My Entry in the Cityscape Photography Contest
This is a photo I took in late September of the construction just down the block from my apartment. I live in Gentrification City (aka Denver), so construction is EVERYWHERE. There is especially a lot near me though because several years ago a big hospital moved to a new campus (that formerly was a military base). The old campus sat empty for several years as the economy in '08 wasn't developer-friendly, but then Colorado legalized pot, and ...Gentrification Time! So now all the old hospital buildings have been torn down (and one was imploded, which was loud and shook my apartment and freaked out one of my cats), and new, very likely overpriced buildings are going up. Developers keep building "luxury units" that sit empty because no one can afford them, instead of affordable units for normal people. Businesses, too, are being priced out: I've seen many local businesses I liked have their rent TRIPLED so the owner could kick them out and sell to a developer, or some such. It's depressing. Capitalism, woo...
Grrr. And the normal people have to spend all their money on rapidly rising rents because there aren't enough normal units to go around. Not to mention that the developers always negotiate to put in less parking than is needed, so everyone has to park a mile away from where they actually live.
Yeah like they always say your rent is too high if it's more than 30% of your income, and it has NEVER been that small a portion of my income, even before the recent spikes ...that's totally a baby boomer generational rule. Nobody's income has kept up with housing except maybe stock brokers and landlords!
Sounds to me like everyone's after a quick buck without any forethought for their future income. No good developing for a market that doesn't exist. Seeing that a lot here too. The council just spent out on building tennis courts in an area with 33% unemployment and that was before the automotive industry closed end of last month. I dread to think what it will be now. Anyway I asked who on earth would even be using the tennis courts and apparently they're hoping for people coming from the city centre. I could come up with so many better uses for that land.
Here they are wanting to destroy a poverty-stricken, highly polluted neighborhood (which, like, no one should live there, but they literally can't afford anyplace else) in order to widen the highway, and kill over 200 old trees (we DON'T have many of those because Denver is naturally prairie grasslands) in order to make a flood basin thing under the golf-course-attached-to-city-park (that is needed because of widening the highway). The whole highway project is in court and they are trying to kill the trees anyway because they presume they'll get to do what they want.
Meanwhile, average rent is ~1400, I think it was, so where are the poor people who get eminent domained out of their three generation houses supposed to go?
It's like, okay, that industrial neighborhood is super unhealthy to live in, but you haver to give the people someplace to go.
I'm guessing, as far as they're concerned, poor people don't don't make them enough money, so they don't care where they go. The way to improve neighbourhoods seems to be too drive the poor out.
I so hope they manage to stop them removing the trees. It's typical that there are restrictions on what we the people are allowed to do on our own properties when it comes to removing trees, but companies can remove them by the 1000s.
Exactly. We've already lost dozens right down the block from me from them tearing down the old hospital. :(