Human Right or Commodity? Which housing paradigm do you want?
In July 2014 I woke up to a beautiful political art installation across the street from my house. “Gentrification Avenue,” the hand fashioned street sign read. In its simplicity it captured the confusion, sorrow and rage felt by me and my North Beacon Hill neighbors when every rental home on our street- save two - was snatched up by an unknown developer in a handful of months. Working class families of color were evicted from their homes to clear the way for multi-million dollar condos.
By spring 2015, the Latino immigrant family across the street was displaced. We cried as my son’s best friend packed up his Legos, Nerf guns and stuffed animals to moved two miles south, into a neighborhood that, for the time being, remains marginally affordable. Gentrification went from being a remote issue, to a very real problem impacting our lives.
When assigned to create a popular education “artifact” for the graduate degree I am pursuing in adult education, it didn’t take long for me to choose the issues of gentrification and displacement. “An artifact,” we were told, “is something that an educator produces to make knowledge of the marginalized visible.” This was my opportunity to dig into the historical and structural forces that created the current mess, and uplift the perspectives of those most impacted.
The term “gentrification,” was coined in 1964 by Ruth Glass, then Director of Social Research at University College in London, to describe the displacement of working class renters by middle class homeowners, (Slater, 2011). For Glass the term was closely linked to England’s class structure. Within U.S. cities, gentrification is also synonymous with race. During the course of constructing my project, I knew I would not escape examining my own role and position, as a middle class white homeowner living in a historically working class, multi-racial neighborhood. But, I’ll come back to that…
Joaquin “Wakx” Uy, a board member at the Social Justice Fund Northwest and housing justice activist, told me that to understand Seattle’s present day housing crisis, “you have to start at the point at which housing became a commodity, rather than a human right.” When Wax said this, it made me think of a place I had visited in which the opposite was true: Cuba!
By spring 2015, the Latino immigrant family across the street was displaced. We cried as my son’s best friend packed up his Legos, Nerf guns and stuffed animals to moved two miles south, into a neighborhood that, for the time being, remains marginally affordable. Gentrification went from being a remote issue, to a very real problem impacting our lives.
When assigned to create a popular education “artifact” for the graduate degree I am pursuing in adult education, it didn’t take long for me to choose the issues of gentrification and displacement. “An artifact,” we were told, “is something that an educator produces to make knowledge of the marginalized visible.” This was my opportunity to dig into the historical and structural forces that created the current mess, and uplift the perspectives of those most impacted.
The term “gentrification,” was coined in 1964 by Ruth Glass, then Director of Social Research at University College in London, to describe the displacement of working class renters by middle class homeowners, (Slater, 2011). For Glass the term was closely linked to England’s class structure. Within U.S. cities, gentrification is also synonymous with race. During the course of constructing my project, I knew I would not escape examining my own role and position, as a middle class white homeowner living in a historically working class, multi-racial neighborhood. But, I’ll come back to that…
Joaquin “Wakx” Uy, a board member at the Social Justice Fund Northwest and housing justice activist, told me that to understand Seattle’s present day housing crisis, “you have to start at the point at which housing became a commodity, rather than a human right.” When Wax said this, it made me think of a place I had visited in which the opposite was true: Cuba!
In the early 2000’s, I traveled to Cuba three times as a member of the Everywoman’s Delegation through local workers’ rights organization, LELO. There I heard about former domestic workers who were able to purchase the homes vacated by their wealthy employers following the 1959 Cuban Revolution. We visited a Havana open air plaza where, on certain weekends, people gathered to “trade” apartments; since private home sales were then illegal under Cuban housing law. Unlike in the Soviet Union, where upwards of 79% of urban housing was government or state-owned (Struyk et al, 2001), Cuba’s post-Revolution housing policies made homeownership accessible for 85% of the population. To confront urban housing shortages in the 1980’s, Cubans organized “microbrigades,” and trained unemployed youth and workers to build new housing. 60% of the completed apartments were then reserved for microbrigade volunteers themselves, (Kapur and Smith, 2002).
I think it’s fair to say that in Cuba housing has been treated as a human right. In the United States, however, Wakx nailed it: housing is a commodity. This is exactly what Inye Wokoma, artist and third generation Central District homeowner, was driving at when he told me economic, rather than social forces, shape neighborhoods and communities. “The shape of that change is always about winners and losers,” he said, “And we already know that people with the least amount of economic and political power are the default losers in that process.”
I think it’s fair to say that in Cuba housing has been treated as a human right. In the United States, however, Wakx nailed it: housing is a commodity. This is exactly what Inye Wokoma, artist and third generation Central District homeowner, was driving at when he told me economic, rather than social forces, shape neighborhoods and communities. “The shape of that change is always about winners and losers,” he said, “And we already know that people with the least amount of economic and political power are the default losers in that process.”
