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“Our family was renting it for $800, it got sold for $1.3 million, or something like that.” What followed? Eviction.
When I first saw this video, it touched a raw nerve with me. While the city featured was San Francisco, this situation could uniquely be applied to many cities in America
In my thirty years in the DMV, I have seen various metamorphoses of Washington DC. From The Murder Capital and the Crack Epidemic to the gentrification wonderland it is today. I have seen my cousin’s former neighborhood paved over to make way for the baseball stadium … and yes, it was formally a rough neighborhood.
I have also been ribbed by well meaning friends to move closer to the inner city. This drives me absolutely insane. Why would I want to pay more money in rent to live in places which other minorities like myself were essentially forcibly removed from? You would be surprised how many people look shocked when I tell them that Georgetown was once a thriving black neighborhood. Don’t look so shocked. It’s still happening today.
Sure, gentrification brings fresh business to the neighborhood and some individuals might make a good sum of money off the sale of their property (if they owned it to begin with) but something is very wrong with the picture when we see minority group after minority group displaced from the neighbors they called “home”.