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# Can You Be A Gentrifier If You Grew Up Here?
- URL: https://bklyner.com/can-you-be-a-gentrifier-if-you-grew-up-here-parkslopestoop/
- Published: 2012-06-15T18:45:52.000Z
- Updated: 2012-06-15T18:45:52.000Z
- Author: Rachel Silberstein
- Tags: gentrification, Nona Willis Aronowitz, #API-Imported

![](/content/images/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/demographics-533x399.jpg)

Park Slope native Nona Willis Aronowitz spent much of her childhood in brownstone Brooklyn and the East Village. But those neighborhoods aren’t what they were even a decade ago, which means that as an adult New Yorker on budget, she’s living in Harlem — and as she writes in the Atlantic Cities, that’s made [a gentrifier](http://www.theatlanticcities.com/neighborhoods/2012/06/how-recession-has-made-me-gentrifier-my-home-town/2289/?ref=bklyner.com) in her home town. Her childhood turf is financially out of the question, Aronowitz says. Harlem makes fiscal sense. But does that mean she’s a gentrifier or a victim of gentrification? Is it possible to be both?

> It’s not as if I can move back to my old stomping grounds, now populated by six- and seven-figure earners. Yet in my current location, I’m still pushing out even lower-income residents…. If I moved to an upper-class neighborhood, I would slow down gentrification in lower-income communities. But I’d also be actively participating in my own displacement.

And with property values on the rise (covering the story, Ditmas Park Corner [points out](/blog/real-estate/when-youre-gentrifying-your-home-city) Brooklyn rents are [up 10%](http://therealdeal.com/blog/2012/06/14/rents-in-brooklyn-up-10-percent-annually/?ref=bklyner.com) since this time last year), the gentrify-or-be-gentrified paradox of New York living isn’t limited to lifetime residents: the politics of demography affect us all.

So how do you think about where you live? If you’re a long-time Park Sloper, has it been a struggle to stay in the hood? And if you’re a newer transplant, how did your own socio-economic profile factor into your decisions about where to call home?