The Truth About Gentrification With Aristotle Theresa | The Legal Zone Podcast Episode #11

good morning and hello everyone good morning to everyone out there welcome to another episode of the legal zone good morning dr cheney morning good morning john saladi good morning salon good to be here good to see you today we have a very very special guest with us today he is not a client as usual as we usually have we're going to switch up a little bit and start having other experts in different areas of law to talk about injustices and this morning we have with us none other than the great aristotle teresa good morning aristotle good morning um thank you for that introduction all right aristotle also goes by ari right ari yes yes he is a civil rights attorney and he focuses on zoning and administrative law many people may not be familiar with this but you're going to be at the end of this show he is a principal of stoop law which is located located in the anacostia neighborhood of south east washington dc for all you washingtonians his firm stoop law has pioneered gentrification law we're going to define that in a minute leading to the adjustment of best practices in the dc office of planning and for land developers in addition to his urban development and planning law practice mr teresa is an adjunct professor having taught classes in land use and urban planning and critical race theory mr teresa is a fourth generation dc resident and he is a double hbcu graduate graduating from howard university school of law in 2010 and clark atlanta university in 2003 so we are in for a treat to day for all of our law students and other people who enjoy learning about the law let's just briefly go over these two definitions that we're going to be talking about today gentrification some of you have heard about it some some of you may not have heard about it but what is it what is gentrification the process whereby the character of a poor urban area we're going to get into this today please listen it's changed by wealthier people moving in improving housing and attracting new businesses sometimes displacing current inhabitants in the process so we have this what some people might call uh unnecessary evil you are on one hand building up cities you're making it attractive you're bringing in business you're bringing in wealth but on the other hand you're displacing people we're going to talk about that the other is pud which is planned unit development and that the overall goal of a pud planned is the key word here is a process to permit flexibility in the zoning regulations every city has zoning regulations but a planned unit development allows for those to be flexible so long as the pud offers one a commendable number or quality of public benefits it has to benefit the public to protect and advance the public health safety welfare and convenience of the people and these we'll soon see they could be manipulated or interpreted to mean different things alrighty so we have that gentrification and pud brother teresa mr arie tell us a little bit about what you do and then we would like to know any sort of injustices you have encountered dealing with gentrification and zoning and planned unit development sure um so um like was stated i i'm a gentrification attorney and so what does that mean um you just gave a definition of gentrification um it's a process whereby wealthier people come in and investments are made into neighborhoods uh new housing is made sometimes people are displaced and and it's a process whereby communities become wealthier um a lot of times existing residents are left out of that process but in terms of what a gentrification attorney is um i operate under the assumption that in order to effectuate gentrification there are systems in place um that facilitate something like gentrification and so one of those systems would be the process by which a pud gets approved right so in order to build housing for wealthier people you need those approvals you need uh approvals for uh more density on a project or you may need approval from an inspector to come look at uh the the the the footings or the foundation of a building in order to get this building done um are there any guidelines that address the people who are being moved out yes so the pud process is supposed to like when it comes to gentrification but but i just want to state that that there's a that there's all these systems that surround gentrification that do not work correctly so in order for gentrification to take place um there's a lot of uh systems there's approvals that are made that should not be given um a lot of process is kind of disregarded uh because gentrification is is hyper investment it's not it's not normal investment it's um it's investment that's sped up that's facilitated with government subsidies with government land uh with tax breaks um and and also uh regulatory uh laxity like like becoming lacks with the regulatory process and so when i say i'm a gentrification attorney i'm looking at the fallout of gentrification and and all the systems that surround gentrification and how um you know a lot of times uh guaranteed uh rights and guaranteed processes that that are guaranteed to to residents um are are kind of pushed to the side and so i'll give an example of that you asked me what was a great injustice um that that i've seen um in my practice i always give this story um it's about barry farm it's my first case uh the first case that i did as a zoning attorney um i did just as a resident i live in anacostia so my home practice is here i also live here um i heard about