Longtime residents watch their neighborhoods transform while newer arrivals insist they're community members, not gentrifiers. At what point does personal choice become collective harm?
Join the debate to comment
Reading is free. Members pay to post — that's why it stays clean.
Add your commentMy grandmother came to Harlem in 1961 from South Carolina. She kept that apartment on 118th street for 44 years. My aunt tried to take over the lease after she passed and the landlord used it as an excuse to renovate and triple the rent. That apartment is now an Airbnb. So yeah. I have opinions on this topic.
Born and raised in Bed-Stuy. Watched my mom's block go from cookouts every Saturday to strangers who don't make eye contact in the elevator of the condo that replaced Miss Gloria's house. You can call yourself a 'community member' all you want. Community membership isn't a vibe you purchase.
That last comment is exactly the problem. 'Lower crime and better schools' — for WHOM? When the people who built the culture of a neighborhood get pushed to East New York or the Bronx or Jersey so someone can enjoy a safer block and a cortado, that's not improvement. That's displacement with better branding. Please do some reading before you post.
The 1800s DUMBO take is confidently incorrect on multiple levels but I don't even have the energy today. What I WILL say is: if you moved somewhere specifically because it was affordable because of decades of disinvestment that happened because of redlining, and your presence then attracted capital that made it unaffordable — yes. You are part of a system that caused harm. You didn't maliciously harm anyone. But 'I didn't mean to' is not the same as 'it didn't happen.' Own it and do something useful with that awareness.
i just wanna know who is telling these people harlem has a 'vibe' lol. my uncle has lived there since 1987 and his vibe is paying bills and going to work. the vibe thing is so condescending its wild
Okay but can we be honest for one second? The landlords are the ones raising rents. Not the white girl who moved in downstairs. She didn't set the market rate. Blame the private equity firms buying up whole blocks, not individual people trying to find an apartment they can afford.
To everyone in this thread who currently lives in Brooklyn or Harlem asking themselves hard questions — genuinely respect it. To everyone who moved there, never once asked themselves this question, and are now reading this thread defensively — you're exactly who this debate is about. You know who you are.
Counterpoint nobody wants to hear: longtime residents also sell. I've seen families take buyouts, cash out, move to Atlanta or Charlotte and buy a house outright. That's a legitimate choice too. This narrative that every displacement is purely victimization erases the agency of people who made calculated decisions. It's complicated and pretending it isn't helps nobody.
I moved to Crown Heights from Ohio in 2019 and yes, I absolutely think about this. I donate to local tenant organizations, I shop at the West Indian-owned spots, I vote for candidates who support rent stabilization. Does that erase the fact that my presence drove up demand? Probably not entirely. But I think the answer is engagement, not paralysis.
gentrification is actually GOOD for neighborhoods lol. lower crime, better schools, nice coffee shops. the people complaining just dont want change. every neighborhood in NYC has changed a hundred times over history this is nothing new
Technically speaking, gentrification in Brooklyn actually started in DUMBO back in the 1800s when the manufacturers moved in and displaced the original farming communities. So this is literally a 200-year-old cycle. Just pointing that out for historical context.
Is it wrong to choose not to have children just because you don't want to?
110 comments
Would you still eat meat if you had to kill the animal yourself?
109 comments
Is judging someone by their height as shallow as judging by their weight?
108 comments
Are dating apps genuinely harder for men or for women?
108 comments