The Myth of Gentrification

[Recursion]

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2015/01/the_gentrification_myth_it_s_rare_and_not_as_bad_for_the_poor_as_people.single.html

That gentrification displaces poor people of color by well-off white people is a claim so commonplace that most people accept it as a widespread fact of urban life. It’s not. Gentrification of this sort is actually exceedingly rare. The socio-economic status of most neighborhoods is strikingly stable over time. When the ethnic compositions of low-income black neighborhoods do change, it’s typically because Latinos and other immigrants move into a neighborhood—and such in-migration is probably more beneficial than harmful. As for displacement—the most objectionable feature of gentrification—there’s actually very little evidence it happens. In fact, so-called gentrifying neighborhoods appear to experience less displacement than nongentrifying neighborhoods.

...

Gentrification, as it is commonly understood, is about more than rising housing prices. It’s about neighborhoods changing from lower-income, predominantly black or Latino neighborhoods to high-income, predominantly white neighborhoods. Demographers and sociologists have identified neighborhoods where this kind of displacement has occurred. Wicker Park in Chicago, Harlem and Chelsea in Manhattan, Williamsburg in Brooklyn—these places really did gentrify. Sociologists and demographers captured these changes in case studies and ethnographies. But starting a decade ago, economists began to ask more nuanced questions about the displacement the other social sciences were documenting. Simply documenting that low-income people were being forced out of a neighborhood whose housing prices were rising didn’t mean in and of itself that gentrification was causing displacement, they noted. Poor people often move away from nongentrifying neighborhoods, too. Indeed, low-income people move frequently for a variety of reasons. The real question was whether low-income residents moved away from “gentrifying” neighborhoods at a higher rate than they did from nongentrifying neighborhoods.

One of the first people to explore this question in a sophisticated way was University of Washington economist Jacob Vigdor. In 2002, Vigdor examined what had happened in Boston between 1974 and 1997, a period of supposedly intense gentrification. But Vigdor found no evidence that poor people moved out of gentrifying neighborhoods at a higher than normal rate. In fact, rates of departure from gentrifying neighborhoods were actually lower.

It wasn’t just Boston. In 2004, Columbia University economists Lance Freeman and Frank Braconi conducted a similar study of gentrification in New York City in the 1990s. They too found that low-income residents of "gentrifying" neighborhoods were less likely to move out of the neighborhood than low-income residents of neighborhoods that had none of the typical hallmarks of gentrification.

[hobbit709]

1. Come to Austin and see what happens and has happened here.

[Recursion]

7. My mom's from Austin. I can't remember if we're supposed to lament white flight or gentrification

Because I see complaints about both, and I mostly see Latino families moving in.

[hobbit709]

52. Austin is the only major city in the US that has a declining black population.

[Starry Messenger]

2. lol

Come to San Francisco and the surrounding exurbs.

[Recursion]

4. Spent a lot of time there, actually. And DC and Boston.

The actual numbers in the studies cited are pretty interesting.

[Starry Messenger]

5. In the last two years?

http://antievictionmap.squarespace.com

[Recursion]

8. Yup. You should check out that map you posted

If you thought that made the case about "gentrifying" neighborhoods, you should look more closely.

[Starry Messenger]

14. Dude. I live here.

[Recursion]

16. And?

Tell me what that map says to you

[Starry Messenger]

18. That it isn't low-income Blacks and Latinos living in the newly $3k SF apartments

that they were Ellis evicted from. That my friends who have been driven out to the exurbs and beyond (I'm 20 minutes south of SF myself) have been driven out by rising prices. That studio apartments in San Mateo have been freshly built, and I'm seeing prices starting at $2800 a month.

That over 20 art spaces have disappeared, in the last two years, in San Francisco. They couldn't afford the ridiculous rise in rents.

It takes $300,000 cash down payment to buy a house. No one poor or lower-middle is buying houses. Even the middle-middle is buying far away from where they work.

We are turning into a playground for the newly rich. I know, because I'm living it.

