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5d ago
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Congrats on being born somewhere that must have taken a tremendous amount of effort and fuck anyone who tried to get a slice of that pie fr. u earned that & those transplants should stay in the dead ends they were born in! landlords are angels from heaven imo and if the immigrants are willing to pay that who are landlords to tell them no
5d ago
@SOFT Sounds good maybe if you’re so self righteous you might not understand where im coming from
@SOFT i def feel like part of the problem is people over-idolizing nyc and so many people considering where they’re from “dead ends”
5d ago
@SOFT it’s not about it being a badge of honor to be born somewhere it’s about the fact that everyone deserves a home to call their own and people act like New York is some transitional public playground that they can’t imagine anyone actually grew up in
5d ago
good moment to remind new yorkers to vote in our local elections!!! policy, rather than the individual renter, is largely to blame for the outrageous and unliveable rents across the city. we need to push our representatives to build actual affordable housing, rather than ultra luxe expensive housing that then “subsidizes” other affordable housing that often never even gets built at all or doesn’t get built in the areas that actually need it, pushing people further away and forcing longer commutes on an already taxed mta system. it’s a complicated topic that cannot be handled in this comment so will leave it at that
5d ago
@RIOTGRRRL sincerely, girl who moved here 7 years ago for school and learned a lot about nyc building politics during that education
5d ago
the insinuation that transplants are the backbone of this city’s culture is irking me. there were whole communities here that have been pushed out in the last 10-15 years as a result of gentrification. they were doing just fine until they couldn’t afford their housing and lifestyle anymore.
nyc was fine before gentrification and will be fine after folks find a new en vogue city to call home their 20s.
5d ago
no one should pay that for a bad apartment, and most don’t, but if no one had moved here within the last ten years this city would be in a much worse place. everyone is a transplant or a descendant of one, drawing the line at ten years is completely arbitrary lol. It’s also kind of like a nationalist mentality
5d ago
@SLOWDAZZLE my Issue lies not with the concept of transplants themselves (be so for real lol) but rather gentrification + poor decision making regarding housing , the enabling of predatory practices, and the implication of this mindset on native/existing tenants of the city. the city would be absolutely fine without this influx of people 🥰
5d ago
I understand the frustration, it's hard seeing a place change that you love so much. but people are just moving with the tide of job opportunities, education, and other factors. they'll definitely dilute the culture, but they'll adapt over time. locals being encouraging of that adjustment helps. all cities change as different people come and go, new york has always been that way. beloved places like China Town and Little Italy wouldn't be there without transplants. each new wave of transplants brings the places they came from with them and adapt to the place they move to.
more than the transplants, the blame should be on the economic factors and private developers that use the transplants as opportunities to inflate the market prices and push out locals. transplants just live where they're able and pay what they have to. they don't control anything other than their decision to move, and the pull factors attracting people aren't going away. housing reform, market regulation, and smarter development will alleviate this more than hostility to new people.
5d ago
@ROYALLMONARCH china town and little italy would be fine without transplants, arguably better. I would love to see big changes in housing and I am happy to spread blame to the overarching issues (predatory landlords and legislation) but you are delusional if you do not see the correlation between people new to the city being willing to pay $5k for dogshit + a city full of opportunistic landlords = rising market prices.
5d ago
@TOILET I was more saying that Italian and Asian immigrants were the transplants of their time and subject to the same predatory housing policies of their time. the attitude of disliking transplants exists within the context of its time and is targeted at different demographics who are the current wave of people moving in. the people who were once transplants left their mark on the city and became core to its identity as time went on. tale as old as time. the only difference in framing between noble immigrants seeking economic opportunity vs pesky transplants diluting a pure image of a city's culture is the lens of historical hindsight.
also as @SLOWDAZZLE said, the posture of hating transplants for their effect on culture is the same argument used in places like the UK against immigrants from the middle east/north africa. sure there's a cultural/ethnic element to that example that is less pertinent to the imagined demographic of "transplant" vs "immigrant," but the core attitude is the same regardless of whom its positioned towards. disliking transplants for their passive participation in a housing market and economic landscape that they have no control over is also counter productive.
5d ago
also important to note that if your gripes are more along class lines against wealthy folks moving in and taking advantage of inflated housing to the benefit of their own wealth, a lot of transplants are your allies here. if you want to make actionable change against the housing crisis, a lot of newer new yorkers don't want to pay those prices either! something like a rent strike to directly act against slumlords and private equity would require solidarity with transplants. basically just be aware of who you're directing TOTALLY VALID frustrations towards. transplants aren't a monolith.
a lot of transplants also want to be better neighbors and community members. speaking as a former NY transplant myself, the most important element of educating myself on how to live in NY were my NY native friends who helped me adjust. getting a cold shoulder from locals doesn't help to integrate new folks.
5d ago
@ROYALLMONARCH my post was very clearly specific to housing within the lens of the last 10 years - not the dilution of culture or immigration issues. feel free to read my reply above where i make it abundantly clear i am in no way hating on transplants as a concept, i am hating on the poor decision making with regard to housing + gentrification confined to the last 10 years. we collectively have control of where and how we spend our money. if you’d like to imply i am anti immigrant that is your prerogative, but i think you know what i am actually saying 🙂 this is my lived experience as a child of immigrants born and raised in this city. thank you for your opinion and i appreciate your input
5d ago
@LEONA curious others’ perspectives on this but i feel like there’s a distinction between moving and transplanting if that makes sense? like people who come here for an actual reason (family, school, real job) - and not just bc they want to live in their perception of what nyc is or because they have rich parents or are “influencers”. i’m not a nyc native though - my family is all from nyc, so i grew up in jersey but spent a lot of time in the city, and i feel like i have a mixed relationship to living here (moved bc i got a job here). i def don’t think the city is better bc of transplants though, the change in the last 10 years is noticeable to me... even the new buildings are ugly AF
5d ago
@MARXINISTA I think your point of "movers to nyc" vs "transplants to nyc" is my main point. transplant is such an ambiguous and unspecific term if there isn't a consensus as to who that encapsulates. from my understanding, a transplant is really anyone not native to NYC who moves in. to say transplants within the last 10 years are ruining a city paints culpability very broadly when there's definitely a more specific demographic representative of the forces affecting the city than anyone who has moved there within the last 10 years. transplants broadly also have to deal with an unaffordable housing market. being hard on individuals versus systems is counter productive IMO and misses the root of the very real issue. it's not folks who like matcha and don't have sidewalk etiquette who are to blame for systems they exist within.
5d ago
@ROYALLMONARCH transplant in this convo is not at all ambiguous and i think you know that. matcha is absolutely representative of the type of people im referencing. at this point I want to say this - no offensive intended - but all of your takes seem to come from the perspective of someone who is defensive of being the transplant gentrifier
theyd gonna call u mean and problematic but ur correct. nobody understands sidewalk etiquette anymore
5d ago
i love NYC but realized in my early 20s that I never really wanted to live there. I have friends that have moved there and made great lives for themselves but in my heart I know i’m meant to be in Virginia and will love NYC as an outsider and frequent visitor, this was the magic never truly wears off. As a child of the woods and the suburbs, I can’t imagine growing up there and seeing your hometown change so much. I live in a town that people visit as tourists or students and love and fantasize about living in while they just increase the cost of housing and food exponentially, on a much smaller scale than NYC but still disheartening to see all the genuine quirky/weird stuff get pushed out by money
5d ago
