Uneasy Rhetoric

It’s a knee-jerk reaction. In any group of left-leaners, say the word “gentrification” and you’ll think the devil had just walked into the room.

There is a good reason for this reaction, of course. Gentrification, the process by which a run-down neighborhood suddenly sprouts latte joints and art galleries, is a particular kind of neighborhood revitalization that often drives property values so high that the people living in the neighborhood when it was still a conglomeration of ramshackle housing and boarded up businesses have to leave. They can’t afford the property taxes, they can’t afford the rent. If they’re really lucky, and if they’re owners, they’ll hold out just long enough to make a pretty penny when they flee.

The problem is, most successful revitalization strategies will increase demand in neighborhoods, especially if those neighborhoods are historic, or funky, or just close to where people work. Is Grog the Liberal’s reaction entirely justified?

This article in the L.A. Times describes the experience of a high school student in Echo Park who filmed the effects of gentrification on her neighborhood. The student, Stephanie,

lives with her two younger sisters and parents, immigrants from Mexico City, said a former landlord often reminded the family that their apartment could command two or three times their roughly $500 monthly rent.

She chronicles the loss of neighborhood landmarks and she interviews residents and business owners. Interestingly, however, her film is not an anti-gentrification screed. She says:

“There’s always two sides to a story. I also want to show how [the changes] will improve the area,” Stephanie said. “I want to show this to the people on the other side of gentrification and have them pay attention to the tenants, to the residents of Echo Park, and not make them feel unwelcome.”

Stephanie gets it.

A few years ago I was doing a site-visit to some activists in North/Northeast Portland. The other members of the granting committee I was on wanted me to make sure to ask about how the group was dealing with “gentrification.” So I asked.

The answer I got surprised me. Instead of ranting about how the white yuppies were coming to take away the quaint old neighborhoods and throw all of the poor black people out, the director of this group said, “everyone wants to live in a nice neighborhood, have safe streets, nice houses, shops within walking distance. The problem isn’t stopping gentrification. The problem is finding a way to ensure that everyone can afford to live there. The problem is low incomes.”

Can gentrification happen without driving up rents and property values? Probably not. Greed and a housing market based on squeezing every ounce of capital out of a property have seen to that. The problem is that a small amount of neighborhood revitalization will add a couple thousand dollars onto the asking price of a home, and a lot of revitalization will add more. Thanks to our American desire to be “ahead of the curve” or part of “the next big thing,” people will desire living in these neighborhoods so much that they’ll pay over asking, driving up property values even further. It’s a vicious cycle.

Is there a public policy solution to the evils of gentrification? You certainly wouldn’t want to outlaw it. Gentrification is the last hope for many neighborhoods. You couldn’t raise the minimum wage enough so that a bag boy could buy a condo in Portland’s Pearl District.

However, you could create incentives for developers to build housing geared for lower-income and/or first-time home buyers. You could create developments with a mix of low-income and market-rate rental housing. The problem is ensuring that the housing created for lower-income families doesn’t creep back into the regular housing market while at the same time ensuring that it does not become decrepit, or that low-income residents in a mixed-income development aren’t ignored when it comes to repairs or upgrades.

Is gentrification an unstoppable force? Probably. I know if I heard about a quiet little neighborhood where the residents were coming together to clean the place up and bring in new businesses, and if I found out it was still affordable, I’d probably jump. And I’d probably come in over asking. Wouldn’t you?