When we hear the word gentrification, we think of Google buses gliding through the streets of San Francisco and pre-fab luxury condo towers sprouting up along the Brooklyn waterfront. But gentrification, firstdefined by British sociologist Ruth Glass as a process in which a neighborhood’s “original working-class occupiers are displaced” by an influx of higher-income new arrivals, isn’t just happening in New York and the Bay Area. A potent combination of rapid private development, soaring rents and property values, and pro-growth public policy is radically reshaping the fabric of cities across the U.S.
This process doesn’t just lead to a proliferation of twee coffee shops, it contributes to the criminalization of the homeless, increased income inequality and deepened residential segregation. Investment is not necessarily a bad thing, of course, but too often, it is driven by developers whose interest is profit, not preserving local culture or ensuring that low-income residents still have access to affordable housing. Meanwhile, longtime residents are left out of conversations about what is happening to the places they call home.
Gentrificationdoes not happen the same way in every place. It is dependent on transit lines, local history and the political inclination of municipal authorities. Some cities that experienced previous waves of gentrification are now undergoing rapid new growth (like Philadelphia), while others are revitalizing downtown areas long overlooked by car-culture suburbanites (like Houston). But the signs are everywhere. Here’s a sample of what’s going on in five major cities across the country.
1. Boston
Boston wins the title of “unexpected gentrification capital of America,” according to data compiled by the Cleveland Fed. Looking at the percentage of urban homes that went from the bottom half of home price distribution to the top half, between the years 2000 and 2007, Boston came in first, with a 61 percent shift. Over a quarter of Boston residents now live in formerly low-income neighborhoods that have gentrified.
The rapid transformation of the city’s south end is being pushed by twin forces, according to Tim Davis, senior research fellow at the UMass Boston Center for Social Policy. In an interview with the Harvard Political Review, Davis explains why low and middle-income Boston residents are facing a decline in affordable housing options. According to the article, this is “caused by both ‘classic gentrification,” in which higher-income residents move into neighborhoods, and a ‘sub-prime lending bubble’ which led to a change in real estate prices that forced existing neighborhood residents to pay more of their income toward housing.”
Johnny Magdaleno reported on this insidious combination for Vice last summer. In the south Boston neighborhood of Dorchester, houses decreased in value by 40 percent between 2005 and 2007. During that same period, the neighborhood experienced twice as many foreclosures as the state average. Housing finance giants like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are leveraging these circumstances to their advantage, foreclosing the homes of low-income residents who fall behind in their mortgage payments. The newly empty homes are sold to large real estate developers eager to invest in newly hip areas like Dorchester. This has pushed many former homeowners into the rental market, but average rental prices in the city jumped from $1,984 in November 2011 to $2,487 as of December 2014, according to real estate database Zillow. Low-income and even middle-class Boston residents are left with fewer and fewer housing options from which to choose.
2. Nashville
The rapidity of Nashville’s metamorphosis has shocked observers and longtime residents. In a woeful New York Times column, Nashville Sceneeditor Steve Haruch laments that in recent years “we built a 78-mile, sprawl-inducing ring highway instead of investing in mass transit; we built not one but two massive stadiums downtown; we spent a half-billion dollars on a convention center the size of an aircraft….A house that went for $40,000 a decade ago might now go for 15 times that amount.” Apartment rents are up18 percent since 2009 and home values went up 9.1 percent last year alone, according to Zillow.
As construction booms downtown, concentrated development and rising rents are pushing longtime residents out of East Nashville neighborhoods like Cleveland Park, which has a significant concentration of older residents relying on fixed incomes. Working-class families have also been priced out, abandoning centrally located neighborhoods like Germantown and Hope Gardens for farther-flung, more affordable housing on the outskirts of the city. This speaks to a broader national trend: the suburbanization of poverty. As higher-educated, higher-income individuals flock to urban centers, lower-income residents are forced into suburban neighborhoods that offer limited job opportunities and social assistance programs.
This increasingly stark residential income segregation can also be understood through the lens of education. Last year, the New York Times analyzedgentrification rates by looking at which cities witnessed the largest influx of recent college graduates between 2000 and 2012. Nashville, with an increase of 48 percent, was near the top of the list. Drawn by jobs and a wealth of amenities, highly educated young workers are increasingly concentrated in a handful of big cities, exacerbating geographic segregation. As Emily Badgerpoints out at the Washington Post, “College graduates in America aren’t simply gaining access to higher wages. They’re gaining access to high-cost cities like New York or San Francisco that offer so much more than good jobs: more restaurants, better schools, less crime, even cleaner air.”
