[Khantilever]

Originally Posted by Via Chicago

you honestly believe gentrification somehow solves poverty and segregation rather than sweeping it to another area that is in that moment less desirable to the gentry/capital? people can support economic growth that dosent also come at the expense of displacing the very people it is supposed to serve (i.e. current residents). gentrfication is literally the battle of the affluent against the poor. guess who wins that matchup everytime, and who's favor the odds are intentionally rigged? banks and other financial institutions are the primary causes and beneficiaries of gentrification. youre more interested in property rather than people, and at worst are conflating the two as the same thing.

Everyone can agree that there is a 'natural' tendency for neighborhoods to gravitate toward either one of two extremes--high or low income. But there are many mixed-income neighborhoods in transition, and the transition can last a very long time. And during that time, poor residents can enjoy the many benefits of richer neighborhoods--lower crime, better amenities--without initially paying the full cost.

There is a wealth of academic research coming to this conclusion. A long-established empirical finding is that there is very, very little evidence of 'displacement.' This is a counter-intuitive result, but makes sense when you consider how the vast majority of neighborhood change occurs through 'replacement' as residents come and go from neighborhoods over time. People tend to move over time as their income or family or job situations change. Gentrifying neighborhoods are characterized by lower-income residents being replaced--rather than displaced--by higher-income residents. https://www.nber.org/papers/w14036

In fact, the rate at which poor people leave gentrifying neighborhoods is *lower* than the rate at which they leave non-gentrifying neighborhoods. How do you reconcile this empirical fact with the poor being hurt by gentrification? https://www.researchgate.net/publica...y_in_the_1990s

There's a really nice working paper I saw at a recent conference which followed households over time, and found that the children of poor families living in gentrifying areas were significantly better off than those who didn't experience gentriifcation. https://www.nber.org/papers/w25809

^ Also, as an economist who has worked with Fed researchers and presented my own research there, I have to say they definitely are not biased or have some kind of agenda.