{"id":471,"date":"2006-02-16T09:24:25","date_gmt":"2006-02-16T03:24:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.stier.net\/?p=471"},"modified":"2021-12-26T09:58:05","modified_gmt":"2021-12-26T14:58:05","slug":"how-to-keep-the-promise-of-gentrification","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/?p=471","title":{"rendered":"How to Keep the Promise of Gentrification"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post is a follow up to the previous one, The Potential and Danger of Gentrification
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How do we realize the promise of gentrification by not displacing people in growing neighborhoods?
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There are a number of prescriptions. Here is a tentative list of ideas that seem plausible to me.
\n<\/span>1. Stop Inappropriate Uses of Eminent Domain.<\/strong> The first task is for the city to stop forcing people out of their homes by the inappropriate use of eminent domain. Eminent domain should not be used against people who have invested in and maintained their homes and created a strong neighborhood in the face of great challenges. Instead the city should make available the land it owns for new development that complement and improves neighborhoods.
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2. Fair Property Taxes. <\/strong>We need property tax laws that protect long time homeowners in changing neighborhood from rapid increases in their real estate taxes. There are a number of ways to accomplish this. One possibility is to cap increases in real estate taxes at a certain percentage. Another is to delay tax increases over a certain percentage until the homeowner or his or her immediate family sells the house. There are other possible policies along these lines.
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3. Aid for Rehabilitation. <\/strong>Low income people throughout the city need much more help in rehabbing their homes. We have an incredible housing stock in this city. No one will ever build row houses and twins of the kind and quality we have now. But many of our low income and elderly homeowners need help in keeping their houses in a good state of repair.
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4. Limit Tax Sales. <\/strong>We need much more support for people who are already in danger of losing their homes. Thanks to the work of Lance Haver, John Dodds and others, the city recently agreed to give people who have recently gotten into tax trouble more time and better payment plans with which to resolve their situation. But the city sold some of its tax liens for earlier years and people in that situation have little help.
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5. New Affordable Housing \/ Inclusive Zoning.<\/strong> We need new affordable housing in gentrifying neighborhoods. New York City and a few other places have pioneered a new public policy tool called “inclusive zoning.” It can help us in Philadelphia. The basic idea is this: When a private developer gets some regulatory change or other benefit from the city that enables him or her to build market rate housing, he or she becomes obligated to rent or sell a certain percentage of the units at affordable prices. This policy would kick in when a developer benefits from a zoning variance, or the city’s use of eminent domain to assemble building space, or new infrastructure spending, and so forth.
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6. Use Public Housing to Break Down Barriers. <\/strong>Other forms of assistance for affordable housing should be directed towards neighborhoods that are undergoing gentrification. The usual policy in American cities is just the opposite. Public housing in this country often reinforces economic and racial segregation. In Philadelphia, we have to use it to break down rather than build barriers.
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7. Organize Community Groups Citywide.<\/strong> In many distressed neighborhoods today, people do not have the resources to fight city hall either to protect their homes or to get the city to enforce L&I regulations against destructive businesses or absentee landlords. Sometimes they don’t have the experience in dealing with city agencies. Even more often, experienced community activists don’t have the political clout that those of us in more affluent parts of the city have. It is time for the civic organizations to band together and work collectively to protect one another. One task is to work together to enact the rest of this agenda. Another task is stand up for one another before L&I, City Council, the ZBA and other city agencies. We need a small office with paid staff to mobilize the leaders of civic groups to help one another. And that office could also create a “Civic SWAT Team” that would go to the aid of neighborhoods that need immediate and special help in responding to threat to its well being. (A model for this effort might be SCRUB. Mary Tracy of SCRUB has done a wonderful job mobilizing community groups to deal with city policies and to stand up for one another on billboard issues.)
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8. Organize neighborhoods. <\/strong>Racially and economically integrated neighborhoods are difficult to create and tend to be fragile. Efforts have to be made to bring different people together and to keep them together. When West Mt. Airy was created, West Mt. Airy Neighbors held community events, called walk n talks, that encouraged different people to get to know one another. We are still doing similar events. Change is a constant in every neighborhood and it often leads to conflict. Those conflicts can heighten racial, ethnic, and class tensions. Those tension need to be proactively managed so that all sides continue to see the benefits of working together towards a common good. (One of the few academic papers I have written that draws on my community organizing experience, Democracy and Diversity<\/a>, deals with this issue. Another longer essay I wrote says much more about the importance of community organizing to neighborhod revival<\/a>.) Neighborhood organizing is hard enough to do in prosperous places like West Mt. Airy. The city needs to support such efforts in areas that raise the money internally for paid staff.
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This post is a follow up to the previous one, The Potential and Danger of Gentrification How do we realize the promise of gentrification by not displacing people in growing neighborhoods? There are a number of prescriptions. Here is a tentative list of ideas that seem plausible to me. Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8913,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[40,55,57],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2006\/02\/14254457788_10c7a67aec_o-660x439-1.jpg?fit=660%2C439&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p35YuU-7B","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=471"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8912,"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471\/revisions\/8912"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8913"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}