Tectonic Plates: Gentrification and its Effects on Asian and Latino Immigrants
“Immigrants are central to the allure of the city; it’s a truism the city repeats endlessly to itself; immigrants provide a rich diversity and cosmopolitan flavor that awakens one's sense of identity”
Every morning my mother is out the door by 5:30. Every evening she’s back home at 9:00. That means when I wake up, I play the role of mom. On an average morning, when the cars begin their regular honks and the doors begin their regular pivots, I aide my family. My youngest brother, no older than the newest Mercedes models I see across the street, pouts and fusses. He misses his mom, I miss my mom. She works hard. Two jobs on a single parent is hard, but she wears it well. We don’t starve, we aren’t cold, but we are poor. We live in the Chelsea housing projects, third floor, more specifically. In our two bedroom one bathroom home, I dress my baby brother and feed him food that my mother so thoughtfully put together the night before. An old toaster warms my breakfast, Eggo waffles. My dry, slightly burnt waffles are snatched by my oldest brother. He does this every morning, and I don’t bother stopping him. He’s like my our father. Our father was cheerful, playful, and always hopeful. I miss him.
My oldest brother is a local on the buses. He’s on them more than the average car-less teen. He takes me to school and my younger brother to daycare before setting off on his day. His day consists of grimy floors and an array of post-chewed gum. You guessed it, he’s a bus boy. He doesn’t complain or pity himself, and that’s why I look up to him. Sure, he doesn’t have friends, he doesn’t go to school, he never sees his mom, his dad is dead, and his job is defined as terrible, but he loves his compact family and works hard for us, no matter what the circumstances may be.
By the time the sun sets low in the sky, heavy and dreary like my tired brothers, my mother comes home. She’s early. Her face was always so full and healthy, and her hair gave gentle shimmers every time she moved. But today, her face droops and her eyes are red with a shiny coat of tears. I was afraid to ask what was that matter because I already know what it is. It’s many things; her best paying job let her go, her sister was forced to move out of the Chelsea housing projects (she could no longer afford it), and she knew we were next.
What is Gentrification?
Gentrification is making old things new, like rusty to shiny. Areas around NYC, specifically Chelsea, are wooing families and luring them in with new and improved apartments. High demand, high prices. It’s not as good as it sounds. Gentrification is rising. It’s like the idea of tectonic plates. When tectonic plates shift and push up against each other, mountains are made. They never stop growing. Imagine money was the tectonic plates – it’s strong enough to build mountains, but this money builds great skyscrapers, and it will never stop. Gentrification should be adjusted to build a better experience for Asian and Latino immigrants who are a key source to a thriving economy.
Avenues, a $45,350 world school for upper class kids, shares the same street as the Chelsea projects, a lower class housing community. Throughout history, constructing buildings up, then tearing them down, and building them back up again, has been a common thing. Trends change, whether it's clothing or architecture. Everything has a debatable side to it, especially gentrification.
In Class Divide (2016), director Mark Levin shows us the pros and cons of gentrification. As buildings become old, they become unsafe. The unfortunate burden of time and age affects us once youthful people, along with the once modern building. Gentrification improves the city around us, whether it’s for aesthetic reasons or safety purposes. Along with improvement, it brings self expression. Architecture is art, and architects are artists. They create with hopes to please. Character is created and cherished, that's why buildings with more than just windows and doors are so pleasing to the eye. Also, as young millennials with higher income move into gentrified neighborhoods, the crime rate slowly drops. The neighborhood becomes more advanced and modern with a safer environment.
Unfortunately, gentrification comes with a price (no pun intended). Green paper, number one cause of divorces… you know what I’m talking about? Well, it can be quite hard to acquire, and very hard to live without it. Gentrification causes a spike in home value. This can cause displacement for people who can’t afford to live in their neighborhoods because of fancy new buildings. The motto “first come first serve” does not apply to gentrification. Say a 70- year-old man has lived in Chelsea his whole life, but a 30 something year old comes into the picture with loads of money and a thirst for more. That 30 year old makes a new building, everyone loves it, so prices go up, and then the whole Chelsea community prices go up, and that poor 70-year-old retired man in now forced to relocate, all because of green paper.
