COMMENT OF THE DAY: MONTROSE HASN’T EVEN HIT PUBERTY YET 
“I regularly walk around in Montrose. I’ve also been to many urban neighborhoods in the northeast which are as close to 100% gentrified as you can get. I’m talking Greenwich Village in NYC, Beacon Hill in Boston, Georgetown in DC.
Montrose is not anywhere close to that level of gentrification. It won’t even be there in 20 years. Right now, you can still walk around Montrose and see loads of old 60s and 70s garden complexes with $700 a month apartments. There are plenty of trashy convenience stores, rundown strip malls, and vacant lots. And yes, there are still plenty of young artists and musicians who live in the area and hang out in areas like the Menil plying their craft.
Any neighborhood where a lot on a major commercial street can sit vacant for over a year is not that gentrified yet.
Okay, so yes. Montrose is obviously gentrifying. It’s different from how it was 20, 30, 40 years ago. That’s part of city life–places change, some people move out, other people move in. And eventually, maybe in a few decades, if Houston doesn’t get destroyed in a hurricane or become the next Detroit due to economic collapse, Montrose probably will become the kind of bland-ish upper crust West U-ish neighborhood people act like it already is. But here’s the reality: It’s not there yet, and it won’t be for quite awhile.” [Christian, commenting on Comment of the Day Runner-Up: The Creative Destruction of Montrose] Illustration: Lulu
Sign up for the Newsletter
Totally agree. And we actually have small studios in the $700 range in Montrose that are pretty nice (I think). And 1 beds *near* Montrose for $600.
.
Montrose is still cheap if you don’t mind living in an older garden style apartment building
Great comment. I think we forget to think outside of Houston in terms of context.
Agree except I wouldn’t say Beacon Hill or Georgetown are “gentrified”. They are where the rich have always lived
This is true, but if you look at where Montrose is today compared to where it was 15 years ago? This isn’t about whether or not Montrose has gentrified, it is in process of being gentrified, and as you say, there’s still a generation or so to go before it’s gentrification is complete. This whole string of comments of the day (comment of the days?) has been about Montrose losing what made it Montrose. That has indeed happened. What’s left of what made Montrose what Montrose was?
.
Sure, it isn’t completely gentrified, but it sure isn’t Montrose any more.
@toasty – “there’s still a generation or so to go before it’s gentrification is complete”
I don’t see “gentrification” as a one-way process with a hard and fast terminus. Like any socio-economic phenomenon, it occurs over time and changes over time, never reaching a “100%” ideal. 20 years from now, the neighborhood could become subject to some new, as yet unforeseen, force that shift it again in another direction. In an urban setting, change will be constant, and that is the only thing you can count on.
I’m very confused as to where these 700$ apartments are.
Good stuff!