A new twist on NIMBYism that may be threatening cities

[Obadno]

Article about this from the Financial times today:

Pro Gentirfication

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Gentrification is more beneficial for the original residents of a neighbourhood than previously thought, according to a new study of fast-improving city neighbourhoods across the US.

Instead the trend increases college attendance and reduces poverty exposure of the many who stay, including the most disadvantaged, and does not make the leavers worse off, a report published on Tuesday by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia found.

The Philadelphia Fed looked at the 100 most populous metro areas in the US and concluded that “gentrification creates some important benefits for original resident adults and children and few observable harms”.

High-income and college-educated people in the US have increasingly chosen to live in central urban neighbourhoods over the past two decades, reversing decades of urban decline. This process of gentrification has until now been widely thought to be associated with the displacement of original residents and a worsening of their conditions.

However the Philadelphia Fed study, which the regional central bank said was the first comprehensive national look at how gentrification affects a broad set of outcomes for adults and children, found that many less-educated adults remain in gentrifying neighbourhoods and benefit from declining poverty exposure and increasing house values.

Those who leave tend to go to areas with similar labour market income or commuting conditions and “do not end up in worse neighbourhoods or with worse labour market outcomes”, the report’s authors Quentin Brummet and Davin Reed found.

The process of gentrification reduces children’s exposure to poverty and they gain more experience of better education and employment conditions, “all of which have been shown to be correlated with greater economic opportunity”, according to Mr Brummet and Mr Reed.

Children in less-educated households in gentrifying areas are more likely to attend and complete college, the researchers found; they suggested that was because “the increased exposure to college-educated adults could provide role models, information or networks”.

The findings have clear policy implications, the researchers concluded.

Worries that gentrification will harm existing residents have fuelled support for expensive policies like rent control and been cited as an obstacle to building more housing. But the report suggested that local authorities in urban areas should focus on developing gentrifying areas while helping residents to stay.

“Increasing housing supply in high-demand urban areas could increase the opportunity benefits [and] reduce outmigration pressure,” the report said.

In particular the researchers championed policies that aim to increase disadvantaged children’s exposure to better local areas, such as subsidies to help their families stay in improving neighbourhoods; this would increase their chances of better education and employment outcome, the researchers said.