
Trader Joe's Shrugged - philliescurt
http://www.vvdailypress.com/articles/trader-45236-joe-successful.html
======
drakaal
Visit the Tenderloin in SF.

Twitter came in to the community brought lots of jobs. Did that make the
neighborhood better? No. What happened was that the price of housing went up
for a group of people who could already not afford it. Basically the "area"
was developed but not the "community".

Like an invasive species. There is nothing wrong with rabbits in general. I
like them. But in Australia they are destroying the native species.

As humans we have more ability to pick up an move, but we tend to not want to
do so. Most of the people in the low end of the economic spectrum rent, so it
is not like the increase in property values is making them rich off of their
homes, instead they see rent increases.

Trader Joes in the "wrong" neighborhood does the same thing. Many communities
"need" a walmart because it will serve their need for cheap food and clothing,
and won't raise the property values. It is easy to hate Walmart and other big
box stores, but in truth, often a community needs "cheap" more than they need
"good".

Edit: Produce is one of the things that are hard to get in a "food desert"
Trader Joe's is notorious for having expensive produce with a short life span.
[http://www.cbsnews.com/news/4-things-not-to-buy-at-trader-
jo...](http://www.cbsnews.com/news/4-things-not-to-buy-at-trader-joes/)

~~~
aetherson
Could we find some nuance between "poor people are going to be wiped out by
invasive rich/middle class people," and "there are no losers to
gentrification, ever"?

It seems clear that when a neighborhood gentrifies, some of incumbent
residents will find their lives improved (perhaps because: a job is created
that they get, they own property which is now more valuable, the neighborhood
is safer, schools are better), while others will find their lives worsened
(because they are renters who can no longer afford their home or
neighborhood).

Whenever we have these kinds of discussions, I want to know what the
alternatives are. Granted that gentrification is a mixed bag, is there a
plausible alternative which helps anyone in these neighborhoods?

~~~
Qworg
Mandate that the new businesses hire only locals.

I think this handily solves the problem - rents can't go up too much,
otherwise the possible employees leave and the business shutters. Locals are
employed, business runs, things improve in the neighbourhood and lift all
boats.

~~~
ef4
That doesn't solve the problem at all.

The "lift all boats" outcome is exactly what activists are afraid of, because
if that actually happens it makes the neighborhood "more desirable", and new
people will start getting interested in moving in. Those people provide upward
pressure on rents.

And once new people move in, they would now be "locals" and eligible for the
jobs, too.

There's no logical way to satisfy these anti-gentrification groups because
what they're afraid of is quite literally "the neighborhood getting nicer".

Instead of making their cause "keep the rent low by keeping the town crappy",
they should make their cause "raise wages so we can afford a nicer town".

~~~
Qworg
The business has to charge more in order to pay the newly increased wages that
are necessary in order to hire the wealthier people who now desire to live in
the improved neighbourhood.

I don't think they're afraid of "the neighbourhood getting nicer". I think
they're afraid of people who don't know the local situation "helping" them out
- "for their own good" of course. It is the same problems that countries face
who work with the IMF/World Bank. Who wouldn't want free money?

------
l0stb0y
I understand that discussing racism is a social minefield but, as a liberal
and global citizen, stories like this disturb me. Couple this event with Spike
Lee's blatantly racist and poorly worded rant against gentrification, and I
question how much progress we have really made in this country. Also, the term
'non-oppressed population' makes me want to vomit.

