Friday, February 6, 2009

Gentrification, Hypocrisy, Moving into Woodlawn


The question: Would I be contributing to economic and racial segregation by purchasing a condo in Woodlawn (and thereby participating in the gentrification of the neighborhood)?

The issue: Chicago has a history of gentrifying poorer neighborhoods, and the result has often been that the neighborhood gets nicer but at the expense of moving all the old residents out and bringing in new residents. So the people who could afford to live there when it was a "bad neighborhood" cannot afford to there now that it's a "nice neighborhood." So they move and rich people move in and the division of classes (and usually race) stays roughly the same.

The Woodlawn community just south of the University of Chicago is one such neighborhood. The University has purchased a good deal of land in the neighborhood, and is planning to be moving (and growing) into the area. It has already built new graduate housing, is in the process of building new undergraduate housing and is planning to move its police headquarters to this area.

Gentrification is well under way and there are many old buildings (condo and apartment) that have been gutted and renovated. Because this process is still somewhat just beginning, there are many "great deals" to be found in housing there. The area can't yet support, e.g. $350,000 for a 2-bdr condo in the way that Lincoln Park on the North side can. No one would buy it. Thus, you can get a really nice 3-bdr, 2-bath completely newly renovated condo for $250,000 (pictured).

I really want to buy this condo. It is, objectively, a phenomenal deal. For all intents a purposes it would be getting a brand new condo for about half of what I'd pay for a smaller, lower quality place only a few miles away. But I am nervous that to do so would be to act in complicity with larger forces of social inequity that I claim to oppose.

Any thoughts? I'd love to hear.

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