Gentrification and City Policy: Changing Soccer Fields and Neighborhoods

by Alina Schnake-Mahl

“Who cares about the neighborhood?”

That was the defiant declaration of a young white techie as his group of co-workers attempted to kick local kids off a soccer field they had rented in San Francisco’s Mission District. Captured in a viral video (“Mission Playground”, 2014), the confrontation, and a follow-up video by one of the displaced residents, added kindling to a smoldering controversy about the implications of gentrification.

San Francisco, once the capital of utopian and alternative thinking, is facing an influx of tech money and people buying up property and housing, and driving costs out of reach of many residents. The Mission is but one neighborhood of hundreds in the Bay area, and thousands across the country, experiencing massive upheaval by gentrification.

Though many vilified these new mission residents for their behavior (Rodriguez, 2014; Wong, 2014), perceiving their actions as callous and condescending, the greater fault lies with the city. It was the city that chose to put the field on the market, opening up the possibility of ownership and displacement. Individual actors, the tech workers or gentrifiers generally, take advantage of a system that puts power in the hands of those with money; they are actors on a playing field made lopsided by more than just San Francisco’s sloping hills. Through policy, taxes, incentives and contracts, the city, by choosing to support processes that encourage or prevent gentrification, plays an active and causative role in this process of neighborhood change.

There is reason for a city to welcome gentrification, as it often results in increased taxes, removes blighted buildings, raises property values, and can eliminate some challenges of neighborhoods of concentrated poverty (Freeman, 2006). This bolsters a common view, perceiving these changes simply as the result of the market economy acting without constraints or incentives: supply and demand driving up prices and driving out previous residents. This market-based perspective assumes the process is inevitable and benign (Hartley, 2013; Sullivan, 2014). A part of a natural cyclical process of neighborhood change; waves of populations flowing into a neighborhood, splashing their preferences and identities onto the neighborhood to alter its personality, followed by a subsequent wave, maybe with larger and more powerful whitecaps, cresting and breaking to disperse the long-term less economically advantaged and usually less white residents. The city sees only this development and economic improvement, focusing on the increased police presence, new supermarkets, coffee shops, yoga studios, and artisanal pickle options. Meanwhile, it forgets the consequences for those who occupied those apartments, homes and businesses prior to change (Macaig, 2015). This creates a comfortable narrative of the present, colored by only short-term memory.

However, if instead gentrification is malleable, a process supported by structural, social and economic forces, then it does not absolutely need to favor those with monetary power. It is not natural law; skepticism towards improvement is healthy, as poor neighborhoods cultivate valuable culture and assets, not just “blight.” And “improvement” can mean destructive forces unleashed upon residents and communities when neighbors, friends and trusted businesses are forced out due to rising rents (Causa Justa, 2014). It risks establishing neighborhoods of stark income inequality, allowing for appropriation of community power according to socioeconomic position.

An historical view moreover, reminds us of decades of disinvestment and abandonment of inner city minority neighborhoods, of the recent predatory lending and ensuing foreclosure crisis. It recalls residential redlining, white flight, blockbusting, restrictive covenants and zoning restrictions, and urban renewal that resulted in the drastic geographic concentration of poverty and race (Kennedy & Laonard, 2001).

Further, this history is only the echo of a much larger pattern. The viral video of the field fiasco was filmed in mid October, close to Columbus day; a day venerating the man who mistakenly encountered a land occupied by millions of indigenous people, decimated the populations, displaced them from their land, and declared ownership over the “New World” for Spain. We celebrate Columbus for his contribution to Western progress, often forgetting about the forced sacrifice of indigenous populations; in the same way the celebration and narrative of hip, gentrified neighborhoods is a culturally convenient sanitized tale.

Colonialism and gentrification share a vocabulary. Both academic literatures term those who occupied an area before new residents arrived as “indigenous populations (Freeman, 2006).” They are the original residents before new arrivals changed the physical landscape, cultural norms, power structure, and majority population. In this nation and across the world, historical treatment of indigenous peoples is synonymous with displacement, manipulation, exploitation and forced migration. All is justified in the name of expansion, development, progress, improvement, and the “betterment of the nation.” The question, then, is not whether development generally- or gentrification specifically- is wholly beneficial or harmful, but rather what sacrifice indigenous peoples pay for the sake of “development”.

