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Hello, this is the padlet of Senna, Michael and Niels.
The theme of our padlet is Gentrification. Gentrification is an uprising subject in cities around the world.
We hope you enjoy our padlet.

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This is what happens after a neighborhood gets gentrified.

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This is what happens after a neighborhood gets gentrified.

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(Senna)

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"Displacement is becoming a larger issue in knowledge hubs and superstar cities."

Spencer Platt AFP/Getty

This article is from the archive of our partner
Back in 2014, Spike Lee famously expressed his disdain for the forces of gentrification in New York: "Why does it take an influx of white New Yorkers in the south Bronx, in Harlem, in Bed Stuy, in Crown Heights for the facilities to get better?" he argued. "What about the people who are renting? They can't afford it anymore!" Lee's criticisms reflect a now-familiar narrative in cities all over the U.S.: As wealthier residents flow back into once-low-income, often minority neighborhoods, longtime residents can be priced out.

But exactly how does this dynamic play out, and is displacement inevitable? A new comprehensive review of what we know about gentrification sheds much-needed light on this heated issue. The review, by researchers at the University of California Berkeley and UCLA and published by the Federal Reserve of San Francisco, takes a close look at studies of gentrification and displacement conducted over the past several decades. (I wrote about the review's insights on how public investment shapes gentrification last week). It helps us better understand several questions related to gentrification and displacement: Just how extensive is displacement, exactly what kinds of people are displaced, and how do people and groups fare after they leave gentrifying neighborhoods?

Recommended Reading

The earliest studies of displacement conducted in the 1980s generated widely varying estimates of how many people are displaced by gentrification. A 1982 study found that roughly 1 percent of all Americans, 5 percent of families, and 8.5 percent of urban families were displaced from their homes between 1970 and 1977 by either eviction, public action, sale or reoccupation, or the changing state of their neighborhood. A 1983 study of five cities (Boston, Cincinnati, Richmond, Seattle, and Denver) found that nearly a quarter (23 percent) of residents in these urban neighborhoods were displaced due to eviction, increased rent, or the fact that the house they were renting was sold between 1978 and 1980. Similarly, a 2001 study of gentrifying areas of Boston by Jacob Vigdor found evidence of heightened housing turnover in gentrifying neighborhoods.

Perhaps the foremost student of gentrification and displacement is Lance Freeman of Columbia University. His 2004 study with Frank Braconi found that poor households in gentrifying neighborhoods of New York City were less likely to move than poor households in non-gentrifying neighborhoods. This of course may have to do with the fact that there are fewer poor households in gentrifying neighborhoods to begin with. Still, the authors concluded that "a neighborhood could go from a 30% poverty population to 12% in as few as 10 years without any displacement whatsoever." In a subsequent 2005 study, Freeman found that the probability that a household would be displaced in a gentrifying neighborhood was a mere 1.3 percent. A follow-up 2007 study, again with Braconi, examined apartment turnover in New York City neighborhoods and found that the probability of displacement declined as the rate of rent inflation increased in a neighborhood. Disadvantaged households in gentrifying neighborhoods were actually 15 percent less likely to move than those in non-gentrifying households.

And, in a 2009 study, Freeman found that gentrifying neighborhoods are becoming more racially diverse by tracking neighborhood change from 1970 to 2000 (although he does note that cities overall are becoming more diverse as well). Freeman also discovered that changes in educational diversity were the same for both gentrifying and non-gentrifying areas. Ultimately, while some residents were displaced from 1970 to 2000, gentrifying neighborhoods were generally more diverse when it came to income, race, and education as opposed to non-gentrifying neighborhoods.

Counterintuitively, several studies have even found that gentrification can in some cases reduce displacement. Neighborhood improvements like bars, restaurants, waterfronts, or extended transit can and sometimes do encourage less advantaged households to stay put in the face of gentrification. A 2006 study found that displacement accounted for only 6 to 10 percent of all moves in New York City due to housing expenses, landlord harassment, or displacement by private action (e.g. condo conversion) between 1989 and 2002. A 2011 study concluded that neighborhood income gains did not significantly predict household exit rates. What did predict out-migration was age, minority status, selective entry and exit, and renting as opposed to buying.

A 2010 study on "Who Gentrifies Low-Income Neighborhoods" found that the impact of gentrification on black residents varies based on level of education. By examining around 15,000 census tracts in 64 metros from 1990 to 2000, the authors found that gentrification tends to benefit highly educated black households. In fact, one-third of the increase in income among gentrifying neighborhoods during this period came from the progress of this specific demographic. This in turn causes gentrifying neighborhoods to be more attractive to middle-class black households. But gentrification can also have a negative effect on less educated black households, by pushing those who did not complete high school out of gentrifying neighborhoods.

That said, displacement can be and is a big issue in places where gentrification is occurring at a feverish pace. In her coverage of related research by the UC Berkeley Urban Displacement Project, my CityLab colleague Tanvi Misra points to the strong link between gentrification and displacement in a high-gentrification city like San Francisco. Over a quarter of San Francisco's neighborhoods (422 of the nearly 1,600 surveyed) are at risk of displacement. The study's lead author, Karen Chapple, writes that by 2030, San Francisco, Oakland, "and many other Bay Area communities may realize that their neighborhood has turned the corner from displacement risk to reality."

Indeed, displacement is becoming a larger issue in knowledge hubs and superstar cities, where the pressure for urban living is accelerating. These particular cities attract new businesses, highly skilled workers, major developers, and large corporations, all of which drive up both the demand for and cost of housing. As a result, local residents-and neighborhood renters in particular-may feel pressured to move to more affordable locations.

