The Paint Comes Out

Someone spray-painted a building in the Wedding the other night. It was this coordinated action—Still not lovin’ Gentrification—targeting the new developments, the ones with furnished apartments for students at prices nobody who actually lives here can pay. I understand it completely. The anger is justified.

Berlin’s been transforming and not in any way that benefits the people who were here. Money arrives, rents climb, people who’ve lived here for decades get pushed out. You watch it happen. Whole neighborhoods get cleaner and emptier at the same time.

What I can’t quite work through is this: if I had the money, the actual capital to just move into a beautiful place in the Wedding or Kreuzberg without even looking at the rent, I would do it. Without hesitation. Without lying awake about it. I’d sign the lease and move in the following week. So I’m sitting here understanding the spray paint while knowing I’d be exactly the person it’s supposed to stop.

The paint makes a statement, sure. But it doesn’t change what money does to a city or what I’d do if I had it. That’s what gets me. Not the contradiction exactly—I can live with that—but the fact that there’s no good answer to it.