Reflection: Capital City: Gentrification and the Real Estate State, by Samuel Stein

In this book, author Samuel Stein demonstrates just how much our global and local economies rely on real estate development for GDP creating what he called the ‘Real Estate State’. According to Stein and Schwartz, there is no county in the US where a full-time minimum wage worker can afford an average two-bedroom apartment. Rent burdens continually constitute most of people’s overall financial burdens, year after year. For this book, Stein essentially embraces the question every planner asks: “How can we improve cities without sparking displacement?” (p.9).

One thing that stood out to me from this book is the idea that planners are less land use managers than they are wealth managers, as their roles have come to be. By examining how we’ve gone from manufacturing and industrial cities to hot spot residential resorts through the lens of a city planner, Stein gives the reader a glimpse into housing as the most lucrative industry in US cities.

Stein defined various types of planners from rational comprehensive and communicative to advocacy and equity planners. By doing so, he brought the reader to the same level for a more fruitful read. One of the most impactful parts of the book was an anecdote from those in Harlem are afraid of improvements to their neighborhoods, knowing those improvements are not for them and that they mean displacement (p.67).

Another point Stein makes which I think is important to note is that, in New York City, it seems the real estate state is almost inescapable, no matter the party in charge. He makes historically substantiated points on the evolution of how real estate has come to rule our states. As an industry reliant on rising land values, renters, who are often low-income minorities, are the most vulnerable to displacement.

It seems like some of the most harmful things identified by Stein include the excessive use of public-private partnerships in NYC and inconsequential community input: “The people must have their say, but their options must be limited.” (p.31). However, I think this book gave too much blame to planners. Functionally, planners are instruments of the governments they work for and putting the onus of planning equitably on just planners puts them in a difficult position.

Stein made a good point on the symbolism of having a real estate developer as President. While I already agreed that Donald Trump was corrupt to maintain his properties and capitalize off his Presidency, I did not realize the powerful symbolism that represents him and the industry as a whole – using government and taxpayer dollars to line his own pockets. The history of Donald Trump’s family did seem to reflect the different mechanisms for exploiting municipal governments and its planners for profit. From his great grandfather dodging the German draft to Donald Trump dodging the American draft, the exploitation of the public is ingrained. Starting with exploitation of speculation based on future transportation infrastructure by Friedrich and blatantly racist and discriminatory housing policies by Fred to exploitation of public housing regulations and racism by Donald Trump, exploitation runs in the family.

Some of the suggestions Stein made to remedy the housing crisis and rule of real estate were great, but not applicable to many cities or suburbs in the US which may be smaller but also struggle with gentrification. Of the suggestions Stein made, application of inclusionary zoning to white enclaves seemed the most obvious and applicable even in suburban areas. Integrating wealthier whiter neighborhoods instead of displacing poor people of color is clearly beneficial. One obstacle to this could potentially be the community feedback aspect of urban planning and who participates. We know that white people are highly participatory in local politics and people of color who do participate are often not heard.

Stein also suggests using historic preservation boards to the advantage of the working class and through preservation of character and housing. Additionally, the third and most robust strategy given was rent controls. While this seems to be a crucial tactic in New York City and other metropolises like San Francisco or Detroit, it does not seem applicable to growing cities. Further, creation of nonspeculative urban housing sounds fascinating, but requires intense community activism. The “right to sell” bill seems like one of the more applicable preventative measures to gentrification. By being able to sell their homes to the city, lower socioeconomic status occupants can make some money and that home is used to give back to the lower SES community through public housing.

The most important measure to mitigate gentrification is reexamining taxes and property. Funding education through property taxes is one of the most well documented and worst ways to help uplift communities. It is a vicious cycle of generations bound to poor education and poverty. Within that, Stein suggests cities tax any revenue traced to public initiatives or amenities. This would be highly effective given that the signal for gentrification is improved local amenities, at the cost of current residents who may not enjoy them in the future.

Stein’s last suggestion to reindustrialize cities may have potential but seems an inadvertent way to drive other forms of wealth out of the city potentially. Additionally, there would be greater concerns of air quality due to increased manufacturing.

Additionally, the principles defined at the end apply only to highly dense cities, not smaller cities like Gainesville or even Fort Lauderdale where gentrification is rabid. This book was about undoing mass gentrification, but I would have appreciated some time devoted to tactics which could be applied to reduce and prevent mass gentrification and displacement.

This book, towards the end, felt like a planner’s Communist Manifesto-lite. Saying that real estate comprises “60% of the world’s assets,” demonstrates just how much our global economy relies on real estate for revenue and economic flows. While I completely agree that the primary principle of planners should be public stewardship, this book’s conclusion relies on communism too heavily, even citing Karl Marx and discussing the seizure of the means of production. Furthermore, I wish this book provided opposing arguments to Stein’s own with comprehensive refutation to prepare people who may use his book for planning and experience backlash.

This book was actually a reading for a course, Housing in the United States. Thank you Mr. Suarez!

