Gentrification

Gentrification

Gentrification is a process that affects low income communities located within urban cities all over the world. In recent years, gentrification has been affecting communities in Los Angeles and is forcing people of color out of their homes. In many cases, individuals are being involuntarily removed from places they have called home for a majority of their lives in order for property owners to rent their spaces to more “affluent” residents. 

Research:

According to Mike Maciag gentrification is a process where “ A new class of more affluent residents is moving into once underinvested and predominantly-poor communities. Development has followed, typically accompanied by sharp increases in housing prices that can displace a neighborhood’s longtime residents.” 

Research and statistics made by Governing, suggest that they there is a rapid increase in neighborhoods experiencing gentrification in recent times. Their findings suggest that around 20 percent of neighborhoods with lower income/home value have experienced gentrification since 2000. In the 1990s this number was only 9 percent. 

Maciag further suggests reasons as to why gentrification is accelerating in the United States. According to his findings, the number of Americans pursing urban lifestyles plays a roll in the growth of gentrification. The gentrification rate was 20 percent for the period following the 200 census. This was more than double the rate for the 1990s. 

Maciag also suggests that there are certain characteristics that are shared between cities that are experiencing gentrification. These neighborhoods recorded population increases and became whiter by 4.3 percent. In contrast, low-income neighborhoods that did not experience gentrification showed slight population losses and a growing concentration of minorities. 

A problem that often arises with gentrification is the failure for individuals to acknowledge that it is occurring. According to Allen J. Scott, many people see the rapid removal of low-income individuals as voluntary departure. Often times city councils promote property upgrading which spreads misconceptions of the affects it would have on community members. Spreading awareness of the causes of gentrification is important to communities who are experiencing signs of it. 

Personal:

Gentrification is something that is affecting my neighborhood and the surrounding neighborhoods that I grew up in. Specifically, I have witnessed the rapid changes of the neighborhood I went to school and spent much of my free time in, Highland Park, CA. Within the laster few years the presence of white middle class individuals has increased while the Latino population is rapidly declining. The cost of living has forced many of my friends to relocate to areas out of Los Angeles, which is the case for many others alike. Many of the family-owned businesses that I frequented as a child are no longer around and have been replaced with white-owned eateries and shops. Gentrification is especially alarming today because it is making its way into my neighborhood of Lincoln Heights. My family has lived in Lincoln Heights for 3 generations and we are all witnessing the signs that gentrification is starting to affect our home. I believe it is important to shed light on this issue by informing my community which is slowly falling victim to this process. I hope to inform those around me so we can come together to come up with ways to protect the many families and business in our neighborhood. 

The Community:

Niomi

Becky

Jenny

“Gentrification” a poem by Sherman Alexie

Let us remember the wasps
That hibernated in the walls
Of the house next door. Its walls
Bulged with twenty pounds of wasps


And nest, twenty pounds of black
Knots and buzzing fists. We slept
Unaware that the wasps slept
So near us. We slept in black


Comfort, wrapped in cocoons,
While death’s familiars swarmed
Unto themselves, but could have swarmed
Unto us. Do not trust cocoons.


That’s the lesson of this poem.
Or this: Luck is beautiful
So let us praise our beautiful
White neighbor. Let us write poems


For she who found that wasp nest
While remodeling this wreck.
But let us remember that wreck
Was, for five decades, the nest


For a black man and his father.
Both men were sick and neglected,
So they knew how to neglect.
But then death stopped for the father


And cruelly left behind the son,
Whose siblings quickly sold the house
Because it was only a house.
For months, that drunk and displaced son


Appeared on our street like a ghost.
Distraught, he sat in his car and wept
Because nobody else had wept
Enough for his father, whose ghost


Took the form of ten thousand wasps.
That’s the lesson of this poem:
Grief is dangerous and unpredictable
As a twenty-pound nest of wasps.
Or this: Houses are haunted
Not by the dead. So let us pray
For the living. Let us pray
For the wasps and sons who haunt us.

References:

Maciag, Mike. “Gentrification in America Report.” Governing Magazine: State and Local Government News for America's Leaders, 2015

Scott, Allen J. “Residential Adjustment and Gentrification in Los Angeles, 2000–2015: Theoretical Arguments and Empirical Evidence.” Urban Geography, 2018, pp. 1–23.