The scene is one that has been repeated in major cities across the country, with a few exceptions like Detroit, where even the most devout advocates of gentrification haven’t dared to venture. From LA to Dallas to Miami to Atlanta, developers are converting once seedy urban centers into new homes for the upwardly mobile, as condos and lofts replace drab low-rent apartments.
In LA where the farce of rent control is the order of the day the scene has been especially stark for that city’s poor. In a recent article appearing in the LA Times, the Sanchez and Ibarra family of Echo Park in LA were highlighted, they recently faced the prospect of having to vacate their $662-a-month apartment, while finding a new home for themselves and their six children. That’s right six children. Here we have yet another example of how the poor continue to make equally poor decisions, which exacerbate and perpetuate their condition in life.
The Sanchez and Ibarra family are not alone, across the country, millions of people, with more children than they can scarcely afford must cope with minimum wage jobs and poor living conditions all because they have squandered one opportunity after another.
While the purpose of the LA Times article was clearly designed to evoke sympathy for the poor LA residents who can’t find affordable housing, the inevitable question again goes unasked. Why does this family have six children? Why is this family living in one of the most expensive cities in one of the most expensive states in the country? While it’s certainly possible that the Sanchez and Ibarra family could have once afforded to provide for their growing family and suddenly fell on hard times, it is more likely that they never could afford these things yet stubbornly and selfishly chose to grow a family in abject poverty, while refusing to make the necessary sacrifices to ensure their family’s survival.
As gentrification takes hold in yet another neighborhood, one inevitably hears the howls of racism and discrimination, while in reality it is simply the free market which grants the same opportunities to the rich and poor alike, as the poor have many opportunities to become wealthy and the wealthy have many opportunities to remain so or lose that wealthy entirely.
In the case of the Sanchez and Ibarra family, they were given $10,000 to vacate their apartment, more than suffiencient to supplement housing costs or finance a move to a more reasonably priced community, but sadly reason is a quality sorely lacking among America’s “working poor.”
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-apartment24oct24,0,7422913.story?page=1&coll=la-home-headlines