Jake Dobkin's piece on gentrification is a great read for anyone interested:
[http://gothamist.com/2013/09/23/ask_a_native_new_yorker_how_...](http://gothamist.com/2013/09/23/ask_a_native_new_yorker_how_guilty.php)

~~~
pessimizer
Your opinion might be interesting if it was explained in any way other than
just insulting other people who have an opinion.

Nobody cares that you want to vomit but the people who love you. Strangers
_might_ care _why_ something makes you want to vomit, if you can convince them
to.

------
scotch_drinker
Does Trader Joe's have a habit of hiring local people? Are there known
instances where Trader Joe's or other reasonably high end store coming into
economically depressed areas and significantly improving the economic status
of people in the area?

This article has a lot of rage and perhaps it's justified. But it's also
entirely possible that stores do this sort of thing all the time with the
blessing of city councils and what it does is displace the existing
population. Dallas (where I live near) is notorious for giving developers tax
breaks to tear down lower class apartments if they agree to build something of
much higher tax value. I doubt Dallas is odd man out.

This author takes as fact that the economic improvement but bristles at the
idea of mandating some of that through affordable housing and a community
hiring benefit.

 _" So it is not enough that the $8 million development of four-to-10 retail
businesses, with Trader Joe’s serving as the anchor tenant, would bring new
jobs, quality food and other goods and services, and tax revenues, to a poor
neighborhood."_

No it's not enough. It would bring new jobs but to who? It would bring quality
food but for whom? It would increase tax revenues but for who? The answers to
those questions are rarely "the poor from the community". The author's anger
sounds empty without answers to critical questions and his unfailing belief in
the free market makes me wonder if he ever ventured anywhere at all.

~~~
ultrasaurus
Are the poor from the community currently working at, eating quality food from
or benefitting from taxes collected from the "empty two-acre lot on which it
was to be built"?

"This isn't the best way to help poor people" is a very different argument
from "this will hurt poor people".

~~~
scotch_drinker
As I mention below, the empty lot isn't the floor. It is easy to imagine a
scenario where a development provides negative impact to those who live near
by. If the development has the impact of hiring people from other areas,
increasing traffic to the community and eventually causing further development
which leads to a loss of affordable housing, then yes, they are benefiting
from that empty lot. Having nothing there isn't the bottom of the scale, it's
only a measuring point.

------
aaronbrethorst
I got the sense while reading that blog post there had to be more to the story
than what was presented there. I spent some time reading, and found out that:

1\. The crux of the issue for PAALF was that increasing neighborhood
desirability (and therefore rent) without ensuring either living wage
guarantees or affordable housing would result in the displacement of current
neighborhood residents.

2\. The land was being sold at a $500,000 discount from its assessed value,
which was money that PAALF felt the community desperately needed.

Here's some more context:

 _[W]hen Trader Joe 's announced Monday it was pulling out due to 'negative
reactions from the community," PAALF was as surprised as anyone._

"This was not about Trader Joe's," Gilliam said in response to questions from
reporters. He said the group's opposition was rooted in development
commission's "broken promises of the past."

[http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2014/02/portlan...](http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2014/02/portland_african_american_lead_2.html)

 _The property in question was assessed at $2.9 M and was offered to Majestic
Realty for $500,000, which amounts to a nearly $2.4 M “subsidy.” This subsidy
primarily benefits the Roski family, one of the richest families in the
country. It secondarily benefits Traders Joes, a national corporation. It
mandates no affordable housing and no job guarantees from Trader Joes._

 _A new Trader Joes will increase the desirability of the neighborhood to
non­-oppressed populations, thereby increasing the economic pressures that are
responsible for the displacement of low­income and Black residents._

[http://www.bizpacreview.com/wp-
content/uploads/2014/02/paalf...](http://www.bizpacreview.com/wp-
content/uploads/2014/02/paalf-letter-regarding-trader-joes.pdf)

~~~
scotch_drinker
This is exactly what happens in Dallas all the time. The city gives tax
benefits to the property owners and the developers so that they will build
these big shiny new developments in areas that are "oppressed". The result is
that none of the money ends up in the locals pocketbooks, people who had a
home of some sort are forced to pick up and move to somewhere else in the city
and the rich get richer. The author of that editorial falsely believes that
the free market will fix everything when this is clearly not a free market
decision. If it were, the developer would have to pay full price with no tax
benefits and then we could talk about fairness.

~~~
res0nat0r
But it isn't really isn't that black and white is it? A rich family could get
a break on this property to build a Trader Joes there, but how long has the
property been vacant? Maybe no one else wants to build there and this
"subsidy" is better for the community due to the employment a Trader Joes and
other businesses could provide.

Right now an empty parking lot isn't helping the community much; this should
also be taken into consideration.

