Gentrification is NOT Inevitable | Leslie Kern in conversation with David Madden

What does gentrification look like? Can we even agree that it is a process that replaces one community with another? It is a question of class? Or of economic opportunity? Who does it affect the most? Is there any way to combat it? Leslie Kern discusses the myths and lies around gentrification with David Madden, co-author of In Defense of Housing.

Kern proposes a genuinely decolonial, feminist, queer, anti-gentrification. One that demands the right to the city for everyone and the return of land and reparations for those who have been displaced. Her new book, Gentrification is Inevitable and Other Lies, is out now!

[peternennig]

We need a right to decent housing. We also need guaranteed employment at a fair minimum wage tied to inflation and productivity (in the US should be $22-24/hr) and replacement income for elderly and disabled (~$3500/month is what people need by governments own figures; currently about a third of this for social security or disability payments). To make housing affordable we need to guarantee safe and decent housing as a right and make sure people can make enough to afford the housing they need. Also a job guarantee could build public housing and green infrastructure needed so that we can have green, walkable and bikeable cities and without the harms of urban sprawl and urban decay, and provide adequate public transportation in urban and rural areas. Both are necessary; neither are sufficient.

[dfwherbie]

Wow. I never would have thought to hear an argument which focused on the effects gentrification has on women. Not that I’m surprised about this. But being a black man from NYC, and seeing how entire communities are uprooted (many of which are left homeless), is some crazy whitewashing of the issue that is much more predicated on class dynamics than just gender. I’m sorry, it’s just hard to hear how gentrification is and has “always been a feminist issue” when the communities that are disproportionately affected by it are black and brown. We can’t go anywhere—not only substantively, but materially—on the Left until we stop this reductive, and indexable, project of parochial focus. And on the highest of MF keys, this convo was annoying AF. Had to stop after 10 minutes.