Displacement is an act of force. Displacement is when working class and poor people are forcibly pushed out of their community so more affluent people and businesses can move in for the purpose of profit and destabilizing communities.
In Baltimore City, where I am from, the Murphy Homes Projects, which was the home to about 1000 poor and working black families, was torn down in the mid ‘90s. Murphy Homes was laden with drugs and crime so the solution to the problem was displacement and gentrification. With the new, sleek Orioles and Raven’s stadiums nearby, new transportation systems, fancy cafés and restaurants -the so-called urban renewal set in at full force. This is the process of gentrification, the flow of capital into economically depressed areas intended to benefit the elite at the expense of the working class community.
The people living in Murphy Homes were displaced and sent to the surrounding counties, disconnected from their community and homes. The “Heritage Crossing” town homes are being built were the Murphy Homes Projects once stood, offering only half of the housing stock that existed before. Yes, the new town homes are there-but who is living in them? A majority of wealthy white professionals who have access to more money. Where is the original community now? Divided, purposely separated and randomly scattered, forced into the county and other parts of the city.
The value and significance of land is important to maintaining a community. Having a safe space that you can call home, a space in which people with common experiences and histories can share and struggle. Drugs and crime are a problem but we need to challenge the “solution” being implemented. Housing sorts the population into class which then sub-divides into race. People from the middle and upper classes have more mobility to move their capital where they see fit, that is privilege.
Housing in the United States is a sure way to sort out class and race into separate and unequal environments. Working class people have always been at the whim of the capitalist market as far as housing issues and people of color are disproportionately affected.
The Mission District is the commercial and cultural heart of San Francisco’s Latino community and serves as a diverse working class community. The Mission has endured an ongoing struggle to stop gentrification by dot-com companies and developers. Low income people were housed on prime terrain for the new “urban gentry” who could pay higher rents for housing and business space.(Confusing sentence) Loan and mortgage companies along with the government poured money into upgrading and rehabilitating the Mission. The result: affluent tenants moved in and working class people evicted.
Between 1996 and 1999 the number of evictions in the Bay Area tripled—2730 legal eviction notices were issued. Families were forced from their homes and rent prices went through the roof. Neighborhood bodegas were replaced by bourgie cafés and clubs all intended for the quick rich upper class white techies.
Grassroots community organizations are fighting tooth and nail with developers, government officials, rich tenants, landlords to preserve the Mission community. Developers want to build luxury lofts where factories (bound for cheaper labor overseas) that employed the community once stood.
The fight is on so many levels, families need economic stability to survive and this is through the service and manufacturing industries, communities of color are fighting to preserve a safe social and cultural space, self determination, respect and dignity. The connections are made from coast to coast. From Baltimore to SF, community preservation is an age old struggle that we fight on daily. The angering part of this process is what happens to communities once the capital flow dries up. We’re living this right now with the “economic downturn.” The dot-comers are finding they can’t afford the hip lofts anymore, clubs are closing doors, they’re moving away. Now what?
Anita Wheeler is the Political Editor of Dynamic, and a member of the YCL Coordinating Committee.
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