December 25-31, 2003

slant

A Dream for Camden

Bigger is not always better.

by Joseph Lapp

I read an article in a local paper the other day about a big $1.2 billion development project on the way for the Cramer Hill section of Camden. Hey, that’s my neighborhood!

This new proposal plans to bring money from private investors into my neighborhood to build new homes along the river, draw in new businesses, create open park space and even build an 18-hole golf course atop the abandoned trash dump. So what's my problem with all this new development? Can anyone say "gentrification"?

According to the article, the new riverfront homes are going to be selling for upwards of $200,000. It didn't specify how much the other homes would go for, but based on the rest of the project's ambitious plans you can imagine that it isn't going to be more low-rent housing. So the question obviously arises: What do we do with the current residents of Cramer Hill?

Some people may call me a naysayer, a ne'er-do-well and a bump in the road to progress, but the idea of buying out hundreds of poor families (mostly members of minority groups) and replacing them with hundreds of new rich folks seems not only shortsighted but also pretty darn mean.

Instead of tackling the difficult problems of poverty and social inequality we instead turn to the easier, morally questionable alternative of just moving the poor folks somewhere else. At least then they'll be somebody else's problem, right? Wrong. These problems belong to each of us and the solution to these problems should be something with which we are all concerned.

I've been living in Cramer Hill for the better part of seven months and in that admittedly short time, I've seen some of the best and worst that this little city has to offer. I've seen the crime and the pollution, the pothole-ridden streets that are slowly but surely destroying suspension on my Volkswagen van, the abandoned homes, the homeless and the poor, as well as the hopelessness and devastation caused by hard drug addiction and other social ills. But I've also witnessed a city on the rise: development along the downtown waterfront (if only they'd get rid of the prisons), a NJ Transit system that actually works, including a yet-to-open light rail between Camden and Trenton, and the slow but certain revitalization of a community that has been on hard times for nearly 50 years.

Camden officials sound excited. Why shouldn't they be? Displacing the "undesirable" (Does that include me?) will raise property values, which means more tax dollars going to the cash-strapped government. "Cleaning up" the neighborhood will also attract new businesses (even more tax dollars) and presumably lower crime (less money for the nightly helicopter sweeps and police cruisers needlessly running their sirens all night long). This project makes everyone happy. The government gets more money, the Cherokee Investment Partners (the company running this proposed shindig) stand to make a lot of money, the rich folks get another new playground. Yup, everyone stands to gain. Everyone except those who already live here.

It doesn't sound like anyone yet has a plan for the relocation of current residents. Numerous ideas spring to mind. Poorly designed low-rent housing projects that will fall apart in a year are always in vogue. Forget that we're trading one ghetto for another. I doubt new residents will want their children attending the same poorly equipped schools that the children of current neighborhood families attend. A new school district in a high-priced area sounds like it would create the same old class-based disproportion in education funding with which

we're already contending.

Ultimately, I don't have a solution. I agree that we need to improve the city, but improving the city means raising the quality of life for its current residents, not bringing in new residents with the promise of a better quality of life for them. This will do nothing but demonstrate to the poor just how much we care about their needs.

I want to see Camden fulfill the promise engraved on City Hall ("In a dream I saw a city invincible") as much as anyone else. I want to see our streets free from crime, our children healthy and well-educated and poverty and inequality stomped out across the land, but take your gentrification elsewhere. For my parting words I choose to paraphrase John Lennon, because I think he summed it up best: "Some say that I'm a dreamer, but [I hope for Camden's sake that] I'm not the only one."

(For another viewpoint on gentrification, see Cityspace article on p. 63.)

Joseph Lapp lives in Camden. If you would like to respond to this Slant or have one of your own (800 words), contact Howard Altman, City Paper editor in chief, 123 Chestnut St., third floor, Phila., PA 19106 or e-mail altman@citypaper.net.