Plum Cherry || Currently development narratives are almost entirely dominated by two competing middle-class advocates.
NIMBYs (Not in My Backyard), who tend to be property owners, and will defend their neighbourhood from any form of change, good or bad.
YIMBY’s (Yes In My Backyard), who tend to be temporarily embarrassed property owners, and hate and resent NIMBYs as 9/10 times they are their parents or grandparents.
Both are beneficiaries of gentrification. They sit down in the cafes, pubs and town halls of once working class and diverse areas and duke it out whilst those they displaced eke it out on the margins in and outside the cities and regional towns.
Like much middle class liberal discourse, it is alien vs predator. No matter who wins, we lose.
In the advent of the housing disaster already taking place, we are seeing a shift towards YIMBYism. This is not the end of gentrification, but a reaffirmation of young professionals’ right to benefit from it.
Something needs to change.
Housos deserve nice things actually
YIMBY’s advocating, explicitly or implicitly, for the demolition of public housing in the inner city is the final stage of gentrification.
Public housing is a bulwark, and an object of envy for NIMBYs and YIMBYs alike.
“How dare someone live so close to all of these amenities without paying? The culture that they built, that I pay to live near?”
Public housing in gentrified suburbs remind the gentrifier the absurdity of their conditions – luxury hovels. Premium working class aesthetic. Paywalls for proximity for what used to be.
Enter slum clearance 2.0.
“But it’s for their own good!” they say as they hand out their eviction notices “we’re increasing supply to the vulnerable” as they demolish people’s homes.
There is nothing more that a middle class gentrifier loves more than looking at models of future development that are clean, modern, and soulless. Something that they could see themselves in as they sip their matcha lattes.
To them increasing supply is the end of the argument, not the beginning. They identify closer with the government minister, the property developer, faster than the actually displaced.
They don’t care about communities, they care about supply and the hope that they could one day sink their paycheck once again into the heart of marginalized spaces.
Maybe they could be made to care, but the bleeding heart sees public housing as a charity case, not the tools of their liberation.
Pleading with gentrifiers for inclusionary zoning, “affordable” housing, and an end to antisocial development will only go so far.
More than this those that were displaced need to find their voice, set their sights and reclaim their communities.
The landscape has changed. YIMBYs have opened the door a fraction, it is time for the degentrifiers to knock it down.
A nation of housos
The Australian dream was built on a temporary working class seizure of government services in the last housing crisis.
The working class lived in government housing in order to save up for government built housing using government supported loans.
It was a good concession, home ownership was the primary way to have some form of stability, as well as the promise of stolen wealth in a property obsessed continent.
In Menzies view, home ownership was a way of turning workers into “mini capitalists”.
He was right.
As the Government scrambles to patch the seams with essential worker government housing, the relationship between the working class and public housing has reopened.
And with that de-gentrification emerges.
The difference between YIMBY and de-gentrification
The difference between YIMBYism and de-gentrification is not a question of yes or no, but a question of power.
Rather than lobbying on the behalf of developers and governments, or mistake veto for vetos sake as empowerment. The community campaigns for greater say, greater housing, and housing and services that benefit them.
Rather than paint walls with the cultures that used to be, the displaced are mobilised to advocate the right to return.
If they’re workers, workers housing, non-workers, non-workers housing. If they’re loaded, lucky.
This writing leans towards public housing as a solution, however does not condescend the tools that a grassroots movement may use to degentrify and advocate for the displaced.
The main thrust is to create a cultural and material movement to reclaim lost spaces. To play offensively rather than defensively, and to break the middle class duopoly for the benefit of ordinary people.
This involves challenging the middle-class stranglehold on a vision of change.
When suits dream, systems adapt, when ordinary people dream, systems change.
As such hold onto the bonds of community that the city tries increasingly to sever, and begin the conversation of binding them once more
Rather than saying yes to someone’s vision, think of what you would fight to manifest. And then fight for it.
Let’s clip the two wings of gentrification together.
This is a member contributed article to the Renter’s And Housing Union, and does not necessarily represent the views of the Renter’s And Housing Union as a whole.
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