Gentrification is a powerful force for economic change in cities, but it is often accompanied by extreme and unnecessary cultural displacement. While gentrification increases the value of properties in areas that suffered from prolonged disinvestment, it also results in rising rent, home, and property values. As these rising costs reduce the supply of affordable housing, the existing residents, who are often POC, are displaced. This prevents them from benefiting from the economic growth and the greater availability of services that come with increased investment. Gentrification presents a challenge to communities that are trying to achieve economic revitalization without the disruption that comes with displacement. The negative effects of gentrification are felt disproportionately by minority communities, whose residents have fewer options of neighborhoods they can move to compared to their white counterparts.
Gentrification occurs when communities experience an influx of capital and concomitant goods/services in locales where those resources were previously non-existent or denied. Gentrification usually occurs when more wealthy people move to or become interested in historically less wealthy neighborhoods. Some argue that gentrification is beneficial because the gentrification process creates more development, rapid economic investment, and support of projects related to consumption and entertainment. An incoming population of more affluent and privileged residents is directly connected to an increase in resource allocation to schools, stores, and other developments.
While these effects can be beneficial, the gentrification process becomes harmful when it forces original residents to leave a neighborhood through exponentially increasing property prices or coercion.
When there is no widespread displacement, and the shifts in the neighborhood are carefully planned through with community input and involvement, gentrification can be a good thing for the community, increasing racial, socioeconomic, and ethnic integration. However, this is rarely ever the case.
Gentrification usually leads to negative impacts such as forced displacement, a fostering of discriminatory behavior by people in power, and a focus on spaces that exclude low-income individuals and people of color. Poorer communities are commonly converted to high-end neighborhoods with expensive housing options such as high-rises and condos. As property prices increase, the original residents of the neighborhood are forced out in a variety of ways. First, with an increase in the prices of buildings, the gap between the price of the building and the income that the landlord gets from renting the building grows bigger. Landlords thus increase rent prices, which forces out the low-income residents. As building prices continue to increase, the problem worsens because it becomes even more profitable to convert apartment buildings into non-residential areas. Additionally, since investors can earn more money from selling buildings, real-estate dealers have less motivation to improve the buildings. The real estate dealers often sell the buildings at higher prices instead. This cycle of rising building prices continues until only large and well-financed investors are able to continue.
Because of the potential for large profits from the conversion of ordinary living spaces to high-rise/office buildings, landlords have used immoral means to intentionally displace low-income and POC residents from rent-controlled areas. For example, a development corporation in New York Chinatown applied for a special zoning permit for the construction of an apartment on a plot with rent-control housing. Before the city decided whether or not to issue the permit, the developer had already evicted the tenants and demolished the rent-controlled building. The residents stated that the corporation forced them out of the building through deprivation of services, gang intimidation, harassment, and arson.
Even when the living spaces in a gentrifying area remain residential, the developers attract new residents with higher incomes because of the services and facilities that improve in addition to the increased cost of living and property values.
The rush of these new and wealthier residents puts pressure on the housing market that produces inflated rents and prices that effectively displace low-income residents.
Furthermore, during rezoning, new residents, some with the most spatialized privilege and high economic standing, have the power to shape city policy to protect themselves from further gentrification that might have priced them out of the area.
Displacement from these methods is borne by low-income individuals of color, many of whom are elders. Physical frailty/weakness makes it more challenging for these individuals to resist the actions that landlords take to remove tenants, and researchers have found that elderly people are more intensively affected by social changes around them. For example, many older adults cited loss of friendships or community networks as a reason to move. This is a problem that builds on itself because with gentrification, many people are rapidly forced out of their neighborhoods, leading to fewer community networks and more reasons for elderly low-income individuals, who are already facing struggles from rising prices, to give up on their homes and move out of the neighborhood.
Due to rising property values and coercive techniques, low-income individuals and people of color also can face exclusion from the newly planned spaces in the gentrifying location. The urban planning shift from “fostering community formation” to “investing the city with money and consumption-oriented spaces that resemble suburban shopping malls that exclude low-income and people of color” is common in gentrification efforts. Instead of community integration, there is selective development/enforcement of distinction between different areas. Moreover, when developers build houses, they are not building these houses for low-income families. There are frequent cuts in low-income housing federal assistance, so new buildings are usually intended for upper-income families. These spaces are societally problematic because they disproportionately exclude people of color and low-income individuals.
The issue of how gentrification affects different racial groups is particularly relevant right now in light of the increased instability people are facing due to the pandemic and incidents bringing attention to the unnecessary use of policing against people of color in the United States. Most gentrification occurs because of a lack of policies that offer equitable rezoning policies, value community input, and provide intentional housing options. Without policies that attempt to remedy the trends that cause forced displacement, gentrification will continue to displace lower-income communities. To develop such policies, we must recognize the disproportionate and destructive effects of gentrification.
Writer: Alex White
Editor: Molly McEwen
Sources:
file:///D:/s1681146/Downloads/ijerph-18-00907-v2.pdf
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