Saturday, August 15, 2009

Gentrification

Before I post this next entry I also want to introduce myself as a new blogger on Speaking Our Truths. My name is Kathleen Peters. I'm a white, New Hampshire-born queer woman who is currently working in New Orleans after graduating from Simmons College in 2008. While I was always interested in women's studies and (partially) aware to the sexism in our society, my awareness to race and class issues didn't begin until I went to college, and even then it wasn't until my last couple of years that it really started to sink in. I tend to get my thoughts out best through writing, yet generally I'm too nervous that I'm going to "get it wrong" when discussing race and class issues to talk about it on a larger scale. I'm finally learning, however, that I will never get it right, that I will constantly learn new things, that others will often correct me and put me in my place when it's needed, and that a little more light will be shed on which way I should be going. So I might as well just start talking rather than constantly being afraid. Just as a personal note with any entries I post, while I know it's no one else's responsibility to teach me, comments are always welcome and appreciated. I'm here to learn as much as I am to share.

The following are my current thoughts on moving into a new apartment and wondering where I fit in with regards to the current gentrification occurring in many parts of New Orleans.

Gentrification

My [insert superfluous gender label here]-friend and I just signed a lease on a place on the border of the 7th and 8th ward of New Orleans. As his friend and our boss said when we told them the cross-streets, “Ooh, y’all know that’s a hot corner, right?” The shelter we work at provides volunteer/staff housing in return for taking very low pay rates. That was working out fine for the first few months, however it became evident that living and working with the same group would not last for long, so come summer we started apartment hunting.


I found the apartment we ended up settling on off of Craigslist. It was cheaper and larger than any other one-bedrooms and studios we had looked at before, and the location was perfect – right in between the shelter in the Upper 9th and my second job in Mid-City. The landlord is great and the lease is thorough but fair, so we put down a deposit and signed our names. The only problem is as we were signing it, I couldn’t help but think we were doing damage by moving into that neighborhood. Much of the areas around the 8th and 9th wards have already been gentrified, but most of it is still predominantly Black and (increasingly) Hispanic. The shelter’s staff housing is in the Upper 9th, sandwiched into a block where most of the houses are owned by an extended Black family. The previous shelter managers, who were white, had lived there previously, and when they left the shelter they asked their neighbors their thoughts on making the house a place for volunteers/staff to live. Before staff lived at the shelter, and in an attempt to decrease staff burn-out the directors were looking to create separate volunteer housing. The surrounding family had no problem with the house becoming a place for volunteers, so volunteer housing it became. I had questions in my mind when I first moved there, feeling that I was intruding on a neighborhood/family and remembering the stories of how the area across the street, the Bywater/Marigny, used to be predominantly Black as well. It wasn’t until the last several years, and especially after Katrina, that white artists and hippie folk overtook that area for their own, pushing people of color further into (or in many cases out of) the 9th ward. I was worried that by (mostly) white volunteers living there we may be adding to gentrification occurring on this side of the street as well.


I reminded myself, however, that we were not tenants who were willing or able to pay high rent rates for this house or who were looking to change the color and/or class of neighborhood. Everything was done under the shelter, and we were shelter staff who were thankful to have a free place to stay in a city that was new to us. The intent for the placement of the house was also one of solidarity, with the idea that if you are working with a community, you should be a part of that community. The shelter did not want its full time staff to be advocating for women and children to live in an area that they themselves would not live in. Our shelter started with Common Ground Relief, the organization who were one of the first to respond to the needs of Lower 9th ward residents immediately after Katrina, and the organization whose motto is “Solidarity, Not Charity.” Our shelter is working to keep within that mission as best we can, thus we house our volunteers a few blocks away from the shelter.


