The Gentrifier’s Lament
21st October 2010
Megan McArdle is more realistic than 95% of the rest of Washington.
I have no idea how you could stop this process. To keep our neighborhoods the way Jacobs and I liked them would involve massive coercion not just of real estate owners, but of merchants, food vendors . . . everyone in the network of service providers that supports a neighborhood. The more people like me who move into my current neighborhood, the more services the neighborhood will attract–and those, in turn, will bring further waves of gentrifiers who will use their higher incomes to drive up rents, home prices, and the assessed values upon which property taxes are based.I want the services, but I don’t want this to price out all the people who already live there. Unfortunately, it’s a package deal.
It’s called a free market. Treasure it while you can.