[JonLP24]

21. Billionaires have turned Vancouver into one of the most expensive housing markets out there

The most expensive housing market in North America is not where you’d think. It’s not New York City or Orange County, California, but Vancouver, British Columbia. Now, Vancouver is a beautiful city—a thriving deep-water port, a popular site for TV and movie shoots. By all accounts, it is a wonderful place to live. But nothing about its economy explains why—in a city where the median income is only around seventy grand—single-family houses now sell for close to a million dollars apiece and ordinary condos go for five or six hundred thousand dollars. “If you look at per-capita incomes, we look like Reno or Nashville,” Andy Yan, an urban planner at the Vancouver-based firm Bing Thom Architects, told me. “But our housing prices easily compete with San Francisco’s.”

When price-to-income or price-to-rent ratios get out of whack, it’s often a sign of a housing bubble. But the story in Vancouver is more interesting. Almost by chance, the city has found itself at the heart of one of the biggest trends of the past two decades—the rise of a truly global market in real estate.

<snip>

Vancouver isn’t an obvious superstar. It’s not home to a major industry—as New York and London are to finance, or San Francisco to tech—and it doesn’t have the cultural cachet of Paris or Milan. Instead, Vancouver’s appeal consists of comfort and security, making it what Andy Yan calls a “hedge city.” “What hedge cities offer is social and political stability, and, in the case of Vancouver, it also offers long-term protection against climate change,” he said. “There are now rich people around the world who are looking for places where they can park some of their cash and feel safe about it.” A recent paper by two Oxford economists bears this out, showing a tight correlation between London house prices and turmoil in southern and Eastern Europe. The real-estate boom in Miami has been magnified by political unrest in Venezuela. And Vancouver, which has a large Chinese population, easy access to the Pacific Rim, and nice weather, has become a magnet for Chinese investors looking for insurance against uncertainty. A Conference Board of Canada report found that Vancouver’s real-estate market is tightly connected to what happens in the Chinese economy.

The globalization of real estate upends some of our basic assumptions about housing prices. We expect them to reflect local fundamentals—above all, how much people earn. In a truly global market, that may not be the case. If there are enough rich people in China who want property in Vancouver, prices can float out of reach of the people who actually live and work there. So just because prices look out of whack doesn’t necessarily mean there’s a bubble. Instead, wealthy foreigners are rationally overpaying, in order to protect themselves against risk at home. And the possibility of losing a little money if prices subside won’t deter them. Yan says, “If the choice is between losing ten to twenty per cent in Vancouver versus potentially losing a hundred per cent in Beijing or Tehran, then people are still going to be buying in Vancouver.”

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/05/26/real-estate-goes-global

[Starry Messenger]

25. My husband and I have seriously discussed moving in with my mother.

She is in a Prop 13 property. Our rent is "low" for now, in our present 1bd 1bth apartment, which we thought would be a starter that we'd move from when we decided a better place to settle. Since then rents have skyrocketed and our landlady has threatened us with a higher rent. Can't wait to get that letter next month.

As far as the region, lower-income Blacks have been swiftly dispossessed.

"San Francisco rent has skyrocketed to obscene levels. Median rent in San Francisco is over $3,000 a month, with some neighborhoods in the $4,000-$5,000 range. Average rent is in the same range. Even rooms for $1,000 a month are virtually nonexistent. Rents in 2013 increased over 10 percent from the previous year, which is more than three times higher than the national average of 3 percent. This makes San Francisco perhaps the least affordable city for middle-class families in the country, with New York City following closely behind. It's so expensive that even San Francisco's minimum wage, which is the highest in the country at over $10 an hour, is barely enough to live. One would have to work five, six, or more minimum-wage jobs to make the city's rent. Moreover, San Francisco is one of the most unequal urban areas, and its income inequality is growing the fastest in the nation.

"What they do in San Francisco, they send black people to prison and [provide] no jobs."
Evictions have also shot up, displacing hundreds of San Francisco residents. According to the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project, a grassroots project that has been counting and mapping evictions in San Francisco, "The number of evictions in 2013 has surpassed evictions in 2006, the height of the real estate bubble. Total no-fault evictions are up 17 percent compared to 2006. More significantly, there has been a 115 percent increase in total evictions since last year" in 2012. From 1997 to 2013, there have been over 11,000 no-fault evictions - either through demolition, owner move-in, or the Ellis Act. The Ellis Act is a California state law that allows landlords to evict tenants to "go out of business" by pulling their property off the market. This allows speculators to swoop in and flip the property. In fact, speculators are driving many Ellis Act evictions. The Anti-Eviction Mapping Project reports that Ellis Act evictions "increased by 175 percent" in 2013 "compared to the year before." Additionally, "Demolitions have gone from 45 in 2006 to 134 in 2013, a 197 percent increase."

