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Author: TheWanderer

Nov 9th 2017 at 6:00:11 AM

* This trope constantly hangs over ''Series/TheWire''. Gentrification is presented as, at best, attempting to paper over the problems of the city, and at worst as almost an equal force with the city's prodigious crime rate in making the city unlivable and unable to pull itself out of its downward spiral. Also, every real estate developer encountered for more than a few seconds is greedy, corrupt, and willing to screw over anyone to make a few dollars. Specific examples include:
** Real estate developer [[CorruptCorporateExecutive Andy Krawczyk]] is a major behind the scenes power in Baltimore. He's also the very model of a corrupt developer, pushing to do things like building luxury condos after doing a land grab, [[ScrewTheRulesIHaveMoney skirting the law to bribe officials]], bending city hall to do his bidding in everything from zoning laws to who gets promoted within the police force.
** Drug kingpins often buy up cheap real estate in bad neighborhoods, then profit massively from corrupt deals made with developers or the city when the land has to be bought for urban renewal.
** The second season features a protracted fight between the union dockworkers and the aforementioned Andy Krawczyk over a pier that has fallen into disuse. The dockworkers want to repair and reopen the space for commerial use, which could mean adding hundreds of badly needed jobs and giving that area of the city a chance at genuine renewal. Krawczyk wants to simply take the land and build luxury apartments near the water.
*** The second season also has a short incident where Nick Sobotka, the nephew of the head of the dockworkers union, attempts to by a house that used to belong to an aunt of his, only to find that due to gentrification the prices of real estate have soared so much that he could never hope to buy property in that neighborhood, showing how blue collar locals get squeezed out by gentrification.
** There's a darkly humorous case in the third season. Stringer Bell, the DragonInChief of what was the biggest drug empire in the city when the story began, is trying to move into legitimate business and become a real estate mogul/developer. So what's the funny part, you ask? [[spoiler:The business partners who are supposed to be helping him do this, Andy Krawczyk and [[SleazyPolitician State Senator Clay Davis]], are actually [[{{Rainmaking}} conning him out of money while his projects go nowhere]]. They are literally bigger crooks than one of the biggest drug dealers in town and can cheat him with impunity.]] Stringer's attempt to get into the real estate business is [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKk1eoYALlM discussed by a group of detectives]] who investigated him in Season 1 and are now doing so again.
--->'''Detective Freamon:''' You know, a couple of years ago when they were buying all that downtown real estate, I thought they were buying it to flip it. Get the cash when the federal payout lands and the properties are condemned.
--->'''Detective Pryzbylewski:''' Bell and Barksdale haven't sold ''any'' of it. They're buying ''more'', in fact, and applying for building permits.
--->'''Detective Freamon:''' Seems that Stringer Bell is worse than a drug dealer.
--->'''Detective Pryzbylewski:''' [with distate] He's a developer.

* One of the earliest episodes of ''Series/BurnNotice'' concerns a greedy extortionist demanding outrageous sums of protection money from a Hispanic neighborhood and busting up the homes and businesses of anyone unable or unwilling to pay. (Or worse.) As she explains to Michael when he goes undercover as a crook and joins her gang, she ''wants'' the rates to be too high to afford and to drive out the people who are unable to go to the police because the real estate companies she owns can swoop in and buy up the property cheap and make far more money on it when the city later goes to gentrify the area than she ever could from [[ShameIfSomethingHappened simple protection rackets]].