The 5 Phases of Gentrification -- When can it be stopped?

[GreatGazoo]

and when is it too late?

Phase 1 – Pioneering
New residents move in to abandoned or under-maintained buildings.
Banks will not lend so renovation is limited to the resources of the Pioneers.
No displacement of original residents, yet.

Phase 2 – Potential is Seen
Real estate agents promote the area’s “potential.” Vacancy rates drop.
Rents begin to rise. Banks begin to lend. Speculators buy distressed buildings.

Phase 3 – Safety and Media Hype
Gentrifiers create historic preservation, business and neighborhood associations.
Rents increase dramatically and displacement of the original residents fuels tensions.
Police adopt “broken windows” tactics and selectively enforce loitering and similar laws.
Media attention promotes the new safety and changes in the neighborhood.

Phase 4 – Peak
The first wave of Pioneers gets priced out.
Banks and investors create more high priced apartments and condos.
Buildings bought for speculation in Phase 2 get put back on the market.

Phase 5 – Post Peak
Vacancy rates increase as rents push above the limit.
Speculators take the money they made in Phase 4 and look for new opportunities in neighboring communities.
Landlords are absentee, including large banks and institutional investors.
Property values stagnate or fall from their peaks.

adopted from the work of American urban theorist Philip Clay.

[Facility Inspector]

1. Phase 6 - Bistrofication

Hot dogs become "gourmet," nowhere within miles can one find a regular old "chop suey" joint.

[GreatGazoo]

2. love it

but that happens in Phase 4. SNL picked up the foodie thing in this brilliant piece:

[enid602]

52. phases 7 and 8

Phase 7. Whole Foods moves in. Bernie stickers on all the Volvos.

Phase 8. The DANES take over the neighborhood.

[AngryAmish]

3. How do you propose to stop it?

[GreatGazoo]

5. Protect those at risk -- Seniors, families, low income

Strengthen or create rent controls or stabalization
Freeze property taxes for longtime residents and seniors
Change zoning laws to prohibit high rises, condos, and multi to single family conversions.

http://www.rooflines.org/3731/7_policies_that_could_prevent_gentrification/

[jwirr]

19. I might be wrong but wouldn't a good voucher system from

HUD help?

[Gormy Cuss]

22. No, because voucher payments are set too low for rents in newly gentrified areas.

They could help displaced tenants find acceptable housing elsewhere provided there are cheaper neighborhoods nearby and that there are sufficient rentals participating in the Sec. 8 program.

[jwirr]

23. Okay. I know that my son in law has a several rental

apartments that voucher users have rented in the past but our area is not one of the areas that no ordinary family can afford to live in.

[daredtowork]

53. HUD just lowered the value of vouchers in the Bay Area

Where we've had the most spectacular rent spikes in the country. HUD is "considering" a recalculaton. However, I suspect this is a quiet agenda to shift the people who aren't "contributing to productivity" away from the "in demand" areas.

The Section 8 waitlist, which only takes a fraction of applicants, only opens up once in a blue moon. The vouchers are being sucked up into Project-based Development. However, people kept using their "portable Section 8" to move to cities where quality of life was higher, services more accessible, and opportunities were possible. The only way they could be fended off was by making the vouchers unusable.

[jwirr]

55. Okay, that is very interesting. In other words HUD is just

fine with the displacement of whole communities in order to create housing that is not affordable to most people.

Obviously HUD has changed its goals.

[geek tragedy]

4. threshold question is whether it should be stopped in all cases.

drug dealers and shootings and blight and decay are usually not worth preserving.

the key is promoting middle class ownership. renting communities are much more likely to get wiped out by gentrification.

[GreatGazoo]

6. another question would be whether we can stop the worst effects of gentrification

while enjoying the better effects -- lose the street dealer, keep the neighborhood greasy spoon

[geek tragedy]

9. it can be delayed, but once the drug dealer goes, the chain of events begins

it can be very specific to locations--in NYC neighborhoods that aren't very close to subway lines are probably not in a lot of danger from gentrification.

[Hortensis]

24. It's worth noting that G doesn't just "happen." Almost always investors

have targeted an area as advantaged in some way or ways that make it ripe for conversion to profits.

[geek tragedy]

27. and that's the thing, there's organic revitilization which is the more benign form

of gentrification--as an area gets safer and more pleasant, yes higher income white people will start moving in, which means soon there will be more stuff that white people like such as cutesy little coffee shops.

But, then there's the turbo-gentrification that's driven not by improvement, but by those looking to exploit the neighborhood and its residents. Neighborhoods don't evolve, they're transformed via outside interests.

And often times, city governments are captured by real estate interests and encourage the latter kind of changeover.

[Gormy Cuss]

43. "Middle class ownership" is gentrification in low income neighborhoods.