very far becoming torn down what exactly is berry farms for those who don't know okay berry farm is a public housing complex uh with with a long and storied history um it might be outside the scope outside the scope of the program today um but it's a very long and storied history um from you know in washington in washington d.c uh it used to be friedman uh slaves friedman um informally enslaved uh built a friedman colony there then it was raised and became public housing but that's been in uh black hands since you know the end of slavery and it was something that was promised to us uh as part of like this friedman's colony but anyway um so right so let's just so i want a little bit more information on berry farms because i've heard about berry farms all right and everything i've heard about berry phones hasn't been too good okay so i'll give you some information on it so uh after after the civil war um african americans uh came to d.c by the droves uh because lincoln freed the slaves and so the natural thing would be okay well this is one person in government who like seems that they care about us so let's go to dc so a lot of people came to dc after the civil war and a lot of them uh the the formerly enslaved uh camped out uh at the at the civil war forts which were now empty because the war was over and so they camped out they were like the first homeless encampments and you know we have prom with those like we're always clearing those out we're doing that today at union union market and all these other areas in the city um but they cleared it out and so uh lincoln was like you know we can't have these people camping out in these neighborhoods all over the city um let's let's give them not give them some land but let's take berry plantation it was a formerly a plantation and parcel it out and sell it to the to the formally enslaved give them loans so they can have these this land and so they gave them loans on and the berry plantation they gave them loans for for lots of land and they worked during the day and at night they came back across the river and they built their homes right wow for a long time they lived there they got horrible terms on their loans too so like a lot of that stuff was like uh exploitative like you know uh they got bad terms on the because they borrowed it and they built their own houses anyway the proceeds uh from selling these lots to the slaves went to developing howard university um it was general howard uh who who actually was in charge of this friedman's program and he formed a lot of the black schools so clark atlanta was one of the schools that was formed uh you know as part of like these friedman schools uh howard university was formed from the profits of these lots at berry farm well in the 50s when they were doing urban renewal uh you know they tore down like all the black neighborhoods so like a lot of the black people lived in alleys um you know there's a fort reno uh and berry farm and southwest i know you've heard about southwest all these were like you know if not like perfect communities you know they were tight-knit communities they had businesses there people own their properties um and they came and raised berry farm because it wasn't up to code right because the formerly enslaved built it at night you know on their own without like any like zoning or dcra or nothing like that so they tore down berry farm and made it public housing and so a lot of the people who were in southwest and a lot of people whose neighborhoods were torn down through urban renewal ended up in public housing at berry farm it had about 450 units in its prime but um yeah they tore it down and so the injustice you know getting back to the injustice um i went they were tearing it down and i went to the hearing and uh some of the residents were defending themselves and opposing the development they wanted them to develop in place so they could during the development they could stay on the site so they wouldn't be displaced from the neighborhood um and they wanted them to do that and you know is your is your client these residents is that who you usually represent yeah they well they were not my clients then but they ended up being my clients barry farm tenants and allies association and so they were residents of barry farm okay yeah and so they they opposed um you know the development and they asked to participate in the hearing uh by applying for something called party status and in order to have party status you have to be uniquely impacted by the project and so the black chairman of the zoning commission who's been chairman for 20 years anthony hood said that they didn't qualify for party status because they were not uniquely impacted uh because a lot of people in the city were concerned about berry farm being turned down so their concern wasn't unique even though they were even though they were residents of bengal right right so that that's the injustice that because how you're looking how your face is looking is how i was looking at the hearing when i saw that wow and so like and that's when i got involved and so that i'd say that's like one of the biggest injustices like i've seen like in government where like some people are like actually participating in like their democracy uh to like protect their rights and they're being told they're like actually like you don't have the right uh to do this because you're not uniquely impacted even though your homes are being destroyed okay so just to put this in perspective these people are living in this apartment complex so to speak right because we have we have people