Posted on 02/19/2014 5:17:26 PM PST by Lonely Bull
OAKLAND -- Steve Kopff was one of many San Franciscans who cascaded last year into sunnier, cheaper, hipper Oakland.
He bought and began restoring a historic but rundown mansion. He planted vegetables, raised backyard hens and bees, launched a neighborhood newsletter and peppered his Facebook account with paeans to his new city.
But this year, Kopff became a scorned symbol of the angst over Oakland gentrification. He wrote an online essay describing his diverse, working-class neighborhood east of Lake Merritt as "mostly undiscovered" and a "virtual food desert" in need of an organic supermarket, better restaurants and "a coffee kiosk with patisserie bites."
(Excerpt) Read more at mercurynews.com ...
“Gentrify” means fixing up your property without my permission.
“The guy is just talking about bringing new businesses to the neighborhood and he is attacked like he is an alien life form. “
The hood is a racket. Real jobs and self-reliance would upset the delicate balance between the parasite and its host. Or the scammer and his mark, if you prefer.
Hell, it was a “bad thing” in the Mission district across the bay 20 years ago...
“If you like your slum, you can keep your slum.”
There’s a Whole Paycheck on Bay Street near Lake Merritt. What’s his beef?
No, but very similar. My wife says it isn't him. I have some sympathy for those folks in Oakland. At mom's house in SF, newcomers are welcome in the neighborhood but they shouldn't trample rights of long-time residents.
My wife has a girlfriend living in a house adjacent to the alleyway behind mom's house. The jerk was filing complaints to the city to harass my wife's friend because he wanted her to improve her property. He didn't like the looks of her house and yard. She is on limited income with bad health, still working in her 60s supporting her family and can't afford to do much. She does what she can. When the jerk filed a complaint on mom's yard I almost went postal on him. He had several chicken coops, with about 15 chickens and sometimes I had to chase them out of mom's yard. He dumped his construction debris behind mom's fence in the alley and I had been after him for a couple months to remove it. So I started shoveling the rocks and lumber into his flower beds and the fight was on. Our girlfriend's son said he would call the cops on him, I said don't bother it won't do any good. Cops came out and said they can't intervene, it was up to us neighbors to settle it ourselves, and they left. After I got into the guy's face and made it known he had more to lose than me, he backed off.
Mom and other long-time residents don't deserve to be treated like crap by newly-arrived yuppies who want changes outside their boundaries. I have nothing against people improving their property, I am all for it. I have about the best house on my block and have a neighbors crappy house next door that is the worst on the block. I don't force my preferences on anyone.
I just thought maybe you missed the photo. I don’t click on all the host links either. I was following this due to the ‘gentrification’ angle vs. another post I was following about my hometown. No comparison, though, save for the race issues that are the same everywhere...
That is...unless you can tell me that SF/Oakland have municipal policies that are out to drive up land values like Portland (unaware of that if it’s the case).
I really don't think this is about race. Although maybe the guy being gay might have something to do with it. I don't know what it is about gays, but they always seem to be shoving their agendas onto everyone else. They don't try to fit in and co-exist.
About municipal policies, that's a mixed bag. Land values have skyrocketed here. Mom's house is worth a million now, and homes are selling a couple hundred Gs over asking. A home nearby got remodeled and just sold for $3m, crazy. They sold for about $30g about 40 years ago. The city is trying to get low-income housing built, is discouraging car use in favor of bikes and public transit. These policies are doomed to failure, and the city should let the future take it's own course. You can only cram so many people into a city; cramming more in will only make it intolerable. People will leave of their own accord for lower-cost areas. Those who can afford it will come in. Gentrification is a natural process. But people should not be forced to conform their own property to the likes of newcomers, and I believe in personal property rights.
Maybe you misunderstand my poorly-stated comment: The ‘race’ is from the other side...the side that always claims ‘gentrification’; the article cites a 35-year white resident being called a ‘gentrifier’. I personally find it amusing that the gay couple would be so ignorant as to believe they would ‘melt in’ moving into the ‘big white mansion on the hill’ in minority-heavy Oakland just because they’re gay. Or, as the one black neighbor calls Oakland, “ancestral lands”.
I’ve documented City of Portland, OR policies on driving up land values; I don’t know what they call it when it happens to working-class non-black neighborhoods, but it’s all over the city in the urban growth boundary. They are also doing the ‘high-density/no car/mass transit’ housing thing. Some parallels, it seems...more than I thought. Good ‘ol boys network hard at work...
Yes, sorry, I did misunderstand. This driving up of land values is insane. I can tell you what it did to SF. Back when I was growing up in the city, it was about 16 percent black. These blacks originally migrated into the city during WWII when workers were needed for the shipyards. Japanese-Americans were rounded up and shipped off to concentration camps elsewhere, leaving empty housing in SF that was then utilized by incoming blacks from the south. As the city became wealthier, blacks moved across the SF Bay to cheaper housing, and now blacks account for less than 6 percent of the population. Oakland since WWII has historically had a lot of blacks, mostly on the flatlands (”ancestral lands” since WWII). They are now being driven out by incoming Asians; what happened in SF is now happening to Oakland. Wealthy whites have always been in Oakland, on the hills. My daughter lived there for a while until a few years ago, practically all white - Oakland is not as black as people think. It’s the poorer flatlands that are being gentrified (much of it by Asians).
I can’t make sense out of why land prices are sky high, except it parallels the loss of the industrial base in favor of hi-tech work. My dad bought his house in SF a few years after WWII for $6g, fully furnished. My mom sold it for $23g in the early 1970s to a couple yuppies who remodeled it. Now it’s worth between $1.5m to $2m. Kids can’t afford what their parents had. Crazy. What happened here will happen to Portland.
Is happening. Frankly, since I was party to public meetings of Portland shilling their policies to Eugene politicians, I wouldn't be surprised if Portland learned its ways from its sister cities both down south and up north. Without Federal dollars pouring into the city for its mass transit pork projects and all the welfare dollars, the city would be a lot more like Detroit. Ironically the story of blacks settling SF for shipyard work in WWII mirrors that of Portland...the race breakdown is the same roughly, too. As far a land/property prices, if you do a careful analysis of what's happened to residential real estate over the past 40 years or so, it looks a lot like a pyramid scheme. I realized that 20 years ago and it's only worse now, particularly due to political pressures to queer the market for 'social equality'...(aside from the bailouts given rather than letting things 'equalize' on their own).
Is that the right address?
According to this link, Steven J. Kopff and Josh Stenzel purchased 1218 East 21st Street, aka the Ellen Kenna House (1888), in early 2013 and began the lengthy process of gentrifying it to its original glory.
Josh posted a pic on Pinterest:
Hmmm, How much has Oakland Councilman Kalb and his stooge Danette Lambert done to drive out poorer residents by jacking up their property taxes?
Yep,,,I had to use google street view...to get the address as all I could remember was that it was on the corner on Ninth Avenue.
Hi, just wanted to submit a correction to this post. The house pictured on the corner of 9th Ave. is not the same home. The inhabitants of that house have lived there since 1977.
Thank you.
And using pricing to keep out those who caused the hell hole in the first place.
Being poor doesn’t cause one to be a criminal,
but there does seem to be a common cause...
poor character -> poverty
poor character -> criminal tendencies
Black is no longer a race, it’s a culture.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.