When I first started dating Beth, I had never been in the Bronx in my life, except for one trip to the Bronx at the ripe old age of 5 to go to the Bronx Zoo (which I now live a five minute walk from). I had always expected it to be a wasteland of burned out buildings, flaming garbage cans, gang wars, and so on. Typical thoughts for most people outside our beautiful bourough.

It isn’t like that here. In fact, I love the neighborhood I live in, and I’m not so sure I want to leave at any point.

However, the South Bronx is not the same as my neighborhood. Foresaken for many years and generally avoided by most people, it has its bad points. Crime is high, the neighborhoods are somewhat rundown in some areas, and housing is resigned to apartment buildings that are usually left unkept by slumlords. While it isn’t as close to the outside reputation people give it, it’s not a fun happy place to live and most people are happy to get out in one way or another if they can actually afford to.

For years, the residents of the South Bronx have been begging the city to help improve conditions in the South Bronx, and for the most part those requests have been met with yawns and empty promises.

Fast forward now, to 2005. Much like the “meat packing” district of Manhattan, the hipsters have arrived and the gentrification of Port Morris and Motthaven have begun. You would think this would be a good thing, right? People with money who aren’t criminals start moving to your neighborhood en masse, the worth of the neighborhood goes up, and people pay more attention to it.

It’s finally what these neglected neighborhoods have always wanted, right?

Wrong.

Amidst a New York Times article touting the arrival of “SoBro,” we find the “unhappy with everything” crowd has already started moaning bitching and complaining that their neighborhood may no longer be the craphole they’ve become accustomed to:

Still, no one expects the area to become another TriBeCa or SoHo anytime soon. The newcomers, some of whom have spent much of their lives abroad or in the hinterlands and are not as easily put off by the Bronx’s outdated reputation, say they have felt welcomed. Nevertheless, those welcomes sometimes mask fears by longtime residents that they may someday be priced out of the neighborhood.

“It’s going to attract a class of people whose incomes and lifestyles are going to be radically different from those in the South Bronx, which is one of the poorest areas in the city,” said Hector Soto, a lawyer active in developmental and environmental issues. Many of those fears coalesced around a rezoning measure passed by the City Council last March that essentially added another 11 square blocks of Port Morris to a five-block zone where, starting in 1997, apartments were permitted among the factories.

Mr. Soto and other critics - backed by artists and professionals - fought in vain for provisions that would have assured that half of any new apartments be set aside for low-income families. Amanda M. Burden, the chairwoman of the City Planning Commission, objected successfully that such set-asides would have discouraged development.

Taken on its word, this article claims that people are upset that the improvements and development that will come to these neglected areas will price them out of the neighborhood. Well? What the hell did they expect?

The contradiction in their desires and their gripes is laughable. They want the high-end neighborhood with beautiful stores, nicer apartments, and less crime. However, they still want to pay the same rent as they’re paying in the crime-ridden crappy-apartment neighborhood they live in now. You can’t have it both ways, although, as with most of the people in New York City, they’re going to die trying.

The fact is these people are going to get what they wanted. The neighborhood will improve around the “investment” of the “hipsters” and so on. You can’t invest nothing in the neighborhood (as most people who live down there do) beyond a corner bodega and expect the neighborhood to turn around.

If only residents down there would learn to accept the receipt of what they’ve been asking for for years, they may actually learn to like it.

Source: NY Times