Black Relocation Is Happening- Ch. 1. Intentional Devaluation and False Promises.

Harnessing Black Consumer and Economic Power As An Agent For Social Change.

Black Relocation Is Happening v2.2

Ch. 1. Intentional Devaluation and False Promises

The powers that be, the local citizens and the rich/corporations never intended to keep any promises about supporting real fundamental, systemic, and lasting change in Black communities. For the past 60-70 years since white-flight in the fifties and sixties, Black communities experienced intentional devaluation of our property and neighborhoods, urban decay, and modern Jim Crow segregation. Positive factors such as an educated workforce, great climate if in California, and good home condition are not reflected in property evaluation in the Black communities. Worse, the same factors of bad schools and closeness to the urban cores which are used to devalue Black communities are no longer used to decrease the value of property once Blacks have been relocated- now close proximity to metro lines and urban cores is now more desirable than a good public school system and therefore worth paying for.[i]  Our communities have been intentionally left underdeveloped in order to serve as cheap housing for the new city dwellers so they may profit from the depressed prices and future expected profits brought by urban renewal- aka the “fixer upper market”.

The day of relocation has arrived, the new neighbors are here and coming, and yet Black communities never saw the promises realized. What we are seeing is an increase in real estate development encroaching into the historic Black cores and post white-flight Black areas,[ii] and an increase in economic exploitation accompanied with significant demographic relocations[iii]. The expected profits from the new development may be in the billions.[iv] Downtown Los Angeles /LA Live/Staples Center complex is a perfect example.

This “integration” is neither progress nor the same as accepting Blacks into white areas. We pay more for the property when we move into white neighborhoods, i.e. rent goes up, not down. We are not trying to take advantage of the Jim Crow system. Rather we are trying to escape it.

[i] A New York Times article states that public school system ranking is no longer an important factor with regards to price in newly redone urban areas like San Francisco where most of the property is now some of the most expensive in the country after “revival”. Quoctrung Bui and Conor Dougherty, “Good Schools, Affordable Homes, Finding the Suburban Sweet Spot,” New York Times, March 3, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/03/30/upshot/good-schools-affordable-homes-suburban-sweet-spots.html. Close proximity to metro lines and urban cores is now more desirable than a good public school system and therefore worth paying for.

However for Blacks, these exact reasons- closeness to downtown and poor schools- are still used as negative factors when the desirability equation is applied to determine the value of black property and in black areas. By analogy Black areas should be higher valued because they are also close to downtown Los Angeles/LA Live and USC, and will soon be stops along the new metro lines which caters to the exact same crowds as in San Francisco. Of course, Black areas are not valued more highly.

[ii] Angel Jennings, “Downtown Development Boom Set To Move Into South Central L.A. As City Approves Controversial High Rise Complex”, Los Angeles Times, November 22, 2016, http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-reef-development-20161122-story.html; “Controversial ‘Reef’ Project In South LA Get Green Light From City”, The Open Daily Los Angeles, November 23, 2016, http://www.theopendaily.com/business/controversial-reef-project-in-south-la-gets-green-light-from-city.

[iii] Which groups are moving in large numbers into the “renewed” urban areas? According to the US Census Bureau, countless mainstream media articles and personal observation it is a combination of groups that are moving into the urban areas at “unanticipated proportions” looking for cheap housing, including but not limited to, white hipster/techies, white millennials and their parents, white homosexuals of both genders and other groups and white heterosexuals of both genders and political groups. See e.g., Sam Frizell, “The New American Dream Is Living In A City, Not Owning A House In The Suburbs”, Time, April 25, 2014, http://time.com/72281/american-housing/.

[iv] In South Los Angeles the plan for “The Reef” development calls for more than 1,400 units of housing, as well as a hotel, restaurants and shopping to be built on two empty parking lots near a Metro Blue Line station. Jennings, “Downtown Development Boom Set To Move Into South Central L.A. As City Approves Controversial High Rise Complex”; “Controversial ‘Reef’ Project In South LA Get Green Light From City”, The Open Daily Los Angeles.

In Inglewood, the Rams and NFL are building a stadium in Inglewood adjacent to a newly expanding metro line. David Davis, “The End Zone Is Near- The Rams Come Full Circle, and So Does Inglewood”, Los Angeles Magazine, March 2016. “This once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” said “Silent Stan [Kroneke]…”bigger than Century City as a footprint”. Ibid. The article continues, “As a bonus, the location is within 2 miles of a Crenshaw Line light-rail station, scheduled to open in 2019- the same year as the new stadium. Kroneke will be doing the math on season tickets, personal-seat licenses, luxury suites and beer- figures that may well dwarf the size of the new stadium- while trying to build a Super Bowl Contender.” Ibid. Los Angeles Magazine’s target audience is white, affluent Los Angeles.

In Downtown Los Angeles, Downtown/ LA Live originally centered around the Staples Center and now contains a number of hotels with every increasing construction also adjacent to the metro lines. See e.g,, Andrew Khouri, “Downtown Los Angeles Hasn’t Seen This Much Construction Since the 1920s”, Los Angeles Times, January 8, 2017, http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-downtown-boom-20161130-story.html; Roger Vincent, “In L.A’s Broadway Theater District, Chinese Developer Builds Condos Priced For the First Time Buyer”, Los Angeles Times, September 21, 2017; http://latimes.com/business.   At the same time, Los Angeles’ city and county homeless population is increasing at an alarmingly rate-in 2017 it increased 23% from 2016, which increased from 2015’s numbers. Gale Holland and Doug Smith, “Los Angeles County’s Homelessness Jumps A “Staggering 23%” As Need Far Outpaces Housing, A New Count Shows”, Los Angeles Times, May 31, 2017, http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-homeless-count-20170530-story.html; Gale Holland and Peter Jamison, “Los Angeles Sees Another Sharp Rise in Homelessness and Outdoor Tents”, Los Angeles Times, May 4, 2016, http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow; Thomas Gaist and Marc Wells, “Homelessness Sharply Increases In Los Angeles County”, World Socialist Web Site, June 9, 2017, https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/06/09/home-j09.html.   The demographics are visibly different- filled with the same relocation groups as in the other cities. The development pattern is very similar to San Francisco, New York and Washington DC. Some of the same developers can be found in all these cities, such as the Carmel Partners, www. carmelpartners.com

The Mid-Wilshire and Miracle Mile areas in Los Angeles also used to have a large Black population. Following Downtown LA, the Black population is being replaced by white heterosexuals and homosexuals.

For Blacks, the result is a shift in demographics while others get super rich and buy teams. See also Gene Balk, “As Seattle Gets Richer, the City’s Black Households Get Poorer”, The Seattle Times, November 12, 2014, http://blogs.seattletimes.com/fyi-guy/2014/11/12/as-seattle-gets-richer-the-citys-black-households-get-poorer/.