This weekend’s Wall Street Journal features an op-ed that purports to tell the whole truth about the Whole Foods rumpus in Jamaica Plain.
WSJ version of the back story (see also here via the hardworking staff):
For 47 years, the Hi-Lo grocery store provided J.P. residents with staple items and a vast stock of Latin American products. But when Knapp Food group, the Massachusetts-based owners of Hi-Lo, decided that they had had enough of the supermarket business, they pulled out of Jamaica Plain, shuttered a local landmark, and negotiated a 20-year lease with Austin, Texas-based grocery giant Whole Foods.
You can guess what happened next.
Yeah – sturm und drangstore.
Local activists warned of the “Whole Foods effect” – higher rents, fewer low-income residents.
But the Journal piece says that’s wholly inaccurate:
In fact, evidence points in the opposite direction: “To blame gentrification for rising rents is to get things exactly backwards,” says Duke University economist Jacob Vigdor. “Companies like Whole Foods are building in places where the clientele is there already. They follow the customer.”
When studying gentrification patterns in Boston, Mr. Vigdor investigated claims that elevated rates of neighborhood departure correlated with rising rents. “Actually, I found that in the gentrifying neighborhoods, the turnover rate among long-term residents was actually lower than it was in other parts of the city,” because most residents see changes like lower crime rates and the revivification of derelict buildings as positive developments.
And so . . .
“People think that gentrification is causing prices to rise, when it’s actually the reverse. In cities that are popular places to live, where demand exceeds supply, and prices go up all over the place—this leads people to seek out neighborhoods that are less expensive,” says Mr. Vigdor.
Until they’re more expensive.
So rest easy, Juppies. According to the Journal, you’re not the cause of Jamaica Plain’s upscaling.
Just the beneficiary of it.
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Campaign Outsider 