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kaydee's avatar

Thank you for addressing this topic! I’m definitely adding Leslie’s book to my reading list. Maybe she answers this question therein, but where I live in Queens, there is a massive housing shortage. We desperately need to build more housing (for current unhoused neighbors as well as a steady stream of incoming new residents), and due to the cost and complexities, large developers seem to be the only entities with that capability. Recently, some people in my neighborhood protested against a new development, and gentrification was one of their main qualms. This development is displacing 10 current residential tenants to create thousands of desperately needed new housing units (the rest of the area is currently industrial/warehouse/commercial space). The local city councilperson (a woman of color) negotiated 1,400+ affordable units, including hundreds for low-income tenants. That said, it is market-rate new construction, and the protesters objected to how it would “change the character of the neighborhood.”

So I guess my question is: when there’s a housing shortage, how can cities alleviate that without contributing to gentrification?

And if new development (which is expensive to live in, because it’s so expensive to build) isn’t the solution, won’t rising rents eventually gentrify the neighborhood anyway, because the lack of supply will drive up the price of housing until only the wealthy can afford to live there? It seems like, at least where I live, opposing new development amounts to saying “sorry, no room for you here!” I’ve also noticed that many of those who oppose development are homeowners and landlords, who benefit from housing scarcity because it increases the value of their properties and they can charge higher rents.

I don’t want to displace people from their homes, but I don’t think the solution is to pull up the drawbridge to keep new people out - and that seems to be the unspoken implication when people talk about resisting gentrification. So is the solution subsidized affordable housing and/or public housing? And if so, how can cities with strapped budgets make that happen?

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Wren Rosewood's avatar

I cannot wait to read Leslie's book! My background is in city and regional planning (and like her, I've been living in a small town now for several years so I feel a bit disconnected!) but she is so right about there being power structures behind gentrification, including the local governments themselves, and that it is not inevitable.

I could give so many examples from Baltimore City that are simply maddening. In the East Baltimore Development Initiative, rowhome owners were bought out for $30K and then their houses were renovated and flipped for $300K. In West Baltimore, the city bought an entire row of 10 houses for $200K from a landlord (so $20K each) with the intent to demolish them and then give the land to a developer. ALL OF THESE HOMES WERE OCCUPIED, SOME BY THE SAME RENTERS FOR DECADES! Why not buy the houses and then give them to the tenants mortgage-free? Why is it okay to give them to developers and not the existing residents? Why can't the existing residents be given the power to revitalize their own neighborhoods?

This doesn't include all of the people who have been bought out just to have their homes left vacant for a decade and then be considered a health hazard for the city to spend even more money to demolish. It costed the city $600,000 to demolish 16 houses in the 2200 block of Druid Hill Ave!

I went to city council meetings and asked these very questions and no one had direct answers. Yes, I know there are very complicated and decades-long histories behind these projects. But the city's mindset has never been to help house the people already here. Their top priority is to attract and give handouts to developers instead.

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