In the Rebecca Solnit book, a Nonstop Metropolis: A New York City Atlas (2016), there was an essay with vital information regarding the importance of NYC. “City of Walkers: Around the World in a Day,” is an essay written by Garnette Cadogan discussing the importance of individuality and immigrants. This essay introduced me to the idea of immigrants being the key source of life and color in a city. Cadogan discusses the reality of immigrants and how “Immigrants are central to the allure of the city; it’s a truism the city repeats endlessly to itself; immigrants provide a rich diversity and cosmopolitan flavor that awakens one's sense of identity”(98). This allows us to visualize how immigrants are the backbone to culture and originality. They bring language, food, clothing, and culture, which us Americans travel overseas to find.
Gentrification also affects immigrants. The NYC neighborhoods that best shows the impact on immigrants attempts to raise families is the Chelsea housing projects. The vast majority of the immigrants in that housing community have true dedication, and as a matter of fact, they do jobs that homegrown Americans would never even consider doing. Moreover, author Jackelyn Hwang discusses how Chinatown and Little Italy, just to name a few immigrant hotspots, are places of focus for gentrification. Hwang explores why immigrants prefer to live in areas full of people with a familiar culture, and how the magic of making non desired places desired can disrupt that system. Immigrants may be more hesitant with moving to NYC because they fear they will stand out, causing them to stay behind. Immigrants give color to an otherwise dull city through diversity, culture, and architecture.
In an article by Rakesh Kochhar, he has conducted research that allows us to see that the typical Hispanic employee earns a living in the service sector, a cocktail of mostly low-paying jobs in areas such as food service, homecare health, personal service, and maintenance. These jobs are honestly dreadful, and many wouldn’t want to do it. In order to do these jobs successfully, you’re going to have to get your hands dirty, and not many want to endure in that everyday journey. And out here in the glorious California, where there are fields and fields of crops waiting to be harvested, you see hard-working Latinos breaking their backs doing a job no one else would do. “In 2013, 49.7% of the more than 22 million employed Latinos were immigrants” (Kochhar). This summarizes the willingness of immigrants, it shows that almost 50% of them are willing to work. Latinos are a hard working group in any given population. NYC can’t afford to push them out with gentrification – the city needs these people.
In the business economic journals, author Paige Borelli discusses how Asian immigrants play an important role in helping the U.S. economy thrive. It was found that Asian immigrants owned 1.5 million businesses, which had total sales of $506 billion and employed 208 million people in just 2007 alone (Borelli). Borelli also describes this population as “prosperous” as she addresses the number of Asian immigrant-owned businesses continuously growing, passing the growth of homegrown American businesses. But on top of that, Asian immigrants also play an important role in the consumer market. They hold the fastest-growing spendable income after taxes of any racial or ethnic group in the country. Asian are also very hard working and can become very successful, but before they hit fortune, they must survive gentrification.
What would the family's life in the begining be like without the negative affects of gentrification? They would still live in the projects, they would still be poor, but they would make it. If the story went the other way:
Every morning, I wake to a laughing child. The smell of pancakes sway through the vents throughout the building. In nothing but an oversized shirt and pink panda socks, I shuffle to the kitchen. My brothers sit on the couch, obviously watching Spongebob, and my mother stands over the griddle with a spatula in hand. I eat, then dress.
After my brothers and I are dressed, our mothers escorts us to school. Down the elevator, to the bus stop, all the way to school. My oldest brother is a senior, I’m a freshman, and the youngest is in Kindergarten.
After school, my oldest brother takes over and brings us home. My mother’s at work until 5 o’clock, so my brother takes us out to get doughnuts as we await her arrival. It’s a tradition we have, because our mother doesn’t approve of unhealthy eat. By the time we’re home, we set out a chocolate frosted doughnut with rainbow sprinkles for our mom, we know she appreciates a little “pick-me-up.”
This evening, she brought home a new thing of groceries, and that means a large meal. I helped my mother prepare the salad, my older brother buttered the garlic bread, and of course, the baby brother was laying on his belly coloring a picture of Spongebob. Life is good, being here with my family, being happy, and feeling at home.
