Gentrification!!!

In today’s Daily News, Julie Shaw reports that housing prices have gone up in the Graduate Hospital neighborhood and that a neighborhood that was mostly black ten years ago is now mostly white. Shaw does helpfully point to concrete numbers to support her case, presenting income numbers and population numbers from the last census, but most of the article seems to center around quotes from old and new folks who live in the neighborhood. Some gems include:

There are “too many goddamn dogs around here. It’s like every person needs a dog, like it protects you. . . . They [dogs] be everywhere. I love dogs, but why do every white person have to have a dog?”

or

“It’s an amazing area in close proximity to Rittenhouse Square and Center City proper. What you can’t afford in Rittenhouse, you can afford in Graduate for a fraction.” (discussing the sale of $700K homes in G-Ho)

In G-Ho, the pendulum swings again

“IT WAS a cold and sunny February morning this year when the Rev. Clarence Martin Sr. returned to the site of his Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church, at 20th and Fitzwater streets, and saw the historic building already partly demolished, its red bricks caved in by a backhoe.

Martin didn’t want to see its destruction. But he had to visit a congregation member who lived across the street…”

To read the rest of the article, click here