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Gentrification

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How do residents from the Brooklyn area survive gentrification?
Introduction
Neighborhoods can change in many different forms by social polarization, political factors, and integration of new neighbors or departure of long-time folks. These changes around a specific area are sum up as gentrification. The renewal of neighborhood environments that transform and attract middle and upper-class households and investors, creating problems for those who cannot afford rises of rents. However, what cause some dwellers to remain in their homes despite the rise of property values? Or how lower-class populations persist in gentrified zones? With the aid of federal and government institutions, low-income characters would not be able to continue living in their homes. Even though the process of restoration can result in the increase of the cost of life, some dwellers opt to remain in Green Point, Brooklyn because they enforce a number of methods, such as Section 8, Low Interest Rate programs and rent regulation, to fight displacement.
Definition
Generally speaking, gentrification is a two-edge process that usually pushes long-time dwellers from a neighborhood as the upgrading or improvement of the urban environment takes place around this specific neighborhood. In other words, residents opt to move out of the neighborhood because of the rise of rents, property value, and the renovation of the stock housing, which usually ends up with the replacement of the lower class with the middle to upper-class individuals. This displacement can usually extend farther afield. For instance, those who are pushed to move out by the rise of rents have no option, but to move outstate or even return to their native countries. Nevertheless, this phenomenon has dimensional perspectives that experts have observed and analyzed throughout the history. Therefore, numbers of researches have been posted to study the positive and negative impact of gentrification, the waves of inhabitants’ displacement, the increase of local businesses, and the intensification in the cost of living among these gentrified neighborhoods.
A field investigation indicates that a displacement of people can be expanded to many sectors around the city or out of the city, locations like New Jersey, upstate New York and Long Island (Newman & Wyly, 2005). Furthermore, the research also states that “older and even younger immigrants return to their country of origin when they are priced out of their housing," in neighborhoods such as Fort Greene and Harlem, having in mind that these communities have a large black population. Correspondingly, this means that the issue with gentrification intensifies even more when the tenants have inferior sustainable resources. In addition to this, gentrification triggers another tricky circumstance around the city, which is homelessness. In 2002, members of neighborhoods and CDCs fellows, who are the responsible for the development and preservation of affordable housing, annunciated the highest number of people displaced from their houses that ended up in homeless shelters since 1970s, (Kathe and Wyly, 2005).
History of Gentrification
The term gentrification comes from the Old French word “genterise” which means “of gentle birth," in the 14th century (Dictionary.com, 2014). Surprisingly, the concept of gentrification is not relatively old; sociologist Ruth Glass introduced it in the 60s, who observed a change in the social structure of neighborhoods in 1964. “…Once this process of 'gentrification' starts in a district it goes on rapidly until all or most of the working class occupiers are displaced and the whole social character of the district is changed” (Glass, 1964, p. XVII). Since then, this process has been seen from different point of views from other specialists and it has developed a social awareness within the lower class. Furthermore, with more recent investigations on this topic, the addition of a new form of liberalism policies has emerged. As a result, the process of gentrification is now studied from other angles like regional perspectives such as Leeds in England and Barcelona in Spain (Atkinson and Bridge, 2005). Meanwhile in the late 1970s, gentrification was starting to be perceived as familiar event since it appeared to abridge all the social and economic manifestations, such as social polarization, failures in the market and inequalities that molded the American life in inner-cities communities (Kathe Newman and Elvin Wyly, 2005).
Gentrification in Green Point, Brooklyn
As the history of many neighborhoods around the New York was being developed, the arrival of immigrants changed entire neighborhoods. Particularly, in Green Point, Brooklyn, where the major population were integrated by Poland after World War II, (Pearsall, 2012). However, after owners of industries decided to shut down manufacturing establishments, the environmental aspect has been more attractive to more people. As a result, this neighborhood suffered rapid transformations periods with the arrival of Yuppies in this area. Yuppies refer to productive young and wealthy professionals, with a luxurious lifestyle, (adapted from the Oxford Dictionary, 2014). And as the transformation continued, new businesses were being established, for instance, bakeries were replaced by bars and bodegas, (Pearsall, 2012).