To conclude, I can very easily connect this to the homeless population of California, and more specifically, Santa Barbara. Here, we see struggling homeless men and women attempt to survive in SB. SB is over-priced, meaning I could but a five bed and four bathroom home here for a staggering $4 million, but I could get the exact same home in Texas for $1 million. It’s part of the challenge we endure everyday. Thankfully, the homeless has the Laguna Blanca S.O.C.K. Club. The S.O.C.K. Club helps the struggling poor, and that made me think, why can’t we take the S.O.C.K. Club to New York City? NYC is over-priced and is filled with homeless to lower class people, including immigrants. To connect back to my thesis of making gentrification a better experience, people affected by it need assistance, a movement to aide them, they need help. In the Central coast, we have an outstanding food bank with healthy options. The food bank helps those who are hungry or poor families that need to save all the money they possibly can. NYC is a perfect candidate for a food bank with wholesome options, especially when obesity is on the rise due to cheap foods with empty calories.
The pressure of tectonic plates can be reduced by an earthquake. Let us be the earthquake, and let us make a difference.
My oldest brother is a local on the buses. He’s on them more than the average car-less teen. He takes me to school and my younger brother to daycare before setting off on his day. His day consists of grimy floors and an array of post-chewed gum. You guessed it, he’s a bus boy. He doesn’t complain or pity himself, and that’s why I look up to him. Sure, he doesn’t have friends, he doesn’t go to school, he never sees his mom, his dad is dead, and his job is defined as terrible, but he loves his compact family and works hard for us, no matter what the circumstances may be.
By the time the sun sets low in the sky, heavy and dreary like my tired brothers, my mother comes home. She’s early. Her face was always so full and healthy, and her hair gave gentle shimmers every time she moved. But today, her face droops and her eyes are red with a shiny coat of tears. I was afraid to ask what was that matter because I already know what it is. It’s many things; her best paying job let her go, her sister was forced to move out of the Chelsea housing projects (she could no longer afford it), and she knew we were next.
What is Gentrification?
Gentrification is making old things new, like rusty to shiny. Areas around NYC, specifically Chelsea, are wooing families and luring them in with new and improved apartments. High demand, high prices. It’s not as good as it sounds. Gentrification is rising. It’s like the idea of tectonic plates. When tectonic plates shift and push up against each other, mountains are made. They never stop growing. Imagine money was the tectonic plates – it’s strong enough to build mountains, but this money builds great skyscrapers, and it will never stop. Gentrification should be adjusted to build a better experience for Asian and Latino immigrants who are a key source to a thriving economy.
Avenues, a $45,350 world school for upper class kids, shares the same street as the Chelsea projects, a lower class housing community. Throughout history, constructing buildings up, then tearing them down, and building them back up again, has been a common thing. Trends change, whether it's clothing or architecture. Everything has a debatable side to it, especially gentrification.
In Class Divide (2016), director Mark Levin shows us the pros and cons of gentrification. As buildings become old, they become unsafe. The unfortunate burden of time and age affects us once youthful people, along with the once modern building. Gentrification improves the city around us, whether it’s for aesthetic reasons or safety purposes. Along with improvement, it brings self expression. Architecture is art, and architects are artists. They create with hopes to please. Character is created and cherished, that's why buildings with more than just windows and doors are so pleasing to the eye. Also, as young millennials with higher income move into gentrified neighborhoods, the crime rate slowly drops. The neighborhood becomes more advanced and modern with a safer environment.
Unfortunately, gentrification comes with a price (no pun intended). Green paper, number one cause of divorces… you know what I’m talking about? Well, it can be quite hard to acquire, and very hard to live without it. Gentrification causes a spike in home value. This can cause displacement for people who can’t afford to live in their neighborhoods because of fancy new buildings. The motto “first come first serve” does not apply to gentrification. Say a 70- year-old man has lived in Chelsea his whole life, but a 30 something year old comes into the picture with loads of money and a thirst for more. That 30 year old makes a new building, everyone loves it, so prices go up, and then the whole Chelsea community prices go up, and that poor 70-year-old retired man in now forced to relocate, all because of green paper.
