As prices continue to rise in the New York metropolitan area no one is safe from the dirty G.
I have witnessed this in only the last 23 years. My neighbors just sold their house to a Harrison transplant last week , it was on the market for only 2 hours and sold to a Engineer who will be living in it who is much more wealthier than many of the old timers.





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First, I'd be surprised if a single kid from Port Liberte gets enrolled in an elementary school on Ocean Avenue. Next, the article talks as if Port Liberte and Society Hill are part of the Greenville community. They are isolated islands within Greenville, for better or worse.

*shrug*

Seems like a rather typical, oversimplified reaction to a very complex socioeconomic dynamic.

I for one don't think the poor are always "pushed out" in the way we think. It's not so much that people get thrown out by their landlords, it's more that when it's time to move, people choose another neighborhood.

It is impossible to dip a neighborhood in amber, and prevent its character from changing. Even if it maintains a similar socioeconomic and ethnic composition, it's going to change.

At any rate, the bigger issue is not so much "gentrification," it's the lack of affordable housing. As long as the cost of housing is whatever the market will bear, people with fewer resources will have less power to decide where they can live. That is always a tough nut to crack.

Gentrification is nothing more then the systematic planned relocation of the poor, working poor, unemployed and disabled from a geographic area.

Posted by Ricardo Kaulessar


Gentrification is not a recent concept in Jersey City.

In fact, the gentrifying of New Jersey?s second largest city has been happening since the 1970?s when ?urban pioneers,? or upscale folks bought homes in rundown neighborhoods and fixed them up before selling them for a profit. That?s how the Downtown section of the city transformed from a haven for car thieves and drug addicts into a hotspot for luxury rentals and gourmet pizza places.

Yet, gentrification is not as genteel as it sounds as it is essentially a process whereby people with money and means are able to push out those with less money. And it is still happening with more and more high-income individuals coming to Jersey City as Manhattan and Brooklyn.

The Wall Street Journal reported in September that statistics kept by Mayor Steven Fulop show that over 5,600 residential housing units are currently under construction and another 18,000 have been approved for development.

Elizabeth Deegan moved to Jersey City?s Greenville section eight years ago after the Queens native tried to find a house of her own that she could afford in New York City?s five boroughs. Deegan, 35, who works for Federal Express as a delivery person, is well-known in the Greenville area for the Project Greenville art space based in her garage as well as for organizing an annual Winter Wonderland Weekend in recent years.

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