It is a classic plot element in many old Western movies, the John Wayne era ones.
The impending arrival of the railroad is known only to a few, the town’s government, usually the mayor, and some influential businessmen, including the mayor, and knowing what the value of land adjacent to the line and from the tracks to a reasonable distance away will increase, has them touting the value of the train to the citizens to get them excited about it, while these people quietly buy up property which they will either turn around and sell at a profit, or use as build to suit rentals.
In the movies there is always someone, a rancher who refuses to sell or the newspaper editor, a real one, attempting to expose what is going on in the cigar smoke filled backroom. With the happy ending a hero brings justice and foils the speculators’ abusive plot. In the more noire ones, the defender of the people is a martyr of goodness, and the bad guys keep their ill-gotten gains as the citizens are woken too late by the sacrifice.
That is the movies, though. It’s all acting. It’s fictional escape.
In the real world, just the rumor of a possible train coming to town sets the speculation in motion and by the time the train comes the speculators triumph, the Mayor can gloat about how he made the town what it is and have his place in history, people will be attracted to town so the hidden buying frenzy pays off, but conditions for the people who have been in town will either remain the same or worsen as the cost of living increases and real estate becomes competitive.
With real people and real consequences, not actors who are paid to bring a script to life.
Other than the convenience of an occasional trip to the big city for the citizens, the real benefit goes to those who knew what was coming but were silent, acted on that knowledge, and got support from the people about to be reduced by touting what the train will bring them while hiding what the train is bringing to themselves.
When Oklahoma City was just a tent town after a land run, speculators bought up huge tracts of land in what would become the city. These people started the trolley line bringing people from the center of the city to the lake from which the water to generate the trolley electricity came. There was a beach there along with a dance hall and other early 20th Century attractions at lakes. The city was land locked, as is the state, so this beach was one destination for residents while a branch trolley line brought people to a second lake closer to the city’s downtown.
As part of the plan, these men having bought the land through which the trolley lines ran, divided each single plot into quarters and put them on the market. Each round trip to either lake brought passengers by the lots for sale and people bought them.
The city expanded and the people, who were in a position to, cleaned up.
As a side note, this did not happen on the East Side of the city as the “wrong people” lived there by Jim Crow rules.
Years ago, New Bedford stood to have an aquarium, a huge money-making attraction. This prize was lost as was another, a plan involving a casino.
The greatness of the city had been long gone and the rape of the city’s historic features with a six-lane highway to nowhere so trucks from the fish processing plants would not be clogging city streets gave the city the air of a pass-by thing somewhere between Cape Cod and Rhode Island.
A mayor who could overcome these sins and bring some prominence back to the city would be a hero for those who remained or arrived after the renaissance. Making a once prominent city a Class-A city again would be the feather in any mayor’s cap, and if done right, would be very lucrative for those on the inside, the Club members.
As was told to me at a public meeting about the train coming to town by the MBTA’s community liaison, or some such title, when I explained that with the possible increase in rents and housing costs, people presently living here will be forced to move perhaps to places they have never had a desire to and is foreign to them, this train is an economic boon for the city and people have to accept it is all about the economy. People will just have to accept this and move.
So, this, having been stated over three years ago, is a reality long known to those with connections.
Over a ten-year period, the city’s public schools made phenomenal improvements so much so that the need for charter schools whose purpose is supposedly to pick up the slack was not there. Citizens chose to eliminate future charter schools and keep the money in the public school to increase or, at least, maintain the improvements made thus far, and did so by ballot. Yet, the mayor gave a closed public school building free of charge with no money going to the taxpayers but money coming from them so a charter school already in town could have another campus.
He knew the public schools had eliminated the need for charters and their money draining, yet this.
If the people already here do not need the charters, who are they for?
If rents increase in town, especially within a zone fanning out from the train station by degrees, people already here will have to and are expected to move because the new out of reach rents too high for locals will be a bargain for those who had been renting in Boston.
The daily 3 hour round trip from New Bedford to Boston might seem to rule out this being an attraction to move, but during Covid we saw how working remotely meant people could do their jobs even better remotely, so the 3 hours would only be needed for the occasional trip to the Big City.
Are these schools a way to entice young parents to move here because of those “good” schools to which their children can go and not have to mingle with what is left of the Great Unwashed in the public ones?