A 2013 Cleveland Fed study found that extensive gentrification is the province of a limited group of large superstar cities and knowledge hubs like New York, San Francisco, Seattle, Boston, and Washington D.C. In three-quarters of America's 55 largest cities, less than 10 percent of all neighborhoods experienced gentrification from 2000 to 2007, and gentrification affected 5 percent or less of a total of 22 neighborhoods. Not surprisingly, these cities are the ones being hit hardest by displacement. And with real estate prices in these cities surging toward all-time highs, there is reason to believe that displacement may worsen over time.

Of course, an even bigger issue is the neighborhoods that are untouched by gentrification and where concentrated poverty persists and deepens. A 2014 study found that for every gentrified neighborhood across 51 U.S. metro areas, 10 others remained poor and 12 formerly stable neighborhoods fell into concentrated disadvantage. A Harvard study of Chicago found that the gentrification process continues for neighborhoods with over 35 percent of white residents, and either slows or stops if the neighborhood is 40 percent black. The reality is that the displaced are getting pushed out of working-class neighborhoods that are "good enough" to attract people and investment, while the poorest and most vulnerable neighborhoods remain mired in persistent poverty and concentrated disadvantage.

Gentrification and displacement, then, are symptoms of the scarcity of quality urbanism. The driving force behind both is the far larger process of spiky reurbanization-itself propelled by large-scale public and private investment in everything from transit, schools, and parks to private research institutions and housing redevelopment.

All of which points to the biggest, most crucial task ahead: creating more inclusive cities and neighborhoods that can meet the needs of all urbanites.
This article is from the archive of our partner CityLab.

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This Is What Happens After a Neighborhood Gets Gentrified

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"Displacement is becoming a larger issue in knowledge hubs and superstar cities." This article is from the archive of our partner Back in 2014, Spike Lee famously expressed his disdain for the forces of gentrification in New York: "Why does it take an influx of white New Yorkers in the south Bronx, in Harlem, in Bed Stuy, in Crown Heights for the facilities to get better?"

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Gentrification is sweeping through America. Here are the people fighting back.

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Gentrification is sweeping through America. Here are the people fighting back.

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(Senna)

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Walk into the home of Robert and Bertha Darden, and you are immediately surrounded by memories. Like many African American couples who have reached a certain age, the front room of their house is full of photos - of the Dardens in their youth, of their happy children and smiling grandchildren.

Many of the moments reflected in the photos were captured during their 28 years spent in their Atlanta home. In the midst of all of these stands a plaque. "I received this when I retired after 29 years of working for the city of Atlanta," Mr Dresden says.

He's an Atlanta man. Beaming with pride, he tells me he had started working for the Atlanta's sanitation department in 1969, and later transferred to the department of transportation where he remained until his retirement in 1998.

But now the city is aggressively trying to take their house.

"It doesn't feel good at all," he says. "It's not a good feeling to give the city 29 years of my life and then they want to take my home."

The process the city is attempting to use to take ownership of the house is known as "eminent domain" - the power for governmental entities to take private property for public use.

The city claims it needs the house, along with others on the same block in the Peoplestown neighborhood, in order to build a park and pond that will help with street flooding.

Meanwhile, community members suspect the flooding is being used as a pretext to facilitate private development in the neighborhood.

This process is replicated throughout the US. If successful, eminent domain could become the newest tool that local and state governments could use to accelerate the gentrification and displacement that is already affecting low-income black and brown communities.

'The most powerful tool in the gentrification arsenal'

Eminent domain has a long history in the US and also exists in other countries where it is known by many names including compulsory purchase, compulsory acquisition and, perhaps most appropriately, expropriation.

The US constitution acknowledges the government's power of eminent domain and imposes two limitations: the taking of property must be for public use, and it must include just compensation. Determinations of what constitutes public use have traditionally been left to each state, and the US supreme court has been increasingly expansive over the years.

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Mattie King Ansley Jackson, 95, on her front porch. She has lived in Peoplestown for 35 years and fought alongside Bertha Darden and Tanya Washington against the city. Photograph: Ben Rollins for the Guardian

In Georgia, land cannot be taken and handed over to private developers to increase revenues. However, land can be taken for a public redevelopment project, such as a facility or park to help deal with flooding issues.

And that is exactly what the city says it intends to do in Peoplestown. According to a press release issued by the city, "Once completed, the neighborhood will have a Japanese garden, gazebos for community gatherings, several detention ponds, and bio retention areas to treat stormwater."

Tanya Washington, a professor at Georgia State University, lives on the same street as the Dardens, and like them, she is in a legal battle to keep the city from taking her home.

According to Washington, the city's rationale is problematic because it uses the symptoms of the neighborhood's systemic neglect to become a reason for displacing families.

"What I'm concerned about is cities trying to use that crumbling infrastructure as a justification for exercising eminent domain because it provides a basis for arguing public necessity," she says.

Complicating the battle is the fact that cities are given a presumption of public necessity, placing the burden of proof on the homeowner. As a result, the state court hearing the initial case ruled in favor of Atlanta's government, but Washington and the Dardens are appealing against the decision.

If allowed by the courts,that built-in justification could become the most powerful tool in the gentrification arsenal.

It would allow almost any city to use the legacy of institutional racism and systemic neglect to further advance the displacement of low-income black residents.

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Bertha Darden and her neighbors. Mattie (center) was an Olympic torch bearer for the 1996 Olympics. The three are close friends. Photograph: Ben Rollins for the Guardian

In theory, the rationale for using eminent domain could include street flooding, high quantities of lead in city water systems, or even high crime rates in certain neighborhoods.

The latter is not unimaginable: crime actually was part of the justification for the city demolishing all of its public housing.

Atlanta's decision to get rid of it eventually became a model for other cities. Its use of eminent domain could be next.

