
Gentrification May Actually Be Boon To Longtime Residents - luu
http://www.npr.org/2014/01/22/264528139/long-a-dirty-word-gentrification-may-be-losing-its-stigma
======
forsaken
This is only talking about people who own their homes. A lot of gentrification
is happening in areas where historically the residents were suppressed from
owning real estate. My own knowledge is mostly around the Portland, Oregon
area, but there is a documented history of minorities being unable to purchase
property, get loans, and lots of other institutional things that stop people
from actually owning the land.

For them, gentrification is definitely a bad thing.

Edit: Reference here on page 25:
[http://aaablogs.uoregon.edu/visualculturesymposium/files/201...](http://aaablogs.uoregon.edu/visualculturesymposium/files/2011/02/Milo_Petruziello_2010_Project.pdf)

~~~
spindritf
_he also found that a lot of renters actually stay — especially if new parks,
safer streets and better schools are paired with a job opportunity right down
the block._

That squares with the recent study[1] by the Federal Reserve Bank of
Cleveland.

 _" We're finding that the financial health of original residents in
gentrifying neighborhoods seems to be increasing, as compared to original
residents in nongentrifying, low-priced neighborhoods," says Daniel Hartley, a
research economist with the bank._

 _He looked at the credit scores of original residents and found that they
went up — regardless of whether they rented or owned — compared with residents
who stayed in nongentrifying neighborhoods._

From the OP.

[1]
[http://www.clevelandfed.org/research/trends/2013/1113/01rege...](http://www.clevelandfed.org/research/trends/2013/1113/01regeco.cfm)

~~~
gipp
That seems like pretty clear-cut survivor bias.

~~~
kens
If you read the above link [1], it's not survivor bias:

"Another way to cut the data is to compare movers and nonmovers across
gentrifying and nongentrifying neighborhoods. Interestingly, there is a
slightly larger increase in credit score (1.5 points more) associated with
residents of the gentrifying neighborhoods who moved to a different
neighborhood relative to those who lived in a gentrifying neighborhood but did
not move. So it appears that, on average, movers are even slightly more
positively affected by gentrification than nonmovers."

~~~
gipp
Fair enough. I just Ctrl-F'd 'bias' and had nothing, guess I could have been
more thorough.

That paragraph still fails to specify whether this applies only to homeowners
and renters, or whether that still holds when looking just at rentership. We
have "original resident renters living in gentrifying neighborhood benefit",
and we have "movers overall benefit", but that doesn't necessarily imply
"original resident renters who (were forced to) move benefit."

~~~
johncarrington
"I just Ctrl-F'd 'bias' and had nothing, guess I could have been more
thorough."

Did you consider maybe reading it?

~~~
gipp
That's pretty much what "been more thorough" meant there, yes.

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danohuiginn
'"To my surprise," Freeman says, "it seemed to suggest that people in
neighborhoods classified as gentrifying were moving less frequently."'

Well, duh. With rents rising, your only chance to stay in the neighbourhood is
to cling on to your existing contract. Look at a fully-gentrified
neighbourhood; the only low-income residents will be those who have been
living in the same home for decades, with a rental contract that protected
them from rent increases.

~~~
hyperpape
A good possibility, but many cities don't have rent control and/or give
landlords lots of leeway to raise rents. You'd have to break it down by city
to see whether the effect was limited to cities with rent control.

~~~
danohuiginn
fair enough. I'm mainly thinking of a European context -- tenants rights in
the US being much weaker, the same pattern may not apply there.

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shaftoe
It's always hilarious to see arguments that people fixing up a run down
neighborhood is terrible. That improvement is unfair to the people who ran it
down or didn't own anything there to begin with.

Let's just have things stay crappy and life will be fair to all.

~~~
infosample
shaftoe, as a thought experiment consider why the neighborhood is run down.
Did the people run down the neighborhood because that's what they like? How
was the economic situation for these people? How were the schools, the
hospitals, the law enforcement? Was there housing discrimination? How were
their politicians? What was the funding like compared to other neighborhoods?

In other words, how was the neighborhood before it was crappy and how did it
become so?

~~~
otterley
How are these matters relevant to the opinion that improving neighborhoods is
a good thing?

~~~
infosample
"That improvement is unfair to the people who ran it down"

Assumption 1: The residents are the people who ran down the neighborhood.

Assumption 2: Gentrification improves the neighborhood.

My previous comment addresses the first assumption. Feel free to disagree.

If a neighborhood is just real estate, assumption two is valid. If a
neighborhood is a community of people, and gentrification moves a lot of the
people, you have not improved the neighborhood, you displaced it.

Once we question these assumptions, perhaps we can address the root problems.

~~~
otterley
"If a neighborhood is a community of people, and gentrification moves a lot of
the people, you have not improved the neighborhood, you displaced it."