The worry of intruding on a neighborhood returned, however, when it was no longer the shelter that was renting a house for predominantly white staff in a poor, mostly Black area. It’s now the case of two young white out-of-towners renting an apartment in the same area on their own. To be fair our choices of apartments were limited, for not only was price a factor in where we lived, but also location. The shelter can be a bit of a 24/7 job with a high probability of needing to be there on short notice if an emergency comes up, so the radius of apartments that we could look at was restricted. We could have lived in the Bywater/Marigny, along with most of the other white people in the area, but the apartments were too expensive and many weren’t looking to rent at the time we needed. When we looked at the place we decided on, we discovered the low rent was due to “nobody” wanting to live there due to the dangerous reputation that the area has. Now I won’t lie, while I usually don’t get caught up in the stigma surrounding some New Orleans neighborhoods, personally believing that that stigma is racist and classist in origin, I did think twice about calling the landlord back after our boss, who is Black and has lived in New Orleans all her life, told us how she thought that area was bad news and she worried about us moving there. I want to be open-minded and in solidarity with the community I’m working with, yet I also don’t want to be blatantly naïve and ignore realities if there are certain corners of the city where you don’t want to be. The apartment was empty for six months prior to us moving in because everyone who had come to look at it never came back. After talking with our boss further she said she thought we’d be fine overall, she just didn’t want us going into it completely unaware of our surroundings. However, if we could have afforded to live in another area we probably would have kept looking after that conversation.


But regardless of our financial situation or the safety status of the neighborhood, should we be moving there on an ethical level? Should two white twenty-something-year-olds who have college degrees and could get higher-paying employment but are choosing to live under the poverty line for a job they love (and are gaining much experience from), move into a low-income area where they are potentially taking that space away from a person of color or a person poor not by choice?


Taigi Smith, who wrote “What Happens When Your Hood is the Last Stop on the White Flight Express?” in the anthology Colonize This! Young Women of Color on Today’s Feminism calls gentrification:


“The displacement of poor women and people of color. The raising of rents and the eradification of single, poor and working-class women from neighborhoods once considered unsavory by people who didn’t live there…A money-driven process in which landowners and developers push people…out of their homes without thinking about where they will go. Gentrification is a pre-meditated process in which an imaginary bleach is poured on a community and the only remaining color left in that community is white…only the strongest colors survived.”


This does not describe us. We are not intentionally “bleaching” a neighborhood. We are not moving to a place “once considered unsavory” – it is technically still unsavory, and shocking to everyone we meet when we say where we’re moving to. One Black man who I sat next to on a flight back to New Orleans called me a “very brave lady” with a confused smile on his face when I answered his question of where I live. While he was very polite and friendly, I couldn’t help but wonder what he was actually thinking behind his smile. Was it, “what is this white girl doing moving to that neighborhood for?” Definitely, he as much as told me that in the rest of our conversation. Was he also thinking how naïve this New Hampshirite was for not knowing that area like he did, a native New Orleanian? Possibly. Did his thoughts go so far as “Why is she gentrifying that neighborhood?” Probably not. The area’s not to that point yet. There are other white people living here, but it’s nothing like the Bywater/Marigny or other places further up in the 7th /8th ward. Possibly due to the context of our conversation, as well, he did not get from me that I’m some young artist type that is trying to be “trendy” and revitalize the neighborhood. I’m someone who’s working in the neighborhood and just wanting an affordable place to live. At least I hope that’s the impression he got.


Yet regardless of our intention, regardless if Taigi Smith’s definition of gentrification doesn’t necessarily define us, we do fit the profile of those who start gentrification. We don’t make much money, yet we have a high educational background and came from middle-to-upper class families. We’re young and do not have a family that we feel the need to “protect”, thus we don’t mind living in an area that is dubbed as “less desirable” than where we grew up. We frequent the trendy bars and coffee shops in the Bywater/Marigny, and if one popped up around the corner from us in our new place, we’d probably patron them as well, thus encouraging similar establishments to rent property there. This would in-turn draw more attention to the area from other whites and affluent people in other parts of the city, and then a few years later we now have another fully gentrified area that have pushed marginalized groups out to find a new place to call home. That is until another group of people like myself decide they want to live there as well, and the process starts all over again. We’re not intending for any of this to happen, yet we’re aware that it most likely will and that our presence there almost undoubtedly will add to this process occurring.