3. Los Angeles
For decades, Skid Row was known as ground zero for L.A.’s homeless population. An industrial neighborhood lined with warehouses, dive bars and pay-by-the week motels, Skid Row was where the city’s poorest residents lived. Today, the area is gentrifying at lightning speed, as developers buy up large tracts of land, converting them to luxury apartments, designer stores, and upscale restaurants and bars. Though the neighborhood has witnessed previous waves of gentrification (AlterNet reported on the changing face of Skid Row back in 2007), what’s happening today far outpaces anything that came before. According to Politico, more than 23,000 new residents have moved to Skid Row in the last seven years alone.
What makes this area’s gentrification particularly striking—and disturbing—is that it is reliant on the criminalization of Skid Row’s low-income residents. Los Angeles has the highest percentage of homeless who have no shelter whatsoever, and the city leads the nation in the number of chronically homeless, as Politico reports. But this population, many of whom suffer from physical disabilities, addiction or mental illness, has been vilified by local authorities and police officials, who view them as a blight on the city’s downtown. In 2006, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and then-LAPD chief William Bratton collaborated on the “Safer Cities Initiative,” a broken-windows policing effort that involved arresting offenders for petty crimes such as jaywalking, going to the bathroom in public places or sleeping on the streets. Essentially, it criminalized people for being homeless.
Though activists challenged the initiative in court, the forced marginalization of Skid Row’s most vulnerable residents continues. Just last year, the L.A. City Council unanimously approved a real estate mogul’s plan to construct a pedestrian bridge connecting two halves of his new luxury condo, preventing upscale residents from having to walk on the sidewalk below. His reason? To reduce “potential incidents that could occur during the evening hours when the homeless population is more active in the surrounding area.” The poor are being shunted aside to make room for the rich.
Those who downplay the effects of gentrification say that longtime residents often benefit from the revitalization of their neighborhoods, and that the number of people who are forced to move out is overblown. But this is not the case in Skid Row, or in other L.A. neighborhoods like the Latino enclaves of Highland Park and Boyle Heights. In an interview with the L.A. Times, Moses Kagan, president of Adaptive Realty, defended his company’s massive condo development project in Highland Park. “Nothing is permanent,” Kagan told the reporter. “Including where we live.”
4. Baltimore
In Baltimore, local authorities are also facilitating the process of gentrification, though they are doing it through development grants rather than policing efforts. City officials, led by Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, have approvedmajor tax breaks for developers to spur new housing construction, and aregiving developers $400 million in public subsidies to build a massive new office park on the Baltimore waterfront. The project, which was strongly opposed by local community groups, unions and activists, will make room for the offices of the energy company Exelon, as well as a Morgan Stanley facility, residential towers and stores.
In an article for Salon, Sally Kohn outlines the dire consequences of these grand acts of municipal benevolence. “Private companies are tricking public officials into sweetheart deals that never pay off for the public…. The private development of mass gentrification, made way for by public policy including public financing, not only systematically ossifies but intensifies the economic inequality within our nation’s cities.”
Yet local authorities are also turning to public-private partnerships to mitigate the city’s affordable housing crisis, as Dusty Christensen reported for AlterNet last year. Their two-pronged strategy involves selling public housing units to private investors, and the enforcement of an initiative called Vacants to Value. In neighborhoods with fewer vacant houses, which are deemed “strong,” landlords are pressured to fix their properties or risk losing them at public auction. Areas classified as “weak” are transformed into “community development clusters,” allowing developers to buy up entire blocks of both city-owned property and houses that have been pushed into auction. What they choose to build is out of the city’s control.
5. Denver
Like Nashville and Boston, Denver is becoming home to a growing number of highly educated, affluent young adults, and is building the amenities, nightlife opportunities and centrally located housing to draw more of them. More than 25,000 new housing units have been built along the city’s light rail lines in the last 15 years. But as Jonathan Thompson makes clear in a piece for the High Country News, this new development, much of which is being built on the path of the rail lines, has done little to benefit Denver’s longtime low-income residents. “Denver doesn’t just need more housing, it needs more affordablehousing,” he writes. “And the free market has no incentive to provide it.” Rents went up 10.8 percent in Denver last year, the second highest increase in total rent in the country after San Francisco, according to Zillow.
Areport by the local chapter of the National Association for Working Women looked at the role public transportation is playing in the city’s gentrification. It found that bus and commuter-rail fares are too high for most low-income residents. As Zoe Williams, an organizer with the group, told the Denver Postin an interview, “Low-income communities and communities of color pay for the transit system. Their neighborhoods face major changes with build-out. The bus routes they rely on get cut out. They can’t afford to ride light rail, and it doesn’t go to places they need to travel.” This means that even as low-income residents get priced out of downtown, more remote neighborhoods along public transportation lines are becoming similarly out of reach.