When 'urban renewal' means pushing black residents out

In the late 1950s, Atlanta embarked on its first attempt at "urban renewal", which for many people at the time translated to "negro removal".

Hundreds of homes were demolished by the city, and thousands of black families in three neighborhoods (Summerhill, Peoplestown and Mechanicsville) were separated from each other when three interstates were constructed through the heart of their communities.

The problem worsened in the mid-1960s when the city decided to build a new stadium to house a professional baseball team. A significant portion of the Summerhill neighborhood was wiped away. Whatever sense of community and connection had survived was reduced even further as business left and schools closed.

Decades later, inpreparation for the 1996 Olympics, an estimated 30,000 low-income Atlanta residents were displaced from their homes in order to make room for the new Olympic Stadium. Landlords in the area sought to raise rents to take advantage of proximity to the Olympic venues which meant many had no choice but to leave.

In the process, 1,195 public housing units were gone, and by 2000, only 78 of the families from the former public housing were rehoused in the shiny new development - a mere 7% of the pre-Olympics population. Moreover, the project launched a new agenda that ultimately resulted in Atlanta becoming the first US city to completely demolish all of its housing projects, eliminating 17,000 units of public housing.

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The neighborhood of Peoplestown. Photograph: Ben Rollins for the Guardian

The Dardens understand these negative side-effects all too well. Such projects tend to place extreme demands on the pre-existing infrastructure, whether in the form of increased traffic or other environmental concerns. Mrs Darden recalls that as the new Olympic Stadium was being constructed, the city had to build a tunnel that could handle water drainage from the stadium.

"The tunnel was supposed to go through Grant Park," she said, referring to a nearby neighborhood where residents are predominantly white with higher incomes. "But Grant Park residents refused to let them bring the tunnel to that neighborhood, so they stopped it in our back yard."

As a result, the Dardens and their Peoplestown neighbors say they have had flooding issues ever since Olympic Stadium was built. These issues led to significant flood damage in 2006 and 2012 after heavy rains, and several residents, including the Dardens, eventually sued the city for failing to address the hazard.

Several street drains on their block often become clogged with tree limbs, garbage and other debris. "If the city had just cleaned out the drains the way they should have, the flooding never would have happened." Instead, ever since 2006 Mr Darden has taken it upon himself to periodically clear the street drains, especially when heavy rain is expected.

One could argue that despite his retirement, at the age of 67 he continues to work for the city more than the city works for him.

'Why don't y'all just move back to the country?''

In 2005, the city of Atlanta proposed the Atlanta Beltline Project: a 6,500-acre ring of parks, open space, light rail transit and mixed-use development along a 22-mile industrial rail line that circles the core of the city.

Given the previous experience with major development projects in the city, the not-for-profit organization Georgia Stand-Up commissioned a study to explore rising home prices in areas adjoining the proposed Beltline path and to offer recommendations to avoid displacement. Even at this early stage, the 2007 report highlighted troubling increases in property values that did not bode well for low-income renters and owners on the city's south side.

Unfortunately, not enough was done by the city to address those concerns. The project's affordable housing effort was underfunded, and many of the affordability requirements were either too weak, too temporary or both. The trend towards gentrification increased. A more recent Georgia Tech report shows that prices in neighborhoods bordering the south side of the Beltline increased by 40% from 2011 to 2015, while prices further away increased by 18%.

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Tanya Washington in front of her home. She is originally from Washington DC, but has been in Atlanta for 15 years. She is a law professor at Georgia State University. Photograph: Ben Rollins for the Guardian

The Dardens have seen the impact first hand. "Some of our friends were renting, and when it came time to renew their lease, the landlords wouldn't renew and sold their properties to developers instead," she said. "Some neighbors say the rents went up so much they couldn't afford it. It doubled or even tripled. We have a lot of senior citizens on fixed incomes who can't afford that."

And it's not just renters. Her aunt used to come by on Sundays to pick up one of the neighbors who attended the same church. The neighbor lost her house because she couldn't afford to pay the increasing property taxes.

Mr Darden mentions the house right across the street. "The owner got sick and sold the house. Not sure how much, but a developer bought it, remodeled and just finished it a few months ago. They put it on market for sale, I believe asking $469,000. And that's just a wood frame house, not even brick like ours." A house two blocks away recently sold for $515,000. And just a few houses down the street from the Dardens, a house that recently sold for around $100,000 is now listed for around $300,000 after remodeling.

Mrs Darden recalled an experience at a town hall meeting last year. "During the public comments, my husband was speaking about some of the issues, and a new white neighbor who had moved here about a year earlier called out, 'Why don't y'all just move back to the country?'"

To the Dardens, the translation was clear. "Get out."

Not all of the new residents share that attitude. Washington, the professor at Georgia State University, is a relatively new resident of Peoplestown, having moved there in 2011. From her perspective, the main reason she moved there was because she appreciated the neighborhood the way it was and valued her neighbors.

"I love to be able to sit on the porch and talk to some of the older neighbors," she said. "I wasn't looking to replace, neutralize or change them." She respected the neighborhood association that was in existence, and didn't feel like she needed to start a new one.

But some new residents, particularly white ones, felt differently.

"When folks decide to start their own associations, it sends a message. The imposition of an us versus them, new versus old, resident versus buyer perspective is not healthy for a community," Washingtonsaid.

"It has produced harsh feelings on behalf of long-term residents who feel slighted and disrespected. And it impedes building a common platform and demanding representation of the whole community. Part of the community invites development because they don't feel threatened by it. Part of the community is scared to death of it because of decades of past experience."

Such a split often paves the way for other interested parties such as developers to pursue "divide and conquer" strategies, and as the most recent promise of development began to take shape, the community was vulnerable.

