Gentrification, Portland, and OTR
Posted on July 4th, 2007 by Jackie Danicki
People in Cincinnati are for-EV-er comparing that city to Portland, usually when talking about the proposed streetcar. (BTW, I’ve polled a few friends who live in or lived in Portland about the impact of the streetcar, and the results might not please those who are pushing for Cincinnati to emulate Portland.) My friend Nancy Rommelmann has a great piece on the gentrification of her own neighborhood in Portland that made me think of Cincinnati’s Over-the-Rhine neighborhood. (If you’re sick of people bragging about living in OTR as if it makes them some kind of white martyr, raise your hand!) Well worth a read.
Filed under: Life
Get a grip! Your friend Nancy is set to make a fortune off the property she bought just 4 years ago. ($231,000 in appreciation in 4 years?) as a Portland native I wish she would have stayed in Los Angeles, or better yet, never left New York.
Get a grip on…what, exactly? What’s your beef with Nancy’s article? What’s your beef with people being free to live wherever the hell they choose?
Thanks! You made the point that Nancy never had the courage to make. Namely, people are free to live wherever the hell they choose.” Be that, OTR or in the Boise neighborhood that Nancy has called gentrified.
But Boise *has* been gentrified, in terms of wealthier people coming in and the area undergoing something of a facelift. I don’t sense any judgement in stating that plain fact.
If I have a beef with Nancy’s piece - and it is likely one dictated by limited space - it’s that it did not ask why people believe that the demographic make-up of neighborhoods is something we should ever endeavor to plan or engineer.
Listen up Jackie. The Boise neighborhood was very likely the sort of place that one would expect to be shot, beat, or robbed in the 25 years prior to Nancy Rommelmann arriving and trying to pull the door closed behind her. Poor black folks should be just as peeved by Rommelmann’s crocodile tears as I am, but for a different reason. It sounds like Rommelmann wants to deny long situated homeowners the equity they deserve in order to preserve a diverse environment for Nancy and her ilk. Does that fit? Tell me if I’ve read too much into her “plan” for the future of Boise.
Instead of raising their hand they should use it to lend that hand to help someone displaced (they aren’t hard to find) due to their shelter/low income housing being taken from them so it can be gentrified/renovated it into a luxury condo, a new yuppie club, a niche/artsy business, etc.
But then the people doing/moving into the “new” places to blame, that rests soley on the Shoulders of the City Goverment in cohoots with the 3CDC and companies like Western-Southern, et al.
Why do people in Cincinatti feel the need to compare with Portland specifically. They don’t seem to have too much in common to me, other than being medium sized American cities. Ohio and Oregon are very different states.
Urban neighbourhoods evolve over time. They just do. The more economically vibrant the city the more rapidly it happens. This is one reason to enjoy living in cities. Trying to stop it or manage it is foolish and counterproductive. For one thing this reduces the charm of it.
What Nancy didn’t mention was what the neighbourhood was like before the period before it became gentrified. Like for instance, who built it? It may not have always been black, and I am sure it was always evolving. The article sort of suggests that the neighbourhood is evolving from something static to something else static, but of course it would never have actually been static.
I just happened across your reference to the Willamette Week article today. Just about every person of color who read Nancy’s piece is offended by her invasion of her black neighbors’ privacy and self-congratulatory tone. Perhaps you can talk to her about her ‘martyrdom’ since it is clear she is not interested in interacting with people of color unless she can patronize them.
Kevin Fitzroy makes his racist views clear in the comments to the WW article.
Julia, you are an ignorant and deeply nasty piece of work. Nancy has a mixed race child and is one of the most gentle, fair, loving people this world has produced. You know not a thing and should be ashamed of yourself for being so recklessy libelous. Get a life.