One of the most notorious hotels in the world is the Cecil Hotel. It is not famous for its glitz and glamour; Instead it is known for its many mysterious deaths, abnormally high record of suicides, infamous guests, for being a popular spot to deal and use drugs, and for being the perfect place to lie low for those who have committed crimes. It is was also the inspiration to the American Horror Story season five, Hotel.
The Cecil Hotel was built in 1924 in Downtown Los Angeles. It cost 1.5 million dollars to build, with a total of 2.5 million being invested into it. The hotel boasted 19 floors and 700 guest rooms. However, despite intentions for the hotel to be a fancy and popular destination for the wealthy and famous, it started to gradually decline once the Great Depression hit. Despite this, it managed to remain a popular destination throughout the 1940s. After this decade it began to rapidly decline as the area, now known as Skid Row, became populated with homeless people, drug addicts and dealers, and others who have committed serious crimes.
Unlike other hotels, the Cecil Hotel boasts a high number of suicides, murders, and mysterious deaths. The first suicide to take place was that of Percy Ormond Cook in 1927. He shot himself in the head while inside of his hotel room after failing to make up with his wife and child. After him was W.K. Norton. Norton killed himself in 1931 in his room after taking poison capsules. Other deaths were from jumping from high rooms, poison capsules, gunshots to the head, and slitting their own throat. A more disturbing death was that of Dorthy Purcells newborn son. Purcell shared a room with her boyfriend, Ben Levine, who was unaware that she was pregnant. While there she went into labor. Not wanting to wake her boyfriend, she went into the bathroom where she gave birth to a boy. She thought he was dead and threw him out of the window. Purcell was charged with murder, but was not found guilty due to being declared insane. Another tragic suicide was that of Pauline Otton. She jumped from her 9th story window and landed on a pedestrian. The pedestrian, George Gianinni, was killed instantly.
Other than suicides, there have been other tragic and mysterious deaths. “Pidgon Goldie” Osgood was found raped, stabbed and beaten in her room. Hours later, Jaques Ehlinger was seen walking around in bloodstained clothing. Although, he was arrested for her murder, he was later release. It is still an unsolved crime. Finally, one of the most recent and famous deaths to occur at the Cecil Hotel was that of Elisa Lam. Lam went missing for several weeks. The only clue they had to her whereabouts was a surveillance video of her getting on to an elevator and acting strange. She seemed paranoid, hiding in the corner of the elevator, and peeking nervously around its edges. Despite Lam having pushed several buttons to multiple floors, the elevator remained stationary with the doors open. At one point Lam was seen getting out of the elevator and gesturing wildly, as if having a confrontation with someone. Almost three weeks from the date she had gone missing, guests began to complain of the water in their rooms tasting funny. It was then that they found Lams decomposing body in one of the water supply tanks. Although she was inexplicably naked, there were no signs of foul play. Authorities believe that the fact that Elisa was Bipolar could have played a large part in her death. In some cases, those with Bipolar, who are not taking their meds, can have hallucinations and experience other disturbing symptoms. Her death was ruled and accidental drowning.
The Cecil Hotel had also played home to two well known serial killers. The first, was Richard Ramirez. Most commonly known as the “Night Stalker,” Ramirez was rumored to have stayed at the Cecil for a few weeks. It is believed that during his stay he may have continued with his killing spree. The second serial killer to stay there was an Austrian man known as Jack Unterweger. Unterweger stayed at the Cecil in 1991. He may have sought to copy Ramirez’s crimes. While staying at the Cecil he strangled and killed at least three sex workers
Surprisingly there seems to be very little claims online that there are ghosts at the Cecil Hotel. However, when Ghost Adventures went to investigate they claim they were physically scratched. They also found compelling audio and video evidence.
If you or someone you know has ever stayed at the Cecil Hotel and have had any spooky experiences, please let us know! We would love to hear about any creepy happenings at the hotel.
Heres a pic I found on fb of the beloved Ozzy Osbourne and Vinny from Motley Crue. !!! They look so proper lmfao Vinces smile is undeniably cute.
Just wanted to make a quick post letting yall know I’m alive and still rockin. Shit sucks without a phone and theres never a second that goes by that I dont miss and remember my badass followers!
I’ll be returning soon! Even if it means fighting to the death ! Love yall ! & Enjoy the music! ✌
Mental Health and Los Angeles’ Homelessness Crisis: Why “Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel” Is One of the Most Important Documentaries on Netflix
The series observes the devastating impact of mental illness and the stigma surrounding it and teaches us that the dire problem of homelessness in the city of Los Angeles is only getting worse
SPOILER ALERT: It may be best to only read on if you have already watched the documentary series.
“Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel” is not about a cursed hotel. This documentary series is so much more than that and I personally believe that it is one of the most important documentaries to air on Netflix. So many current issues are covered that are generally brushed under the carpet and left to rot and this is one of the reasons why it must be watched.
Elisa Lam believed that experiencing Los Angeles would change her life for the better. She wanted to discover “La La Land”. Instead, what she discovered was not the glamorous city she had in mind - staying only a few streets away from Skid Row in a hotel infamous for its tragic history, riddled with stories of death, drug abuse and serial killer lodgings, Elisa was faced with a gruesome reality - that reality is Los Angeles’s gaping wealth divide which is only widening as time goes on.
Elisa’s dreamy expectations of LA being heavily dampened by the poverty she found herself in would have no doubt contributed to her worsening mental state during her stay at the Cecil Hotel. Los Angeles is often depicted as the city where people go to find themselves - after all, it’s Hollywood’s home - but the reality is that the city has many more dimensions that are not represented on holiday websites or tourist leaflets.
I have seen for myself only a fraction of the poverty which adorns the streets of LA when I visited in 2019 and what I saw was shocking enough. People are living in tents only streets away from where millionaires sleep comfortably in their high-rise apartments and mansions. A taxi driver told me “The council are building more apartments in downtown LA but it’s only for the wealthy. They won’t do anything about the problem of homelessness.”
This is brought to light in the documentary also and it is clearly highlighted how much the homeless have been forgotten about in the city - for 100 years they have been shoved aside to make space for rich newcomers. Last year it was estimated that there are about 66,433 people living on the streets in Los Angeles and this increased by 12.7% between 2019 and 2020. The main cause of homelessness in the city is too many underpaid jobs and lack of affordable housing.
The fact that Elisa ended up losing her life in a place where she was looking to escape from her troubles is truly heartbreaking. She was incredibly bright, but severely mentally ill, and I believe that parallels can be drawn between Elisa’s condition and the way in which the impoverished are treated in LA. Elisa was the victim of bipolar disorder, a mental illness which is heavily stigmatised like many other mental health conditions. Some people might speculate that Elisa should have been more responsible and taken her medication as it had been prescribed to her - and whilst I agree that we all have a responsibility for our own self care, there can be many reasons why people don’t take their medication. These can include the stigma behind being prescribed medication for a mental illness and not wanting to become dependent on medication. In Elisa’s case, the fact she strongly believed going to Los Angeles would help her find herself may have made her feel as if she wouldn’t need her medication once she got to the City of Angels - she’d be okay without it.
But as the documentary demonstrated, the symptoms of bipolar disorder can become so severe that they cause people to do things that are completely out of character and even lead to a person’s death. This is why mental illness needs to be better understood and why Elisa could have had more help - her sister mentioned she had had severe psychotic episodes at home previously, so why didn’t her family make sure she was 100% safe and well before she travelled alone? It would be wrong lay the blame on her family though - Elisa was an adult after all and they had to let her travel if she wanted to.
The problem of homelessness in LA suffers the same stigma as Elisa’s illness in a society where the elite are catered to and the poor are simply pushed aside. A Los Angeles Times analysis conducted in 2019 discovered that 67% of people living on the streets suffer from a mental illness or substance abuse disorder - a direct result of the city’s lack of social care for its poorer residents. Just like those living on Skid Row, Elisa felt rejected by society, misunderstood. Her worsening mental health was a product of the same system which has left millions of Americans deprived - a system which belongs to the billionaire class, a system which wants to maintain a spectacular image at all costs, a system which doesn’t want to talk about mental health issues.
The Cecil Hotel, too, is a product of its environment. It is not a cursed place in the paranormal sense - it is cursed in the fact that lives have been needlessly lost there through the lack of resources and funding that are contributed to Skid Row. Although the Cecil Hotel has provided many with shelter, tragedies are bound to happen when people are not given the help they need to battle drug addiction, mental illness and crime involvement. The lack of security at the hotel was also shocking to begin with.
These are the reasons why “Crime Scene: Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel” is so desperately relevant in today’s society. With the pandemic taking hold of the world, more people than ever before are grappling with mental health issues and the wealth gap continues to increase worldwide. There will be more deaths like Elisa’s if we don’t start to talk about mental health and more people will resort to living on the streets if we continue to value wealth over human lives.
The brick wall out front of the legendary Rainbow Bar & Grill on the Sunset Strip, where Led Zeppelin used to party and Lemmy sat at the bar every night.