In addition to this, in the early 2000s, the neighborhood of Green Point suffered a boom of restoration housing stock that triggered even more the increases of cost of life (Pearsall, 2012). The median rents increased substantially every year, and the monthly median rents in market rate rental units went from approximately eight hundred dollars in 2002 to thirteen hundred dollars in 2008 (Pearsall, 2012). Thus, this triggered an increase of a quarter of rents in gentrifying neighborhoods due to the sum up of all the transformations around this area. Which perhaps many folks would not consider this growth as intensified, but for those who struggle to afford the rent, any increment more than a hundred dollars is significantly threatening enough.
Methods to Persist Gentrification
However, many individuals from gentrified neighborhoods have survived these rises in rental fees one way or another by private or public aid programs. For instance, Kathe and Wyly, 2005, state that rent stabilization programs are the most common approach to fight the increment of rents. Along with more public housing programs, dispensation from rents increases for elder citizens, Section 8, low tax rates for homeowners. As a result, more than half of house families receive rent regulations and less than a third are unregulated or not controlled, according to New York University Furman Center’s statistics. As well as “one out of 15 poor renters living in a gentrifying neighborhood is able to do so in the unregulated rental market.” Surprisingly, after all environmental changes and rising of housing values by the market force, low-income dwellers use these beneficial methods to stay in their neighborhoods.
For better understanding of the process by which these residents from Brooklyn neighborhoods still are in their homes, it is indispensable to explore and define these systems. First, rent stabilization is a program that provide legal limitations on the rent, protecting residents for the increases of fees, maintain property owners receiving reasonable incomes, (Rent stabilization and rent control, 2012). Similarly, Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) is a program designed for extremely poor families and elder citizens with households in the New York State, that provide the opportunity to afford decent housing, (Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher, 2012). And lastly, State of New York Mortgage Agency (SONYMA), known as low-interest rate program that qualifies low and moderate income individuals who are first-time buyers, offering low down payment mortgage, (Low Interest Rate Program, 2013).
Conclusion
As we can observe, gentrification is a double-edge sword; however, this process of transformation of working classes areas into middle and upper classes residential has shown its positive impact to long-time dwellers who were looking for systems to resist the increase of cost of living. The aid of the government is crucial to these people and brings hope to succeed in a neighborhood that has changed a lot. By understanding these systems, we can have a decent idea of what these low-income class people have experienced. As a result, people with little opportunities to continue living in a gentrified or gentrifying neighborhood must appreciate the help from public or private sources, who to provide these marginalized people more tools to combat gentrification.
Work Cited
Atkinson, R., & Bridge, G. (2005). Housing and Societies. Gentrification in a Global
Context: the New Urban Colonialism 57(8), 33-42. London.
Fact Sheet#1 Rent Stabilization and Rent Control (2012). Retrieved July 30th 2014, from http://www.nyshcr.org/Rent/FactSheets/orafac1.htm
Glass R, 1964, Aspects of Change, in Centre for Urban Studies (ed) London:
Aspects of Change (MacGibbon and Kee, London).
Gentrification. (2014) Dictionary Reference. Retrieved July 29th 2014, from http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/gentry Gentrification. History of Gentrification. (2008). Retrieved July 29th, from https://sites.google.com/site/gg2wpdermotmitchell/history-and-explanation-ofgentrification Low Interest Rate Program. New York State Homes & Community Renewal. (2013).
Retrieved July 30th 2014, from http://www.nyshcr.org/Topics/Home/Buyers/SONYMA/LowInterestRateProgram.htm Newman, K., & Wyly, E. (2005, July/August). Gentrification and Resistance in New
York City. National Housing Institute, 142. Retrieved July 25th, 2014, from http://www.nhi.org/online/issues/142/gentrification.html Newman, K., & Wyly, E. K. (2006). The right to stay put, revisited: Gentrification
And Resistance To displacement in New York City. Urban Studies
(Routledge), 43(1), 23-57.
Pearsall H. Moving out or Moving in? Resilience to Environmental
Gentrification in New York City. Local Environment [serial online].
October 2012; 17 (9):1013-1026. Academic Search Complete, Ipswich,
MA. Accessed July 20, 2014.
Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher Program. New York State Homes & Community Renewal. (2012). Retrieved July 30th 2014, from http://www.nyshcr.org/Programs/section8hcv/ Yuppie, (2014) OxfordDictionaries.com. Retrieved July 30th 2014.
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/yuppie?q=yuppy

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