that watch from outside of this country so there's this apartment complex in washington dc that's historically black this is you said that lincoln almost gave this he didn't give but they came together and they they started living right after the civil war so they've been here for a long time now they're living in this apartment building and the government comes and they intend to tear the building down right and these residents in the building they say no no no wait a minute we live here and the government's response was you don't have standing to stop us because you're not going to be uniquely impacted by this is that right right because because you know some other people also what he said was people are concerned all over the city about berry farm so you know like everyone's concerned about it so you're not uniquely impacted like it it impacts everybody so so it seems as though they want to do something which is build up berry farms right and they're not going to let anyone not even the interpretation of the law yeah stop them exactly and so when i say i'm a gentrification attorney that's what i mean like you know i don't stop gentrification but i know that in order for gentrification to happen a lot of shortcuts are made so what are some of the rights that people have if i'm if i'm living in this building if i'm an elderly person and i've been living in a building for 60 70 years and they want to come and they're going to take it yeah they're going to make the city a bigger city what's going to happen to me where am i going to go um where are you going to go i mean historically people end up going to the excerpts like pretty far out like woodbridge um but are they giving me money to go to these places oh oh if like if you're a part of public housing yeah they would give you a voucher um and and allow you to move where you want to move or where you're able to find housing that fits your needs uh with a voucher uh do they give you money to move no they don't give you like moving money or anything like that they don't what if i own the place do they um do they give me money to buy something new oh so if you own a place and they try and displace you yeah that's rare uh for them to displace you i mean it happens where you can own something and they'll displace you but when they do that they're supposed to give you fair compensation okay yeah all right so what's going on with that case now when when they said they didn't have the the right or the standing what happened um well uh they they came back and and we we lost that case of course at the agency but then we appealed it at the zoning commission not at the zoning commission but at the court of appeals and we won the case but they ended up tearing it down anyway um you know it's just kind of uh you know they just kind of do what they want to do uh we we won the case though um but yeah and where do those people go um they're all over the city um you know different public housing mostly the historical aspect of beer is that is that going to be gone now um well they have uh historic they they did some historic preservation over there so they're gonna preserve a couple of the the fairy farm units um and maybe do like a museum over there um and that's kind of interesting because they're kind of attaching it to like equity so they're going to have like residents like work the location and like maybe have some like retailer there it's going to be they're going to do something like new like try and figure out a way so like residents can profit from that culture wow okay what other injustices have you encountered um i mean all kinds i mean i'd say that that's that's one big one um and most of them are just kind of along those lines um yeah i mean most of them are kind of along along those lines um where just something guaranteed didn't happen another time was um i worked on a voting case in ward 8 um where they uh you know ward 8 is kind of a gentrifying neighborhood i i don't know who's familiar with ward 8. but um i mean most of ward 8 is black yeah well what's what is ward 8 so people again people may not be from dc ward is a section of the city or what yeah ward 8 is is a section of the city it's 95 black um and you know it's a lot of um uh unemployment uh i mean a lot of morbidity like like whatever morbidity you could assign to a neighborhood um high homicide rate uh jail rate i mean you could you could put on ward eight uh low life expectancy anyway i i mean it living in ward 8 they had a vote um last year during the election the 2020 election um and and the mayor assigns where the voting locations are um and the way that they put the voting locations uh they were all in like gentrifying neighborhoods so if you lived in like a gentrifying neighborhood you could like walk to like a voting location but like some of the most isolated like impoverished parts of the ward like were miles from like a voting location and this was during the pandemic when all of the buses were like shut down and like it's like part of the politics of this area oh and then also like the mail-in votes like we don't receive mail out here like the mail is like really bad um a lot of people don't get their mail um so so people regular don't regularly get their mail so people weren't getting like the mail-in ballots and all that stuff um and so like the way that they positioned the voting booths was basically so like they were in the gentrifying neighborhoods but then like in all the poor neighborhoods there were none even though there were opportunities to open some in the poorer neighborhoods they didn't and