Carla Smith, the city councilwoman who represents Peoplestown and Summerhill, argues that the community was able to participate in a Livable Centers Initiative (LCI) that resulted in a robust planning document. "No one will argue that the LCI is not a good product; everyone was involved in that," she said.

The owners and developers of the property announced signing an " agreement " which incorporates concepts from the LCI, stating, "We are deeply committed to making the community safer, stronger, healthier and more stable."

However, Washington highlights that none of it is enforceable.

'We have to give a damn'

As frustrating as the fight has been for Washington, she remains optimistic and she knows that other cities have found ways to resist gentrification.

"But the first thing you have to do is you have to name it and call it what it is. It's not a question of can we do it ... There are lots of policy practices, tax incentives and laws that can be put in place. So there's no lack of capacity, but there's a lack of political will. We have to give a damn. We have to give a damn about people staying in their home. We have to give a damn about poor and working-class folks, and about seniors who want to spend their sunset years in the homes that they know and love. We have to care, and our policies will follow our compassion."

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'We have to care about seniors who want to spend their sunset years in the homes that they know and love'. Photograph: Ben Rollins for the Guardian

Atlanta voters will soon have an opportunity to influence how much the city government cares about these issues.

The current mayor is unable to seek re-election due to term limits and on Tuesday the city voted for a new mayor and city council. "Lots of people running are touting their long record of service and how many years they've been in public positions," Washington says. "For some of them, their record is their indictment. Because this [gentrification] happened on your watch, and not only did you not stop it, you facilitated it."

Mrs Darden agrees about the current lack of political will and the need for new leadership. "We need new city council people and a new mayor that has a heart for the people."

As for Mr Darden, he believes the battle is about faith. "I still trust God, and I won't doubt him. We're not gonna bow to the city."

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Gentrification is sweeping through America. Here are the people fighting back

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Walk into the home of Robert and Bertha Darden, and you are immediately surrounded by memories. Like many African American couples who have reached a certain age, the front room of their house is full of photos - of the Dardens in their youth, of their happy children and smiling grandchildren.

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When Gentrification Knocks on the Wrong Door.

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When Gentrification Knocks on the Wrong Door.

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(Michael)

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When Gentrification Knocks on the Wrong Door (Published 2017)

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Would-be buyers want Monxo Lopez’s South Bronx home, where an overheated real estate market seeks to remake — or erase — the past. He’s not selling.

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(Niels)

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Across the country in Brooklyn's rapidly gentrifying Crown Heights neighborhood, locals lashed out over a new restaurant with decor that included fake bullet holes and a menu that offered a drink called "40 ounce rosé" (malt liquor and wine) served in a paper bag.

Over the past few decades, gentrification debates have migrated from the pages of academic journals into the streets and the mainstream press.

The word, in many ways, is tinged with negativity. And for good reason. In tight real estate markets, it can lead to development that privileges profits over community and shuts people out of neighborhoods they have lived in for decades.

But what about cities struggling to overcome the threat of bankruptcy like Hartford, the capital of Connecticut? How does gentrification look in New South cities like Austin and Nashville, where mid-century urban planning destroyed residential communities and left downtowns largely unoccupied?

While doing research on the economic health of Hartford, one of us asked the head of a downtown Hartford nonprofit about gentrification.

"We could use some of that. But we are so far away from it, it's not even an issue."

If residential patterns and urban areas vary, so too must the story of gentrification. In other words: Have big cities hijacked the gentrification debate?

The origins of gentrification

"Gentrification" is a term coined by the British sociologist Ruth Glass in 1964 to explain the return of the middle class to London's center city.

In the US, academics and urban planners first started extensively talking about and debating gentrification in the 1970s. Between 1950 and 1970, urban manufacturing went overseas and white middle-class city-dwellers moved to the suburbs.

Concerns over blighted urban centers grew. Sociologists, planners and geographers found new cultural and economic trends to study related to the rise of artist and middle-class loft living and the return of capital investment to urban centers.

Today, the meaning of gentrification no longer refers to the "return to the center." Instead, it usually means that new and affluent residents or developers are investing in a neighborhood.

This infusion of capital changes the relationships within and between communities. Demand increases and property values rise; poorer residents are displaced as wealthier people move in; new shops appear and the public image of the neighborhood changes. High demand can incentivize landlords to evict residents, at times using egregious practices -- like hiring someone to harass renters -- in order to escalate rental prices.

Extreme gentrification takes place in the highest-rent, highest-demand places like San Francisco or New York's Greenwich Village. Rents in New York's once-booming Bleecker Street have become so astronomical that vacancy is now a problem of too much demand, rather than not enough: Property owners now keep their storefronts empty, hoping a major chain will want to locate in the high-visibility district.

Gentrification isn't all negative. In an influential and counterintuitive study, Lance Freeman and Frank Braconi, who study urban development, found that poorer residents were less likely to move out of gentrifying neighborhoods than non-gentrifying neighborhoods. Safety improves with gentrification, and so can services and amenities.

While some neighborhoods experience positive outcomes, gentrification studies are mostly concerned with access to housing, public space and the loss of community. It seems impossible not to view New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles or Boston through the lens of skyrocketing real estate and displaced residents.

What about other kinds of places?

The urban in between

When cities experienced population and economic decline decades ago, some, like New York and Boston, found ways to rebound. Others, like Detroit or Connecticut's largest city, Hartford, did not.

Hartford continues to experience unusual and difficult financial circumstances. The city has low home-ownership rates and high poverty rates. But maybe more significant is that the city is the state's capital. Half of the city's real estate is made up of government buildings, educational facilities or hospitals -- all of which are nontaxable. With a $65 million deficit, Hartford is now on the verge of bankruptcy.