The displacement of San Francisco's African-American population was the canary in the coal mine for today's current incarnation of gentrification. Previous waves of gentrification and urban renewal, particularly in neighborhoods like the Fillmore District, which is famous for its historic jazz scene and was long known as the "Harlem of the West," exiled many African Americans from San Francisco. According to census figures, in 1970, African American's constituted 13.4 percent of the city's population. In 1980, they dropped to 12.7 percent; then to 10.9 percent in 1990. By 2000, African Americans made up 7.8 percent of the city's population. Now, San Francisco's black population hovers around 5 percent or 6 percent only."

http://truth-out.org/news/item/23305-the-bleaching-of-san-francisco-extreme-gentrification-and-suburbanized-poverty-in-the-bay

Oakland has also seen gentrification:

"The Morning Edition piece reminds us of Oakland’s rich history as a hub of West Coast black culture and the birthplace of the Black Panther Movement. By the 1980s, Oakland’s population was more than 50 percent black.

“Today, Oakland is one of the most diverse metropolitan areas in the U.S. – it’s now 34 percent white, 28 percent black, 25 percent Latino and 17 percent Asian.”

http://www.thebolditalic.com/articles/3157-oaklands-declining-diversity-makes-national-headlines

[JonLP24]

27. I hope my post wasn't taken as being contrary

it was meant to show agreement highlighting how something such as 'billionaire glut' could radically transform the housing market in Vancouver which puts prices out of reach for their own citizens which also used San Francisco as an example to compare it too.

I certainly agree and pointing to speculator interest as the force behind Ellis Act evictions & displacing residents as well as contributing to the vicious cycle of poverty.

[Starry Messenger]

28. No no!

I was just elaborating!

[drm604]

51. This has been going on for years.

I spent some time in Vancouver in the mid 90s. At that time people were talking about how high property values were because of wealthy people leaving Hong Kong because of it moving from British control to Chinese. I didn't know that this was still going on today.

[TeeYiYi]

17. I looked at that map...

...and found that the increasing number of illegal evictions in San Francisco, under the Ellis Act, was horrifying and heartbreaking. I had no idea things were that bad and it appears to be spreading to Oakland. Lots of people living in their cars...

What was it that you saw in that map, that I failed to see?

TYY

[TexasProgresive]

3. Saw it in Houston

in the Heights, Montrose and the Rice University area. The poorer people either moved out or were forced out.

[Recursion]

11. You're missing the point. Poor people move, pretty frequently, in any neighborhood

A "gentrifying" neighborhood means that richer people move in when poorer people move out, and poorer people move out at a slower rate.

[TexasProgresive]

12. It was pretty rapid in the neighborhoods I mentioned.

[JonLP24]

13. I guess I never understood the term

since why would it matter if things are still the same? I viewed in like Motorola moving out which set off a chain reaction in events where Tri-City Mall and businesses closing one-by-one. The Riverview project which was a glorified shopping center really had the effect of neighborhood businesses shutting down and moving to the Riverview location.

My old neighborhood which featured a BK, a 7-11, Peter Piper, a bar, and thriving strip mall which is now a parking lot. Oscar, latter Fresh & Easy is now an empty building. BK has no residents. 7-11 was replaced by a check cashing business. People have moved out.

I always saw it as changes in real estate, loss or addition of businesses, and specific projects but the abandonment of these areas is a very problematic part of the problem but I guess I never understood what the term meant since poorer moving out a slower rate which begs the question why are the rich moving into low-income housing?

[Recursion]

15. They're moving for the location, not the housing stock

I'm not sure what people want. When white people move to the suburbs, it's "white flight" and the destruction of the inner city, and when white people move back, it's "gentrification" and... the destruction of the inner city.

