Owning Places and Buying Time

Stalled gentrification creates a problematic community that illuminates in a rare way the interplay among class, culture, race, and gender in everyday city life. Newer owners and long-time male renters clash over the use of public space; women renters argue to their landlord that through buying time with rent they are culturally like owners; Black and Latino renters split over how to share a large building. Neighborhood conflicts thus reflect varied resources and traditions, disparate visions of place, and contrasting strategies for making a neighborhood home.