~~~
joveian
The land is not actually a parking lot but is grassy and open and is
effectively a park right now. It actually adds quite a bit of value to the
neighborhood as it is IMO. Also, the PDC did not offer it to anyone else at
that price, just Trader Joes.

------
Shivetya
PAALF knows damn well economic opportunity would improve the lives of those in
the affected area, what they also know is that is not improve PAALF's
opportunity or that of its leaderships or those it pays fealty too.

Now its quite possible TJ didn't pay the entrance fee, those monies paid out
to concerned groups who can change the outlook of any new business.

Racism and exploitation of the poor are big business, Animal Farm would be a
good start to understand the situation

------
schmichael
The article fails to mention the incredible subsidy Trader Joe's was given to
build at this location: they would pay only $500k for a $2.9 million lot.

~~~
briandear
That lot is only worth 2.9 million if someone where willing to pay $2.9
million. I bet the value of that lot just dropped dramatically after this
situation. Who would buy that lot knowing that you really can't employ it for
it's highest and best use? No one wants to pay $2.9 million for a lot just to
build some nail salons, a barber and a dollar store.

------
josephschmoe
The question we need to ask is: How can we make gentrification inclusive
instead of exclusive?

~~~
protonfish
That is a great question. I work in Detroit where there has been some modest
growth in the downtown area with little benefit to the local population. There
are not nearly enough entry level jobs to satisfy demand and the public school
system is in disgraceful shape. To give a little back to the community would
only require a small fraction of the cost of development - entry level job
opportunities, funding for educational resources and safer schools, access to
affordable and nutritious food. Sadly, the reverse is encouraged - local
leaders would prefer the poor were washed away like street litter. It is
shameful and inhumane. The angry tone of the article justifies it - "these
people" are bad and deserve it.

------
beat
Despite the author's hysterics, gentrification is a complex issue with
positives and negatives on both sides. That said, I'd like to toss in an
interesting historical perspective here.

Gentrification is something that happens primarily to predominantly African-
American neighborhoods in the US, and one of its effects is eventually pricing
the poor black community out of the neighborhood. But here's a question...
where are the middle class black families?

Historically, racial segregation happened across economic boundaries. A black
doctor or a black lawyer was still black, and unwelcome in white
neighborhoods. This meant that historically black neighborhoods had a rich,
vibrant economic culture, with wealthy members of the community living among
the poor, supporting local business and providing role models for youth.

With the success of the civil rights movement in the 1960s came a new
geographic social mobility for black professionals. Those who could afford it
could now move into nicer, cleaner, safer, white neighborhoods. And they did
so. And the more it happened, the worse the black neighborhoods got, creating
more pressure for those who could afford to leave to leave. Eventually, the
historically black neighborhoods were stripped down to ghettos, dominated by
gang violence and devoid of the local businesses that once served the middle
class. Soon, the only opportunity for jobs and social advancement was outside
the neighborhood, and poverty grew even worse. It's a terrible cycle.

This was aggravated further by the (illegal) practice of redlining, where
banks colluded to deny funding to entire neighborhoods, depressing real estate
prices and driving homes and businesses into foreclosure. (White) developers
could then swoop in and buy land at fire-sale prices, building out the new
infrastructure for a wave of gentrifying whites looking for cheap nice houses
in the heart of the city.

Think about this, and you can see the resistance to gentrification.
Historically, it's been nothing but trouble for the people already in a
neighborhood.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Gentrification is something that happens primarily to predominantly African-
> American neighborhoods in the US

Gentrification is something that happens to primarily poor, and primarily
urban neighborhoods. These _also_ tend to be disproportionately minority
neighborhoods (of a variety of ethnic minorities, but blacks are prominent
among them in pretty much every region of the US, while the mix of the rest
varies from region to region), but its more about economic class than race,
which is mostly a distraction.