this was because the mayor's rival well someone that the mayor doesn't want as council member was in this location so so like she was trying to get somebody else elected which she had done in the prior election and so like the person she wants to get elected is more like kind of mainstream would be fit in more with like the gentrifiers for what position what position does she not want and who's who's the mayor we were talking about mayor bowser muriel bowser for this is for the council seat one of the council seats because the council approves a budget and like she you know she always is looking for votes on council wow it sounds like a microcosm as we're hearing about with voting changes in other places and restricting voting here and putting polling places in where it's easy for the right voters and not putting them yeah we don't want people i mean it's it's like that in miniature and you know ward 8 is relatively a small place compared to a whole city sort of thing is going on right there's an injustice boy yep wow um why do you think going back to the gentrification why do you think the and who was it that ultimately decided to do what they're gonna do anyway what what group of people uh the zoning commission okay so what incentive is there for the zoning commission to disregard the rights and the voices of the residents well the zoning commission is the mayor's agency which you know and the mayor decides how development goes and so the mayor tells the zoning agency hey i want you to prove these projects i want tells a planning agency i want you to plan this and the mayor's incentive is tax tax based so like you know if you don't have money i mean that means you're a drain because you may you may you're not paying taxes not only are you not paying taxes but you may be collecting welfare you may be on um you know on public housing you may you may have all kinds of subsidies um from the government uh so but but but here's an interesting thing like with gentrification i mean you're just reversing the subsidy you know like the subsidy then goes to the developer the subsidy then goes to the newer residents but i think the way that the mayor looks at it is there's a greater return on the newer residents so like you know if i'm going to be spending some subsidy you know at least it should be with these people who are going to have a discretionary income and they're going to spend money and make the city popular and all this stuff so so they're running away they're running away poor people yeah yeah absolutely yeah so isn't the saint elizabeth 48 saint ez yes hannes is on ward 8. and how are you seeing that developing as a big i mean that's a huge huge project um i i mean i'll be you know i'm watching i mean that's pretty far up uh mlk um closer to congress heights uh and i know that gentrification you know it generally happens in um uh how that like it's um works together so like you know it doesn't work independently so i mean i know i i have my eye in ward 8 on anacostia because everything over there is hot yeah there's synergy like gentrification happens with synergy so it's more than one project you know it's a lot of stuff happening and that's happening in anacostia right now you got the frederick douglass bridge 11th street bridge mlk gateway uh reunion square colombian quarter you know everything over there is just blowing up right now based on what you're saying it's not uh because some people might hear gentrification and think that it's a race issue but it doesn't seem like it's a race issue because the mayor of dc is an african-american woman right right it seems it seems as though it's a thing against poor people well well i don't want to um i don't want to offend anybody but there's a saying in ward 8 uh to describe people like the mayor uh and they call them negropians so that what's what's a negro pen let's let's let's define that term well so so maybe it's not money or race maybe it's cultural right so maybe she's black but like culturally um you know she doesn't she's not a part of the black collective you know in ward 8 she's not um so what is what is that what does that mean tell me what that means well i mean i i think you know when you start talking about it in like uh political subunits like a ward um like it's pretty easy for us to be on the same page with things like we don't need to talk to each other be on the same page and ward 8 is 95 black so is that a black opinion a ward 8 opinion i don't know but like we get on the same page with stuff um you know and the mayor is not on the page with ward 8. like um so is that a black opinion is that uh um a poor or rich opinion or is it cultural i think a lot of it is cultural and um yeah she's definitely not not with us and another famous one is all skin folk and kenpo all skin folk ain't info now is this mayor muriel bowser yeah that's him okay so we have an injustice where where people in a particular part of the city they're getting displaced against their wishes and wants even though there's laws in place that should protect them and again go back to what we say to this show so often is the system is not necessarily broken it's the people who are running the system that are broken that are crooked um dr chaney i know you have tons of questions what would you like to ask mr ari today i'm fighting this fly i'm glad you came on that show thanks thanks for having me okay you just gotta bear with me because this is a little lengthy gentrification does not benefit the poor and this is my assessment it's reverse robin hood robbing the poor and given to the rich and you