Sorry, Mayor Adams: Gentrification is nothing like slavery — in fact, it’s about freedomBy Howard Husock
June 20, 2022
Mayor Eric Adams was right to honor the memory of Seneca Village, the community of free blacks that once stood on part of the site used to create Central Park. But he’s misguided in asserting, as he did in his Juneteenth speech, that gentrification — and the changes it can have on current-day black neighborhoods — is akin to slavery. In fact, it’s just the opposite: Gentrification is an aspect of freedom.
It is well worth recalling the many communities of successful black-owned businesses and property owners — from Harlem to St. Louis to Pittsburgh to Detroit, that were cleared for the alleged greater good of urban renewal and, like Seneca Village, without compensation for their owners.
Think of Pittsburgh’s Hill neighborhood, immortalized by the brilliant playwright August Wilson — replete with a rich community life, yet labeled a slum and replaced by public housing.
But buying and selling property is not seizing. Adams’ call to “preserve” black neighborhoods ignores that urban real estate constantly changes as the economy changes, as commuting patterns change, as the climate changes. That’s just not how healthy cities work — for any racial group.
“Preserving neighborhoods” means freezing them, and long-time residents may suffer, rather than prosper, as a result. Somehow declaring Bedford-Stuyvesant to be permanently a black neighborhood would have meant denying long-time owners the chance to sell their homes for far more than they originally paid — and, in the process, to build the inter-generational wealth blacks are likely to lack.
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Source:
https://nypost.com/2022/06/20/gentrification-is-nothing-like-slavery-in-fact-its-about-freedom/