> Think about this, and you can see the resistance to gentrification.
> Historically, it's been nothing but trouble for the people already in a
> neighborhood.

Its nothing but trouble for current residents for reasons that have nothing to
do with the history of the racial history you recount (which is generally
accurate); bringing rich people and high paying jobs (already filled by rich
people, or for which the poor current residents aren't qualified) to where
poor people are doesn't help the poor people, it just pushes them aside.

~~~
beat
Yes, it's a class thing more than a race thing at this point. I probably
should have tried to make that more clear. :/ It _was_ a race thing
historically, but now the racial line is incidental to the class line.

I do think African-American culture is a unique case, though. Immigrants tend
to be socially (upwardly) mobile and get out of the ghetto in a generation or
three. The old black neighborhoods are different, much more trap-like and
harder to escape.

------
mudil
Reminds me of a WSJ story from 2006 where a woman was criticized and prevented
from planting trees in SF's Tenderloin because making the neighborhood more
beautiful would make transvestites and transgender residents feel unwelcome.

San Francisco's red-light denizens fight to stay seedy:

[http://www.post-gazette.com/life/lifestyle/2006/10/24/San-
Fr...](http://www.post-gazette.com/life/lifestyle/2006/10/24/San-Francisco-s-
red-light-denizens-fight-to-stay-seedy/stories/200610240220)

------
rqebmm
Reminds me of what happened in my old (rapidly gentrifying) neighborhood in
Boston when Whole Foods wanted to build a store in place of a recently-closed
local supermarket. I remember being mystified by the opposition at the time.

[http://www.boston.com/yourtown/boston/jamaicaplain/gallery/0...](http://www.boston.com/yourtown/boston/jamaicaplain/gallery/012010_hilo_closing/)

------
briandear
Perhaps everyone should read this:
[http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2014/02/trader_...](http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2014/02/trader_joes_minority_contracto.html)

Apparently there are quite a few minority-owned businesses and other community
groups that want the store there.

------
joveian
Here is an article that has a little more background, including, in the first
paragraph, a link to the letter from the PAALF:
[http://sharonmaxwellforportland.org/node/5](http://sharonmaxwellforportland.org/node/5)

There is a lot more history here as well as much more to this particular issue
than the vvdailypress article even hints at. For instance, Trader Joes was
given a huge discount on that property, putting it in the range that multiple
local (worker owned) coops could potentially afford to put a grocery store on
that spot, but the PDC never offered the property to anyone else at that
price, only Trader Joes. I am very happy the deal fell through.

------
holograham
This is a much more complicated issue than the author of this post grasps.

Trader Joes are built for upper middle class clientele not the poor. The food
is not very cheap although healthier.

That said the subsidy doesnt make sense unless the community had ulterior
motives of cleaning up a rough patch of town which could be perfectly
acceptable -- I am not sure the specifics on the area. Lots of communities use
this practice to bring new businesses in which develop the land into
attractive property instead of dilapidated buildings or parking lots. That in
turn entices more land developers to build new homes/apartments/condos/etc.
It's a cycle to gentrify a community.

------
briandear
“There is a class of colored people who make a business of keeping the
troubles, the wrongs and the hardships of the Negro race before the public.
Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they
have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs – partly because
they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not
want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their
jobs.”

\-- Booker T. Washington

------
squozzer
I think the larger question is what exactly will raise the living standards of
a poor neighborhood without gentrification.

I am not sure. A lot of the poorer neighborhoods in my city (Atlanta) were
built as bedroom communities for factory workers.

As others have suggested, job magnets that are otherwise undesirable to the
upper middle class might work.

WalMarts, airports, jails, power plants, sewage treatment plants, military
bases - did I miss anything?

