• BigNote@lemm.ee
    2·
    10 months ago

    I’m GenX as well and I will straight up admit that my wife and I got lucky, purchased a house in a “distressed” neighborhood in Portland because it was all we could afford, and now, 20 years later, the neighborhood is fully gentrifying and our house and property is worth way more than what we owe on it.

    I’m conflicted as to how to feel about it. While on the one hand we very innocently bought the place because it was in a shitty neighborhood and was all we could afford, on the other hand I now know that we were what the urban studies people refer to as “bohemian colonizers,” meaning that without knowing it, we were, by moving into the neighborhood as poor artist types, part of a much longer process of gentrification.

    Again, I am of several minds regarding how I feel about the whole thing.

    • garden_boi@feddit.de
      3·
      10 months ago

      be poor

      move to a poor neighbourhood

      I really don’t think that you should feel bad about this personally :)

    • michaelmrose@lemmy.world
      1·
      5 months ago

      What were you supposed to do live in a tiny apartment to make housing more available for the poor fuckers nearby who just happened to have started slightly closer?

    • 31337@sh.itjust.works
      1·
      10 months ago

      Meh, gentrification is the result of bad policy, not personal, individual choices (except maybe for people flipping houses and landlords). Neighborhoods, and the people in them, should not stay poor forever. Rent controls, grants for people to start businesses or coops or whatever, allowing mixed-use zoning, and stuff like that can reduce the harmful affects of gentrification.

    • trashgirlfriend@lemmy.world
      1·
      10 months ago

      Yeah, I don’t think you should feel bad. You can’t really individually control processes like this and well… you needed a place to live.