See Ya, Harlem; Hello … SoHa? When Neighborhood Renaming Goes Terribly Wrong

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Whether or not you’ve ever taken “the A train to Harlem,” in upper Manhattan, as the Duke Ellington song goes, chances are you’re familiar with this world-famous neighborhood that’s central to African-American history. Yet recent efforts to rebrand part of it, as the forces of gentrification creep ever northward, have created controversy and no small amount of outrage.

The label SoHa—short for South Harlem—has actually been floating around in some form since the late 1990s. But it never caught on with the general public the way such roll-off-the-tongue New York neighborhood abbreviations as SoHo (South of Houston), Tribeca (Triangle Below Canal Street), and Dumbo (Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass) did.

Yet that didn’t stop some from trying to aggressively market the moniker, largely as a real estate sales tool. In 2006, a 15-story residential high-rise named SoHa 118 went up at West 118th Street and Frederick Douglass Boulevard. After that, several local restaurants and businesses nearby adopted the SoHa label, followed by real estate agents who sprinkled the term in their listings.

But now some Harlem residents have had enough.

According to local TV station NY1, state Sen. Brian Benjamin—who represents Harlem and nearby areas—recently spoke out against the rebranding.

“How dare someone try to rob our culture and try to act as if we were not here, and create a new name and a new reality—as if the clock started when other people showed up,” he said.

On June 7, Benjamin introduced legislation that would prevent New York City real estate agents from using nontraditional neighborhood names, launching a flurry of news coverage and social media criticism. Keller Williams, for one, has wiped “SoHa” from its listings.

So while we all know that some rebranding efforts can pay off for a neighborhood, others clearly can backfire badly. How can you tell which is which?

The SoHo effect

Neighborhood renaming is nothing new, particularly in New York City. Now-trendy SoHo, in downtown Manhattan, was once called Hell’s Hundred Acres, so named for its abundance of sweatshops and factories. It was definitely a name worth replacing!

But the renaming of SoHo was not a rebranding effort. It was just a nickname bequeathed in 1962 by urban planner Chester Rapkin, a key player in developing the area into the upscale shopping hot spot it is today.

The term “the SoHo Effect” refers to how a trendy new name seems to magically boost real estate values in the area—and that’s the kind of magic that real estate professionals and local businesses like. According to the podcast 99% Invisible, a hip new neighborhood name is “now a leading indicator of imminent neighborhood change, a sign of gentrification to come, like a Whole Foods opening.”

What’s in a new neighborhood name, anyway?

Neighborhood rebranding is a trend (and highly debated topic) in other parts of the country, as well. 

A 2016 study on name changes in Philadelphia found that several gentrified neighborhoods saw a rise in property values. For instance, in 2002, one property developer started flipping properties in the Point Breeze neighborhood and, a year later, rebranded the new community as Newbold.

According to the study, Newbold saw an increase in home values by more than double from 2000 to 2009. However, the report also found that home values in the nearby neighborhood of Devil’s Pocket, whose name had not been changed, nearly tripled during the same time period.

Which makes you wonder: How much stock can you really put in a new neighborhood name?

In California in 2012, real estate agents began using the acronym NOBE to refer to a section of the San Francisco Bay Area neighborhoods of North Oakland, Berkeley, and Emeryville, according to the East Bay Express. Similar to the Harlem-SoHa rebranding effort, NOBE was seen by many as a marketing tool to attract well-off buyers to East Bay neighborhoods that had long been seen as less desirable.

But alas, the use of the new name infuriated some locals—one of whom spray-painted the window of a cafe with this sentiment: “F**K NOBE.”

We doubt this message did much to make wealthy home buyers feel welcome.

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