Where is Hartford's gentrification? Or, more precisely, is there a kind of gentrification that would be welcomed in a place like Hartford? A place like Hartford could learn from smaller cities, which are less afflicted by the bloated real estate and speculation that plague places like New York and San Francisco.

In a de-industrialized small city like North Adams, Massachusetts, for example, gentrification is welcomed. The old mill city near the Berkshire Mountains had its sprawling electrical manufacturing plant, Sprague Electric, transformed into a contemporary fine art museum, MASS MoCA. The museum, in turn, helped transformed the city from a shrinking post-industrial community into an arts and cultural destination. The museum injected $34.4 million into the local economy in 2015, drawing tourists, lowering unemployment levels and creating opportunities for new businesses.

Tourism jobs are not the skilled union jobs Sprague Electric once offered. But without other opportunities, the community welcomes this kind of gentrification. The town was built for 20,000, but only has 13,000 residents. The community wants -- indeed, it needs -- more people.

There is also what we could call "empty lot" gentrification. Gentrification doesn't always displace existing populations. Consider cities like Nashville, Tennessee and Austin, Texas, where suburbs bloomed in the postwar era. The center cities never housed the heavy manufacturing of northeastern and Rust Belt cities; until recently, they remained sites of light manufacturing, parking garages and empty lots.

In the early 2000s, former Austin mayor (and real estate entrepreneur) Will Wynn sought to build more residential properties in downtown Austin, and Austin has since seen dramatic residential growth. Empty lot gentrification has its own issues: It can create downtowns for elites. Concerns over gentrification beyond Austin's city center have grown, and Austin's famed music venues are getting priced out.

A tale of two kinds of cities

In bloated real estate markets like New York or San Francisco, critics of gentrification see even the smallest changes -- a new park or a new coffee shop -- as harbingers for inevitable neighborhood ruin.

For cities needing gentrification, the issues are different. The conversation about popular cities has made academics and policy analysts timid about gentrification. Ailing small cities need to increase visibility to attract more people and develop a stable tax-base.

Hardly a call for free market-driven housing policy, there is no reason policies that minimize the negative effects of gentrification -- rent control, mixed income housing and limited equity cooperatives -- cannot be combined with efforts to attract the middle class.

The gentrification debates should also not blind us to what made New York and San Francisco attractive cities in the first place. The principles of urban activist Jane Jacobs for healthy city life still hold: diverse uses of streets and public places, mixed-use buildings, a variety of economic and commercial opportunities and local excitement about community building.

But simply getting people into the city cannot be overlooked.

In North Adams, new opportunities come from investing in the arts. In Pittsburgh, an openness to technical innovation, museums, universities and a dynamic restaurant culture are creating national buzz about a city that continues to lose population. Detroit just hired the nation's first chief story-teller to help move the narrative away from stale stereotypes. Throughout European cities, night mayors are charged with inspiring excitement around urban nightlife.

Hartford will never become New York. But why not look to North Adams, Pittsburgh or Columbus for examples of a different kind of gentrification?

Weird Wave Coffee, in other words, might be welcomed in Connecticut.

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Gentrification? Bring it on, say some cities

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Across the country in Brooklyn's rapidly gentrifying Crown Heights neighborhood, locals lashed out over a new restaurant with decor that included fake bullet holes and a menu that offered a drink called "40 ounce rosé" (malt liquor and wine) served in a paper bag.

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She fought for her community as a Black Panther. Will gentrification force her out?

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She fought for her community as a Black Panther. Will gentrification force her out?

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(Michael)

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One by one, Frances Moore has watched friends and neighbors move into cars, tents and encampments. Many in crisis often turn to the 62-year-old Oakland woman, who provides free meals to the homeless, but she has found it increasingly difficult to hear their stories of displacement.

That's because she knows she could soon be next.

Moore, known locally as Aunti Frances, is now fighting an eviction from the community where she was born and raised, in the heart of a neighborhood recently named the hottest real estate market in the US. In north Oakland, a region strained by the wealth of Silicon Valley and a major affordable housing shortage, the former Black Panther's struggle has become a rallying cry in the battle against gentrification.

"I have to think about my program, the community I've given so much to, my blood, sweat and tears. It's about more than just me," Moore said on a recent afternoon, seated on the stoop outside her second-storey apartment. She sighed and buried her face in her hands: "I'm just panicked."

The displacement of low-income communities of color has become a predictable cycle of life in the San Francisco Bay Area in recent years amid a booming tech industry and rising income inequality. Real estate investors and tech landlords have launched mass evictions to make way for Facebook employees and have increasingly removed elderly and dying tenants from their longtime homes.

Like many older black tenants in the region, Moore is at the mercy of a young landlord who bought her home and immediately moved to kick her out.

Growing up in Oakland and Berkeley, known internationally for civil rights activism, Moore said she first learned of the Black Panthers at around age 12 and that the group eventually took her in when she aged out of foster care.

As a teenager, Moore sang with a Black Panther group and worked for the civil rights group, which was founded in Oakland and provided health clinics and free meals: "They took me in and fostered me, fostered my growth. I learned and practiced and worked, and I mean worked, like 15 hours a day."

She moved into her current apartment in 2010, not far from where she grew upand launched the Self-Help Hunger Program to provide meals to locals and homeless people.

The program has persisted in the face of backlash from newer residents who complained about homeless people and garbage and harassment by police.

Most recently, Moore's biggest challenge is Natalia Morphy, a 31-year-old woman who bought the three-apartment complex where Moore lives and has repeatedly tried to evict the tenant. Though the previous attempts have failed, Morphy, who co-owns the property with her parents, is now arguing in court that she lives in one of the units and thus has a right to remove the remaining tenants.

