Filed under: Displacement, Gentrification, University City Creep, West Philly Cultural References | Tags: creep, expansion, Gentrification, university city, west philly
via Zine Library. Sounds familiar if you live in West Philly, right? Distribute freely.
Filed under: Licenses & Inspection (L&I), Real Estate, University City District, Zoning | Tags: expansion, university city
Why does this man get it more than you do? BJ Widick, author of Detroit: City of Race and Class Violence, is one of the few people who fall into the category of “old white men” who get it. Before his untimely death last year at the age of 97, Widick was well known as a Columbia prof and unionist, and a good Serbian/Midwestern rabblerousing hybrid that exemplifies what makes this country great. (Or as they say in the vaporous toxic cloud of University City marketing, what makes this place so very diverse and special. Desirable diversity, the hot new fetish!)
Below is an excerpt from Detroit that was actually transcribed from a Gary Nunn radio broadcast from 1957. Behold.
“The Real Estate Board pursues–and enforces–a policy which will in time spread the ghetto, block by block, until it becomes the entire heart of the city. You can watch it happening almost day by day. As a Negro family moves a block away from the ghetto’s former boundary, real estate agents go to work on the fears of the white residents in that block. The prospect of a double sale is created; a new home to the panicked white seller, and an old one to another Negro. Block by block it works…There are no apparent legal weapons against a group of men [the Detroit Real Estate Board] who practice the most vulgar racism in their internal membership policy–whose external policy results in what we could only describe (should it happen in any other country) as a form of Fascist race segregation and economic discrimination based on race.”
Gee, radio sure was different back then. It should be noted that is not just realtors who are factors in the displacement of people of color–the State functions as an apparatus of the rich to declare buildings out of code, unsafe for habitation (thanks L&I!) and thus ripe to be picked up on the cheap by whites with cash-in-pocket. If you don’t know already, most people cannot get a loan/mortgage from a bank unless a house is in “habitable” condition, e.g. conforms to code, has working furnace and water heater, needs no major repairs. Why? Because if you default on your payments or they jack the rates, and they then repo your house, they want to be able to sell it easily for more cash money. See the cycle? In order to buy foreclosures or condemned/gutted properties, the buyer must have 100% cash, which leaves the option of a buyback out of the question.
At this point I’d like to introduce some of the great new tools of the trade that scum sucking devil worshipping money grubbing, ahem, West Philly real estate professionals, use to research which properties to buy and essentially steal based on the support of wonderful public-private partnerships like the University City District.
Number one on the list is Trulia, very popular as a way to search forclosed homes and fancy gentrified flipped homes. They won’t be honored with a link, but you can probably figure it out. See how much your neighbors are trying to flip their “gorgeous renovation” for.
Number two is Property Shark. This requires an account but it is bona-fide free. This gets you into the property history of any address, complete with zoning info, last sale price, mortgage status, and neighborhood demographics. See how little your landlord paid for the building in which you rent an apartment, or how much those yuppies on the corner paid. See how one building is against zoning code, or how every building on your block is owned by some absentee landlord from Florida.
These tools can be used for subversion or for ill. More on all this in another edition of University City.
Filed under: Appropriation, Displacement, Gentrification, Race, Real Estate, The Master Plan, UPenn Mortgage | Tags: eviction, expansion, Gentrification, home prices, ucd, university city, upenn, war, west philly
Using the power of the internet, anyone can find this snazzy article about how UPenn is a Zombie Flesh Eating Monster. According to the Philadelphia Business Weekly, the UPenn-subsidized mortgage program was already a smashing success way back in 1998.
“It’s just been overwhelming,” said D-L Wormley, Penn’s managing director of community housing. “It literally is people from every part of the university – professors, the housekeeping department, a vice president, the physical plant. And that’s the thing I’m most thrilled about.”
And what’s good for Penn is good for West Philadelphia’s residents, the banking community there, local construction contractors and neighborhood real estate values.
Part of the new program includes cash for faculty and staff already living in the area bounded by Market Street, 49th Street, Woodland Avenue, University Avenue and the Schuylkill River: Penn is offering up to $7,500 in matching funds toward exterior home improvements.”
Of course by 2004 this program was considered a battle plan against local residents (read: black people.)
“The change in the program is two-fold. First, the geographic boundaries originally set by the program are being extended. The new borders reach out westward to 52nd Street, northward to Haverford Avenue, and eastward and southward to the Schuylkill River. The old boundaries extended only to 49th Street, Market Street and Woodland Avenue in the west, north and south, respectively.
The second alteration of the program consists of a reduction in the maximum size of the loans available to those participating in the program from $15,000 to $7,500.
The forgivable cash loan “can be used for a down payment, to buy down points, or for interior or exterior home improvements,” according to the program’s policy. The loans are forgiven after seven years on the condition that the purchaser remains in residence during that time.”"
Wait, you mean if I own a house for 7 measley years and work for UPenn during that time, I get fifteen thousand dollars for free? That’s right. Doesn’t that mean that there’s some unfair advantage available to UPenn staff?
And of course, there is:
“Penn officials note, however, that it is not their intention to force people from the neighborhood. But, the program gives the Penn-affiliated buyer a clear advantage in the real estate market.
“If two buyers are competing for the same house … the Penn buyer is already $7,500 ahead,” O’Donnell said. “If there is a bidding war, the Penn buyer is going to win.”"
Aye aye, sir! Fire away! Move the negroes out of here! Move in the zombies with cash bonuses that they don’t have to repay!
end the upenn zombie monster parade
