(MintPress) – In 2010, a record 2.9 million properties were foreclosed on as the height of the housing crisis played itself out across America. Two years prior, in 2008, the worst of the economic collapse set in, launching the burst of the housing bubble and sending homeowners scrambling for options.
During the first year of the downturn, 10 million Americans moved away from their current county to a new destination. Within large population shifts comes the mobilization of different demographics and social classes, which can lead to social gentrification – occurring when wealthier people acquire property in low income or working class communities.
Gentrification follows common patterns of more affluent, white individuals or families moving or opening businesses in minority, lower income neighborhoods. Over the past decade, areas such as Northwest Fort Lauderdale, Fla. and Pittsburgh’s South Side are being transformed into more expensive and updated housing.
The 2010 Census also found other cities across the nation that may be experiencing high levels of gentrification. Between 2000 and 2010, Columbia, S.C. saw the largest change in white share of the population with a 47.1 percent increase. Chattanooga, Tenn. saw a 38.7 percent increase in white share while Roanoke, Va. went up 34.9 percent.
What this means for communities has been a topic of debate for some time. The term gentrification is often couched, and likely oversimplified, as affluent white people modernizing lower income minority areas, which, in turn, raises the cost of living in those areas and forces the lower-income residents to move. In a 2005 study, Columbia University assistant professor Lance Freeman set out to prove that displacement is an exaggerated issue with gentrification.
While studying New York City and Boston respectively, Freeman found that poor and less educated residents in gentrifying cities moved less than people in other neighborhoods. In New York, Freeman found that it was 20 percent less likely than instances in Boston.
In an interview with USA Today, however, residents such as James Lewis, a tenant organizer in Harlem, disagreed with the claim that the effects of gentrification are overblown, arguing that it would take decades of studying to show what those in the inner city actually experience.
“All you have to do is talk to people around here,” Lewis said. “Everybody with money is moving into Harlem, and the people who are here are being displaced.”
The influence of business
It’s difficult to say whether or not the housing foreclosure crisis that struck in 2007 has made waves of homebuyers go after cheaper real estate, but it is a market principle that we can assume in this day and age, says Mark Davidson, a geography professor with a specialty in urban politics and gentrification at Clark University.
In an interview with MintPress, Davidson acknowledged that the existing populations in gentrified areas are usually not the beneficiary.
“There’s still people looking for affordable housing in up and coming neighborhoods, and although things have slowed down, those market principles are still there,” Davidson said. “In the U.S. context, it really affects minority and black neighborhoods.”
That’s not to say generating revenue in traditionally poor neighborhoods doesn’t have a benefit. Davidson said gentrification has to be looked at from a moral standpoint, but also from a policy perspective. For cities, more affluent residents increase tax revenues, which can provide the city with funds to update public works and attract private capital investment such as businesses and attractions.
At the turn of the century, that model played itself out in Northeast Minneapolis. What is now a blossoming arts district in one of Minnesota’s most historic neighborhoods was once a haven for the poor. In the early 90s, aspiring artists began to flock to the neighborhood to take advantage of low rents for living and studio space. The popularity of the art boom drew various bars, restaurants and businesses to the area, such as gyms.
Robert Johnson, who ventured to the area to open an art studio when rents had bottomed out, said the reinvestment in the city was pressing artists because very few could afford to buy their own property, subjecting them to increasing rents.
“You’ve seen a lot of the old buildings being remodeled,” Johnson told Minnesota Public Radio. “And rents are going up as larger businesses come in that make more money. And as much as we try here to make it, it can be difficult for artists. You have to really think like a business person.”
City reinvestment
When businesses begin to show interest in an area, it rubs off on prospective renters or buyers, Davidson said. He added that there is no guarantee a city will take off if the municipality lures new business to the area, as is the case when comparing Phoenix, Ariz. and Atlanta, Ga. Prior to the bursting of the housing bubble in America, Phoenix and Atlanta were showing positive trends in job opportunities and business development. But Davidson noted that while they showed similar job prospects, the cities were on very different trajectories because of reinvestment plans by their respective local governments.
“There’s a re-emerging confidence in Phoenix and a heavy stagnation in Atlanta,” Davidson said.
Davidson was quick to point out that cheap housing does not drive gentrification, particularly after the foreclosure crisis because he says low-cost housing options often mean poor educational options and public services – something very few Americans are willing to sacrifice, regardless of the recession. He attributed state and local reinvestment plans into neighborhoods and cities were better indicators of potential gentrification issues.
For the poor, gentrification can mean a cyclical transition from neighborhood to neighborhood, or the option of Section 8 housing – a federal housing program that provides payment of rental housing assistance to landlords who rent out to low-income individuals or families. The program is subsidized by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and serves 3.1 million of America’s poorest individuals.
In areas of New York City, those against gentrification called for the federal government to step in to control rents and set zoning restrictions. Tod Newcombe, editor of GOVERNING, a publication dedicated to public policy, wrote that cities lose their identity when they alienate the lower economic class and turn cities into homogenous business districts.
“The poor and working class are part of the urban fabric, too. They work at unsung jobs, and they rely on a city’s supply of affordable apartments, transit and inexpensive retail stores to meet their modest needs,” Newcombe wrote. “Unlike other income groups, the poor have far fewer options when it comes to living outside the city.”
Matt Bevilacqua of Next American City, a non-profit organization dedicated to studying municipality growth, said that every city’s model toward gentrification is different, making it impossible to point to one event that leads to the economic differentiation. He noted that race commonly plays a role, but that socioeconomic trends are a better indicator of an area’s divisiveness.
“The confusion leads many to the reductionist belief that more white people in an urban neighborhood implies gentrification, while fewer white people – or more accurately, a white population that isn’t growing – means an absence of the phenomenon,” Bevilacqua wrote.
Davidson admitted that there was no sweeping fix to gentrification issues because each city presents such a drastically different scenario. Regardless, he said, there will always be a group within the city that is exploited and, for all intents and purposes, run out of town.
“If you are a resident who lived in a neighborhood for 40 years and you were scraping by and you put a lot of labor into your house and all the properties are transforming around you in a way that might be seen as an upgrading or betterment,” Davidson said. “But to that person it is completely foreign to them. Then you see two different angles: You see better facilities and more investment. For someone else it’s a loss of their home and neighborhood.”