Maybe; maybe not. If crime and other social and environmental ills are reduced
after the previous inhabitants have been displaced, I'd contend it's an
improvement.

~~~
infosample
I agree, any reduction is an improvement. I have no problem admitting that I
just don't know if we fixed the problem or moved the problem.

On one hand, overall crime in the U.S. is down and crime in New York City is
really down.

I just wonder, is the goal of gentrification to fix neighborhood's ills or
cheap rent in a cool area that happens to be a fantastic real estate
investment?

I'm having a hard time understanding how moving people from the suburbs to the
inner city and back improves anything aside from a specific geographic area
for a while.

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GigabyteCoin
The pinnacle example of this imho is the 202 year old Parisien Au Richelieu
Boulangerie (bakery) that closed it's doors recently in Paris due to rent
increases because of it's proximity to the ever popular Louvre Museum.

Even Paris is becoming too Parisienne for Paris!

[http://eater.com/archives/2013/01/02/the-oldest-bakery-in-
pa...](http://eater.com/archives/2013/01/02/the-oldest-bakery-in-paris-
shutters-due-to-high-rent.php)

~~~
raldi
And yet when this fancy boulangerie opened in a modest neighborhood in 1812,
that was a textbook example of gentrification.

~~~
GigabyteCoin
Touché.

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pessimizer
There's no link to the first study, but I'm pretty sure the results of the
Cleveland Fed are a result of the batty definition of gentrification used:

"For the purpose of this analysis, I will say a neighborhood is gentrifying if
it is located in the central city of a metropolitan area and it goes from
being in the bottom half of the distribution of home prices in the
metropolitan area to the top half between 2000 and 2007. Housing prices are a
good measure of gentrification since they provide a summary of the various
amenities in the neighborhood. Changes in neighborhood amenities such as
increases in school quality or decreases in crime should be reflected in
changes in neighborhood home prices."

Again: Entirely based on home prices (reasonable), but not on home price
improvement, but instead based on passing from the lower half of the entire
distribution of prices in a metropolitan area to the upper half. This could
happen if housing prices _declined_ in an area if the mean price in the metro
declined slightly faster. This is not what normal people are talking about
when they refer to gentrification.

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byerley
Obviously this doesn't apply everywhere, but gentrification is really rough on
students. Between tuition increases, rent increases, and high demand for
student neighborhoods because they're "hip", students moving to certain areas
are being pushed farther and farther away from the actual school (because of
both price and availability).

DC is particularly bad in this regard.

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wallflower
This article conveniently sashays around the real effects of gentrification
due to the "entitlement" mentality of the more recent newcomers.

For example, I heard of a neighborhood ballpark that was used for decades by
Latino children to play ball. The newcomers with dogs would chuck their dog's
droppings over the fence and onto the ballpark.

Latinos who used to play dominos outside at another park. Until they were
continually harassed by cops to stop gathering in a public area to play
dominos. Seems like the newcomers didn't like the bodega feel when they were
out walking their dogs.

See also: "Inside the Barista Class"

[http://www.theawl.com/2014/03/the-service-economy-trap-
insid...](http://www.theawl.com/2014/03/the-service-economy-trap-inside-
brooklyns-barista-class)

~~~
kimdouglasmason
So many logical fallacies in a single post. Well done sir.

If you substitute 'newcomers' with 'foreigners', and 'Latino' with 'white',
your post reads as exactly the same xenophobic screed I've heard over and over
for years.

~~~
yarrel
Ad hominem, appeal to emotion, guilt by association, and straw man.

Although to be fair that's the fallacy fallacy.

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trysomething
Nature has endowed mankind with diverse faculties, fallible reason and
variable fortune, and so in a free society there will _by necessity_ be
"winners" and "losers".

Those of you who _reflexively_ oppose gentrification ought to consider what
type of society you want to live in. Do you believe that individuals have the
right to make decisions that could affect their own lives beneficially or
adversely? One such decision is to rent or buy property.

There are clearly potential benefits and drawbacks to either choice. I may
value stability of residence and the chance my chosen property will
appreciate, and therefore choose to buy, and so put capital down and strain my
credit. Alternatively, I may want to bootstrap a small business or startup
using the same capital and credit, and therefore choose to rent.

When, in the name of stopping the "evil" of gentrification, you propose to
severely restrict what a property owner can do, such as through rent control,
you are _also proposing to restrict the original choice to rent or buy_. You
are thus limiting the opportunity of the less fortunate to buy when and where
the price is low and sell if and when the price gets high.

In the name of protecting the vulnerable, you prevent them from advancing to a
better station in life. It's very easy to consider the benefits of laws and
regulation while ignoring the costs.

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anifow
Gentrification is happenning in Toronto outside of the downtown core, albeit
very slowly.

The main effect is you have families cashing out and moving further and
further away from the city to put the real estate price differentials to good
use (bigger house, or cash in bank). In the current environment, it actually
makes zero sense to buy residential property for the sake of renting it out,
so the only ones who are long time owners. Over time, they too will cash out
and it will be harder to find rentals until the neighbourhood either increases
in status to command higher rates (like what happened in Kensington Market or
in the Bellwood neighbourhood), or the property prices start falling to a low
enough level that it makes sense to buy rental property again.

~~~
BrainInAJar
The neighbourhood I live in in my city was once crappy, got gentrified when
living in the gay district got popular, and thanks to the power of inflation,
is now just a nice, modest, middle class neighbourhood again.

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616c
Anyone who has met long-time residents of Washington DC knows that yeah, if
you are white and rich it is working great for you. If you are black, it is
not. I could write a thesis, and maybe DC is exceptional, but this is wishful
thinking.

I lived in a very gentrified area of Washington for period. It was very weird.
You are pushing out the poor people and you both want to pretend you do not
notice. I believe saying the opposite is disingenuous.

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delinka
Can someone help me understand the problems with gentrification? Do renters
feel entitled to stay in their neighborhoods even when their leases end? When
owners need to perform remodels on [unoccupied] aging homes?

The only real issue that comes to mind is the owner of a home on a fixed
income having to pay higher property taxes because the area around them is
improving. I can think of lots of ways to mitigate this problem ... but I'm
asking about other problems of which I know nothing.

