Sometime I hear people always vouch for gentrification because they say it will build more wealth in the city to help cash poor people later. I want to propose a simple 2 step alternative plan for the City of Birmingham.
1) Pass a living wage bill. In Birmingham, Alabama 27.3% of the population lives below the poverty line. That is much higher than the state poverty level of 17.6%. A city living wage bill of say $11.50 an hour would bring and keep massive amounts of wealth into our city. Think about this, in areas such as Southwest Birmingham there is literally nothing but Churches Chickens and McDonalds. That is it. No restaurants, no grocery stores, nothing. So if those restaurants started paying 4 dollars more per hour that would be about $8,000 per full time employee more per year. Assuming they have 12 full time employees, and 4 part time employees, that would be about $112,000 more per year per store being kept in communities. I have been told the Jimmy Johns in 5-pts South makes about $12,000+ profit per week going to the owners salary. That's $624,000 per year. Meaning, he could easily spare $112,000 a year. He would still be making $512,000 in salary per year. This of course means more money for people to buy houses, more money for people to consume at retail and food stores, and more tax revenue.
2) All the tax breaks and money that City Hall would have given to development projects that would cause gentrification, instead gets put into a cooperative loan fund. This loan fund would be specifically for people trying to start worker-owner coops, consumer coops, housing coops, and community land trusts. The loans would be given out at 4%. That number being chosen here because inflation averages around 3.8%. So it means the fund would keep up with inflation and wouldn't decrease over time. Worker-Owner coops stimulate small business ownership within Birmingham. Building and keeping wealth in our city, and building up our citizens. Consumer coops help give consumers and residents power and incentive to buy from these small local businesses. And Housing Coops and Community Land Trusts deal with our housing problem. In the state of Alabama 70.7% of residents own their place of residence, while only 50.2% do in Birmingham. Home ownership creates residential ownership over their place of living and their community, which can help builds and stabilize neighborhoods.
Zero extra money would be spent with these two points, but with simply the passing of these two ideas we could drastically change Birmingham.
Please define for me "gentrification" and differentiate it from "revitalization."
ReplyDeleteAlso, to help me see what it looks like, give me an example here in Birmingham
Absolutely. Gentrification is basically doing economic development of the physical space without addressing the underlying economic needs of the community residents. When this happens, it causes an inflation of the property values at a pace that the neighborhood residents cannot keep up with. When this happens, people can no longer afford to live in their home. If they own their house, there property taxes go up, and they no longer can afford to pay them, meaning they loose their home all together. If they are a renter, the rent goes up (due to the increased property tax/value) and they have to move. Being that we are 50 owner and 50 renter, this would happen equally with in the city. Of course many of those owners that lose their house then usually become renters. This only contributes to the problem with a lack of home ownership.
DeleteAn example is Avondale. Already property values have gone up by 60%, yet their is no more access to living wage jobs for those residents. If this continues (which it will due to the fact that Avondale is currently being redeveloped), it will cause a breaking point unto which the residents can no longer afford their place of residence. Forcing them to move from Avondale.
A great example of a southern city choosing a different path which starts with grassroots socioeconomic development is Jackson, Mississippi, which has very similar city dynamics. I am very excited to watch what they will be doing.
We have already been reaching out to people in Jackson doing this type of work, and they have offered to work with us in Birmingham.
Thanks for bringing up the topic, I've often wondered how to approach to issue of gentrification as a side-effect to urban renewel. These are both a couple of solution worthy of further exploration.
ReplyDelete