So your key is still deficient in terms of addressing displacement when communities are pushed out by gentrification. It's shocking to many middle class people that community is a valuable commodity even in areas deemed blighted by urban planners who mostly grew up in comfortable suburbia.

City neighborhoods are dynamic but when planning doesn't account for the effects of displacing lower income, established communities the metamorphosis ends up reducing racial/ethnic and economic diversity. That's not a good direction for a vibrant city.

[geek tragedy]

44. So maybe we should put walls around these neighborhoods, ban banks

from lending inside them, ban white and middle class people from moving into them, penalize those who would move out, and go back to the ghetto model of urban planning from the 1950s, which is what produced these communities in the first place.

Hooray for concentrations of urban poverty!

Who knew that Brownsville and Cabrini Green were the model we should be following all along?

We don't need those icky middle class people who own their own homes and take care of them--we have slum lords!

[Gormy Cuss]

45. No, that would be as feckless as ignoring the problems caused by gentrification.

There was never a "ghetto model of urban planning" in this country. The time period you reference was when a lot of low cost housing was developed to drive a strong middle class among GIs after WWII and it worked.

Cabrini-Green (which was built starting during the Depression) was one of many high density, mixed income development meant to provide better housing than the existing stock and it did do so for a decade or so. Then the city neglected it, coincidentally enough at about the same time it became a predominantly low income, African-American community. The same story was repeated in other cities around the country when the pre- and postwar high density, mixed income communities lost their moderate and middle income tenants to the suburbs.

[geek tragedy]

46. redlining certainly did play a role in depressing housing prices in black communities

how many "high density, mixed income" rental communities turned out to be success stories, vs the ones that followed a death spiral of middle class flight and concentration of poverty?

improving uban neighborhoods--increasing safety, improving services--will inevitably mean some renters will get displaced. There is no way around that. Better place to live means more people will want to live there, which means rents go up. construction happens, etc etc.

Cities should try to harness that process to (a) slow down its disruptive effect and (b) make sure that its benefits flow to residents instead of investors.

But, it can't and shouldn't be prevented. White flight and redlining caused a lot of these problems--we shouldn't be in the business of perpetuating that legacy.

[Gormy Cuss]

51. They worked until other policies undermined them

and in recent years some housing policies have sought to bring back mixed income communities. Bear in mind that such communities aren't intended to be very low income to high income mixes but rather places with mix of incomes from 80% of the median to very low income.


No doubt redlining enhanced "white flight" but it's been against the law for decades. I agree that cities should try to mitigate the disruptions caused by gentrification -- and that probably includes ensuring that the displacement doesn't turn the city into an exclusive upper income ghetto, no only because of the social value of diversity but because of practical concerns like decreased local worker pools and increased traffic as some of those former city people are now commuting long distances by car. Witness San Francisco, where there were about 95K African-American residents in the 1970s and less than 60K now; where the vibrant Latino immigrant area is turning into a tech worker gulch even more rapidly. One of the problems in San Francisco is that the city has been slow to embrace higher density housing so when more money comes in, lower income residents have nowhere to go except far outside of the city.

[hifiguy]

47. Agreed.

Northeast Minneapolis was slowly decaying in the 1990s as the Finnish, Swedish, Czech and Polish grandpas and grandmas who raised their boomer kids (who moved to the burbs) began dying off, became snowbirds or went into seniors housing.

Gay guys, especially gay couples, were the "pioneers" who started buying and renovating the old houses - as opposed to tearing them down - and the neighborhood was transformed over the course of a decade. The big commercial developers were largely kept out, to the best of my knowledge, and the neighborhood has very much retained its cool and funky character while going upscale, in terms of the housing stock. Nobody was hustling the old folks out or trying to swindle them when they sold out.

That was a textbook story of what you very rightly call "organic gentrification", gt.

[geek tragedy]

48. My brother lives in Nordeast.

It had a rough patch there during and after the financial crisis--lots of foreclosure/etc signs out.

I think it was spared partly because it was never the trendy place for the yuppies, who tend to prefer lake homes either in the city itself or out in Minnetonka etc.

There's a wide variety of housing stock there, which certainly helped it weather a few storms.

[hifiguy]

49. I think you are very correct.

It was "trendy" but only to singles and childless couples. The yuppie types all went to Eden Prairie and places like it because of the suburban public schools. No way would those types be letting their kids go to the Mpls public schools, and Breck and Blake are excruciatingly expensive alternatives.

[geek tragedy]

50. nordeast schools are pretty good, apparently.

there are public schools that aren't so great, of course . . .

[Nye Bevan]

7. Don't try to stop it.

But force developers to include some low and moderate income housing as a condition of building new developments. And ensure that laws preventing landlords from harrassing tenants to move out are followed.

[backscatter712]

8. That's the thing.

It's not a bad thing to see a neighborhood that was impoverished become no longer impoverished.

