4) Gentrification Or Blatant Racism (Harrangue / Current Social Issues) Poem by Otradom Pelogo

I tried to write about the areas that I frequented the most while I sat there at the Bayview Basin on 3rd St. in San Francisco. It's an area somewhat like the Market St. area and the Tenderloin near the financial district. I was staying where my Uncle Chris lived, in Hunters Point off of 3rd street, and was thinking about what was happening there. From a social perspective, there are a lot of cheap hotels there, shelters, soup kitchens, and a lot of the vices that go along with it (though within stone-throwing distance, just the opposite exits) .
'Decreases in income and decline in standards of living are often accompanied by a multitude of social manifestations—malnutrition, drug abuse, and deterioration in family life, all of which take a toll on health and life expectancy.' (Joseph E. Stiglitz)

So I walked around with my cell phone, taking pictures of everything from restaurants, to laundromats, and from soup kitchens to shelters. I would, while there, spend most of the time at the library, going between the main library downtown and the local library, although a fraction of the size, but mainly to spend time in the area where I was staying rather than waking up in the morning and heading out until time to turn in for the evening. I would spend most of the time working on the social networking to keep in touch, the personal investing program and the MTC Community program, which was about the people and places in the community. Places in the community that were vital to its survival, like the Hunters Point Resource Center where I would stop by for either breakfast, lunch or supper, if not picking up something to eat along the way throughout the day as not to spend too much time traveling from one place to the other, You spend more money when traveling than staying in an apartment or house, unless you have a car, which I didn't, thus you spend much more time traveling from place to place. So you have to prudently plan the day out before leaving in the morning.

The Bayview area lies along 3rd street, where at one end is the baseball stadium where the Giants play and of course, the other end where the 49ers played up until recently, Candlestick Park. This is also an older neighborhood. My uncle and his wife came here in the sixties along with a lot of other people that migrated from the area where we grew up at in Southeast Texas; like my grandparents did from Louisiana to Texas. The city where we grew up, there is a place called Gladys City, a replica of an oil town, brought in by an oil gusher called Spindletop, and many other oil wells that sprouted out in that area. Spindletop, which was the largest in the world at that time, sparked the transportation revolution and helped fuel the planes, ships and trains that aided in the winning of both world wars. And because of that, was one of the most targeted place in case of an attack by foreign powers. After World War II, and most likely before, a lot of people migrated from the southern part of the United States to the West Coast to help in the building of it because of a slowdown due to the war and the appropriation of manpower before and after it. Ann, my Aunt would tell me about the different neighborhoods that were all black neighborhood, like the Fillmore District. The business, shops and houses lined up and down the streets of this area of San Francisco. But then they started developing around that area and eventually into that area, like a lot of other places, buying old homes and businesses out and building up new neighborhoods.

By the time I had moved there in 1988, you couldn't have known who stayed there, though they lived off of Divisadero, one of the main streets that goes through the Fillmore District. As I mentioned earlier, though my Aunt recently died, my uncle still lives there, in San Francisco, with his youngest daughter Christine, in Hunters Point. It, like the Fillmore District, used to be an all-black neighborhood, and like the Fillmore District, the developers have moved in over there and are buying up everything, to build new neighborhoods. There are other neighborhoods of course, within a five or so mile radius that they are also in the process of redeveloping, like the Sunnydale Apartments, or Petreor Hill Apartments. Usually you can tell which ones are next, since, even in the process of gentrification and its purpose or excuse, which is to make the area better, to even look better, they let the place that they want develop over, fall apart and become undesirable, putting little effort into making them a part of everything else, until they get the time to put something else in its place. And of course, some time in the near future, like the Fillmore District, you want be able to tell who once lived there.

I was in one of the local laundromats on 3rd street in January or so of 2014, and they had one of the local newspapers lying on one of the washers. So I picked it up and began to read it, and there was a big write-up on what they called gentrification. They associated it with the displacement of the black communities in San Francisco, like Hunters Point where my Uncle and his daughter lives, Sunnydale a mile or so down the road, Petrero Hill, a little ways up the hill, and the famous Tenderloin area downtown San Francisco off of Market St., and probably a few other places that I'm not so familiar with, though I have just about either driven or caught the bus, or commuter through just about every single area of the city. The number of blacks, they said, more than any other ethnic group had been more so displaced, and the article strongly implied that they (the black communities) were being targeted and driven out of the city of San Francisco. Ironically enough, I was reading an article in the San Francisco Chronicle, I would pick up from the vendor each morning on my way to the gym, they were giving them out free for some reason, and there was an article on The Presidio (which was a military base) . It was also eventually sold to developers, though I'm not sure if a military base would be classified as a victim of gentrification or collateral damage of urban renewal. It sits on top of the hill right above Bakers beach, a nude beach that sits on the edge of the waters of the Bay at the bottom of The Golden Gate Bridge. So of course, it was somewhat priceless in every respect; financially and aesthetically. They also said that, for some reason that the government felt that it had the right not to charge private developers taxes on the land, like when it belonged to the military, which amounts to millions of dollars every year. And like I mentioned above, this happens often with the multibillion dollar corporations and rich individuals, and thus why not a one-time investment credit incentive to those of modest to little income, which could also be considered as part of a new social security retirement augmentation program.
the question is more one of politics than of economics. Will they be able to curb rent seekers and their pursuit of their own narrow interests, which inevitably harms the economy as a whole? Will they be able to construct a social contract for the twenty-first century, ensuring that the benefits of such growth as occurs will be fairly shared? (Joseph E. Stiglitz)

I was talking to a young coworker in Houston, after having gotten back home that May in 2014, after having spent the last six months in San Francisco, where shortly afterwards I started working as an OTR truck driver. We started talking about, I guess, issues that chronically plague people: poor education, lack of housing, unemployment and other factors. Like me, he seemed interested in matters like this, I had brought up creating a personal investing program earlier in a previous conversation, where people could use it to create a supplemental income, once having made it (the investing program) , what I consider, after doing research for the last three years, easier to understand and use. And we eventually got to the subject of the developing of neighborhoods and the displacement of peoples due to it, of any ethnic group, since it's not an issue that only plagues the African American community, but many other places here and abroad, by what is also referred to as gentrification. And I tried to, with him figure out what it really meant.
Rent seeking is, on average, destructive, because the rent seekers gain for themselves less than they take away from others, so evident in the destruction wrought by the rent seekers in the financial sector. (Joseph E. Stiglitz)

It is the use by a company, organization or individual of resources to obtain an economic gain from others without reciprocating any benefits back to society through wealth creation
(Investopedia)

Was it the same as the urban renewal / development thing, which was or rather is the tearing down of the old that can't be used, the renovation of that which can, the building of that which is needed, and the creation of more enterprise, when it tells those who have been there for ten, twenty, thirty, forty and like my Uncle, fifty or more years, that the government has something for them down the road, and what was once their home will soon be destroyed. And with the monies that the government has, and how much we give away, from tax credits to multibillion dollar corporations and rich individuals and in foreign aid, that's the only alternative. Thus, leaving the answer somewhat vague about the morality or is that the immorality of gentrification, if not like the paper implied, the immorality of displacement, targeting and or blatant racism.


Sources mentioned in backing up the above articles:
Privatizing Social Security: The Troubling Trade-Offs
By Barry P. Bosworth and Gary Burless
The Price Of Inequality: How Today's Divided Society Endangers Our Future
By Joseph E. Stiglitz
The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report: Final Report of the National Commission on the Causes of the Financial and Economic Crisis in the United States
By The Financial crisis Commission
Investopedia
Various Authors