can talk about that gentrification is a global phenomenon that was new to me that in 1960 there are writings about london and it's covering notting hill you might know about that and basically they talked about the severe impact on early caribbean tenants and as they migrated there and they developed carnivals and all kinds of lifestyles what they do do and what we do do and eventually along comes gentrification another 2005 article lists three key problems one the the inequality of community disruption we can talk about that working class displacement the erosion of affordable housing in major cities and i'm talking like this because this is a very important topic to us here in the washington dc area and pretty much globally as the research will tell us regarding your views the media reports your views to include race class and age all leading to wide spread gentrification and displacement you know the thing that i was listening to salon and and we're talking about the mayor and different politicians the thing that concerns me and you could talk about this is that ideally this is supposed to be a pro-tenant district that the d.c government has all kinds of rules supposedly to benefit tenants and so how how come we're we're in this slot the way we're in and finally here google did a search or google search reveals that there there can be benefits to gen gentrification but only to long-term residents who are not pushed out development without displacement is the key fighting displacement rather than fighting against development should be the focus is dc moving in this direction i asked you that um i i don't think dc is moving in that direction um i think dc is is moving in uh i i don't know you hear so many things uh one of the things that you just hear heard about is that dc's like going to find housing permanent shelters for like 4 000 people or something like that it sounds good i don't know if i believe it but i guess i'll believe it when i see it um and i mean with the policies i mean i i feel like all they've done really is kind of make it easier uh so like uh chairman hood doesn't have to make those kind of ridiculous decisions anymore they've just kind of rewritten the statute to make it easier to do the things that they want to do um so they're not caught in these situations where they're breaking the law um yeah i think it's going the opposite direction and i agree with you i think that the key never is stopping development development is inevitable development's going to happen as part of human nature i think the key is including everyone in it so more people can uh prosper from uh uh development uh because it's not it is very much like you said uh you know a reverse robin hood situation uh you definitely are taking from people with less um to make it easier for people with more and um that's uh that that that may work good on your budget um but but i think morally and ethically um there's more we should be doing all right i just have two more quick ones topa and gentrification toppo as we know is the acronym for tenants opportunity to purchase a sale and gentrification i am saying is demolition all right before the filing of your berry farm gentrification were your lead plaintiffs officers of the tenants association because i heard about party status and i do have a reason to ask that because we've gone through some issues here and we've had tenants to move forward and they've been kicked out because of party status or lack of standing was there ever a standing issue regarding the tenant plaintiffs they never heard much you said no no uh-uh they they always had standing and and deserve party status i mean they all lived there they had units they were being demolished yeah and when the tenants received the notification i don't know how this would have been done but i know how it was done with topa when they received notification from the government um what was the next step were they were they can you tie and topa with gentrification this is very different and yet similar well um i don't know if if topa has i i i don't i i don't know enough about it but i know that for berry farm residents topa did not apply because uh nobody had applied topa to public housing before and so there is a question of whether or not public housing residents even had topo rights um and so that didn't apply at berry farm um but yeah in terms of topaz responsibility for gentrification uh i i i couldn't say i i don't know i i do know andrew mcguire the gentrification that the the topa attorney um he's very good okay the last part howard croft do you know who i'm talking about he's a former howard koroff was a former dc udc professor okay in urban studies yeah and he was also an activist with martin luther king uh definitely there in southeast washington and he recently died okay one of the things that's interesting about him he was going around talking about and you can see him online doing it he was going around talking about the white people will be coming the white people will be coming fantastic fantastic because he's saying that it would be positive for southeast if you would have more diversity based on what he's saying so i was really thought that you might have known of him or his efforts what he was doing in southeast because i heard that he died in 20 last year of covet i i've heard his name but i i was not familiar with him or his work okay it's unfortunate yeah it really is and so basically those were the concerns that i had and the more that i read about gentrification it does seem like it's really a race-based situation even though