Middle income people, both black and white, are now interested in moving into (or back into) the city especially in neighborhoods near Center City. There is enormous potential in that movement. But there is enormous danger as well.
The movement that is sometimes called gentrification can gives us an opportunity to right a terrible sin. In the 1950s and 1960s, middle class, mostly white people fled many neighborhoods in North and West Philadelphia. They left poor and working class, mostly black people who suffered through fifty years of evaporating jobs and declining neighborhoods. Large parts of the city became distressed.
The consequences were devastating for many of the people who lived in these neighborhoods. To suffer from poverty to is, to begin with, to have low wages and frequent unemployment. But that is perhaps not the worst of it. Low wages and unemployment are made much worse when one lives in a neighborhood that is declining commercially, that is lacking in city services, that is being threatened by housing deterioration, that suffers from high crime rates, and that is, in many ways, cut off from mainstream political and economic life.
The lack of commerce in declining neighborhoods is a critical problem. Food and other goods are more expensive when there are no supermarkets and few or no places to buy clothes or housewares. Important services like insurance or banking or health care are more expensive or unavailable.
Distressed neighborhoods also lack the political clout to get good city services. When revenues are tight and declining, it is poor neighborhoods that suffer most of all. Police protection is rarely up to the problems these neighborhoods face. Recreation centers are run-down or non-existent. The streets are rarely cleaned. Government is slow to respond to complaints about nuisance businesses or run-down (and falling down) house.
Then there is the problem of deteriorated houses. There are thousands of basically strong blocks that are made up of solidly built row houses and twins with beautiful woodwork and details. No one will ever mass produce houses as good as these again. Yet many of these blocks have one, two, or three houses that create problems for people who live in all the others.
One of these houses has essentially collapsed and is home only to the vermin and trash that spread to the other houses on the block. If the residents of the block are lucky, NTI has demolished or sealed this house.
Another house is in a state of disrepair and is rented for very little money. Because of the low rents they bring in, their owners do little to fix them up or maintain them. These houses, too, are unkempt, collecting litter and trash that spill on to their neighbors. The people who rent them tend to unstable with serious family difficulties, personal problems, or drug and alcohol dependencies. The chaotic households of these residents sometimes create additional problems for the block. Children are not properly cared for or supervised. They, or mentally ill adults, create noise, add to the trash on the block, or threaten neighbors.
Then there is a third house has been taken over by people who use them to sell drugs or conduct other illicit business.
Another problem in distressed neighborhoods is the high rates of crime that come with the lack of jobs and the lack of hope. Crime not only threatens individual property and life, but makes a commercial revival impossible and keeps people off the streets, thereby undermining a sense of community and the supervision of children.
And, finally, there are the problems that arise when a neighborhood is cut off from mainstream political and economic life. We know that most people get jobs through personal contacts and that these contacts are greatest where economic life is vital and dense. But these contacts are few and far between in distressed neighborhoods. We also know that impressionable young people are shaped by the role models around them. But there are too few role models in distressed neighborhoods of the success that comes from the hard work of getting a good education. And we also know that young people are more likely to believe in themselves when they have a sense of control over what seems to be an orderly world. That kind of confidence is hard to come by when the residents of a disorderly neighborhood have little sense that their political and economic lives are under their control.
One learns from walking in the neighborhoods we call distressed that the textbook and newspaper picture of these neighborhoods is largely wrong. Most of the folks who live in distressed neighborhoods are not themselves distressed or disorderly. Their incomes may not be high, but their families are strong and intact. They work hard, often in more than one job. They take care of their houses as best they can. They care about their neighborhoods and about creating good role models for young people. Yet, because of the problems of commercial decline, government abandonment, problem houses, crime, and political and economic marginality, they suffer from problems much more severe than a low income and an occasional bout of unemployment. They are assaulted day in and day out by problems that most readers of this essay could scarcely imagine.
The presence of new skilled workers and professionals and managers in neighborhoods that have been distressed can begin to reverse many of these conditions. These new residents create an economic demand for better stores and services. They have the political clout to secure better government. They fix up problem houses. Crime may initially rise when they move into a neighborhood, but they call for the police protection that keeps it under control. And they help begin to reintegrate a neighborhood into the political and economic life of the city as a whole. They can provide the contacts, the role models, and the sense of control that can benefit all the young people in a neighborhood.
I have seen, first hand, what an economically and racially diverse neighborhood can do for everyone in a community. I live in one of the great exceptions to the decline of Philadelphia in the last fifty years, West Mt. Airy. In the late fifties and early sixties our neighborhood fought against blockbusting and white flight while welcoming African American residents. Civic and religious leaders and the community associations I came to lead, West Mt. Airy Neighbors, successfully fought against both broad political and economic trends and individual prejudice to create one of the very few economically and racially integrated neighborhoods in the whole country. I have heard the stories of relatively poor whites and blacks who grew up in West Mt. Airy and who point to the advantages they had from living in a neighborhood that offered the education, role models, connections, and confidence they needed to succeed. And I have heard the stories of relatively prosperous whites and blacks who point to the advantages of living in a diverse community—the excitement of living with people different from oneself and the capacity to feel at home with people of every kind.
The return of the middle class to parts of the city they fled years ago gives us a second chance to create the kind of city we failed to once before, a city of economically, culturally, ethnically, and racially diverse neighborhoods that give everyone the opportunity to succeed as individuals, to be part of a vital community, and to feel at home in their own country. If we are to take advantage of that second chance, however, we have to insure that those who have lived through the difficult times in distressed neighborhoods can stay around for the good times. If, instead, the ugly word gentrification describes an ugly process by which the working poor, who are mostly African Americans, are forced out of their neighborhoods by rising real estate taxes and the misuse of eminent domain, we will have compounded the sin of the fifties and sixties by sinning again.
If we sin again, we will all pay the price. Of course, those who are pushed out of neighborhoods they have lived in all their lives will suffer the worst. But they won’t be the only ones who suffer. Our city has started to grow again. But it will only grow so far if crime remains high, if our schools remain second rate, and if our workers lack the skills they need in an advanced economy. We can’t fix these problems one person at a time. The only fix is a collective one, one that drastically improves the neighborhoods that generate crime, poor education, and low skilled workers. Nor will Center City keep expanding if gentrified¸ mostly white, middle class neighborhoods only feel safe when they wall themselves off from their surroundings. And, finally, new growth in the city will stop when the people being pushed out of their homes and neighborhoods finally draw the line and say “stop.” That is exactly what will happen if we don’t start paying attention to the inequity that gentrification can create.
Can we actually use gentrification to reverse the sin of the fifties and sixties and benefit everyone? I will make some policy suggestions meant to accomplish just that in the second of these posts.