40 years ago, looking at Charleston, the population was 2/3 African American, now that number has been completely reversed as we’ve managed to push African Americans out of their homes far enough for us to make them ‘nicer’. 20 years ago if you moved to Charleston you would have been greeted with ‘reasonable’ housing and renting prices. Now, there’s barely even an identifiable circle that you can live on the rim of. It seems that Charleston has become obsessed with beautifying itself, yet only in the areas it deems necessary for change. Taking over area by area, the working class is being pushed so far out their options for work and standards for life are becoming more and more limited. I would like for us to take notice, that as this gentrification is happening rapidly, it is also only happening for a certain demographic, and also only where and when the government sees it fit to do so. Sadly though, the question that must be asked is do we care more about the conscious decision of beautification towards Charleston rather than the lives of hundreds making their best option be to leave.
Gentrification has been demolishing much of America for decades now, and most of it is extremely noticeable. So many people have had to move out of their homes or even leave Charleston completely during the recent rapid gentrification. There used to be a circle where people who could not afford grandiose houses were able to live outside. They could continue to move out as their section of life got ‘beautified’. When interviewing Kenneth Mueller, talking about North Charleston he said,” Funny how (gentrification) didn’t happen when the area was predominantly African American. It could have been done, but it wasn’t done until the demographics of the area changed.” This forces people to move out and leave their homes, because of the steep incline of prices gentrification demands. Now, it’s even harder to rent because landlords are easily able to kick renters out when they raise the mortgage. Then these renters are unable to purchase a home and are forced to move farther and farther from work because those rates have also skyrocketed. Unfortunately, even though we’re able to recognize this and how it is affecting Charleston there are no easy ways to solve it or make it disappear.