In the Rebecca Solnit book, a Nonstop Metropolis: A New York City Atlas (2016), there was an essay with vital information regarding the importance of NYC. “City of Walkers: Around the World in a Day,” is an essay written by Garnette Cadogan discussing the importance of individuality and immigrants. This essay introduced me to the idea of immigrants being the key source of life and color in a city. Cadogan discusses the reality of immigrants and how “Immigrants are central to the allure of the city; it’s a truism the city repeats endlessly to itself; immigrants provide a rich diversity and cosmopolitan flavor that awakens one's sense of identity”(98). This allows us to visualize how immigrants are the backbone to culture and originality. They bring language, food, clothing, and culture, which us Americans travel overseas to find.
Gentrification also affects immigrants. The NYC neighborhoods that best shows the impact on immigrants attempts to raise families is the Chelsea housing projects. The vast majority of the immigrants in that housing community have true dedication, and as a matter of fact, they do jobs that homegrown Americans would never even consider doing. Moreover, author Jackelyn Hwang discusses how Chinatown and Little Italy, just to name a few immigrant hotspots, are places of focus for gentrification. Hwang explores why immigrants prefer to live in areas full of people with a familiar culture, and how the magic of making non desired places desired can disrupt that system. Immigrants may be more hesitant with moving to NYC because they fear they will stand out, causing them to stay behind. Immigrants give color to an otherwise dull city through diversity, culture, and architecture.
In an article by Rakesh Kochhar, he has conducted research that allows us to see that the typical Hispanic employee earns a living in the service sector, a cocktail of mostly low-paying jobs in areas such as food service, homecare health, personal service, and maintenance. These jobs are honestly dreadful, and many wouldn’t want to do it. In order to do these jobs successfully, you’re going to have to get your hands dirty, and not many want to endure in that everyday journey. And out here in the glorious California, where there are fields and fields of crops waiting to be harvested, you see hard-working Latinos breaking their backs doing a job no one else would do. “In 2013, 49.7% of the more than 22 million employed Latinos were immigrants” (Kochhar). This summarizes the willingness of immigrants, it shows that almost 50% of them are willing to work. Latinos are a hard working group in any given population. NYC can’t afford to push them out with gentrification – the city needs these people.
In the business economic journals, author Paige Borelli discusses how Asian immigrants play an important role in helping the U.S. economy thrive. It was found that Asian immigrants owned 1.5 million businesses, which had total sales of $506 billion and employed 208 million people in just 2007 alone (Borelli). Borelli also describes this population as “prosperous” as she addresses the number of Asian immigrant-owned businesses continuously growing, passing the growth of homegrown American businesses. But on top of that, Asian immigrants also play an important role in the consumer market. They hold the fastest-growing spendable income after taxes of any racial or ethnic group in the country. Asian are also very hard working and can become very successful, but before they hit fortune, they must survive gentrification.
What would the family's life in the begining be like without the negative affects of gentrification? They would still live in the projects, they would still be poor, but they would make it. If the story went the other way:
Every morning, I wake to a laughing child. The smell of pancakes sway through the vents throughout the building. In nothing but an oversized shirt and pink panda socks, I shuffle to the kitchen. My brothers sit on the couch, obviously watching Spongebob, and my mother stands over the griddle with a spatula in hand. I eat, then dress.
After my brothers and I are dressed, our mothers escorts us to school. Down the elevator, to the bus stop, all the way to school. My oldest brother is a senior, I’m a freshman, and the youngest is in Kindergarten.
After school, my oldest brother takes over and brings us home. My mother’s at work until 5 o’clock, so my brother takes us out to get doughnuts as we await her arrival. It’s a tradition we have, because our mother doesn’t approve of unhealthy eat. By the time we’re home, we set out a chocolate frosted doughnut with rainbow sprinkles for our mom, we know she appreciates a little “pick-me-up.”
This evening, she brought home a new thing of groceries, and that means a large meal. I helped my mother prepare the salad, my older brother buttered the garlic bread, and of course, the baby brother was laying on his belly coloring a picture of Spongebob. Life is good, being here with my family, being happy, and feeling at home.
