Greetings:
As you are aware, the current global economic crisis, and the accompanying housing crash, have led to significant changes in the market for housing and the development of land. As such, the economic outlook, particularly for the housing market, is drastically different today than it was just a few short years ago.
The economic cycle of gentrification, against which many organizations and individuals have struggled for years, is primarily defined by the ability of developers and speculators to buy land for cheap in low-income communities, displace the residents, and then flip the property for big profits. The recent collapse of the housing market severely compromises the ability of developers and speculators to continue this path (at least for now).
The movement must constantly assess the economic and social conditions on the ground and adjust our strategies and tactics accordingly.
Consequently, Take Back the Land, a project of the Center for Pan-African Development, propositions that the recent economic cycle of gentrification is effectively over. In the attached position paper, Gentrification is Dead, we define gentrification, identifying the elements and characteristics therein, and then lay out an argument as to why those elements and characteristics are no longer actively in existence. In addition, we attempt to identify what economic cycles might follow gentrification and how our strategies and tactics must change in order to meet the challenges of the new economic cycle.
This proposition is not intended to answer all questions or issue orders from the top. Instead, it is an attempt to begin an honest assessment of material conditions on the ground and shape appropriate responses to those conditions. As such, please forward this widely and discuss rigorously.
The piece can also be found, in its entirety, at:
http://www.thepanafrican.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=newsstory&newsletterID=18
forward,
Max Rameau
Take Back the Land
a project of the Center for Pan-African Development
16 comments:
If someone with money and ideas does not come to buy vacate lots to create homes and if someone does not buy old homes to renovate and restore than urban neighborhoods will further decay.
No one is attracted to dirty disgusting neighborhoods. Who wants to move to crime ridden neighborhoods?
Who wants to invest in disgusting crime filled neighborhoods?
I think Take Back's goal is a great one!
I emailed you about my current situation (oleander23@gmail.com) to see if you could offer some advice.
Please read it.
Thanks !
-Leander
here is some advice Leander
Get a fucking job and buy your own home!
You guys do awesome work. The anonymous haters can screw off.
Your organization is obviously racist. It comes through very clearly that you are out to help one race, not the poor, not the homeless, but people who were blessed with black skin only. It is people like you who will scream racist when a company hires more light skinned people than darker skinned people, yet you steal so that you can create a false community of your own. A community that you will later say owes you.
For those commenting about decay and having these homes taken care of, you are correct only to a point. When someone gets injured on this property, you will sue. When you lose, you will again scream racism.
If you were really good people with good hearts, you would buy the homes and give them away or rent them at low rates. But instead you steal to further your agenda. I think it's sad!
wow!
i saw you online...
i love your rebel mission!
best wishes
happy holidays!
alicia banks
OUTLOOK
http://aliciabanks.blogspot.com
Sad Americans, why do you venerate criminal billionaires while kicking fellow workingman when down?
Billionaires and wannabe billionaires ARE the problem -- not families who took high risk loans to live the dream of having a home or the UAW or anybody else looking out for the workingman.
You billionaire bootlickers are truly sad.
There is a better way to house homeless people than breaking and entering vacant foreclosed or government homes - we are a society of contracts...why not take your argument to the banks and to Fannie Mae and contract with them to have onsite managers and handypeople fix these homes...afterall so many of the jobless and homeless were in the homebuilding industry...we are not going to build our economy back up by criminally breaking into homes.
Frankly, the banks and the government have realized that foreclosures are not good for business...negotiate, contract there are so many moral ways than marginalizing people who are already down and out in this economy...marginalize them for the purpose of promoting yourselves on national news. That sounds like a really cool rebel group promoting themselves on not a local non-profit cable channel but on fricking ABC.
I've been reading this blog since the first entry... is an important initiative, and you know it. Each features are drastically similar, as you really know the Real estate economics is the application of economic techniques to real estate markets, so we can't ignore the speculators in this categories. 23jj
A very important issue as housing has left hundreds of families on the Streets as in Sacramento, California.
It is a real concern how Goverment has done nothing to stop or help this people!!!
Yes i think is very sad they just take advange of a bad situation to have a way to steal from poor people, the goverment should bring new ways to improve their lifes.
I believe three times more energy to produce, than the amount of energy it creates. I wouldn't swear to my numbers.
Thanks mate... just dropped by. Will look for BIKE STN when we get to Seattle. Still in Buenos Airies.
Hi, thank you for sharing this great info. Was just browsing through the net in my office and happened upon your blog. It is really very well written and quit comprehensive in explaining with a very simple language.
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