Gentrification Isn’t The Problem
Displacement is the real enemy. The only way to solve it is more housing and better protections.
Gentrification is the most misunderstood concept in America today. Much needed investment and newcomers do not equal displacement. Let’s set the record straight.
The Urban Displacement Project, a Cal Berkeley initiative that aims to understand the nature of gentrification and displacement in American cities, defines gentrification as:
“a process of neighborhood change that includes economic change in a historically disinvested neighborhood — by means of real estate investment and new higher-income residents moving in — as well as demographic change — not only in terms of income level, but also in terms of changes in the education level or racial make-up of residents.”
In simpler terms, this process can be broken down to mean people of higher relative wealth moving into an area of lower relative wealth, and the investment that accompanies these moves. These people are usually demographically different than the prevailing make up of the neighborhood they move into. If a renter who makes $30,000 a year with a college degree moves into an apartment in a neighborhood with low educational attainment where the median income is $25,000, they are, by definition…