To conclude, I can very easily connect this to the homeless population of California, and more specifically, Santa Barbara. Here, we see struggling homeless men and women attempt to survive in SB. SB is over-priced, meaning I could but a five bed and four bathroom home here for a staggering $4 million, but I could get the exact same home in Texas for $1 million. It’s part of the challenge we endure everyday. Thankfully, the homeless has the Laguna Blanca S.O.C.K. Club. The S.O.C.K. Club helps the struggling poor, and that made me think, why can’t we take the S.O.C.K. Club to New York City? NYC is over-priced and is filled with homeless to lower class people, including immigrants. To connect back to my thesis of making gentrification a better experience, people affected by it need assistance, a movement to aide them, they need help. In the Central coast, we have an outstanding food bank with healthy options. The food bank helps those who are hungry or poor families that need to save all the money they possibly can. NYC is a perfect candidate for a food bank with wholesome options, especially when obesity is on the rise due to cheap foods with empty calories.
The pressure of tectonic plates can be reduced by an earthquake. Let us be the earthquake, and let us make a difference.
Works Cited
Borelli, Keiste. “Enduring Advantages” Asian Indian and Chinese Immigrant Wealth.
Business and Economic Journal. 23 Oct. 2015. Mon. 20 Mar. 2017.
Deniz, G. “The Pros and Cons of Gentrification.” The Odyssey Online. 26 Jan. 2016. 20 Mar.
2017.
Elvin K, Wyly. “The Right to Stay Put, Revisited: Gentrification and Resistance to
Displacement in New York City”. Urban Studies. Vol 43, Issue 1, pp 23-57. 2 July 2016. Fri. 17 Mar. 2017.
Fullilove, M. T. “Root Shock: How tearing up city neighborhoods hurts America, and what we
can do about it.” Making Cities Livable. One World Books. n.d. Web. 18 Feb. 2107
Hwang, Jackelyn. “How ‘Gentrification’ in American Cities Maintains Racial Inequality and
Segregation.” Scholars Strategy Network. Scholars Strategy Network, Aug. 2014.
Web. 18 Feb. 2017.
Kochhar, Rakesh. “Latino Jobs Growth Driven by U.S. Born.” Immigrants No Longer the
Majority of Hispanic Workers. Pew Research Center. 19 June 2014. Sun. 19 Mar. 2017
Moss, Jeremiah. “New Yorkers Need to Take Back Their City.” The New York Times. 13 Apr.
2014. 20 Mar. 2017.
Solnit, Rebecca, and Joshua Jelly-Schapiro. Nonstop Metropolis: A New York City Atlas.
Oakland, CA: U of California, 2016. Print.
Borelli, Keiste. “Enduring Advantages” Asian Indian and Chinese Immigrant Wealth.
Business and Economic Journal. 23 Oct. 2015. Mon. 20 Mar. 2017.
Deniz, G. “The Pros and Cons of Gentrification.” The Odyssey Online. 26 Jan. 2016. 20 Mar.
2017.
Elvin K, Wyly. “The Right to Stay Put, Revisited: Gentrification and Resistance to
Displacement in New York City”. Urban Studies. Vol 43, Issue 1, pp 23-57. 2 July 2016. Fri. 17 Mar. 2017.
Fullilove, M. T. “Root Shock: How tearing up city neighborhoods hurts America, and what we
can do about it.” Making Cities Livable. One World Books. n.d. Web. 18 Feb. 2107
Hwang, Jackelyn. “How ‘Gentrification’ in American Cities Maintains Racial Inequality and
Segregation.” Scholars Strategy Network. Scholars Strategy Network, Aug. 2014.
Web. 18 Feb. 2017.
Kochhar, Rakesh. “Latino Jobs Growth Driven by U.S. Born.” Immigrants No Longer the
Majority of Hispanic Workers. Pew Research Center. 19 June 2014. Sun. 19 Mar. 2017
Moss, Jeremiah. “New Yorkers Need to Take Back Their City.” The New York Times. 13 Apr.
2014. 20 Mar. 2017.
Solnit, Rebecca, and Joshua Jelly-Schapiro. Nonstop Metropolis: A New York City Atlas.
Oakland, CA: U of California, 2016. Print.