Leah Simon-Weisberg, Moore's lawyer, said there was no reason Morphy had to force Moore out: "She's giving a notice that says, 'You can't be my neighbor.'"

The community I've given so much to, my blood, sweat and tears. It's about more than just me

Frances Moore

Through her attorney, Daniel Cheung, Morphy did not respond to requests for comment.

"Though our client is certainly empathetic to Ms Moore, she is confident that her right to recover possession is proper, legal and ethical," Cheung said in an email, adding, "Natalia is an honest, hard working young woman who painstakingly saved her earnings to purchase her property, which she intends to use to build her nest. She has lived and worked in Oakland and South Berkeley for many years and is just as much of a valuable member to the Oakland community as Ms Moore."

Moore said the eviction has taken a toll on her, causing panic attacks and sleepless nights: "I want to turn my brain off." To her new landlord, Moore added: "I haven't even shaken your hand. You don't even know whose lives you are ejecting from this community."

Morphy's legal strategy exploits what tenants' rights groups say is a major loophole in the law, allowing landlords to bypass renters' protections by claiming they are moving in to one of the units. In historically black neighborhoods, many homes are vulnerable to this tactic, which allows investors to evict long-time residents and flip the properties for profit.

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Heidi Borst, a 60-year-old tenant also facing eviction, with close friend and domestic partner Charles Branklyn. Photograph: Courtesy of Heidi Borst

Simon-Weisberg said she has seen a sharp increase in these kinds of evictions - sometimes from young white landlords in their 20s who purchase properties with their parents' help. In Oakland, where she is managing attorney for the tenants' rights program at Centro Legal de La Raza, she said she learns of roughly 20 new cases a month of this nature, almost always involving black and Latino tenants.

One of her cases, she said, involves a 25-year-old landlord who works for a major tech firm and is attempting to evict three generations of a black family who have lived in a three-unit Oakland complex since the early 1970s.

Another case involves a landlord named Blake Haynes, who appears to be a recent college graduate in his 20s.

"I'm just hanging in and trying to stay positive," said Charles Branklyn, an 81-year-old black resident who Haynes is trying to evict from his home of 13 years. The actor and former railway worker, who moved to California in the 1960s, said he would likely leave the state if he loses in court.

"I don't sleep at night. I feel like somebody has kicked me in the pants and my money is no good."

Haynes did not initially respond to a request for comment, but after publication of this article, said in an email that he has offered a financial package to the tenant and seeks a "fair resolution". But, he added, "if the tenant is unwilling to compromise, I am confident that a court will confirm that my right to recover possession of the unit is compliant with local and state law."

Heidi Borst, a 60-year-old tenant also facing eviction by Haynes, said she doesn't know where she would go if she was forced out and has an asthmatic condition that could be triggered by a night on the streets.

"I see it like a death sentence, which is why I fight so hard," she said. "This could kill me."
Contact the author: sam.levin@theguardian.com Topics

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She fought for her community as a Black Panther. Will gentrification force her out?

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One by one, Frances Moore has watched friends and neighbors move into cars, tents and encampments. Many in crisis often turn to the 62-year-old Oakland woman, who provides free meals to the homeless, but she has found it increasingly difficult to hear their stories of displacement.

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The Steady Destruction of America’s Cities

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The Steady Destruction of America’s Cities

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(Niels)

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To live in a city is to watch it change, sometimes quickly and in troubling ways. These changes, more often than not, are the product of decisions by city planners on which longtime residents often have little input or sway. This process is usually referred to with a commonly used term: gentrification. But there is no single answer to the questions of what gentrification really means, what causes it, who controls it, and how it actually changes neighborhoods and the people who live in them.

How to Kill a City: Gentrification, Inequality, and the Fight for the Neighborhood, a new book by the journalist Peter Moskowitz, brings some much-needed clarity to thinking about a slippery concept. "While urban renewal, the suburbanization of cities, and other forms of capital creation are relatively easy to spot (a highway built through a neighborhood is a relatively obvious event), gentrification is more discreet, dispersed, and hands-off," he writes. Moskowitz adds to the growing canon aimed at understanding and explaining the process of gentrification, and he not so subtly suggests that while gentrification naturally brings some improvements to a city,including more people and money, it also frequently kills some cultural traditions and diversity, the precise characteristics that make cities so dynamic and desirable in the first place.

Moskowitz tells of how gentrification has swept through some of America's biggest cities, writing case studies of Detroit, San Francisco, New York, and post-Katrina New Orleans. In each city, there are specific problems and circumstances that helped the process along, but it's striking how similar the choices made by politicians, business leaders, and developers and their effect on poor really are across the country. Gentrification, in each of these cities, dismantles and displaces existing neighborhoods and communities in order to make way for new residents who are mostly whiter, and always richer, than those who predate them. And the same choices seem to be made again and again.

While Moskowitz includes the important stories of those who called a neighborhood home long before coffee shops and luxury condos appeared, it's his outline of the systemic process of displacement that is the most devastating. He convincingly shows how the choices that a city and its government make in the name of a booming economy assign value to some residents and not others: From choices on where and how to fund affordable housing, to invest in public schools, to support new local businesses, but not old ones, the process that goes by the name "revitalization" is often something more pernicious.

In How to Kill a City' s section on New Orleans, Moskowitz highlights the uneven treatment of poor neighborhoods and rich ones in the post-Katrina period, noting that some who saw a need for economic revitalization have said that the storm cleared out some of the less desirable neighborhoods, leaving room for them to be rebuilt without as much concentrated poverty and blight. But they were also being rebuilt more slowly and in a way that ultimately left their previous residents adrift. On top of that, Moskowitz writes, changes to the city's basic services, particularly its school system, disadvantaged poorer families, who were burdened by undue amounts of paperwork. The city also dismantled the teacher's union, which had helped build part of New Orleans's black middle class.

