A lot of the gentrifying neighborhoods in NYC have histories that go much too far back to be attributed to the current residents, even if they've been there 50+ years. Maintaining a late 1800s brownstone is not cheap and without proper care these historic areas will just slowly deteriorate. I think it is an absolute positive that money is returning to these areas.
IMO, current residents have no more of a right to live somewhere than any newcomer.
> A lot of the gentrifying neighborhoods in NYC have histories that go much too far back to be attributed to the current residents
That's kind of a silly argument (Harlem's 50+ year residents were most certainly in Harlem during the race riots), but regardless that wasn't really my point anyway.
The incoming community always brings their culture with them, with very little incentive to preserve the existing culture. They have no reason to keep a Murry's around - they want a Whole Foods. The Russian Orthodox cathedral looks cool, sure, but a new luxury high-rise could be built in that spot instead.
> IMO, current residents have no more of a right to live somewhere than any newcomer.
That's also not really the point. It's not about who has a right to live where. It's about making sure we collectively don't tread over artifacts without taking a step back and evaluating what we're doing as a society. By the time we decide something has historical value and should be preserved, it might be way too late.
My point: In most cases current residents do not have a tie to the original culture or history.
Do not take my comments out of context. You're making my argument but acting like current residents have more credibility - they don't. They are not the "artifacts" and living through race riots does not have any relevance whatsoever.
In my neighborhood "gentrifiers" are coming and preserving 1890s brownstones, on which a new facade costs upwards of 300k (yes hundreds of thousands). Maintaining our architectural history is not cheap and I think it's great that it's happening.
I think you would be hard-pressed to make your same argument in other neighborhoods:
Bed-Stuy? Crown Heights? Park Slope? Brooklyn heights? Boerum Hill? Clinton hill?
There were 1960s race riots in Bed-Stuy too.
In these places in prime Brooklyn what happened in the 1960s is divorced from the neighborhood's origins. Taking one unique case in Harlem and extrapolating it to gentrification all over NYC does not hold water. From my personal experience, it seems Harlem has seen the least amount of gentrification compared to these Brooklyn neighborhoods. If you were to take real-estate prices as a metric (you could choose others I'm sure), Brooklyn has far outpaced Harlem in the rate of change, especially in the last decade.
IMO, current residents have no more of a right to live somewhere than any newcomer.