Yes, the city is about to change, and this is natural.
What seems unnatural is that those who knew from the spark of the idea to its completion paid little attention on how it might be a good idea to address ways to allow some of the people who kept the city alive to stay or assist in finding affordable housing within city limits.
Since my building was bought and all tenants received the 30-day quit notice because the original owner had sold the building at a great profit while saying nothing to the tenants during negotiations between asking, offered , and a final acceptable price, and the new owners want a complete remodel and upgrade so they can charge twice to three-times the present rents, although there are people living here as they seek another home, it is obvious the owners are playing the waiting game as the property has been accumulating trash where it had never before, in the alleyway and what has been tossed onto the first floor outside landings, and the heating system has so far turned on a day or two for two hours each in mid-afternoon, but not when people are home at night.
It is a waiting game. We are going to move, so we will be tolerated until that can happen with an insulting offer to help in our moving costs, in spite of the owners being a property management company that has to have properties for rent or has connections with others in the field they could refer people to or even influence.
The mayor’s connection?
My neighbor’s job brings him into contact with the mayor regularly both in business and socializing. Weeks before we heard anything, the mayor off-handedly mentioned to him that he heard the building had been sold. My neighbor did not believe it as no one had yet said anything and his follow up inquiries went unanswered.
The mayor’s comment was verified when my neighbor and the rest of us received the 30 day quit notice.
The mayor knew we, citizens in his city, were about to be displaced while the tenants were still in the dark. He just watched citizens get displaced in the name of a Class A city standing.
In spite of knowing it would happen and acknowledging one case where present tenants are being displaced in favor of more affluent tenants, and knowing this is going to be an ongoing city-wide occurrence for the next few years, the city has not set anything up to help the displaced.
Besides online rental apps and driving around looking, if the city has put in place anything to help assist those being about to be displaced, they have made it hard to find.
The housing references on the City Hall website on housing assistance are entries dealing with future plans and future building, but nothing relevant to what is happening to people now.
The mayor is complicit in selling the city from under the residents who kept the city alive.
If the mayor is seeing it happen and is casual about people being rendered homeless or transient, knowing it would and is happening, he should set up an office to aid the displaced in finding homes in the city.
Right now, according to the various rental websites, the average number of applications per apartment is over 34 people each and that is only those who have applied not necessarily everyone looking.
I went to view an apartment for $850 a month. Had I gotten it, the owner wanted first, last, and security which is often half of a month’s rent. Going with that figure, the move-in cost, not counting the cost of physically moving possessions, comes to $2,125. As the new owners of my building have finally explained they will help pay that cost but not cover it completely to an amount equal to twice the present monthly rent, supplying only $1,500 toward that leaves me with a debt of $625 to start off in a new place along with any costs of various hook ups for utilities or basic wifi etc.
I am a single, old guy. I have lived a good life in many places and with little by way of important property or any spouse or kids, can find accommodations much easier than can a family. This situation just has me looking elsewhere as I can live in a hotel room with stuff in storage more easily than a family can.
Knowing about the impending displacements, the city should have and still could establish a program to help residents facing these forced debts and to ban the requirement for a $20 fee for a background check especially when those fees are only accepted in cash (Checks bounce and who has a card swiping thing handy anyway), during hours-long open houses where tens of people are filing in and out and, desperate for housing, hand over the background check fee even if the owner decided to give the first person in the door the apartment and spent the rest of the time pocketing a good day’s untaxable take.
There can be a moratorium on this during the residents’ turnover and until such time as real estate settles.
The mayor will get his plaque and the backroom dealers will make their profits, but nothing goes to the people who kept the city alive. City pride maybe, but that will not last long after a forced move.
The gentrification and displacement of the Great Unwashed is not a surprise. Cities change.
It is the total lack of caring by those in power who will benefit monetarily and in reputation with the connected currency it brings that is disturbing.
Like my building’s new owners, the city will just wait out the inevitable exodus and replacement, and, closing the curtain on the city as it is, will welcome the newcomers to the city built for them and the return of their insider investments.
Step up mayor, until the plan drives us away, we are still citizens of the city you run.
The city should have been prepared to help people rather than have them hunt for assistance.
.
.
.
.
.
.