In his chronicle of Detroit, Moskowitz shows how gentrification differs in a city that is steadily emptying out because of economic hardship rather than a natural disaster. He notes that in a 2010 attempt to recast the city as an urban center on the rise, rather than one facing a staggering financial failure, the city's mayor, Dave Bing, proposed shrinking the boundaries of Detroit in order to focus on the downtown area while cutting out the struggling outer ring. The idea, though it was shot down, has had long-lasting implications for how people conceptualize the city, Moskowitz argues, with developers, city planners, and corporations focusing most of their energy and money on a relatively small section of it. "The new Detroit is now a nearly closed loop," he writes, "It is possible to live in this new Detroit and essentially never set foot in the old one." And after filing for bankruptcy, the city's government has had less power to plot out the city's future, leaving it in the hands of developers and nonprofits, who may still have a somewhat limited view of what qualifies as Detroit.

San Francisco and New York, in many ways, have problems and opportunities that are the opposite of Detroit's. Instead of wanting to gin up economic growth in concentrated areas, residents there are struggling to contain it. As San Francisco becomes a hub for bigger, richer companies and their employees, the displacement of longtime residents has vastly outpaced any efforts at maintaining or creating affordable housing in the city. And despite stable economies, liberal leanings, and high involvement in municipal politics in both New York and San Francisco, policies that could potentially help poorer residents have been much slower to come and less robust than the influx of new private capital that devours neighborhoods and displaces residents. In just about every city Moskowitz examines, he finds that choices by city and state governments limited the creation of affordable housing and changed public-housing policies, giving poorer residents little refuge in increasingly expensive cities.

Ultimately, Moskowitz says that a big part of the problem when it comes to the unremitting pace of gentrification is that it is a process that often involves the investments and decisions of the private entities, including developers and big corporations, that decide to set up shop in new neighborhoods. In some ways, that's great for areas that are floundering, but when city leaders become too reliant on the plans and dollars of the private sector, the people who had been living and working in these neighborhoods all along have no one to look out for them and the lives they've built. Private organizations have different interests and responsibilities when it comes to making plans to spruce up a neighborhood. And that can mean that their investments don't happen an egalitarian manner, or benefit a diverse group of residents.

Regarding this point, Moskowitz writes:

Believing that hipsters can reverse the consequences of late-stage capitalism is a more attractive thought for city planners in cash-strapped cities than realizing that many American cities are, for now, screwed thanks to postindustrial decline and growing inequality. Gentrification may provide a new tax base, but it also reshapes what cities are, turning them into explicit supporters of inequality, reliant on it to self-fund, yet still unable to meet the needs of their poor. A real solution to the economics of American cities would require more work-more taxes, more laws, more intervention from the federal government. Those things are hard. Gentrification is easy.

Moskowitz says that while gentrification is a problem in just about every developed country in the world, its propensity to become a full-blown crisis in American cities has a lot to do with insufficient housing regulation. "In nearly every other industrialized nation besides the United States, there is near-consensus that purely private land markets will not meet the needs of the poor, and so measures have been taken to ensure that at least some land remains off the market or subject to regulations that make it affordable."

And in that vein, Moskowitz has some ideas for how to lessen the sting of gentrification: expanding and protecting access to public lands and giving residents more of a voice in the city via community boards and similar organizations, to name two possibilities. Moskowitz also wants cities to heavily regulate housing and to raise taxes, wages, and spending on the poor. He doesn't expect that all, or most, of these plans will come to fruition. But implementing any of them, he writes, would constitute progress.
Related Video

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The Steady Destruction of America's Cities

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To live in a city is to watch it change, sometimes quickly and in troubling ways. These changes, more often than not, are the product of decisions by city planners on which longtime residents often have little input or sway. This process is usually referred to with a commonly used term: gentrification.

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A simple video about the meaning of gentrification 

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A simple video about the meaning of gentrification 

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Summary "This is what happens after a neighborhood gets gentrified."    

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Summary "This is what happens after a neighborhood gets gentrified."    

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(Senna)
The earliest studies of displacement conducted in the 1980s generated widely varying estimates of how many people are displaced by gentrification. A 1982 study found that roughly 1 percent of all Americans, 5 percent of families, and 8.5 percent of urban families were displaced from their homes between 1970 and 1977 by either eviction, public action, sale or reoccupation, or the changing state of their neighborhood.

What a very big issue is, is the neighborhoods that are untouched by gentrification and where concentrated poverty persists and deepens. A 2014 study found that for every gentrified neighborhood across 51 U.S. metro areas, 10 others remained poor and 12 formerly stable neighborhoods fell into concentrated disadvantage.
A Harvard study of Chicago found that the gentrification process continues for neighborhoods with over 35 percent of white residents, and either slows or stops if the neighborhood is 40 percent black. The reality is that the displaced are getting pushed out of working-class neighborhoods that are “good enough” to attract people and investment, while the poorest and most vulnerable neighborhoods remain mired in persistent poverty and concentrated disadvantage.

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Summary "When Gentrification Knocks on the Wrong Door."

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Summary "When Gentrification Knocks on the Wrong Door."

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(Michael)
Monxo Lopez is a popular man because total strangers hound him, calling, writing and knocking on his door. They all want to buy his house. He can get a million and a half for it, but he doesn’t want to sell it. other people in his neighborhood got the same offers. This all because of gentrification, development and speculation transforming his neighborhood. Lopez doesn’t see his house as an investment, but as home. He has no desire to sell it.

