Though the conventional wisdom is that gay men are gentrification’s “shock troops” — moving into distressed areas and cleaning them up, preparing them for wealthier, straight residents — Schulman complicates this by reminding us that living in an enclave of relative safety was (and still is) a premium for gays and lesbians who could not live without fear where they had grown up. Then, too, with the arrival of the AIDS crisis, the sudden rise in deaths of gay men accelerated the process of gentrification. Their absences emptied out rent-controlled apartments, which, because gay partners usually lacked inheritance rights, were converted to market rate at an unusually rapid speed. “The process of replacement was so mechanical I could literally sit on my stoop and watch it unfurl,” Schulman writes.
Front of Book
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