In a sort of mea culpa, or at least a second look, Seattle Times “FYI Guy” columnist Gene Balk revisits his recent piece on the Central District as an affordable and convenient place to live. Uh-oh. As Balk confesses in a follow-up, that assessment went over none too well with the area’s African-American residents, who have lived there not for the “convenience,” as one woman puts it, but because there was no place else to live. Redlining by banks saw to that. Now, Balk says, the trend lines of gentrification predict the C.D. could be less than 10 percent black within a decade.
