Call it what you will, but everyone has the right to buy property where they can afford it.  The property I was able to afford happens to be in a lower income neighborhood.  Guess what, my neighbors have accepted me and even welcome my presence because I took the time to get to know them.  Tell me you think cleaning up a trash-filled street and planting some tree boxes is a bad thing.  Tell me it doesn’t benefit the already existing neighbors.  Go ahead, ask them if they’re against it.

I also have to wonder if all you “anti-gentrification” activists have ever actually set foot in any of the neighborhoods you speak of?

Let’s consider the choices available to a low-income household in a gentrifying/transitioning/etc community.  If they’ve lived there for a long time, they are most likely homeowners who were able to purchase long ago when prices were more modest. As the community becomes inhabited by higher income earners (either because welatheir families move in or because existing families earn more money/wealth over time), real estate prices rise, as do property taxes.  If the household cannot afford the higher property taxes, they might be compelled to move away. (I would argue this is less common in a place like DC where we have very low property tax rates, especially relative to MD and VA).  For the homeowner there’s very little else that might “push” them out, unless they simply don’t like the changes they’re seeing in the nighborhood.  (Again, I would argue that this is unlikely to “push” a household away if gentrification is associated with greater community amenities and improved safety, but others may disagree).  Otherwise, “original” residents will move out for all the same reasons everyone else does – their family size is changing, they’re following a job, they want to move to a neighborhood with better schools, etc.  And when they do move out, they gain considerable wealth from their home thanks to the higher real estate prices in the neighborhood.

My wife and I purchased our house from the son of a long-time resident who had passed away. The son needed to pay off some debt and wanted to move to Mississippi and he sold it to us, very happy to get much more out of the house than he had ever thought possible and to leave DC.  It was a win-win.  We moved into a neighborhood and house that we loved and could afford and he found himself with much greater financial stability and the flexibility to do what he wanted in life.

Now let’s consider the choices of a renter. The renter is far more exposed to real estate price increases that come with gentrification, particualrly if there’s an ineffective rent regulation structure in placethat limits how quickly rents may rise each year.  Low-income families are much more likely to rent and as a result have a much harder time living and staying in “good” neighborhoods. Unlike homeowners, they have no right to remain in a neighborhood. Market prices dictate whether they can stay.  This is why it’s so important, from a public policy perspective, to preserve and develop affordable rental housing options in good neighborhoods.  Otherwise, the market result is income segregation and relegating low-income families to the worst neighborhoods.

Long-story short, i appreciate efforts like this article that encourage community-building in diverse neighborhoods.  (As a side note, it could have been titled “Five Ways to build community When You don’t Live In a Homogenous Neighborhood”).  The benefits and drawbacks of having communities gentrify is a separate and rich topic worth further exploration. I’d love to hear stories of people who feel like they’ve gotten the short-end of gentrification to understand who and how that happens and what can be done to ameliorate it.

How insensitive!! If anything, this article suggests ways to normalize gentrification as a “way of life” and does NO job of posing a critique of gentrification in the first place. Of all places for such an article to exist. DCentric should be beyond ashamed for pulling something like this, more ashamed than they should be not having ONE black writer for it’s blog…

How insensitive!! If anything, this article suggests ways to normalize gentrification as a “way of life” and does NO job of posing a critique of gentrification in the first place. Of all places for such an article to exist. DCentric should be beyond ashamed for pulling something like this, more ashamed than they should be not having ONE black writer for it’s blog…