To take my neighborhood, Columbia Heights in DC, It was about 75% African American when I moved there in the 90s (depending on how one counts Ethiopian immigrants), 15% Latino, and 10% everything else. Now it's about 50% African American, 30% Latino, and 20% everything else. The neighborhood also had the double-whammy of having a large Cabrini Green-style project torn down around 2005. I was a white guy who had been pushed out of the suburbs by high prices (I was poor compared to my former neighbors in Alexandria and rich compared to my new neighbors in DC).

From what I saw, the rich couples moving in were mostly buying up and renovating abandoned houses. This did cause rents to rise, in the long term, but then again Guatemalan and Peruvian immigrants were still coming in constantly.

Anyways, if the data quoted hold up for DC, the point is that poor African Americans were being displaced at a slightly slower rate once that started than they had been before. But whereas before they had been replaced by different poor black people previously, they were now replaced by (most often) Latinos and (less often) whites. And the neighborhood is a much, much better place to live now. As the article points out, poor black kids living in a more diverse neighborhood see an increase in their incomes over time.

[JonLP24]

20. Several issues would contribute to rise & fall of housing

"White flight" is an example of less demand for homes they are fleeing from as well as the increased supply of available homes. Tearing down projects and replacing with high scale condos or whatever but things don't exist in a vacuum but I don't think poor African Americans living in diverse neighborhoods was a concern in the context of white flight. Living in neighborhoods that have been economically & politically abandoned, which the article points out was often a common concern for those that cared about the issue other than increasing the police presence.

[ND-Dem]

6. speaking of the u-district...

I wonder what the agenda is here, cause it's bs

[Recursion]

9. Well, feel free to find better data

But just closing your eyes and saying "I don't like this" isn't an argument.

[Luminous Animal]

26. Easy. Ignoring evictions. Strong arm tactics. And neglect. There is nothing from the

tenants perspective. A libertarians dream of an article. (The author is a libertarian.)

[JonLP24]

29. An factoring construction costs & labor wages as the driving force behind

housing costs with "demand plays a role" when demand is the driving force behind it. Evictions, strong arm tactics would be pushed by those who have to demand to own or tear down those properties & neglect is an example of less demand not to mention the racism that plays a role in all this.

[JonLP24]

10. I like how they focus on the real issue down the article

Whether it is who moves in or who moves out, the process has already happen so it is rare but irrelevant to the real problems.



While critics of gentrification decry a process that is largely imaginary, they’ve missed a far more serious problem—the spread of extreme poverty. Last year, economists Joseph Cortright of the Portland, Oregon–based Impresa Consulting and Dillon Mahmoudi of Portland State University set out to examine how America’s poorest urban neighborhoods had changed over time. They started by going back to 1970 and identifying 1,100 census tracts—the county subregions that demographers use as a basic unit of analysis—located within 10 miles of the central business districts in the 51 largest cities with high levels of poverty. They then asked a simple question: How did the socio-economic status of these places change during the next 40 years?

The answer: Most had not. Two-thirds of high-poverty neighborhoods in 1970 were still high-poverty neighborhoods in 2010. Only about 100 neighborhoods saw their poverty rates decline to below the national average. The typical metropolitan area had one or two high-poverty neighborhoods that could conceivably be described as gentrifying. However, Cortright and Mahmoudi did find another, more significant change. Whereas in 1970, 1,100 census tracts within 10 miles of central business districts had poverty rates of 30 percent or higher, by 2010, the number of poor census tracts had jumped to 3,100. In other words, the number of high-poverty areas close to central business districts had nearly tripled. To make matters worse, the number of people living in extreme poverty in those areas had doubled. The residents of these neighborhoods are disproportionately black.

but I think they fail to miss the mark when it comes to home prices but still show an understanding in low wages, large supply of homes bringing down the prices. The reason why Detroit houses problem are way below the cost of construction is probably because they have a large supply of empty homes but focusing on the issue of lack of affordable housing should be the main focus.

