Gentrification

"I lived through East Harlem's worst times. I witnessed things that you could not even imagine. Now that the neighborhood is finally getting cleaned up, after decades of poverty and crime, I may not even be able to live here". A sad statement made by my mother while talking with my professor about her upbringings and the gentrification in East Harlem. Gentrification is described as a shift in an urban community towards wealthier residents and/or businesses and increasing property values. In more simple words, its when poor people are driven out of the neighborhood that their ancestors helped build, and the rich come and take over. My outlook on gentrification is not totally bias. I do believe that there is some good within gentrification. The East River Plaza on 116th street in East Harlem created jobs and opportunities for a neighborhood that has the worst jobless rate in the city. My mother has told me that the location of the East River Plaza, used to be abandoned buildings where addicts would go to live and smoke crack in the 80s. With the good comes the bad and the ugly. I am against gentrification when landlords in tenements do things such as have their tenants living like animals because they want them out. I recently watched a mini documentary where a resident in a tenement building was being forced to live with mildew and asbestos because her landlord refused to get someone to clean it up. The landlord wants the residents that has been living in the building for years, out so that newer and wealthier residents could come and pay him more. Why should the residents that have been paying rent for decades and years, have to deal with this? Why should my mother, that has lived through the most horrid times in the neighborhood, through the 70s, 80s, and 90s, that has lost her parents due to the East Harlem streets and drugs, that has lost so much family due to the many social issues that affect East Harlem, be moved out of the neighborhood now that it is getting cleaned up? I am not against gentrification, but I am against how it is brought about.