It’s not a suprise that his house attracts attention. His neigborhood is coming back from a time with a lot of crime and blight. The fear is it may bounce completely out of reach of longtime residents who are being pressured to sell, or renters whose landlords are increasing rents or harassing them to leave.

Gentrification brought Lopez tot he Bronx from Brooklyn after his neighborhood changed drasticly. Local restaurants and stores changed into pet shops and boutique pizzarias. The neighborhood changed. Lopez had to move beacause of the new people. They called the cops when they had music and dancing.

Mister Lopez hopes that this devolpment can be slowed. The real and biggest problem is the affordability of the houses. The city is to expensive for people with lower income. Until that changed, he sees his refusal to sell his house as a political act, holding the line against gentrification.

Lopez said: “We know neighborhoods change. We’re not afraid of change. But what we don’t want to see is the people who want to remain to be displaced.”

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Summary "She fought for her community as a Black Panther. Will Gentrification force her out?"

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Summary "She fought for her community as a Black Panther. Will Gentrification force her out?"

# data[].attributes.body
(Michael
Frances Moore is a women who helps homeless people. She also helps the community with a lot of problems. She moved into her appartment in 2010, not far from where she grew upand launched the ‘Self-Help Hunger Program’ to provide meals to locals and homeless people. She is fighting against gentrification. The displacement of low-income communities of color has become a predictable cycle of life.

A lot of people struggles with the problem that they have to leave their houses. They are forced to leave their houses. Even people who lives there for more than 10 years and always worked hard for the community and for their own money. People like Frances Moore propably have to move beacuse they’re forced out their appartments.

It let to sleepless night and to a lot of negativity by the people. Frances Moore has sleepless nights and this all is causing her panic attacks. She said: “I want to turn of my brain”. Some people really don’t know where to go. They have not a lot of money. A night on the streets is predictable fort his people. This all let to people who are homeless.

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Summary "Gentrification is sweeping through America. Here are the people fighting back."

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Summary "Gentrification is sweeping through America. Here are the people fighting back."

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(Senna)
This article is about MR and Mrs Darden, who live for about 29 years in a city, but they want to take their home. The city claims it needs the house, along with others on the same block in the Peoplestown neighborhood, in order to build a park and pond that will help with street flooding. Meanwhile, community members suspect the flooding is being used as a pretext to facilitate private development in the neighborhood.
Tanya Washington, a professor at Georgia State University, lives on the same street as the Dardens, and like them, she is in a legal battle to keep the city from taking her home.
Mrs Darden agrees about the current lack of political will and the need for new leadership. “We need new city council people and a new mayor that has a heart for the people.”

As for Mr Darden, he believes the battle is about faith. “I still trust God, and I won’t doubt him. We’re not gonna bow to the city.”

# data[].attributes.headline
Summary '' The steady destructiom of America's cities''

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Summary '' The steady destructiom of America's cities''

# data[].attributes.body
(Niels)
To live in a city is to watch it change, sometimes quickly and in troubling ways. These changes, more often than not, are the product of decisions by city planners on which longtime residents often have little input or sway. This process is usually referred to with a commonly used term: gentrification.
Moskowitz says that a big part of the problem when it comes to the unremitting pace of gentrification is that it is a process that often involves the investments and decisions of the private entities, including developers and big corporations, that decide to set up shop in new neighborhoods. In some ways, that’s great for areas that are floundering, but when city leaders become too reliant on the plans and dollars of the private sector, the people who had been living and working in these neighborhoods all along have no one to look out for them and the lives they’ve built. Private organizations have different interests and responsibilities when it comes to making plans to spruce up a neighborhood. And that can mean that their investments don’t happen an egalitarian manner, or benefit a diverse group of residents.

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Summary ''Could gentrification save some cities?''

# data[].attributes.subject
Summary ''Could gentrification save some cities?''

# data[].attributes.body
(Niels)
Over the past few decades, gentrification debates have migrated from the pages of academic journals into the streets and the mainstream press.
The word, in many ways, is tinged with negativity. And for good reason. In tight real estate markets, it can lead to development that privileges profits over community and shuts people out of neighborhoods they have lived in for decades.

"Gentrification" is a term coined by the British sociologist Ruth Glass in 1964 to explain the return of the middle class to London's center city.
Today, the meaning of gentrification no longer refers to the "return to the center." Instead, it usually means that new and affluent residents or developers are investing in a neighborhood.
While some neighborhoods experience positive outcomes, gentrification studies are mostly concerned with access to housing, public space and the loss of community.

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Albright, C. (2017, 10 November). Gentrification is sweeping through America. Here are the people fighting back. The guardian. Consulted on 20 February, from https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/nov/10/atlanta-super-gentrification-eminent-domain

White, G. (2017, 9 March). The steady destruction of America's cities. The Atlantic. Consulted on 23 February from
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/03/gentrification-moskowitz/519057/

Wynn, J. Deener, A. (2017, 20 October). Could gentrification save some cities? CNN. Consulted on 13 March from
https://edition.cnn.com/2017/10/19/world/gentrification-in-cities/index.html

Florida, R. (2015, 16 September). What happens after a neighborhood gets gentrified. The Atlantic. Consulted on 13 March, from https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/09/this-is-what-happens-after-a-neighborhood-gets-gentrified/432813/

Gonzalez, D. (2017, 3 September). When Gentrfication Knocks on the Wrong Door. The New York Times. Consulted on 14 March from https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/03/nyregion/when-gentrification-knocks-on-the-wrong-door.html

Levin, S (2017, December 12). She fought for het community as a Black Panther. Will gentrification force her out? The Guardian. Consulted on 20 February from https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/dec/12/oakland-gentrification-eviction-black-panther-francis-moore