it's an economical based situation also so it's great that you're participating yeah i think that it is there's some racialized capitalism happening for um the other thing the other thing i just want i'm just curious about how do people know you know there's a notion if you build they will come how do people know to come are they some way tipped off to come to these neighborhoods once the gentrification happens well it's funny you say that i i just i just read a newspaper article or or my girlfriend showed me a newspaper article of um a newspaper article about uh yeah the new york magazines in new york magazine and it was it was about anacostia uh the the five best neighborhoods in dc um and it had like anacostia on there and it was like a two-page write-up on anacostia and i was thinking to myself man like if i came from new york or wherever this magazine was and i came to anacostia i'd be so pissed off yes there's nothing here there's nothing here and you could get like mugged or shot like it's not even like safe like that to be like walking around like as as like a stranger you know what i'm saying looking lost and stuff predicting the future yeah but really like what it is that's like marketing like they're marketing the neighborhood um you know but there's like nothing here there's no way that this neighborhood is like number two to dupont circle like come on what blew me away was the history the history of berry farms after all of this is there not going to be any more berry farms i mean when you talk about the civil rights and going back that far is there is there going to be some i know you said there may be a museum but it seemed like there should be something much more than just a museum no um i i mean that's going to be a a white neighborhood it's going to be a mixed income uh white a lot of white homeowners a lot of white renters i mean it's going to be like how most of the neighborhoods are in dc now not neighborhoods but you know those big buildings uh you know that are self-sustaining that nobody ever leaves wow so history is going to be erased almost because they don't teach this in in the in this in the schools i i've never heard about this history of berry farms oh wow uh yeah i mean yeah and and the the thing is they say that there's a there's like a it's kind of a urban legend that um when the when the land was given to howard uh to then give to the to the formally enslaved uh that that land was always to be for the purpose of the formerly enslaved and that that was like the the deed uh so to speak that you know people rumor and like there's like a myth that that exists yeah so john just found this when you talk about the marketing which washington area neighborhoods will boom next number one anacost anacostia yeah they've been pumping anacostia for years and they're going to continue to pump wow it has all the bones of being you know that one of those up and coming places just like bloomingdale was 20 years ago you know you've got the pieces there and now you just have to get some people there and and plant those the money and and then the businesses come and the whole thing begins to snowball yeah that sort of does some of that there's all kinds of ways to market uh to neighborhoods like this you know you got festivals you got bids um you know they run these magazine articles about neighborhoods um yeah all kinds of ways that they draw people in into neighborhoods and as washington goes the housing is much more affordable you want to buy a house right anacostia is going to cost you oh a third of what it might cost in columbia heights adams morgan wherever you know in the center of the city so yeah might not have all of the blah blah blah or it might not be as safe as blah blah blah blah but when you can get a house you can actually afford that will attract but again younger people people without children because they don't have to worry about that aspect yet and now you start to get people in who start to change over redo housing attract some businesses and and then you start to get more the city starts plowing more resources in i mean that's resources that should be being plowed into the neighborhood now or 10 years ago yeah but then then then the city will be plowing more money you know fixing street lights redoing sidewalks increasing police presence blah blah blah blah blah blah and on you go very interesting thank you very much ari for coming on the show and educating us and giving us yet another glimpse into an injustice that's surrounding us and some people may not have known this and it may not directly impact them but it's good to know what is happening around us okay thank you very much for having me on uh and you all have a great weekend rest of your weekend all right you too good to see you bye bye as well john okay bye [Music] so john what do you think well and he summed it up so well i mean one of the things we kind of glossed over though since we're talking about injustices there's so many of these kinds of projects like he's talking about where we're going to redo barry farms we're going to redo kelly miller homes in ward 1 and we're going to tear them down and we're going to gut them and redo them but even though like these residents wanted to say well do this gradually so we can stay here you know you're destroying a community i mean the injustice there because i i know many of these situations i bet those residents of barry farm they got put on a list and when this is all done and it's all spanking clean and wonderful you can come back but you know how long that often takes that may take