Gay districts in cities: Priced out due to gentrification?

JupiterKid

I know that there is no “gay village” in Dublin where LGBT buisinsses cluster together like the Castro in San Francisco or Canal St in Manchester, but there is anecdotal evidence that LGBT people tend to settle in inner city or inner suburban communities in many cities and have a potitive effect in improving them - part of a process called “gentrification” that was first coined by the great urban geographer Jane Jacobs in the 1960s. Stoneybatter in Dublin 7 is suggested by some as one such area.

But now it seems that gay districts are the victims of their own success and that the gentrification process and rising property prices can lead to LGBT denizens being priced out. The same article also suggests that the media image of gay households being more affluent than their straight counterparts is a myth. Thoughts?

Article here:
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/jan/13/end-of-gaytrification-cities-lgbt-communities-gentrification-gay-villages?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

L1011

The media image of the pink pound etc focuses on one stereotype of dual-income professionals and doesn't recognise that clearly that isn't the case for everyone. Plenty of reasons why LGBT communities may be lower income than the average - discrimination of various kinds (gender pay gaps will impact a two female household quite significantly for instance) for instance.

baby and crumble

Well my wife is originally from the liberties, which has for a while been known as "the gaybourhood" in Dubin. That's moving a bit now to stoneybatter. We'd have loved to have bought a house there when we were looking 4 years ago but at that stage I wasn't working and we couldn't afford a mortgage on a house there. Now we possibly could (maybe), but we're happy where we are for a bit. It's mad though that we're priced out of my wifes tradtionally working class area, which has also become quite hip and queer.

Peregrinus

baby and crumble wrote: »

It's mad though that we're priced out of my wifes tradtionally working class area. . . .

. . . which has also become quite hip and queer.

Far from this being "mad", these two things are connected.

Mellor

L1011 wrote: »

(gender pay gaps will impact a two female household quite significantly for instance)

Wouldn't that be cancelled out on the other side by two male household incomes?

Peregrinus

Mellor wrote: »

Wouldn't that be cancelled out on the other side by two male household incomes?

Yes, but that's not much consolation if you're in the two-female household!

And, as for the bigger picture, if the two-female and two-male households balance each other, then the gay community as a whole will not be characterised by greater household wealth (which is what the "pink pound" thesis asserts).

Mellor

Peregrinus wrote: »

Yes, but that's not much consolation if you're in the two-female household!

Of course, on an individual household level.
But the claim above said on average specifically. Which that's all irrelevant to.

And, as for the bigger picture, if the two-female and two-male households balance each other, then the gay community as a whole will not be characterised by greater household wealth (which is what the "pink pound" thesis asserts).

That assumes the numbers and pay gaps are equal. A remember seeing a UK study that claim there were twice as many men who identified as gay as women. Another study said that gay men are paid less than straight men (on average), but lesbians are paid more than straight women.

Are dual incomes more or less common in gay relationships?
Are childless relationships more or less common?
Are single people more or less common.

You get the point. There are reasons why a gay relationship would earn more, and there are reasons why they'd earn less.

I'm not saying the pink pound exists. I'm just saying that that there are far to many variables to cherry one or two as exists that it exists or not.

Peregrinus

You're right. Basically the whole "pink pound" thing, like so many other marketing-driven concepts, appeals to a particular stereotype - in this case the stereotype of the male-male couple, out, relatively young, middle class, childless. Yes, these couples do exist. Yes, they have a lot of disposable income. To that extent the "pink pound" notion is valid. But only to that extent.

And of course in the gay community as a whole, reality is much more diverse. There are (gasp!) single gay people. There are female-female couples. There are people who are not in middle-class occupations. And, of course, there are lots of couples, male-male and female-female, who are raising children, with all the ruinous expense that that entails.

So the hip, urban scene may overlap with the gay scene, and in that overlap you're likely to find stereotypical pink pound couples. But it's going to be a relatively small overlap. And, for the rest of the gay community, being gay is not going to get them an exemption from suffering from the downside of gentrification.

The people who benefit from gentrification are, well, the gentry; not so much gays, unless they happen to form part of the gentry.

cgcsb

Smithfield/Stoneybatter is definitely a gay ghetto, but recently I can't help but notice the shear volume of gays living in Ashtown.

