Gentrification
by Peter Dorman (originally published at Econospeak)
Gentrification
This is the bane of urban development, right? Old housing stock, built for yesterday’s working class, is spiffed up and priced far out of reach of today’s regular folk. High end shops replace hardware stores, bric-a-brac recyclers and appliance repair centers; a tide of designer coffee flushes out the cheap, refillable kind. Who can afford to live there?
But wait! Those refurbished old houses are beautiful. It’s a pleasure to peruse delicate artisanal fabrics and custom-designed furniture. The food is fresher, healthier and tastier. And what’s the alternative—to put a blanket over everything old and keep out all improvements? Is gentrification even a problem?
It is. It’s wrong if whole neighborhoods are uprooted, unable to afford housing and services available to them for generations, and the dynamism of city life is crippled if only those who have already made it can make their home there.
Regulations that restrict the development of new housing have rightly come under attack. Encouraging infilling and greater density benefits the environment and keeps housing costs down, but that only moderates the impact of gentrification. The luxury apartments that replace old single family houses are still beyond the means of most of us.
My hypothesis is that the basis of gentrification as an urban problem, rather than a type of broad-based development that benefits everyone, is extreme inequality of income. Gentrified neighborhoods are those outfitted for the upper echelon to spend their money on, and prices are geared to what the traffic will bear. The rest of us can’t afford it.
Imagine that income were distributed much more equally in this country. Maybe a few people would be rich, but there wouldn’t be enough of them to fill up whole cities. And the gap between the better and lesser off wouldn’t be so large as to preclude mixed neighborhoods. As overall incomes rose over time, so would the quality of housing, shopping options and services.
If I’m right, the solution to gentrification isn’t a prohibition on investments that upgrade urban life, but serious measures to reduce economic inequality itself. The test is whether countries without the great divide between the rich and the rest are as subject to gentrification as the US.
“serious measures to reduce economic inequality itself”
Here’s the first big step back to fair share of the pie — the first big step back to high labor union density — same thing:
If a state or local legislature passes a law that makes exercising freedom of association (e.g., organize a labor union) possible where it would otherwise not be possible, then, Congressional preemption of labor law falls to the First Amendment.
Turns out federal preemption of state labor law has been the only anchor dragging reform down everywhere it wants to grow. I’m just getting into this.
Headline: https://onlabor.org/thank-non-union-construction-companies-and-federal-preemption-for-those-collapsed-cranes-in-miami/
Federal preemption can crop up in the most unexpected (and most unwelcome) places. Florida wanted 140 mph resistant cranes — Congress had specified 93 mph — judiciary found Florida’s worries unrealistic. State legislative differences with Congressional intent in the federal Occupational Safety and Health Act could find no protection anywhere else in the US Constitution. Not so in every case.
On KevinMD blog a doctor complained that anti-trust laws bar doctors from combining to bargain about fees with hospitals (unless employed there). I opined (no expert on specifics) if doctors were combining to bargain with a giant like Blue Cross, then, market power would be fairly balanced and the First Amendment would chime in and allow the doctor’s to associate their demands — disallowing not a matter of legislative choice. (I got the general idea right anyway.)
http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/
In same manner, federal preemption does not empower Congress to wipe out state efforts to make organizing a union possible (e.g., making union busting a felony) — especially when there is no credible federal equivalent protection (not for many decades) — not a federal legislative option to just leave necessary protection for union organizing blank for one and all levels of government, deliberately or not.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
For an all-day read on judicial twists and turns shutting out state labor law under the NLRA:
Louisiana Law Review, Volume 70, Number 1, Fall 2009 (97 page PDF)
Reforming Labor Law by Reforming Labor Law Preemption Doctrine to Allow the States to Make More Labor Relations Policy
Henry H. Drummonds
http://digitalcommons.law.lsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=6305&context=lalrev
(p. 69) All of the doctrines rest upon “implied” preemption theory.295 To paraphrase Chief Justice Rehnquist’s complaint long ago, these doctrines grew from “acorns of sensible decision” into a “mighty oak” reaching ever outward, now grown beyond all usefulness296—except as a shield from the reform of labor law to more meaningfully implement the ideal of employee free choice through initiatives by citizens and legislators in the states.
I think what “gentrification” is just a relatively new found desire to live in a city environment, for a variety of reasons.
For many years the exodus to the suburbs was in vogue, leaving many inner city neighborhoods to decline. Now the yuppies want to move back to the city and find the crappier neighborhoods more affordable, and with more upside appreciation.
It has relatively nothing to do with income inequality.