In the four months I have lived in NoDa, my impressions of the recent condo boom and urban revitalization have become increasingly confused. On one hand, I admire the civic and corporate investment this new urban community has created. But as much as I enjoy the interesting restaurants and cool bars, I understand that this vibrant commercial district is pricing out the very people who made the communities unique.
I am not picking on NoDa, but I can’t help but wonder how long it will continue to be the organically artistic neighborhood it’s billed as before it falls victim to professionals and real estate companies looking to capitalize on the incredible investment returns.
In the course of three years, areas such as NoDa, Wesley Heights and Wilmore have gone from the very definition of poverty to places where a house once labeled a “ghetto shack” is now on the market for $500,000. The dynamics are rapidly changing, with someone at or below the poverty line residing next door to a remodeled home that is inhabited by a professional making $200,000 a year.
Neither side has any more rights to the neighborhood over the other, as we are living in a self-described free market. But undoubtedly we all know where the collective power falls in this oft-repeated equation. You can’t blame the professional for making a shrewd investment, but how can we better account for the impact the unintentional or intentional gentrification is having on our communities?
In as little as five years, it is possible that NoDa will be nothing more than a smaller version of Ballantyne, with many of the artists who called the place home no longer able to afford the increased rent, nor the inflated prices of the real estate in the area. The staples of the neighborhood will continue to thrive, but I believe the eclectic nature of the environment will dissipate for a mass-produced version of itself.
In what can only be described as shameful, the abrupt condemnation, the convenient pending sale of Mecklenburg Mills, and the sure development of real estate serves as the straw that will soon break the camel’s back. NoDa’s gentrification isn’t a new concept — it was preceded by the slow gentrification of Earl Village (1st Ward), Wilmore and (soon to be) Wesley Heights.
The fundamental question we must face in this city is how to maintain access to affordable housing for those who need it. Congress has assured us that wages are not increasing anytime soon, but the price of real estate in Charlotte most surely is rising.
What can we do? It’s simple: Advocate responsible development through thoughtful analysis of the zoning for residential real estate and new development in already fragile neighborhoods.
In NoDa, we must actively address the need for commitment to providing affordable housing. Situations like the sale of Mecklenburg Mills leaves room for the city to be portrayed less as a holder of public trust and more as another real estate investor. We need to investigate more opportunities to influence community developers to offer affordable housing. Professionals and real estate owners and investors also must understand that we play an active role in maintaining the sanctity of the community in which we have invested.
Decker Ngongang, a native of Charlotte, is a financial professional and committed citizen.
This article appears in Jul 12-18, 2006.
I went to a city planning clinic on gentrification in Raleigh this past January. There were a good mix of about 200 community residents people there, Southeast Raleigh residents as well. The question and answer session was telling and interesting. Socioeconomic status and age/estate issues were bought up also well as race, indirectly.
Gentrification / new urbanism is happening all over the country. I agree with you Decker, it’s sort of a difficult subject to define because it can have good and bad effects. It’s a zero-sum game.
The enormous Cabrini Green projects (18,000 units) in Chicago are being demolished for redevelopment, which I think is fine because the physical state of those buildings are bad and were built as gloomy fortresses for the urban poor (I believe in positive design for environments) but where will those current residents go? Will they return in a few years for the hopefully mixed-income housing? Also, I’m concerned in the future of New Orleans development (9th ward, the Islenos and their shrimping community, etc.)
My advice to Charlotte residents concerned with gentrification is to find out from your planning department / city council what is happening in your particular community while development projects are still in the planning stages. I heard your planning director speak at a conference and I learned that Charlotte is undergoing massive amounts of development & sprawl within the next 10 years.
I’m reading a good book, “The Death and Life of Great American Cities” (1971), it doesn’t explore social consequences as much I would have liked but describes types of things that later led to the gentification of Greenwich Village, NYC.
Ah, but if gentrification is the problem, one has to look to what causes it to find the solution. And I fear that doesn’t lead to solutions anyone would prefer. It seems obvious that gentrification is the end result of the longest standing determinent of real estate value: location. As the populaton has caused the continuing outward movement of housing patterns, the close in areas whose value was once the victim of that phenomenon begin to surge ahead in value as commute times reach a critical point. The percieved balance of value changes. If the dynamics of the community cause a particular slice of geography to become more desireable, the market value begins to justify the additonal expense per sq foot of rehabing over building new, what would otherwise be marginal housing. The location based land value and the rehabing itself results in market values that are not affordable to persons who might previously have lived there, i.e. gentrification. You can prevent that by artificially impacting land values through zoning and then subsidizing the rehabilitation of the housing stock, but you create the double whammy of a lowered tax base with the most expensive approach possible to affordable housing (rehab vs new construction.) That’s particularly problematic in a city like Charlotte that has LOTS of available housing that fits within the definition of “afordable”, since it’s only possible justificaiton is to create addtional affordable housing where it does not exist in favor us using that which does.
There’s no good reason to artificially keep prime real estate close to Uptown “affordable” when there’s so much other cheap land around. However, I think all of this talk of gentrification in these areas is fueled by flippers who are going to have to eat their words now that the local condo market has gotten so overbuilt and the national real estate party is coming to an end. Wilmore and Noda may eventually become hip gentrified neighborhoods, and that will be a good thing, but I think it will take at least another couple of real estate cycles for that to happen.