Mapping Inequality
a house is a home is a heart.
Housing is a human right. Everyone deserves a safe space to call their own, a place to stay warm and make memories, and if you can’t you have the right to seek assistance. This is why it confuses me when I think about the housing discrimination, gentrification, and the dangers of inadequate public housing that has arguably done more harm than good for the communities it has promised to serve.
When I moved to Asheville for college, I hadn’t put it together that I was moving to a touristy city, with an expensive housing market that has pushed it’s brown and Black citizens on the outskirts of everything. Gentrification they call it. “The process of purchasing and renovating homes and businesses in an underdeveloped and economically under resourced area accompanied by an influx of middle class or affluent people, and that often results in the displacement of earlier, usually poorer, residents. Earlier in the history of cities, gentrification was referred to as “urban renewal”.
My understanding of poverty and the housing market and how it disproportionately effects people who look like me, has only widened. For one this is not just an Asheville issue, this is an issue that happens in my home city of Charlotte, NC. Over winter break I visited my favorite art museum: the Harvey B Gantt African American Art Center, where a photography exhibit on gentrification was being shown, on one of Charlotte’s oldest historic black neighborhoods, Brookhill. It will be up until September of this year if you would like to check it out!
According to a case study by Efficient Gov., Charlotte is in the top ten worst cities for affordable housing, sitting at number eight. Underneath Albuquerque, New Mexico and right above Anchorage, Alaska.
What happened to housing as a human right?
There are many layers to this issue, but I will pose a few ideas, and leave you with some resources so hopefully you can understand the history of home in your own neighborhoods.
When Black Americans fled the south to places like D.C, Chicago, Brooklyn, and so on, from white domestic terrorism after the end of slavery and during Jim Crow, they flocked to any empty housing they could find. This meant that they also moved into white neighborhoods, which scared white people, and they left (“white flight”). So Black people were forced to create their own safe spaces, traditions, and economic opportunities, because they were left by themselves.
What gentrification primarily does, is disrupt safe Black spaces, at the expense of homes that have been apart of families for generations. And many of those with fixed income are forced to leave. Gentrification increases the prices of everything. And for what? $1,800 per month apartment buildings and picture perfect restaurant murals?
Gentrification also affects more than housing. It also hurts children. With a flock of more affluent wealthy mainly white people, they start demanding “better” schools over public schools. This usually means charter schools being built in place of free public schools that serve free breakfast and lunch. Instead, a school that you have to pay for is built with even more expensive additions like uniforms or activities. Let’s say you can afford to stay in your home after new affluent buyers, move in. If your child doesn’t get the lottery for that charter school, you either have to drive your kid to another school district or move altogether, depending on state school laws.
New buyers may also have complete disrespect for residents already there, usually demanding that they change traditions or programs, or gatherings to meet their needs, even though they are new to the neighborhood.
I know that most of us are in school and are not thinking about buying or renting anything for a while. But my hope is that you ask more questions. When you see a new apartment building or restaurant or shopping complex being built, ask yourself— who was there before? What is the history of this neighborhood, and if this space wasn’t mine, whose is it, and am I respecting them?
Here is some good reading material to go forward on more research:
The Fight for Fair Housing by Gregory D. Squires
The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein
Sorting Out the New South City: Race, Class, and Urban Development in Charlotte, 1875-1975 by Tom Hanchett
Evicted: Poverty and Profit by Matthew Desmond
Family Properties: How the Struggle Over Race and Real Estate Transformed Chicago and Urban America by Beryl Satter