anywhere from five to ten years now let's say the city's done a good job and actually keeping track of me i was a resident right they kept track of john saladi but seven eight years from now and they call me oh john you know barry farms is done you can come back now is it realistic to think that having hopefully hopefully reestablish myself somewhere i'm going to tear myself out of that place and come back to this place which will be physically somewhat familiar although it will have been transformed in many ways but what made it a community can almost never be restored that much time gone by as opposed to okay we're going to redo this in stages and in most of these kinds of housing complexes there are often a number of vacant units so they you know the city could empty a building in other words congregate the residents the the existing residents in these other buildings yeah we moved you from this building to this building so that way we emptied this building out completely and we'll restore this building and move people to that building and we'll work on another building so the community one the people stay together and the again the inevitable what makes community community the lives the interactions that gets maintained so even if the city does an amazing job of keeping track of people which often people get lost right five six seven years who doesn't keep an address whatever but even if they kept all that bringing them back years later it's just not realistic a much smaller place than barry farms but where this happened ward one and yeah they moved everyone out they restored these buildings uh did a very great job and one resident came back an elderly resident came back uh these two buildings there might have been what 40 some odd maybe 50 units in these two buildings one resident came back wow so yeah yes you improved them yes you did some good things yes but you still destroyed a community and what more of an injustice can there be than that and and who is it happening to those who are the most vulnerable the most without the means to defend themselves or to even just pick up and move right sometimes and in many cases like barry farms you're talking public housing so here it is public housing that is something that we are supposed to be doing to uplift people that are struggling on some level and instead we get more focused on either who's going to do the work get paid for the work and the physical structures rather than the human structures the human structures get pushed to the side and unless there's an ari around who's gonna essentially often get paid very little but who does it as sort of that's his mission right those people well you don't have standing because while you're i mean that anthony hood could say such a thing but he could get away with it i mean that's not even so much that he could say it but he's away with doing it and he got away with it like nobody even batted an eye it's not like some court came along and said now tut-tut that's that's no right dr cheney what were your thoughts well hopefully i convey them but i'm thinking still about it being a global phenomenon that i ran across some research that said harlem new york remember when bill clinton went to harlem and yeah opened his office harlem has changed all of that's changed a lot of people left california so california has changed it's going to be interesting with california though because even though it's gentrified with all the people that are coming into california and what i'm hearing is such a hot large homeless population and so that would be ripe for more gentrification and then there's cities all across the country we have people all across watch this show from all across the country who's to say that their city is not next yeah and it seems to be that in these communities where people do not have a lot of money they're being targeted because it's easy to move them if they don't own anything and even if they own something i guess you could increase the tax base and all that and imminent domain and they would be looking i think that's the injustice because it's the people who don't have money they don't have a voice the renters and you can run you could come in and do what you want with them and what are they going to do they can't hire an attorney to represent them no one's going to listen to them so they have to pick up and either be homeless or go live with the relative or get public assistance in some other part of a city that's yet to be gentrified well and i think in dc's case what is often happened in the those kinds of situations that you described so long is that those poorer people again particularly the renting class of people because now the rents fries they move where they move they move to the what you'd call the inner suburbs you know just they're actually moved out of dc pg county hyattsville you know those areas uh congress heights so these areas just over the borders in maryland on that side of the city where yeah they've left the district because it's too expensive to stay there as as the rents rise the owners let's say the long time owners of houses the sad and a good who complain them they say wow you know i've yeah my family's been here for three generations but i can now sell my house for six hundred thousand dollars and they do they open so they chose they were but what they do what they do is because these are where investors come in they would come and they will say hey i'll give you 200 000 for this house and it's someone who's lived in this house without a mortgage because it was it was handed down from their parents