03/08/2023
Gentrification vs Revitalization
In the United States, redlining is a discriminatory practice in which services are withheld from potential customers who reside in neighborhoods classified as "hazardous" to investment. These neighborhoods have significant numbers of racial and ethnic minorities, and low-income residents. For decades now, the system has chosen areas to build wealth and what areas will be forgotten to fend for themselves. Red lining prevents the ability to get out, and its purposely done.
For even longer, the system, ran by white men, typically chooses people who look like them to gain access to the better life, let alone bare minimum “amenities” such as grocery stores and housing that comes without violence surrounding it. In more recent history, the war on drugs (since 1971) uses military involvement and resources to target the most marginalized members of society. After all, it wasn’t the system who provided the drug transport to those communities to begin with?
After causing the problems, removing opportunities from the same communities and then ignoring the problems for a long time, they suddenly find new in the old and decide to deem those problematic neighborhoods “up and coming neighborhoods (aka opportunities for investors)”. The land is bought up, new housing is built, driving property taxes and home values up, and pushing those who suffered there for decades out and into another troubled areas for the cycle to begin again.
Here in Jacksonville, Florida, the population is nearly 1 million people. Of the nearly 1 million people, almost 1/3 are African American. The old African American neighborhood used to be a vibrant neighborhood of community, culture, restaurants, commerce, and opportunity. Then the war on drugs began, splitting families apart and creating this pattern. Now, that neighborhood is being bought up by developers in response to a hospital buying up acres just behind the neighborhood.
If we are going to be investors here in Jacksonville, our mission is to buy up as much as possible and revitalize the community for decades to come! The nearly 300,000 African American citizens of Jacksonville deserve a neighborhood for themselves that holds deep and rich history, and reflects what happens when marginalized groups are given opportunities everyone else receives and are then left alone to prosper and heal.
We are not millionaires. We are regular people, activists, and individuals with a network who could make a ton of money while finally doing the right thing. If you’re an activist, wealth creation is the language of capitalism, and sometimes, you have to join them to beat them. Investors, there is a way to enact change and retire early. Lets do the work so we can actually enact real change and do the right thing while fulfilling our personal goals. It is possible to do both!
