Gentrification is a touchy subject in this city – from a number of different perspectives. One generalized view is that gentrification in this type of socio-economic environment is an inevitability and that we as a community have to take the good with the bad when it comes to urban renewal. Another is that the displacement of lower-middle class residents who haven’t owned their home for 20 to 30 years tears apart a community like ours.

At the center of this heated battle of ideologies lies a certain group of people in our community – predominately made up of elected officials and developers. All too often, elected officials are accused of being in collusion with developers to push their project through the system with backroom deals and white envelopes – the fact of the matter is that in 2008, you can’t get a parking ticket fixed without someone blowing the whistle to the Ethics Commission. People really need to get the 1960s mentality out of their heads.

On the other side of that, you have developers, who for the most part are decent people/organizations with creative vision and good ethics – trying to make money and build quality housing for the fortunate and not so fortunate alike. These are the developers with good, solid reputations for creating a pleasant environment from the beginning of the process until long after their project has sold out. We need more of these, believe it.

Then there are (a minority of) developers who come into this city, disregard local zoning/building codes and blatantly lie to city officials and neighbors – these are the ones who ruin it for everyone else in the process – only wanting to make their money at all costs and move on. They historically have created such bad will that they have had to change their company’s name in order to proceed with other projects – which are going on today.

If you think they want to do anything other than make their money and move on, then you are fooling yourself – and we as a community shouldn’t let it happen. They don’t care about our community, so why should we care about them? This city should implement a rating system for developers of projects over eight units in size and track the performance of these developers. These are the developers who should be watched closely and have their feet held to the fire every single time they bring a project up for development.

Maybe then, the general public will have a better perception of the process and the people involved – maybe then, we can better protect our community and be able to ensure long term, positive community development.