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Comment by crwalker | Hacker News Reader

Taking the question in good faith, here a few examples drawn from the example above.

* The neighborhood is mostly burnt down, derelict, or razed: think of the important stories in your life and where they took place, and imagine those places transformed, not into a high-end sushi bar, but cracked sidewalks and rubble.

* A generation of home owners probably lost the majority of their wealth

* The city lost tax revenue and struggles to provide basic services like streetlights or the enforcement of law.

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This was not the lack of gentrification. This is the effects of unemployment. If a high end sushi bar would “revive” the neighborhood, it would only be because the residents were forced out. So what’s the point? I’d rather care about the people in the neighborhood (...which does involve maintenance) than how the neighborhood makes people feel. People live there. This lazy attitude towards justifying gentrification is disgusting. It’s a hard problem that deserves thought, and this is just classism.

HN, your viewpoint is clear. Try visiting oakland! It’s getting more photogenic every day.

You are confusing cause and effect.

Gentrification is a consequence of improving economic circumstances. Decay is a consequence of declining economic circumstances.

Public policies can plaster over this fact somewhat, but generally policies like rent control or CA's Prop 13 make things worse rather than better.

I have visited Oakland plenty. It's a terrible place, due at least in part to bad public policy as described above.

Yea, I’m not buying that you need to kick people out of their houses to improve the economy (whatever that means to you...). Employment and gentrification are linked and cause each other.

Please, stay away from the terrible cities! Would you go so far as to call them shitholes?

No, I wouldn't.

I'm not tracking the argument you're making. Between the frequent revisions of your comments, I've gathered that HN users are bad for not visiting Oakland, but once you discover that we've been there, now you want us to stay away? I thought I was preferring gentrification to decay, but now I'm personally kicking people out of their houses?

Life is hard and unfair. I get it. But if you make choices based on a short-sighted compassion for the disadvantaged that entirely neglects long-term consequences, you will make life harder and more unfair. Exhibit A: CA's Prop 13.

Sorry, but gentrification takes decades. Nobody is walking up to a door and dragging poor old grandma out.

Nobody is entitled to live in a certain community for a certain price. That road leads to a planned (and failed) economy.

Well, if you’re serious, I can take you to people in Oakland who have been put on the street this month. They’re not terribly hard to find.

I’m guessing you’re not.

Finally, there is obviously a huge spectrum between free and planned economy. You can probably fill in the rest of the argument from here.

People have a responsibility to live within their means. IF they can't afford their house/apartment, so be it. I really fail to see the problem here.

> Nobody is walking up to a door and dragging poor old grandma out.

What exactly do you think happens when an apartment complex gets purchased by a buyer whose plans are to redevelop (either remodel or demolish and rebuild) it for a more upscale market.

> Nobody is entitled to live in a certain community for a certain price.

Whether entitled or not, people are in fact harmed by being forcibly displaced from their home.

What happens in our markets up here (MA and NH) is the new building owner inherits the leases of the existing tenants and must fulfill the obligations of those leases. I assume the laws are similar in CA.

Once the building owner and tenant both fulfill that which they’ve agreed to, they can mutually choose to extend renew or not. If the building owner wants to redevelop, they need to wait for leases to run their term or they need to buy out of the lease with each tenant.

When they do that, they’ve fulfilled their end of the bargain. If a tenant wants more than that, they can negotiate (and pay for) lease renewal options. Most residential tenants do not (most commercial tenants do), but should then not be surprised when they don’t have that ironclad option to extend the lease that they didn’t choose to buy.

Then people need to adjust their living styles. "Forced" is the wrong term here. Either you can afford your apartment or not. Nobody deserves cheap rent.

> Then people need to adjust their living styles.

Yes, that's exactly a downward distribution of pain.

> "Forced" is the wrong term here.

As they are compelled by the actions of others, it is exactly the right word.

> Nobody deserves cheap rent.

That certainly includes the wealthier beneficiaries (the new residents, not the even wealthier investors) of government-subsidized gentrification, who are, after all, getting exaxtly what the poorer losers in that process are losing.

If nobody deserves it, taxpayers shouldn't be paying to transfer it from the poor to the wealthy.

When you significantly edit your comments after the conversation has moved on, it's really helpful to include the edits below the original post so that others can view the actual conversation.

-- Edit: like this.

They are only "forced" if you believe they were originally entitled to live there at a certain price.

Which, in a market economy, they were most certainly not.

The moral argument around gentrification is a weak one. Gentrification has been happening since cities existed. At some point we need to accept that people should make sound financial decisions.

> They are only "forced" if you believe they were originally entitled to live there at a certain price.

I’m not opposed to consumer protections here.

And not all old things are good. Hell, the oldest human social institutions are arguably the worst. Do you have an argument for its morality?

I'm just saying the moving of people throughout cities and neighborhoods is a very natural thing. Someone no longer being able to afford things in their neighborhood is not inherently a bad thing. Responsibly adults should be able to manage their finances, move, and adjust. That's life.

> They are only "forced" if you believe they were originally entitled to live there at a certain price.

No, they are forced independently of that.

Whether you view that as categorically wrong may be impacted on views of entitlement, but most of the suggestions I've seen about it being wrong are utilitarian, not categorical, and are thus not dependent on any system of entitlement.

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