and so they say 200 000 oh my goodness that's so much money they get it the person invests in it and then they sell it for six eight or even a million dollars that kind of swindling happens too but even if that doesn't happen you lose a whole part of your community because a long-term family decides they can actually get market rate so they're getting now you know their house probably needs work and this this is that so they're not getting the toughest dollar okay fine but they're still getting five six hundred thousand and what do they do they take their money and they leave the district of columbia because they can't necessarily roll that over in the district so they they move so you're losing a piece of your community you know a long term aspect of your community fabric even for people who are doing well by the capitalism that is they sold out they chose to sold a sell out and they got a good value they're leaving and you're losing the city loses something the community loses something and then there are the swindles or you know the undercutting because they are the people who don't know any bet some elderly residents oh 250 000 wow that's 20 times what grandma paid for this house in 1925. of course they could get 50 times what grandma paid for that house in 1925. that does happen you're right you know what i want to add to the conversation is that when people that are not people who visited these communities and they've experienced excitements like the carnivals and the way things are done the different markets where they sell unique products and whatnot i think that that attracts them to these areas but once they get in these areas and they have lived in these areas and they no longer have that they eventually will leave what do you think about that there's something that brings them here you don't just come for a new house you could come for the convenience perhaps but there's something more to it and then that's gone right you come for the community well you see again it all depends on where you come in the stage of the thing but if you come early relatively early relatively early where change is happening but still there's a sense of what the community has been and that's why you moved there because it's cool it's interesting they're nice people there's a fabric people say hey i mean again the long-term residents are often very welcoming and that then but as more and more people move in yeah you lose some of that even as you gain other things see again the flip side of that is now you're going to gain restaurants that may not have been there before or other businesses that are there so that makes it nice to say but at some point it may be that oh yeah this is just like any other pretty nice place and maybe one's desire to stay wanes and [Music] and you can't forget the people who are coming in because it's a wealthier more expensive place it's pushing out the crime rate drops oh yeah all right yeah so that is a huge attraction for people they want to live in a safe place so there's pros and cons leave your comments send an email we don't have our comments up but send an email to the legal zone at remus law and tell us what you think gentrification is it a good thing is it a bad thing and subscribe yeah subscribe right down on the channel the shows that we have coming they're gonna involve we talked about a police officer and other professionals to talk about the injustices that they face in life dr cheney thank you for being here today okay thank you john solati thank you very much for your presence great conversation salon thank you thank you all for tuning in we'll see you next week okay bye-bye bye-bye thanks for watching our video for experienced legal services in washington dc alabama and washington state visit our website at remuslaw.com or call us at 1-833-329-1799 when someone goes through a divorce they lose their best friend they lose their house they lose their children any time away from your child is a loss let's face it divorce kills the average cost in the united states for divorce is 13 000 it's not uncommon for divorce to cost well into the hundreds of thousands of dollars at remus we take into consideration you the divorcing spouse your property your money and your children we assist clients in directing them to therapy mentorship programs savings we mitigate the cost of divorce to keep your expenses down we look out for the client holistically [Music] it came to rena's law seeking a divorce salon listened to me i told him my story [Music] when he emailed me a copy of the complaint which summarized my story he was able to say exactly what i had been feeling for so many years when my husband was served with the complaint he came to me with tears in his eyes he said he didn't know this is how i was really feeling he asked if we could try again at remus we do all that we can for our clients [Music]

Channel: The Legal Zone: Tackling the Tough Legal Questions

Views: 12,855

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: Gentrification Laws, PUD, Planned Urban Development, Washington DC Gentrification, Understanding gentrification, what is gentrification?, What is the purpose of Planned Urban Development, zoning laws, flexible zoning laws, land development laws, land use laws, gentrification law podcast, land development law podcast, land use law podcast, zoning law podcast, legal podcast, Solon Phillips, Attorney John Salatti, Remus Enterprises Law Group, Legal Zone, the legal zone, law, legal

Id: WlQaEaYe9GQ

Length: 57min 34sec (3454 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 12 2021