Bernie Sanders offers 3 ideas to help battle gentrification while in Greenville

[David__77]

Three concepts emerged, the first of which is an effort the city of Greenville created two years ago — a housing trust fund.

...

The other two proposals haven't been implemented here — requiring developers to provide a certain amount of affordable housing in developments, often referred to as "inclusionary zoning," and laws mandating rent control for working-class renters.

"If you want to build fancy housing, that's fine," Sanders said in reference to requiring developers to aside affordable units. "But you're going to have to build a certain percentage of affordable housing."

https://www.greenvilleonline.com/story/news/2019/04/19/bernie-sanders-south-carolina-rally-danny-glover-dr-cornel-west-affordable-housing-greenville-sc/3520397002/

[Uncle Joe]

1. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread David.

[David__77]

2. I appreciate the focus on policy.

Hopefully this can be associated with specific legislation as well.

[Uncle Joe]

15. I do as well David,

with Bernie policies are "the prime directive" and I believe this is why he resonates so well with the people.

[AlexSFCA]

3. gentrification saves lives

It is amazing how many total crime ridden ghettoes were transformed into beautiful beighborhoods with MUCH reduced crime, particularly violent crime. I can’t wait for Detroit to fully gentrify, I wish more tech companies relocate there and start the new silicon valley. As a victim of crime in the “ghetto”, a survivor, I will never support any efforts to ‘curb’ gentrification because it literally saves lives and there is nothing more important than that. Gentrification is one of the core progressive values.

[David__77]

5. I think "gentrification" can be done well, or not.

If "gentrification" is making improvements to buildings' safety and function, and raises perceived aesthetic value - that sounds good to me. I think that that can be done alongside making provision for income-qualified housing and rent control.

[Kentonio]

6. Raising standards is great

But it doesn’t help if it prices low income people out of the housing market and just pushes them into other ghettos. It’s not an unreasonable policy to make sure there is still affordable housing for everyone.

[David__77]

8. Yeah, gentrification doesn't solve poverty.

Imposing requirements that rents of a specified share of units not exceed some threshold in a neighborhood seems very reasonable. I don't want the country to become ever more geographically polarized.

[artislife]

4. Seattle used to do that in the 90s

I worked at an apartment complex that had a good number of affordable units.

Then Amazon came.

Now there is nothing less than 1200 for a box. They are making noises of doing something.


Meanwhile, we have a homelessness crisis. In 2008, I was wiped out and found that there is really no help for single childless women. I am not an alcoholic so I didn't qualify for half way houses and there were only 2 places that could help me. I was close to iiving in my car. Thankfully, couch surfing and living in cold, crappy places to other houses that were in the process of foreclosure. I made it out. But is was hard.

And I worked through it all.


I live in a basement studio in another county now. And still it takes one of my two paychecks a month just to pay the rent.

[David__77]

7. Where I live, rents have doubled in some neighborhoods in the last decade.

I understand that market forces are a function of the demand of those with money - I think it's reasonable to implement policy to guide and control housing markets.

[artislife]

9. On our local FB group of Buy, Sell trade

There are post after post of people looking to live inside four walls that they can actually pay for. Families, singles and the elderly.

It is so tough. Even an hour out, the rents are still too high. I saw a map of the US and they gave each state a country according to its standard of living and expense. Washington state was Switzerland. I am contemplating moving. But the rest of the country seems so red and not going through climate change well at all. I worry about good water supply.


Something has to change. Slow hasn't worked for us.

[MineralMan]

10. A lot of places have such inclusionary zoning laws.

They work, sort of. Kind of. Sometimes. Until they don't.

One of the problems is that there are conflicts between laws requiring certain standards for residential development and laws requiring the buiilding of "affordable" housing.

All too often, existing affordable housing gets torn down and replaced with distinctly unaffordable housing. Construction costs and zoning requirements often make it impossible to build truly affordable new housing, so rent subsidies and other methods have to be used. The problem is exacerbated by people not wanting to live in truly mixed income housing areas.

We see it constantly in our major cities, where market rate housing always takes precedence over affordable housing. When a mix is the answer, within a particular area, not enough people who can afford the market rates want to live adjacent to people who can't. So economic bigotry plays a role.

[BlueFlorida]

11. Old ideas presented as new inventions

[Tom Rinaldo]

13. He didn't say they were new. He said they were good.

In fact Sanders himself employed some of these concepts when he was a Mayor himself, a long time ago.

Is backing public financing of elections, for example, laughable just because it isn't a new invention? I don't care how old an idea is. If it is good, and especially if it has not been sufficiently implemented across the country, I welcome advocacy for it.

[David__77]

14. I can agree that old ideas can be worthy of support.

And even if all candidates had the same position on them, I think they’re worth talking about.

I don’t think all candidates are supportive of rent control.

[mopinko]

12. this debate has been raging here in chicago for decades. my thoughts-

gentrification is good, imho.
i live in a hood that was regularly described in the local news as "gang infested".
beautiful old buildings were crumbling into disrepair. local icons were the same.
that was 30+ years ago.
now it is the hot hood for flippers lucky enough to get their hands on a building. tons of condos.
high property taxes, and good schools.

now, i live in a hood whose geography, next to lake michigan, a public transport hub, there is only so low it is ever going to go.
housing stock is also such that it tends toward a high percentage of owner v renters.
we are also anchored by a large catholic university.

still, it was pretty sad in many spots when i moved in.


but one bad building by one bad building, in my time here, there has been a ton, and i mean a ton, of money dumped into the housing stock here.
lakefront apartment properties that had been chopped up during the baby boom, then crumbled into crappy "affordable" apts were returned to their former glory and then some.
a small but steady stream of beautiful but rundown big homes w big yards kept local trades people busy, and made a few people rich.

the real estate arm of the pritzker family invested millions. and millions. they did the most amazing rehabs and restructuring of neighborhood gems.
they took an old 6+1 commercial building, kept the outside, but spent $20m turning it into a concert venue and restaurant.
they turned a lot of stately old homes into successful b&b's, including a meticulous restoration and addition on flw's bach house.

i could go on. and on.

and how do the folks in the hood feel?
they just dumped the 6 term alderman, most saying he was "too close to developers."
now, he deserved to be dumped for many, many reasons.
but really, every damn development that needs a zoning change, which requires a public meeting, bring the howling trolls out of the woodwork to scream about gentrification and rent control.
they hate any change. they picket and dig in over the most mundane, decrepit building that comes down.
they are still fuming about a building that came down 20 years ago.
they also despise the university, which stabilized property values about the time i landed here, and helped turn around an historic corridor from flop houses to showpieces.
hard core eat the rich.

a connected fight goes on about tiff districts.
i grant they are widely abused, but they have also wrought a real renaissance.
they turned post industrial wastelands into hoods where you almost have to wait in line for them to take alllllll your money to live there.
they turned a downtown where you scurried to get out before dark to a 24/7 playground.
they built a world class park in the air above train tracks.


all i usually find to say to these people is-
if you dont change, you die.
if we dont share, we starve.
unless you plan to, in fact, eat the rich.