero return – especially due to the huge risk on every project.
These ultra-left “organizers” are so focused on their desire to create disruption that they fail to even ask working-class people what they want anymore. I want a house that is a fair value today, and has greater value tomorrow, and in talking to these types – they have no desire for my reality, but instead one filled with rich boogeymen, conspiracies, and fantasies of huge social justice that will, in reality, hurt me more than it helps.
Step out of a university and onto a construction site once in a while. We’re the working people and we don’t see what you do.