Should we not move there? There are tons of articles and journals and newsletters out there promoting affordable housing, describing grassroots efforts to keep rent prices from going up when gentrification begins, and attempting new methods for keeping long-term residents in the community while allowing for some more affluent residents to reside as well – a form of compromise with the gentrification beast. And in reality, after thinking about the effect we may have on gentrifying the area, we may make a point not to support a new coffee shop if it’s not locally owned by someone originally from that neighborhood so as not to encourage further signs of gentrification to occur. Yet before it even gets to that point, whether gentrification is inevitable or not, would it be more ethical for us to play no part in it? Should we get jobs that we may not be as happy at but makes more money so that we can afford more expensive apartments and not need to invade poor people of color’s space? In short, would it be better for us to stay in the “white” side of town? I believe segregation is harmful and is one way racism and fear of the Other is perpetuated, and while there have definitely been cases where integration was not beneficial, I want to believe that if there are the right networks in place and there is a community that supports integration, it can be positive. But can you have positive desegregation without the fear of gentrification? Can you have integration without infiltration? Is it better to come from the other side, with people of color choosing to move into typically affluent, white areas if they want instead of white people forcing integration upon poor people of color? Am I wrong altogether in thinking that integration is positive?


We have the lease for six months and then we can re-evaluate if we want to stay. Maybe being in the area longer and getting to know the city a little better will tap us into community efforts to fight for affordable housing, and perhaps being involved in that will cancel out any potential harm we’re doing by moving there. Yet we’re already outsiders to this city, an issue I go back and forth on every day: whether it is even ethical for me to be working here in the first place. Perhaps there are enough disaster-junkie transplants here who want to get their “New Orleans fix” before moving on. That’s not to undermine the work that people not native to New Orleans have done and the care they do it with. But there are also a lot of out-of-towners that are just here for the crisis-rush, make too much noise and take up too much space, push people from New Orleans out of the positions they should really be holding, and then get offended when people call them out on it. Would we getting involved in affordable housing community organizing be another type of that same invasion? It’s bad enough to invade a neighborhood in the community that you’re originally from, but to invade an area you’ve only lived in for a short time, then leave a year or so later where others now have to fight a battle you helped fuel? That’s gotta be worse.


My friend talked to an old professor of his, who also helped start the shelter, about this issue of gentrification and what part we may be playing in it. Ultimately the conclusion his professor came to was that if we were attempting to work in solidarity with the community around us, it would be ethical for us to live there. That's the conclusion I believe I'm coming to as well, but still part of me can't help but wonder if intent isn't enough. Sure I'm intending to work in solidarity, but does that mean I actually am? Sure I'm not intending to further gentrify the neighborhood, but does that mean I won't add to it eventually? This could get into the issue of solidarity in general and if that type of activism and social justice work can even exist, but that's another essay for another time. I just hope I'm not inadvertently hurting the community by moving there. I suppose only time will tell.

1 comment:

Leeooorahhhh said...

Kathleen,

I love this piece. I love and appreciate your honesty, the style of your writing which I find accessible and also it is very apparent to me how much you have grown in regards to understanding Whiteness and developing your identity as a White person. Many people are not able to do the work you have done and it takes a lot of bravery because it is a process of vulnerability and accountability.

I really want you to know and take in that I recognize the work you have put in. I think that is important.

I love the questions you allowed to arise and that you shared with us. They are many questions that I have had in terms of gentrification in Jamaica Plain.

As you know JP throughout the years has been becoming more and more gentrified. I live on the JP/Roxbury border right across from the projects. My neighborhood is primarily Black and Latino with some White people. I love my neighborhood even though most White people wouldn't come near here never mind choose to live here. It always blows my mind to hear comments people make about "the hood" or "the ghetto" and the stigma around it.

I don't know if you have noticed this, but wording and language around neighborhoods that are poor, Black and Latino areas is fascinating. The different way White people either refer to it or make indirect, semi-vague comments to it. Or even how they emphasis certain words when referring to my neighborhoods.

Anyhow, I have often thought about how my presence is attributing to the inevitable gentrification that will take place in Jackson Sq. Like you, because of my income I cannot afford many other neighborhoods and also this is my community that I work with. My work is my life and I feel strongly that one doing community/activism/organizing/educating should live where they are doing that work.

You ask tough questions about gentrification, solidarity work,integration...

I appreciate you vocalizing it, naming it and putting it out there. These are big questions that I have no answers to, yet. Maybe not ever. But, they need to be asked and thought about.

Thank you for providing the platform to do so. I know I will read your piece again in order to remind myself that these questions are present always.