On balance, the benefits of gentrification always outweigh the costs.
"As appealing and as plausible as this story may be, it’s an urban myth. The best empirical analyses conducted by urban economists have failed to detect a rise in displacements within gentrifying neighborhoods. This finding goes so much against conventional wisdom it seems impossible, but it’s true. As a matter of fact, researchers find that poor residents are more likely to stay put as their neighborhood improves. Moreover, the benefits of gentrification, in terms of reduced crime and better amenities, more employment opportunities, and reduced commutes are rarely, if ever, considered by naysayers."
Over the past few decades, the term “gentrification,” i.e. high-income persons and households moving into poor minority neighborhoods, who, in doing so, push out significantly poorer lifelong residents, has become one of the most negatively loaded words in urban circles. Almost everyone has...
blog.housingfirstmn.org
Newly-released research found that gentrification produces mostly positive effects for original lower-income residents, but that doesn’t mean there are no losers. Rather, neighborhood change is far more complex than the typical narratives let on, and there are a lot of ways to decipher and judge...
ggwash.org
You can't have investment in an underserved community without pushing up property values. You can't improve an underserved community without private investment in it. There is no way around that. As to white flight, there are more minorities now that live in the suburbs than in the inner city. For example, we live in an inner ring suburb of Kansas City. The high school our kids went to is a majority minority high school. It is also a good school district, and our neighborhood is safe and walkable. I don't think many people are moving out of Northern JoCo to get away from minorities (this isn't the 70s anymore). If they move further out, it's because they want a larger home. In these older inner ring suburbs, the vast majority of homes 2 to 3 bedrooms, 1 to 2 baths, and a single car garage. The kind of homes that were built in the 30s, 40s, and 50s.
Class seems to be the biggest divide these days. People are fine with minorities living near them so long as they are in the same class as they are. What they don't want are poor people moving near them because they think it will drive down their property values, and they have classist views towards the poor. For example, Minneapolis now has some of the most affordable housing relative to incomes in the United States. This is because they banned all zoning that discriminates based on class (for example, bans on multifamily housing, on street parking, and so on). Because of this, it also has one of the lowest inflation rates of any major city. This is also why Houston, despite being the 4th largest city in the country, and by any measure, a global city, enjoys relatively affordable housing relative to income.
The movement to build more homes entered the 2024 legislative session with the backing of an unusual coalition of influential lobbying groups and lawmakers from both sides of the aisle. None of the coalition’s main priorities made it across the finish line, however. Now, the group is reflecting...
minnesotareformer.com
I am no fan of Bernie Sanders, but one thing he gets right is class is by far the biggest division in our society, more so than race or ethnic identity.