I’m a Mexican citizen and a U.S. permanent resident. I come from a working-class family, but thanks to my parents’ hard work and many sacrifices, I was able to attend top schools. After going to college in Mexico City, I lived there in Condesa/Roma — an area that was already expensive and being gentrified. Even as a relatively privileged Mexican with a college degree, I felt that buying there was out of reach.
Eventually, I moved to the United States for graduate school, found love, married and landed a well-paying job. Now, seven years later, I’m in a position to buy a home in that same place. But the prices shock me: They’re comparable to small homes in the San Francisco Bay Area, where I currently rent. A wave of foreigners has moved in, and the signs of gentrification are unmistakable. I hear stories of displacement even among my highly educated peers — some of whom also studied abroad but returned to Mexico to work, rather than staying in the United States as I did.
I’m torn. I can finally afford to live in the area I once only dreamed of calling home. But buying there feels like participating in the very dynamics that have pushed out others. Is it ethical for me to buy there? — Name Withheld
From the Ethicist:
Philosophers have the sometimes-annoying habit of asking what words mean. And “gentrification” is a big one. The urban sociologist Ruth Glass coined it in 1964 to discuss the phenomenon of middle-class Londoners “invading” working-class neighborhoods. Since then, the term has swollen to cover a jumble of trends — rising prices, falling poverty, shifting tastes, global capital, displacement, the uneasy intertwining of color and class. It’s diagnosis disguised as description.
Many economists and demographers have come to question the diagnosis. Rising property values do raise rents and insecurity for tenants; longtime owners gain equity but may struggle with higher taxes. Yet studies in Philadelphia and elsewhere found that low-income residents of appreciating neighborhoods weren’t more likely to move than those elsewhere, and when they did, they didn’t necessarily end up in poorer or more distant areas. Nor do eviction rates seem to be higher. Increasingly, researchers see “gentrification” less as a cause than a symptom of housing scarcity and the lag between wages and housing costs. Some ask why public debate fixates on the troubles of neighborhoods getting richer when the opposite is far more common — and far harder on low-income residents. One plausible argument is that we should retire the word “gentrification” altogether and speak plainly about what actually matters: affordability and displacement.
The cultural toll is harder to count — the loss of cherished shops and amenities, changes to what Glass called a district’s “whole social character.” Yet the language of invaders destroying a neighborhood’s character echoes older exclusionary arguments, the ones once used to keep Black and brown families out of white enclaves. The situations differ, but the premise is uncomfortably similar: that a neighborhood has a proprietary right to preserve its social composition. The better question, morally, isn’t how to bar newcomers but how to absorb them without harming those already there.
All that said, global capitals face particular pressures. In Mexico City’s Condesa/Roma neighborhoods, foreign money floods in and housing supply lags, driving up prices. Housing turns from social good to financial instrument; when newcomers buy as investors or part-timers, street life suffers.
That’s the backdrop to your dilemma. The decision of whether to buy in a rapidly appreciating area is often cast as a moral test. In reality, the transformation is already well advanced; the property you don’t buy will be bought by someone else. The real question is how you choose to inhabit the place. If you help sustain the civic and cultural life that first drew you in and act like a neighbor rather than an investor, then buying the home you once dreamed of isn’t just defensible; it may even soften, in some modest way, the forces you’re worried about.
Readers Respond
The previous question was from a reader who had cut off contact with a friend who was abusive toward her young child. The letter writer was now struggling to decide whether she should belatedly try to intervene. She wrote:
“After I moved to another city, they came to visit. The trip turned disastrous when the mother repeatedly called her daughter profane names, reducing her to tears, even after I begged her to stop. That was the last time we spoke. It has now been a year, and I’m still grieving. I feel I abandoned the child — first by moving away, then by cutting ties. … I worry constantly for her emotional health and safety. I have considered filing a child abuse report, but I fear it might do more harm than good, especially since the incidents I witnessed happened more than a year ago and I said nothing at the time. I’m also troubled that the mother is a social worker, with ties to the very agency that would receive a report. … What is my ethical obligation to this child? Could I reach out to her school social worker and ask them to check on her? I care for her deeply and fear she will grow up scarred unless someone intervenes. At the same time, I feel I may no longer have the standing to act.” — Name Withheld
In his response, the Ethicist noted:
“There is a child you care about who, if your impressions are right, is living under the weight of physical and psychological abuse. That knowledge is hard to carry because it creates a responsibility: Once you’ve seen what you’ve seen, it isn’t possible simply to step away without asking yourself whether you should act. … Reporting belatedly to child protective services or a school social worker may feel awkward, but the fact that time has passed does not erase the significance of what you witnessed. At worst, if the mother’s professional connections allow her to neutralize a report, the effort will be ignored. At best, it might alert people in a position to watch over the child — teachers, social workers, child-welfare staff — who could be helpful in ways you cannot. … However uncertain the outcome, making sure that those who can help have the information you do seems the way to do right by the bond you once had with her.”
(Reread the full question and answer here.)
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I have a godchild who was born to two friends who had a train wreck of a marriage. My godchild was left with an alcoholic parent and an absent parent. I stayed connected. I knew I was enabling, but it was the only way I could protect him. It was difficult for me, but I had dinner with him every Tuesday for four years in his preteen years, and then he knew he could always come to me if he needed me. In my own life, I had been challenged by irresponsible parents. My aunts, teachers and grandmother gathered around me, so that was my model. I would stay in touch with a child you hold dear, even if it means tolerating a parent you don’t. — Sarah
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Social workers are mandatory reporters and should not, under any circumstances, be practicing social work if they are abusing anyone. Not only should this have been reported a long time ago, but the letter writer should also be reporting this to the ex-friend’s licensing board. — Samantha
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I grew up with abusive parents, and although there were several concerned adults in our lives who seemed to care about how my siblings and I were doing, no one ever intervened. Had more adults actually stepped forward when they saw the blatant emotional, physical and psychological abuse taking place and genuinely tried to help any us, I believe the outcomes would have been better. All of my siblings have suffered with PTSD. Several have struggled with addiction. I know that in many circumstances, foster care is worse than a home environment, but a trusted family friend could save a child’s life. — Faith
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As a school principal, I urge you to speak to the child’s principal or teacher. They will not be able to respond directly to your concerns, but if they are seeing issues at school, it will help put them in context. And if they are on the fence about calling child protective services, it may encourage them to do so. — Amelia
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You were outstandingly attentive to this child when she lived near you, but yes, you did abandon her in her utmost need. I was a child with an alcoholic and negligent mother. She was not abusive and my level of suffering was much, much less than that of the child the letter writer describes. But I kept thinking: Where are all the grown-ups? Why doesn’t anyone see what I am going through? Why doesn’t anyone help me? Be the person you once were. Even if you decide not to report the mother, you might be able to keep in touch with the child through letters and phone calls and perhaps visits. — Jaya
Kwame Anthony Appiah is The New York Times Magazine’s Ethicist columnist and teaches philosophy at N.Y.U. To submit a query, send an email to [email protected].
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