Gentrification of Montbello: My first paying job which resulted
Guest Editorial By R.J. Price, PhD
in a w-2 was at the old Montbello Recreation Center, now the Boys and Girls Club. I was a pool attendant, eventually I became a lifeguard, working at the outdoor pool summer after summer. One can’t see the pool anymore. It’s been covered over with concrete and the Club parks it’s shuttle buses there. They have also put in an outdoor basketball court to add a little traditional neighborhood charm. I miss the old Montbello Rec. center. It was hard to let it go but the Boys and Girls club has made a nice addition. That was 30 years ago and Montbello was 20 years old. A few years prior, my sister bought her first home on Crown Blvd. across from Montbello High School. The mortgage was $54,000. Now the median home value in Montbello is $270,000 according to www.realtor.com. Not bad, right? Before the reader gets too excited, let’s consider that most of that growth has occurred in a very short period of time. Last year alone, housing prices in Montbello jumped an average of 27% and our community is now considered the hottest suburban real estate market in the country. While some residents welcome the local and national attention, along with increasing property values, in hopes that the community will get a face lift and an economic boost, some residents fear that those changes are a strong indication that Montbello is soon doomed to gentrification. Some even suggest that recent designation of Montbello at the top of Denver’s list of priorities for a new neighborhood plan means that the community has fallen into the bullseye of someone’s target. Being in the crosshairs doesn’t necessarily bode well for those who are vulnerable due to income status. One may be asking, “What is gentrification?” “Is that what is happening to North Park Hill and Five Points?” Gentrification has taken on different definitions, but the term was originally coined in 1964 by Ruth Glass, a British sociologist who used it to describe the displacement of low income persons by middle-income people in working class districts of London. According to Denver’s Office of Economic Development’s 2016 study on gentrification, the term is defined as “involuntary displacement.” It strikes me that Native Americans were involuntarily displaced by European settlers. From that standpoint, perhaps gentrification is nothing new. Of course, the tactics of today are different and the influx of people are not always of European descent, but regardless, the interlopers are still coming for the land. Gentrification could be characterized as capitalism at its best. In order to understand the genesis of gentrification in Denver and the nation, it’s important to take a look backward. I grew up in Park Hill during the 80s, but I remember my mom talking about the first home she and my father purchased in 1965 near Martin Luther King Boulevard on Ivy St. The purchase price was $35,000. My mom remarked that there were about eight homes on the block that were for sale and already vacant. What happened? “White Flight is what happened.” North Park Hill had been occupied by white residents, but in Denver, like many other cities beginning in the 1950’s, as black residents moved to inner cities (often in hopes of work), white residents moved out. This movement meant that the suburbs expanded while the inner city was left with high vacancies and depressed real estate values. As any student of high school economics would know this phenome
non – the law of supply and demand — is one that could be expected. As more houses were left vacant, property values plummeted. In July, 2015, Alana Semuels in the Atlantic posited that “today’s cities may be more diverse overall, but people of different races still don’t live near each other.” In the late 1960s there was a string of race riots that plagued the country. Lyndon B. Johnson, then President of the United States commissioned a group of civic leaders to determine the underlying causes of these “major racial incidents.” The Kerner Report, as it has become to be known, concluded, “Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white—separate and unequal.” Of course, that was 1968, but the Eisenhower Foundation, which continues to conduct work and awareness around this topic reported in 2008: “America, for the most part, {has} failed to meet the Kerner Commission’s goals of less poverty, inequality, racial injustice and crime.” What does this history lesson have to do with today’s discussion of gentrification? Ms. Semuels concludes in her report, “the practices derided by the Kerner Commission, including white flight, exclusionary zoning, and outright prejudice, are continuing to create black areas and white areas {and brown areas}, but this time around, those areas exist in both the cities and the suburbs.” Unfortunately, this process of displacing people by other persons of greater affluence has become the result of a failure to address institutionalized racism in our country and only appears to have emerged as a recent phenomenon – in the guise of gentrification — across the nation. It has appeared in different ways and with different people, but in the end people who have been historically disenfranchised from the American Dream and from the benefits of the American economic machine are again being marginalized and punished for being poor and often black or brown. According to 2013 demographic data Montbello was outside of the cusp of median income levels that put it at danger for gentrification. However, as home property values continue to rise at uncommon rates, Montbello has and will continue to experience transformation. To help mitigate the negative impacts of gentrification, residents must participate in directing the flow of this energy. This window of opportunity can be used for community members to strengthen bonds among themselves and assist each other in accessing available resources. Community leaders must assist in strategies and solutions that include strengthening homeownership of its current longstanding residents. Lastly, new and current residents must reach across lines of race, class, and culture to help to continue to foster a diverse, welcoming, and inclusive community.Y
Editot’s note: RJ Price, PhD is Community Site Representative-Montbello for the Youth Violence Prevention Center-Denver which is associated with the University of Colorado Boulder. R.J. also co-chairs the Community Engagement Task Team for Montbello Organizing Committee. He lives, works, and plays in Montbello and may be contacted at Roosevelt.priceii@colorado.edu.
MUSE - Montbello Urban Spectrum Edition - May/June 2017
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