Welcome to the Gayborhood?
When stroller-pushing displaces cruising as the most popular activity on the main promenade; when a muffin shop takes over the space formerly occupied by your favorite porn & lube emporium; when walk-up apartment buildings are torn down to make way for high rise condos: these are sure signs that your beloved gay neighborhood is getting a family-friendly, upscale makeover. Of course, if you don’t like it or can’t afford it anymore, you’re free to go -- and once again start the process of rehabilitating an economically depressed, marginal part of town into something just this side of livable.
The Old Gayborhood?
Is corporate and cultural assimilation sounding a death knell for the Gayborhood? Ironic victims of their own success, many historically gay urban areas aren’t what they used to be. Change, it seems, is inevitable; but isn’t the sudden influx of banks and drug stores and schools and straights and Jamba Juice franchises a sort of ultimate backhanded compliment? That depends on who you are and what you mean when you think of "home." What Edge found was that more and more straights want a piece of the safety, acceptance and hipster cred that emanates from the Gayborhood -- while some gays want nothing more than to get away from it all.
Gary J. Gates is a Senior Research Fellow with The Williams Institute, a national think tank at the UCLA School of Law dedicated to "advancing critical thought in the field of sexual orientation and public policy." He is co-author of 2004’s The Gay and Lesbian Atlas which used data from the 2000 U.S. census to "confirm and challenge anecdotal information about the spatial distribution and demographic characteristics" of the GLBT community.
Although it’s a generalization, Gates confirms it’s also generally true that gay neighborhoods are "more racially and ethnically diverse; they have smaller homes and more apartment/condos; they’re generally more urban, have higher rates of crime and lower property values." The long-term impact of such stats means that gays tend to move into a horrible neighborhood that nobody wants, fix it up, and then get priced out of the safe, vibrant, trendy urban destination they created. It happened in NYC as gays went from Greenwich Village (pictured) to Chelsea to Hell’s Kitchen; it’s happening now as high rises and boutiques become ubiquitous on the Lower East Side (as the city runs out of rundown places to fix up, skid row’s Bowery is finally getting a makeover!).
Gates confirms a familiar pattern where gay men, who are generally more urban than married heterosexual couples, take physical and financial risks by moving into marginal neighborhoods with an eye on getting a good return on their investment: "They’re more likely to move into areas that have relatively good housing stock, but perhaps in decay; that have not particularly good schools or parks and amenities you’d want for children ... They can devote more of their disposable income to revitalizing or renovating their homes. That drives the property values up and starts a process where block by block the neighborhood looks better. What’s often not talked about is the downside that the original residents are often priced out of their neighborhood. It happened in my neighborhood in D.C. where residents could no longer afford the property taxes. Gentrification is often good for the bottom line; you’ve increased its value to the city. But where do these indigenous residents go?"