[tammywammy]

19. Interesting article. Rec. n/t

[Luminous Animal]

22. What an ignorant piece of shit article. Not one single fucking word about eviction or "urban renewal

[Recursion]

36. The studies cited talk about evictions. They don't speed up in gentrifying neighborhoods

They happen at the same rate, and in some cases slightly more slowly in a neighborhood that is gentrifying.

Evictions happen in non-gentrifying neighborhoods all the time. Look at Boston; most of the constables' eviction times are in Roxbury, not Jamaica Plain.

[rug]

23. It is the most fundamental aspect of class warfare and it is no myth.

[Luminous Animal]

24. The author of this article is s libertarian. Congratulations.

[Starry Messenger]

30. Thank you.

I read the title and a vein popped out on my forehead and I didn't want to look at the rest of his oeuvre.

[Recursion]

38. People quote libertarians here all the time

I'm more interested in the studies he's citing.

[Luminous Animal]

39. Nope. This guy is a self admitted libertarian. Pathetic attempt to justify driving poor and working

class people out of cities.

[Recursion]

40. So it should be easy to point out the problem with those studies, right?

"A libertarian quoted it" is not an argument against data.

So, I assume you're arguing that in fact, contrary to those data, the poor do move out of gentrifying neighborhoods at a faster rate than non-gentrifying neighborhoods? Should be pretty easy to show, right?

[Luminous Animal]

41. Indeed. The relevancy here is how fast the poor move out. Not the fact that they do move out.

[Recursion]

42. Right. And these data show that they move out more slowly in gentrifying neighborhoods

But, that in non-gentrifying neighborhoods, they are replaced by different poor people. (And, that, in all neighborhoods, African Americans are more likely to be replaced by Latinos than by non-Hispanic whites.)

But, you don't seem to believe that, so I'm curious what data you have that show a faster rate of moving out in gentrifying neighborhoods than in non-gentrifying neighborhoods.

[Luminous Animal]

43. Do you not understand the difference between one poor or working class community displacing

another and thus carving out that space for those communities to thrive no matter what there color or ethnicity and rich people taking over a neighborhood?

[Recursion]

46. Petworth was not "thriving" in 1990

I think that is the biggest underlying myth here: that these were "thriving" neighborhoods beforehand.

But, ultimately, no: I don't think it matters to somebody who's moving who replaces him in the old place.

[petronius]

31. I wonder if rent control plays a factor in the rate of lower-income residents

moving out (or not) of a neighborhood experiencing a rise in rents, and whether these studies controlled for that. With rent control, there would be an increasing disincentive to move from an improving neighborhood. Without rent control, rising rents would be a push on lower-income residents (although perhaps the improved amenities and better job opportunities are a compensation)...

[arcane1]

32. Last time I checked, low-income people don't move into high-rent housing.

[Recursion]

37. Was somebody saying they do?

The studies the article cites point out that individual poor tenants don't actually move out of gentrifying neighborhoods more quickly than they move out of non-gentrifying neighborhoods.

[Starry Messenger]

33. Expensive Housing Driving All the Poor People Out of California

http://la.curbed.com/archives/2015/01/expensive_housing_driving_all_the_poor_people_out_of_california.php

"After a year of bad news for middle and lower class—hell, pretty much all—renters and homeowners in Los Angeles, there are yet more sobering statistics courtesy of the US Census Bureau, via the LA Times: according to the Census's state-to-state migration statistics, almost a quarter million more workers left California between 2007 and 2013 than arrived and, of those who left, nearly all of them make less than $50,000 a year. (In fact, some of the upper-income categories actually made relative gains, i.e. more wealthy people moved to California than left.) One of the primary causes is, unsurprisingly, outrageous rents and housing prices. Housing prices have gone up in Los Angeles more than anywhere else in the past 14 years.

The most popular destination for California ex-pats? Texas. According to the most recent data, 66,318 people left California for Texas in 2013, while only 32,290 left Texas for California. Over a five year period, California's net loss to Texas was 82,154 people. (But hey, Texas doesn't only take; she might give us a movie theater and a giant oil refinery in return.)"

Of course, you think everyone in the US who doesn't live in a shack drinking water filled with cholera is Bill Gates, so I really doubt you'd care. Maybe we'll all come live with you in India.

