Leftist activists are protesting a new immigrant-owned coffee shop in a Los Angeles neighborhood over concerns that store’s opening is a “colonialist” act that will bring gentrification to the area.
Boyle Heights, a largely Mexican and working-class neighborhood in Los Angeles, has seen an influx of protesters and activists in response to a recently opened coffee shop. The protesters claim that the coffee shops presence is a form of “colonialism,” a suggestion that white investors are starting businesses in poor neighborhoods in order to attract more investment – and likely wealthier individuals to the neighborhood. This notion is called “gentrification,” and it is used to describe economic investment that, in some instances, can lead to the displacement of lower-class individuals from a neighborhood as higher-end businesses start to move in.
However, one of the coffee shop’s owners, businessman Mario Chavarria, is an immigrant from El Salvador, who claims that he was blindsided by the protests.
“We were blindsided by this,” says Jackson Defa, one of the shop’s three owners. “We’re not doing a political thing. We just want to open a coffee shop.”
“We looked around, we talked to the neighbors, they were friendly, and so we decided to go for it,” Defa added. “Is there a demand? Yes. Let’s supply that demand.”
But the lack of ill-will from the shop’s owners hasn’t stopped the protests. Manuel and Mariana Sanchez, a married couple from Mexico who has lived in the neighborhood for 15 years expressed concerns that the shop will force lower-class Boyle Heights resident to move somewhere more affordable. “We’re working people making the minimum, of course it’s affecting us,” Manuel Sanchez said. “If only the wealthy are going to be able to move here, it’s not good.”
According to a report from LA Weekly, the activists claim that they will continue their protests indefinitely.
Some aren’t convinced that gentrification is such a bad thing. A column from the Economist argued that the economic investment from outsiders in neighborhoods like Boyle Heights often leads to more work opportunities and income growth for lower class residents.
Yet there is little evidence that gentrification is responsible for displacing the poor or minorities. Black people were moving out of Washington in the 1980s, long before most parts of the city began gentrifying. In cities like Detroit, where gentrifiers are few and far between and housing costs almost nothing, they are still leaving. One 2008 study of census data found “no evidence of displacement of low-income non-white households in gentrifying neighbourhoods”. They did find, however, that the average income of black people with high- school diplomas in gentrifying areas soared.
Tom Ciccotta is a libertarian who writes about economics and higher education for Breitbart News. You can follow him on Twitter @tciccotta or email him at tciccotta@breitbart.com
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