Reflection: Segregation by Design, by Jessica Trounstine

Author Jessica Trounstine describes segregation by design as the process in which federal housing subsidies, state regulation, and local zoning laws have collectively planned and created an environment in which segregation thrives. Trounstine expounds on the ways that different cities provide for their people differently: “poor and minority neighborhoods received fewer and lower quality services...some people have access to good schools, well paved roads...public parks...others do not” (Trounstine, p.2). Beginning with segregated blocks, then neighborhoods, and now cities, we have come to a society with increasingly homogeneous communities and high inter-city income disparities. Due to the way a tax base works, wealthier communities have more money to spend in their budgets and their public services are likely to be high quality. Lower income communities have less money to spend and their public services are likely to be lower quality. In this book, Trounstine reveals that this is no accident.  

Trounstine first disproves several theories of government operation including: pluralism, which only works if everyone can participate; structuralism, which assumes the interests of white property owners are the interests of all; and coalition politics, which gives too much credit to democracy in failing to realize most power eventually rests with private interests. 

Historically, the United States federal government has subsidized mortgages and home buying heavily in the interwar period. However, nearly all these subsidies went exclusively to white communities (Trounstine, 2018). In addition, home buying was and has stayed the most reliable investment one can make and is likely “the single largest component of household wealth” (Trounstine, p. 12). These two factors compounded to make it extremely difficult for people of color to obtain and retain intergenerational wealth through homebuying. This fact has separated the United States by class and is more likely to set people of color up to fail. Trounstine (p.12) writes, “segregation causes higher poverty rates for blacks and lower poverty rates for whites, lower high school and college graduation rates among blacks, higher imprisonment rates, and higher rates of single motherhood among blacks.” Segregation creates long term cycles of poverty in communities of color by directly depriving them of fundamental resources needed to succeed, principally a decent education. Trounstine later explains that black neighborhoods have historically suffered from significantly greater class sizes, lower school funding, and lower teacher pay than white schools. All this long-term inequality begins with segregation, as designed by zoning ordinances.  

Beginning with the federal government, “slum clearance” subsidies and “public housing funds” were given out in the 1930s, segregated by race (Trounstine, p. 6). When federal highway Interstate-95 was built, deliberate efforts were made to destroy black and Latino parks and neighborhoods (Trounstine, p.7). Additionally, because federal funds were focused on white homebuying and single-family homes, it forced suburbanization and segregation as well as cemented the intersection of race and class in society. In the 1960s, fair housing legislation was enacted but strongly opposed. However, opposition was due to the idea of individual property rights, not due to outwardly racist beliefs. This same argument is present today in many suburbs where public housing has been suggested as an option but emphatically struck down, including my own, Weston, Florida. 

The state’s role in segregation was influential in how localities could raise and spend their monies. Additionally, the state regulated local government’s control in zoning using a template given by the federal government in 1922 (Trounstine, p.83). Even though outright segregation was illegal in many states by 1947, states still enabled racist zoning laws. Segregation was just as much state-sponsored as it was sponsored by the federal government.  

Once away from the central city, white suburbia had free reign of local government zoning ordinances to “engage in exclusionary zoning practices” (Trounstine, p. 40). White communities have purposely formed their own cities outside of places of color to protect their property values. This has become a political buzzword for suburbs as people move to suburbs for the amenities which are publicly funded, influenced by property values. Property value preservation creates a scenario where the “white population...gets a vested interest in separation” (Trounstine, p.103). Historically, white communities used residential segregation to segregate schools and communities legally. There is often rhetoric that white communities feel they are paying for the public services of communities of color and, in a world of limited resources, they are being directly harmed by contributing to one collectively diverse tax base.  

Race and class as variables of segregation have become intimately intertwined because of the way race has affected class in this country. Through purposefully racist lending, housing, incarceration, defunding of community resources, and more, communities of color are significantly more likely to be in a lower socioeconomic class than white communities. Through deprivation of opportunity to build intergenerational wealth, race has become nearly synonymous with class in most cases. The overlap between race and class has become so extensive that many people assume people of color are of lower socioeconomic status. The painful truth is that there is a chance that assumption is correct because the United States continually deprives communities of necessary resources for socioeconomic mobility through deeply institutionalized racism.   

This book teaches important political context in US housing policy by providing historical context for why we see residential segregation today and why it persists. One of the most important lessons from this book is that the policies we see today that may not be explicitly racially charged are derived from racist ideas that people of color were not deserving of public amenities like parks, good schools, paved roads, or sewers. This created lower income cities with poor public amenities and no integration. As white communities wanted to separate themselves from poverty and people of color, they migrated to suburbia where they could control zoning policies and legally discriminate against people of color through manipulation of already institutionalized racism. To finish it off, this book was highly informative and dry at times. Nevertheless, it proves the clear point that governments at all levels and city planners have a lot to answer for when it comes to racist zoning. 

This was another course reading. Thanks Dr Suarez!