Gentrification is the complex and interrelated consequences of people moving into a residential area and purchasing a property significantly more expensive than the properties of the surrounding area. Gentrification is often associated with an increase in property values and rents as well as transformations to the neighborhood's culture. Higher property taxes usually force the original residents of the communities to move out.
Yet, though gentrification displaces residents from their communities, it does have some benefits. When new wealthier residents move into poor neighborhoods, crime rates often decrease, infrastructure improves and the neighborhood's economy develops. The problem is that the benefits of gentrification unequally help the newer, wealthier residents, which in turn helps to raise property taxes even further and, ultimately, displaces even more of the original residents.
In an April 19, 2005, article in USA Today, Duke University economist Jacob Vigdor is quoted at saying that gentrification was not harmful to a neighborhood. He mocked the general attitude of gentrification opponents: "We were angry when the middle class moved out of the city; now we're angry when they move back."
Vigdor's assessment is not only overly simplified - its implications are tinged with racism. Institutional racism ranging from the American slave trade to unequal educational opportunities to the refusal of banks to give loans to families of color has made it extremely difficult for people of color to enjoy the same financial success as whites. Vigdor suggests that the poor people of color in underprivileged neighborhoods are irrational because they are upset no matter where middle class white people live. However, poor residents in cities are actually upset because, as history demonstrates, they are either marginalized or displaced or both whenever white middle-class people want to move. When the white middle class abandoned urban areas, their absence and the loss of their tax base eroded inner-city public schools and greatly decreased available employment.
Now, more than 50 years later, gentrification is increasingly common, as many people who moved to the suburbs want to move back to the neighborhoods they originally left. In some cases, people from the suburbs are moving into more urban areas that never even experienced "white flight."
Along with many other famous neighborhoods, such as Northwest Fort Lauderdale and Boston's North End, my neighborhood in East Austin, Texas, has experienced a high level of gentrification. Most East Austin residents are African-Americans and Mexican-Americans, largely due to past city policies that forced people of color to live on the east side of the city.
According to Rick Hampson, who wrote the article in USA Today, "In the predominantly Latino working class barrio of East Austin, the new Pedernales Lofts condominiums have raised adjacent land values more than 50% since 2003. Last fall, someone hung signs from power lines outside the lofts saying, 'Stop gentrifying the East Side' and 'Will U give jobs to longtime residents of this neighborhood?'"
In addition to concerns about displacement, some of the original residents of the neighborhood feel that the new white middle class residents will threaten the culture of the neighborhood. During a meeting in November 2005, Susana Almanza, co-director of People Organized in Defense of Earth and her Resources, an East Austin based non-profit organization, said that some of her new wealthy neighbors complain to the police that many of the original residents play their music too loud, say that they have "too many cars," and condescendingly tell them that their children "run wild."
The signs from Pedernales demonstrate legitimate concerns that a sudden influx of middle class residents will not solve the common problems of the inner city. Gentrification forces poor people of color to find new ways to survive: new work, new schools, new connections and new homes - while the white middle class are able to live closer to work and enjoy their newfound proximity to the expensive downtown nightlife. Though resolving the problems of gentrification requires complex responses - not least the eradication of institutional racism - an immediate solution is for conscientious individuals to not move into neighborhoods where the average property value is significantly less than the property they intend to purchase.
Michael Ramos-Lynch '09 is full of East Side pride.