[daredtowork]

34. This is frustating/annoying

Everyday on DU there are posts about the problem of poverty. Posts about GOP cuts to this and that. There seem to be no solutions except to beg the GOP not to make said cuts to the existing programs. We can't even beg our existing Democratic representatives to focus on begging the GOP not make said cuts on our behalf because they are too Busy and Important trying to save the Middle Class from funny Wall Street rules and all that jazz.

I have a post right now in DU proposing a solution: Mincome. It's a solution because no one would cut it since everyone gets it. Yet DU has remained studiously silent on the idea.

I've seen it stated here at least 5 times that people would never want to see Social Security "means tested" because that would mean it would be subject to cuts just like welfare. Yet they are willing to stand by and let the disabled and the poor - the weakest and most vulnerable among us - continue to be subject to those cuts because they ARE means tested.

Their willingness is shown by their omission of rec and comment.

If they don't like mincome, then give another solution. But know that Studious Silence on the topic is perceived by those going through the starvation and the homelessness as hypocritical willingness to let others die, and that is unacceptable whatever your "moral", logical, or economic reasons. You are caught out.

[ND-Dem]

48. The government and the parties *are* willing to let others die. It's the new reality or maybe

the old one too.

[tenderfoot]

35. unrec

[sabrina 1]

45. See NYC, thanks Giuliani and Bloomberg. Try working and living there if you are not at least a

millionaire. People didn't move out, they were driven out, the way it usually happens, speculators buy up property, throw out working class tenants, fix up these buildings, then charge so much rent no working class person can afford it.

[Recursion]

47. The median household income in NYC is $50K

Meaning half of the households (not people) who have stuck with the city make less than that.

[sabrina 1]

53. I have friends who live in NY, but they don't live in Manhattan. They can't afford to anymore.

[ND-Dem]

49. Blacks were almost 1/4 of the population of Manhattan in 1970. Today they're 15%, having lost

about 150,000 in population. Blacks were 28% of the population of NYC in 1990; today they're about 25%, having lost about 14.000 in population.

The Bronx has gained the most black population since the 70s while most of the other boroughs have lost black population.

I'm fairly sure the population loss in Manhattan was about rising rents.

[WestCoastLib]

50. The article/studies cited don't even say gentrification isn't happening

This is total bullshit.

In fact, the article and related studies aren't even claiming that gentrification isn't happening. They are dismissing gentrification with comments like "two thirds of poor neighborhoods stayed in poverty" or "gentrification could be found in 1 or 2 neighborhoods per metropolis".

Well, no shit. Nobody ever claimed that every poor neighborhood was gentrifying. For example, I was born in Portland and there are a couple well known neighborhoods that everybody knows have gone through gentrification here. This article isn't even saying they aren't, this article is saying "who gives a shit?" And trying to pass it off with misleading headlines to make dipshits believe that it isn't happening.

Look at the (limited) data the author brings up, not the bullshit statements and conclusions he makes. He's clearly presenting data that shows gentrification happens regularly.

[Tatiana]

54. Chicago. Near North Side. Bye bye Cabrini-Green.

Hello Starbucks.

It all looks very lovely and yuppie now. There's a brand spanking new Near North Library, as well as hip bars and retail shops. Unfortunately the majority of the (poor) residents were displaced all over the city and poor suburbs. Only a lucky few got to relocate to units in the same area.

[Hell Hath No Fury]

55. Utter horseshit.

Come to San Francisco and let me show you the neighborhoods that were once African-American and are now almost lily-white due to gentrification (aka ethnic cleansing). There is a HUGE difference between voluntarily "moving" and instead getting economically "pushed out" of a neighborhood because of gentrification. In the traditionally AA Fillmore there are some African Americans who "stayed" -- only because they are living in public housing -- otherwise they would have been pushed out due to being priced out of the gentrified neighborhood. The last predominantly AA neighborhood -- largely working class, and largely renters -- in the City is in the cross hairs. Our population of African-Americans is at a low unseen since WWII due to the gentrification of affordable African-American neighborhoods. That's a reality.

On edit: I wanted to add that my City has some of the tightest, most pro-tenant laws in the entire country and we are STILL hemorrhaging low income/often ethnic renters from their neighborhoods.