Cities experiencing gentrification include New York City, Boston, Washington DC, Chicago, San Francisco, Oakland, Portland and Seattle (Macaig, 2015)- all widely perceived bastions of progressive policy and people. These are the very places that need to lead the way, to support residents across the entire socioeconomic spectrum. Places like San Francisco can still embrace utopian visioning and enact social policy that levels fields without selling fields. In times of increasing economic disparity, coupled with an ecologic, economic and cultural impetus towards concentrated urban living, this is a manifestation of one of the question of our times: how do we create equity and choose social justice over monetized power?

Scarcity of a desired resource, whether a field or house, inescapably presents a challenge for cities; they must decide how to distribute physical space, and determine the appropriate balance of social equity with generating revenue. Though tasked with difficult decisions, the final edict should not privilege the needs and desires of emerging new affluent populations because of their greater ability to pay. If we recognize the consequences of gentrification are not inevitable, it provides an opportunity to do the right things; to change our pattern and support the historically disinvested. If we accept this premise, the question arises as to how we create development without displacement of people and culture.

In this greater landscape of development, questions of inequality emerge. Each neighborhood differs, necessitating city and neighborhood specific policies, but all policy should begin with protecting the rights of renters and homeowners in changing neighborhoods, helping them remain in their homes when property values increase. At its core, this involves maintaining a steady inventory of affordable housing, and establishing strong tenant protection policies. Specifically, some cities experiencing rapid gentrification, such as Washington DC and Philadelphia, have reduced or frozen the property taxes for long-term residents under a certain income threshold, thereby aiding low and working class people to remain in their homes, and helping provide neighborhood stability (Williams, 2014). Mandating just cause evictions offers an additional policy option (City of Oakland, 2014). Cities can determine if the indigenous residents enjoy the benefits of their neighborhoods development; cities have the possibility of thinking beyond the structure of ever expanding markets and towards healthy communities for all.

San Francisco does not have to rent out its fields or acquiesce to the needs of new entitled residents over the historical community. Despite the burgeoning tech money, the city does not need to adopt an exclusively monetized system to allocate its limited land base, but rather should emphasize the importance of ensuring it remains home for long term residents. Generating the broad will to pursue concrete policies begins with understanding this complicated narrative, and embracing a social justice oriented framework that demonstrates care and value for the neighborhood.

About the Author
Alina Schnake-Mahl is a graduate student at the Harvard School of Public Health. She thinks, talks, researches and writes about the effects of place on people.

References

Causa Justa. (2014) Development without Displacement: Resisting Gentrification in the Bay Area. Retrieved from http://cjjc.org/images/development-without-displacement.pdf .

Freeman, L. (2006). There Goes the ‘hood: Views of Gentrification from the Ground up. Philadelphia, PA: Temple UP.

Hartley, D. (2013, Nov 13) Gentrification and Financial Health, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland retrieved from http://urlin.it/579e5

Kennedy, M., Laonard, P. (2001, April). Dealing with Neighborhood Change: A Primer on Gentrification and Policy Choices: Brookings Institution Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy, and Policy Link.

Macaig, M. (2015, Feb) Gentrification in America Report. Gentrification in America Report. Governing. Retrieved from http://www.governing.com/gov-data/census/gentrification-in-cities-governing-report.html

“Mission Playground Is Not For Sale.” (2014, Sept 25) YouTube. Mission Creek Video, 25 Sept. 2014. Retrieved from <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awPVY1DcupE>.

Rodriguez, JF. (2014, Oct 10) DropBox Employees Drop Money for Mission Soccer Field, Kick out Neighborhood Kids. San Francisco Bay Guardian, Retrieved from <http://www.sfbg.com/politics/2014/10/10/dropbox-drops-money-mission-soccer-field-kicks-out-neighborhood-kids>.

Sullivan, L. (2014, Jan 22) “Gentrification May Actually Be Boon To Longtime Residents.” NPR. Retrieved from <http://www.npr.org/2014/01/22/264528139/long-a-dirty-word-gentrification-may-be-losing-its-stigma>.

Williams, T. (2014, Mar 3) “Cities Mobilize to Help Those Threatened by Gentrification.” The New York Times.

Wong, JC. (2014 Oct 23) “Dropbox, Airbnb, and the Fight Over San Francisco’s Public Spaces.” Newyorker.com. The New Yorker, Retrieved from http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/dropbox-airbnb-fight-san-franciscos-public-space

City of Oakland, California (2014). Just Cause for Eviction (Measure EE) Rent and Eviction Ordinances and Regulations. Housing and Community Development. Retrieved from http://www2.oaklandnet.com/Government/o/hcd/o/RentAdjustment/DOWD008793