Gentrification

I take a break every couple of hours and walk back through the neighborhood behind my office. I was offered smoke breaks when I first started and, although I don't smoke, I decided that was a horrible reason not to be allowed a break. So every 2 or 3 hours I go for a little walk to clear my head.

The neighborhood I walk through is not one of the nicer ones in town. It is mostly populated with small shotgun houses in various states of disrepair. You will periodically see the one of the old shotguns torn down and, since we're close to campus, nicer, newer, larger housing built in its place for students to move into with their parents' money. To the casual observer this may look like progress.

If you walk the same places around the same time every day for long enough you start to become part of a community. Most people around here may not know my name but they smile and wave as I walk by and often remark that I'm always walking through here. Once, an older gentleman waved me over to help him with something.

The man was retired and living off of Social Security. He was concerned because he received a letter in the mail regarding his Social Security benefits but was unable to read it. Or, at least, he was unable to read it well enough to understand it. He wanted me to read it with him and go over, exactly, what it meant. This was what he had to live off, after all. It was, essentially, a matter of life and death to him.

I happily read the letter with him and let him know that it meant that he was going to be getting a little more money. He was so happy he hugged me and treated me as if I were the one who was giving him the money. We struck up something of an informal friendship that day. I have, since then, always made sure to stop by and say hi as I'm passing by.

Today was a little different. As I approached the man's house I noticed all of his belongings were in the front yard. They weren't just littering the place. They were very neat and orderly. The man explained that this was because a friend was getting ready to pick them and him up. The landlady had sold his house. He had to leave.

The house is a horrible little thing. It's in disrepair. More than once as I passed by he would complain to me that the landlady wouldn't get anything fixed. But the price was right. He didn't have much money and the rent was cheap. You can't find very many places for that cheap. In fact, he had been unable to find any other place locally that he could afford. He told me he would be moving in with his sister for a while until he was able to find another place.

The house was sold, he said, to a developer. It is going to be demolished soon and more student housing will be built where it was. It will make the neighborhood look better. Property values will go up just a little. And a man will be out of his home.

There's only so many places poor people can live. We may not like their houses. We may not like their neighborhoods. They're not pretty. In some instances they're falling down. New housing looks a lot better. Well off white 20 somethings are more attractive than 70 year old illiterate retirees. But they've also got more options in life.

Let's not forget the human cost to "progress". Each one of these houses that are knocked down and rebuilt dislocates a person who was living there; a person who may not have any other options.