But we want to make sure that the people who live there benefit from the rise in the neighborhood's economy.

So yeah, I'd say that low-income housing, and housing for vulnerable populations, be they minorities, or seniors on fixed incomes, needs to be put in place along with the new development. Otherwise, these folks get displaced, end up living in some other poor neighborhood.

[geardaddy]

11. Agreed.

The problem with most gentrification is that providing mixed income housing isn't attractive to the developers unless the city mandates that it happen.

[GummyBearz]

28. yea, even when the city mandates it there are questions on how to do it

There is a sky rise planned to go into my downtown area, the builder agreed to the number of low income units, but the city wanted them distributed equally (including the penthouse units) in the building... the situation can get muddy I guess.

[brooklynite]

10. Should it be?

I'm not belittling the economic impact on lower income residents; I'm observing (as an Urban Planner) that cities are dynamic; they're always changing. You can't "lock in" the economic status of a neighborhood, nor would you want to (do you want a permanent slum?).
Case in point: my neighborhood was upper middle class in the 1880s. In the 1930s it was low income with rooming houses (and brothels); my house had been abandoned and boarded up, and was converted into apartments. Today it's upper income.

[Gormy Cuss]

26. It should be to the extent that it displaces low income communities

without regard for whether there are reasonable substitutes for tenants and owners. Gentrification contributes to homelessness (particularly for unsubsidized renters) and to economic instability for lowest income owners because their taxes skyrocket as the neighborhood gentrifies and too often selling doesn't leave them with enough to qualify for purchase elsewhere.

The core issue is not that the neighborhood is changing. It's that the current residents always seem to draw the short straw.

[Throd]

12. I don't think it is necessarily something that should be stopped.

As someone who is often in San Francisco, I have seen the good and bad of gentrification.

[kelliekat44]

13. Good post. nt

[hunter]

14. Kill it all past step one.

Everything goes to shit at step 2, and the neighborhood goes entirely to shit at step 3 as more money comes in from outside "investors."

Past a certain point money ruins everything.

I grew up in a place that is now a big money shit-hole where the most boring white bread people in the U.S.A. live, a conformist corporate consumer utopia with a very low crime rate, and a patchwork of homeowner associations ruled by petty tyrants whose only concern is "property values."

Economic "productivity" and "development" as we define them today are a direct measure of the damage we are doing to the natural environment of the earth and our own human spirit.

The economy we have today is not sustainable. We can abandon it on our own human terms, or we can wait for Nature to deal with us as she has dealt with all innovative exponentially growing lifeforms for billions of years now; with massive die-offs, possibly extinction.

The wealthy, which includes most of us posting here, tend to think money will insulate them from any sort of natural catastrophes. But it will be the poor who carry on, for no other reason than there are so many of them.

[geek tragedy]

25. Killing it at step 1 would mean forcing banks to redline minority and poor neighborhoods.

It's very easy to wax nostalgic about the good old days before corn fed transplants come in and ruin everything, but folks in those neighorhoods don't want the shittiness preserved.

And, the only way to prevent gentrification is to make a place undesireable to live. So, if we want to just accept that poor people will have to live in shithole neighborhoods with high crime, blight, and poor services, by all means kill it at step 1.

[hunter]

29. Nope you are wrong.

Full reserve maybe "socialist" banking systems would solve this problem.

Pure grants funded by taxes on the uber-wealthy and lowest interest rate government loans to the people living NOW in a community.

Ask them what they need and make it so.

[geek tragedy]

30. So, just back up a few dump trucks full of money and problem solved? nt

[hunter]

32. Yep. Money requires little more than banking laws, taxes, and a printing press.

It's not "natural" in any way.

[geek tragedy]

33. Okay, so all we need to do is pass a law banning poverty. Seems easy enough nt

[hunter]

35. It is easy enough.

[geek tragedy]

36. which is why poverty doesn't exist outside the US? nt

[hunter]

38. No.

Our current definition of money "bank" blows burning chunks out of every orifice.

Bitter earwax, eye crust, boogers, sticky abrasive dry dicks, cling-on-butt-crunchies, tampon-blood-clots, and everything else. Not things to share. Like my wild half decade human eyebrows or nose hairs.

[GreatGazoo]

41. There is a difference between what various groups consider "undesireable to live"

which ties in to the phases. The "pioneers" leave at some point because what attracted them (edginess, value and unique character) is no longer there. Phase 4 and 5 are just about money, not how desirable it is to live there (because the new owners don't). Having an inhuman institution for a landlord is undesirable for almost anyone.