EdgeCase

Ireland also sort of 'skipped' the 1960s,70s and 80s of LGBT culture so never really developed a gay district in that sense. We sort of went straight from 1950s homophobia to 2000s liberal attitudes to LGBT issues having passed basically jumped through a compressed and super-accelerated social change from the "Celtic Tigre" era onwards.


LGBTQ quarters and clusters tended to be support, protection and survival networks in the olden days when the world was a lot more hostile to gay people. In 2018 Ireland, we've a society where being gay (at least at any kind of official, business, general social etc level) no longer matters at all and you've extensive legal protections. So, LGBTQ has perhaps just been absorbed into the mainstream of society.

It's easy to forget just how much of a conservative backwater Ireland was barely a couple of decades a go and how profound a change we've been through on a whole load of issues.

JupiterKid

EdgeCase wrote: »

Ireland also sort of 'skipped' the 1960s,70s and 80s of LGBT culture so never really developed a gay district in that sense. We sort of went straight from 1950s homophobia to 2000s liberal attitudes to LGBT issues having passed basically jumped through a compressed and super-accelerated social change from the "Celtic Tigre" era onwards.


LGBTQ quarters and clusters tended to be support, protection and survival networks in the olden days when the world was a lot more hostile to gay people. In 2018 Ireland, we've a society where being gay (at least at any kind of official, business, general social etc level) no longer matters at all and you've extensive legal protections. So, LGBTQ has perhaps just been absorbed into the mainstream of society.

It's easy to forget just how much of a conservative backwater Ireland was barely a couple of decades a go and how profound a change we've been through on a whole load of issues.

Yes, I would agree with most of your post but the 1990s were a decade where LGBT tolerance and acceptance, particularly for gay men and lesbians, in Dublin at least and some other major urban areas, did happen. Decriminalisation in 1993 changed a lot of people’s attitudes (including that of my family which enabled me to come out a few years later). IMO it was our belated 1960s/70s sexual revolution. But yes indeed things have moved on hugely since 2000. Dublin definitely does seem to have some evidence of spatial concentrations of LGBT households - Dublin 7, Dublin 8 and the inner city areas seem to be popular if you look at where LGBT people on dating apps seem to be based. Of course, the census only records where same-sex households live on an ED basis and not single LGBT households. There is much scope for research by social/urban geographers in this regard.

Peregrinus

Deedsie wrote: »

Is it not a good thing that there is not a specific neighbourhood for LGBT communities? Surely it's better that we all live mixed together and that the only community is an Irish community? Gay, straight, liberal, conservative, non Irish family background, working, middle, upper classes etc etc should all be happy to live together mixed in the same community be that in South Dublin or South Kerry or North Donegal.

To an extent, yes. On the other hand we all benefit from diversity; life is very dull if everywhere is the same as everywhere else, and we all benefit if different neighbourhoods and different communities have different characters and different vibes.

Minorities in particular benefit from diversity and, while the LGBT community may not suffer anything like the same discrimination and marginalisation as it used to, it remains a minority and therefore can benefit from diversity.

JupiterKid

It would be ideal if LGBT people could live openly everywhere in the country and that is indeed happening but we are not completely there yet. Research internationally has shown that LGBT people tend to concentrate into, and migrate to cities for economic and social reasons. Social classes and ethnic groups also cluster together in urban areas as decades of research has shown. And within cities, LGBT people tend to locate in inner urban and inner suburban areas with a variety of cultural and social amenities within easy reach. Perhaps it is no longer a “safety in numbers” issue but simply the opportunities for work and importantly meeting other LGBT people as potential partners are much greater in major urban areas.

It can be potentially be very isolating for an LGBT person in a remote rural area where they may feel quite isolated and lonely. That said, I put out a thread asking posters on the Farming and Forestry forum a few years back about how they would feel about having an LGBT neighbour or family member and the responses were largely very encouraging and positive.:) Rural Ireland seems light years ahead of rural Idaho but the fact remains that urban areas are more socially liberal and diverse than rural areas. Successive referenda results have borne this out. The urban/rural divide is not as marked as, say, 20 or 30 years ago but it still very much exists.

But gay people generally gravitate towards cities and probably always will for lots of reasons. Young people in general migrate towards cities for lots of the same reasons and in fact, Ireland’s rate of urbanisation is very much speeding up in recent years.