I had dinner tonight with a couple of blokes.
Bloke1: “What do you think of gentrification?”
Luke: “I think it’s great.”
Bloke1: “How come we have only heard about gentrification over past couple of decades?”
Luke: “There was an explosion of land use regulations in the 1970s, taking a lot of land off the market, and making development increasingly difficult. This dramatically spiked real estate prices in nice white areas. Whites who can’t afford to live in these places any more but still want to stay in Los Angeles or the Bay Area or New York or Washington DC have to move into black and hispanic areas. Gentrification means making a place white.”
Bloke2: “I see that 90035 is one of the few places in Los Angeles becoming more white.”
Luke: “More Jewish. More Jews move in here every week.”
Bloke1: “I’m hispanic and I can’t think of any neighborhood that’s been improved by a bunch of Mexicans moving in.”
“What do you think of asians?”
Luke: “They understand racial pride. Us vs them is the most normal thinking in the world.”