There is a neighborhood on the east end of Williamsburg Brooklyn which was almost all Italian immigrants -- no drugs, low crime, reasonable rents. When you go into a store the person behind the counter owns the store. Butchers cut meat to order and the shop is buzzing with neighbors talking. That isn't "shittiness", that is community. They have hung together even as gentrification rages. On Metropolitan Avenue it is typical for three to five 20-somethings to split 2 bedroom apts at $2600/month but the interior blocks, 200 feet away, are almost all owner occupied by the 2nd or 3rd generation that has lived there.

[geek tragedy]

42. as I said in another post in this thread, the key is promoting middle class ownership

Where it exists, it's great and slows down the pace of gentrification--doesn't stop it completely (see Carroll Gardens for an example) but it slows it down and makes it manageable.

That area's gentrification is also curbed by less than comprehensive subway service.

The problem is what to do where the community is almost all renters and where prices are low because no one lives there unless they can't afford anywhere else.

[Matariki]

15. As an artist, I know this formula *way* too well

having been repeatedly used for phase 1

[hunter]

31. Yep. My parents are artists.

They went into "Fuck it All" mode and abandoned this U.S.A. society when they retired. They live in a rain forest drinking and bathing in water that falls on their roof and buying their food at the farmer's markets.

But still, a life made easier for them by good pensions and Social Security.

My own life is a little more complicated, I have no pensions, but I will live out my life somewhat respectable, or decaying homeless, best I'm able.

I've lived off modern meds, in my broken non-running car in a church parking lot, off the streets where the police couldn't harass me.

I can sail away or fade to white anytime.

[Bluenorthwest]

16. The speculators and developers arriving on the scene is the return of the predators, original street

predator class displaced by Pioneers, interim of actual community. Then the upgraded predators come in and basically the place is back to pre-Pioneer dynamics on a grander scale. The new predators don't loiter on the street corners they own the street corners and convert them to condos.

[Recursion]

17. Urban neighborhoods change. That's just what they do.

Nostalgia is pretty much always wrong.

Here's an amazing history of the block of Greene St. between Prince and Houston, from 1642 to today.

http://www.greenestreet.nyc

There is no way to stop churn and displacement in neighborhoods. Trying to stop it is a fool's errand.

Neighborhoods will change, over and over and over again. The rich and the poor chase each other from the city to the suburbs and back, over and over and over again. This has happened already 3 times in New York's history. It's going to keep happening.

[starroute]

18. It's not just about individual neighborhoods -- it's whole cities

In the major cities, there are fewer and fewer affordable neighborhoods. The core areas of places like New York and London are held by the ultra-wealthy who may not even live there. The upper middle class is pushed outwards to gentrify former slums. And the poor can't afford to live in the city at all. They get dumped in decaying inner suburbs where there is a shortage of both jobs and public transportation.

So this isn't just about *your* neighborhood and whether the changes are for better or worse. It's about the nation as a whole and where we live and how we live -- and who has access to opportunities.

[jwirr]

21. This is the same issue that we are talking about when people

tell us they cannot find affordable housing in our biggest cities.

[MohRokTah]

20. It should not be stopped.

It simply is, and always has been. It's how cities function.

[hunter]

34. You thin that's a good thing?

Maybe cities shouldn't function that way...

[MohRokTah]

37. Yes, I do.

Gentrification provides a private means for ceasing urban blight and decay.

I've got no problem with it.

[hunter]

56. "Blight" in the U.S.A. has traditionally been, and still is, extremely racist in its application.

Usually in the U.S.A. it's where the lower income black people are, or in California, where the lower income Hispanic people are.

Although overt "redlining" is illegal now, most affluent "white" communities are uncomfortable with others. One sees this demonstrated again and again, even here on DU.

As a community DU can be as hostile toward non-white or LGBT members as any white, affluent, and supposedly "liberal" U.S. community.

[mountain grammy]

39. City neighborhoods are a living, breathing dynamic

always changing.. In 1995, we sold our 900 sq ft 2 bedroom bungalow in Denver for $70,00. The same house, with a few improvements, sold for $375,000 last year. Denver is hot and rents are ridiculous.

[taught_me_patience]

40. Gentrification is better than nothing

Without even step one, we'd just have a bunch of abandoned buildings.

[Warpy]

54. I was usually Phase One

when working artists were attracted to an area that looked bombed out, buildings sold in the expectation they'd be torn down, large industrial sites nearby abandoned for years. Artists made the apartments habitable and chopped the industrial buildings into lofts. Because the rent was next to nothing, people who gave up setting the world ablaze with their artistic talent would open quirky bookstores, cafes, restaurants and vintage clothing places. Alas, this is what attracted the second wave, yuppie hipsters who were trying to hang onto lost youth by living in "hip" areas. And that's when I'd get priced out. Banks and real estate people only started to notice when the hipsters showed up and waved money in their faces.

If there was a way to encourage the hipsters to visit on the weekend but live elsewhere, that would be a good place to stop the process.