In Inye’s neighborhood, the default losers are most certainly African Americans : homeowners driven out by escalating property taxes; and renters pushed out of a city with the dubious distinction of the highest rent increases in the nation (Balk, 2014). The story of cohesive, culturally rooted urban Black communities dismantled by developers and upper income white people in search of trendy housing is as much about race, as it is class. The Gentrification and Housing Justice Timeline I built as part of this project tells that story.
And now we return to the uncomfortable self-reflection that I promised. In collaboration with housing justice organizers, I hope to use the Timeline as an educational tool that helps people connect their own stories to a broader narrative about race, class, government policy and people’s resistance. In my exercise, modeled on the work of Atlanta based popular education group Project South, I will give participants this assignment:
“Choose a moment, or two, on the timeline, and tell a story about how you benefited from or were negatively impacted by those events.”
It seems only fair that I model a response; so here goes. My slide: ( 1950) Between 1934 and 1962, the federal government backs $120 billion of home loans. More than 98% go to white homebuyers. (California Newsreel). In 1945 my grandfather, Hilton Powell Cornell, returned home from World War II and his young family became renters. But with the help of an FHA loan, and likely a lower interest rate through the GI Bill, my grandparents quickly purchased their first home. Fifty odd years later, I inherited half of his estate: $20,000, which became the down payment on my first home on North Beacon Hill, a neighborhood that was majority people of color at the time.
In researching my Timeline, I learned that homeownership is one of the biggest factors contributing to our country’s racial wealth gap, (United for a Fair Economy). So my question is this, Am I part of the problem of gentrification, or part of the solution?
- by Kristyn Joy
And now we return to the uncomfortable self-reflection that I promised. In collaboration with housing justice organizers, I hope to use the Timeline as an educational tool that helps people connect their own stories to a broader narrative about race, class, government policy and people’s resistance. In my exercise, modeled on the work of Atlanta based popular education group Project South, I will give participants this assignment:
“Choose a moment, or two, on the timeline, and tell a story about how you benefited from or were negatively impacted by those events.”
It seems only fair that I model a response; so here goes. My slide: ( 1950) Between 1934 and 1962, the federal government backs $120 billion of home loans. More than 98% go to white homebuyers. (California Newsreel). In 1945 my grandfather, Hilton Powell Cornell, returned home from World War II and his young family became renters. But with the help of an FHA loan, and likely a lower interest rate through the GI Bill, my grandparents quickly purchased their first home. Fifty odd years later, I inherited half of his estate: $20,000, which became the down payment on my first home on North Beacon Hill, a neighborhood that was majority people of color at the time.
In researching my Timeline, I learned that homeownership is one of the biggest factors contributing to our country’s racial wealth gap, (United for a Fair Economy). So my question is this, Am I part of the problem of gentrification, or part of the solution?
- by Kristyn Joy
References
Balk, G. (2014) Seattle saw steepest rent hike among major US cities. The Seattle Times. http://blogs.seattletimes.com/fyi-guy/2014/09/18/census-seattle-saw-steepest-rent-hike-among-major-u-s-cities/
California Newsreel (n.d.). Where race lives, in Race: The power of an illusion. (Web site and educational toolkit). http://www.pbs.org/race/006_WhereRaceLives/006_00-home.htm
Kapur, T. and Smith, A. (2002). Housing policy in Castro’s Cuba. International Union for Housing Finance (website). Published courtesy of the Joint Center for Housing Policy at Harvard University. http://www.housingfinance.org/publications/members-publications
Slater, T. (2011). Gentrification of the City. In G. Bridge & S. Watson (Eds.), The new blackwell companion to the city (pp. 571–585). Wiley-Blackwell.
Struyk, R. J., Puzanov, A. S., & Kolodeznikova, A. (2001). Administrative Practices in Russia’s Housing Allowance Programme. Urban Studies, 38(7), 1045–1067.
United for a Fair Economy (n.d.). Closing the racial wealth divide trainer’s manual. (Website download). http://www.faireconomy.org/racial_wealth_divide
Balk, G. (2014) Seattle saw steepest rent hike among major US cities. The Seattle Times. http://blogs.seattletimes.com/fyi-guy/2014/09/18/census-seattle-saw-steepest-rent-hike-among-major-u-s-cities/
California Newsreel (n.d.). Where race lives, in Race: The power of an illusion. (Web site and educational toolkit). http://www.pbs.org/race/006_WhereRaceLives/006_00-home.htm
Kapur, T. and Smith, A. (2002). Housing policy in Castro’s Cuba. International Union for Housing Finance (website). Published courtesy of the Joint Center for Housing Policy at Harvard University. http://www.housingfinance.org/publications/members-publications
Slater, T. (2011). Gentrification of the City. In G. Bridge & S. Watson (Eds.), The new blackwell companion to the city (pp. 571–585). Wiley-Blackwell.
Struyk, R. J., Puzanov, A. S., & Kolodeznikova, A. (2001). Administrative Practices in Russia’s Housing Allowance Programme. Urban Studies, 38(7), 1045–1067.
United for a Fair Economy (n.d.). Closing the racial wealth divide trainer’s manual. (Website download). http://www.faireconomy.org/racial_wealth_divide