Gentrification and Displacement: How to Think About Them

The result is that rents and home prices increase. Sometimes affordable mom and pop businesses can't afford rent and upscale neighborhood bistros. Housing redevelopment or infill housing can become profitable enough that the supply of affordable housing dwindles.

The term comes from the idea of the gentry, or people who can afford to own nice property.

The result of gentrification often is displacement of the previous tenants and home owners. In urban areas, sometimes the same household is displaced repeatedly, as they move to less expensive neighborhood, only to find that neighborhood also overtaken with "progress" and more expensive housing. Or equally unfortunate, they may have to settle for a crime-ridden and ugly neighborhood.

Sometimes there is a racial or ethnic overtone in gentrification, but always a change in the average income level and lifestyle.

The Real Problem Is the Displacement, Not the Gentrification

Those of us interested in community development tend to sympathize with the poor and downtrodden anyway. It feels like a conflict when we see good things happening in the neighborhood, only to notice a few months or years the negative effects on those who were living there already.

In our book, an aggressive program to prevent displacement can be successful in what otherwise might be a gentrification situation with lots of negative impacts on the poor.

The most obvious way to accommodate both lower and higher incomes together is to allow increasing density, either through a higher occupancy rate or redevelopment.

In other words, it's wonderful if a neighborhood can become the poster child for mixed income housing and cultural diversity.

It's hard to do because people are racist or at least very class-ist. When the "gentry" arrives, some of them are likely to take offense with more down-to-earth grocery stores, shopping, restaurants, and entertainment.

Action Steps If You Suspect Gentrification

1. Immediately inventory the available affordable multi-family housing units and talk with their owners about how the current general price structure can be preserved, at least in part.

Determine if they need assistance to keep their buildings affordable, and if so, see if they will be eligible for any Community Development Block grant or other government funding.

2. If the neighborhood consists mostly of single-family homes, vigorously address any issues of being outdated in terms of today's market demand. If they are tiny two-bedroom homes with little closet space, but you're in a metro area where only three-bedroom, two-bath, two-car garage places are in demand, your single-family homes may be seen as tear downs that could make way for upscale condos and apartments.

And maybe you as a neighborhood organization or a local government will be powerless to do anything about it, but give appropriate attention to whether addressing architectural obsolescence would be helpful.

Can you get a grant to hire an architect to illustrate some typical additions that would make your single-family housing less vulnerable? If current residents can't afford that and there's no source of long-term financing, you may be stuck with trying to help them at least get their houses into good repair.

3. Look for opportunities to build infill housing on vacant lots. (Yes, urban studies types call it "infill" instead of "fill-in.")

If the housing stock has architectural character and unique appeal--and often it is just such appeal that causes the gentrification to begin--building new modestly priced housing may be the best alternative. Granted, lower-income folks would have to move, but at least they would be able to stay in the same neighborhood.

4. Work with the newcomers, welcoming them to the neighborhood but also chipping away at any class discrimination attitudes they may have brought with them.

Explain that they can have their lattes but that others may want plain old coffee, and that this diversity is part of the neighborhood's charm.

Encourage social mixing to the maximum extent possible, which will tend to alleviate the newcomers' collective tendency to want to organize to move the riff raff out of the way. After all, when we really get to know someone, we tend to find something in them to appreciate.

5. Look to your city government to provide incentive zoning, in which developers are given the opportunity to build more housing units in return for keeping a certain number of units affordable.

6. Understand and recognize that you may need to accept greater density in the neighborhood in order to preserve the current mix of income levels. If there aren't many housing vacancies or vacant lots, you'll have to deal with the gentrification and displacement if you can't bring yourselves to accept more density.

In many places, density would bring benefits, such as having enough of a market to attract a particular retailer within walking distance, rather than problems. However, there is such a thing as living too close to your neighbors if people aren't used to crowded conditions.

7. If you are genuinely unable to retain lower-income people in your neighborhood, because you are close to downtown, you have a new major employer, people suddenly discovered your great old Victorians, or whatever, you may have to accept gentrification and displacement.

But we hope that you'll fight against the displacement part of the equation with all your strength, so that those least able to afford to move can avoid that upsetting and expensive life event.

Return from Gentrification to Housing

Useful Community Development home