In the articles, “New-Build Gentrification and the Everyday Displacement of Polish Immigrant Tenants in Greenpoint, Brooklyn,” by Filip Stabrowski, “The Right to Stay Put, Revisited: Gentrification and Resistance to Displacement in New York City,” by Kathe Newman and Elvin K. Wyly and “Does Gentrification Harm the Poor?,” by Jacob L. Vigdor, the authors share a central theme of attempting to understand the notion of displacement of low-income people due to gentrification in their neighborhoods. Stabrowski, Newman, and Wyly argue that displacement occurs in neighborhoods that have undergone development and rezoning, forcing out long-term residents and leaving others desolate. Stabrowski narrates the story of gentrification that occurred Greenpoint where Polish immigrants, who immigrated during the twentieth century, were unable to stay in the neighborhood after the rezoning and construction of the Waterfront in 2005. These immigrants had to leave their enclave and well-established community due to poor housing conditions, rent overcharge, refusal to renew their leases, the “roommate law,” and verbal harassment. Stabrowski states the events that occurred are a form of “everyday displacement,” which is “the lived experience of ongoing loss- of the security, agency, and freedom to ‘make place'” (Stabrowksi, 796). He describes this to be the immigrants’ exclusion from a neighborhood they feel entitled to. Similarly, Newman and Wyly wanted a way to quantify this problem, but they acknowledge that it was fairly difficult to find people that were displaced specifically for reasons that stem from gentrification. However, their analysis followed residents that had relocated for three specific reasons, expensive residence/difficulty paying rent, landlord harassment, or private action. They were able to confirm that this displacement occurs at a high enough value to be measured as significant. They followed the displacers from Manhattan to the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Queens, rarely ever in the other direction. They also argue that this gentrification entices the poorer residents just as much as it does to outsiders and the benefits would be tremendous if these residents could remain the neighborhood without the additional stress.
On the other hand, Vidgor plays devil’s advocate in this discussion and instead, argues that there are aspects of gentrification that benefit the poor residents that stay in the neighborhood. He criticizes the research done by previous scholars, like Newman and Wyly, for their lack of considerations that may be skewing their data. Throughout his piece, Vigdor analyses the benefits and detriments that poor households would face by comparing the costs of relocation, the loss of “character” in a neighborhood, and a possible decrease in the standard of living without relocation. He attributes gentrification to be a consequence of the income disparities within cities and states redistributive policies will always help some and harm others when this disparity is far too great. The main (points) of his argument include that the research neglects to understand the underlying cause of gentrification, if “revitalization” increases the amount poor households will pay, or if housing costs increase well beyond their ability to pay.
While these authors work to give a holistic view of gentrification within cities, I recently found the website for the Displacement Alert Project (DAP) Map that I think would help quantify this problem and improve the tracking of displaced residents. This would, therefore, provide data Vidgor criticizes previous research for lacking and possibly further support Stabrowski, Newman, and Wyly’s arguments. The Displacement Alert Project was created by the Association for Neighborhood and Housing Development (ANHD) in 2016 in order to map residential buildings that could cause displacement due to an increase in rent. The map uses information from different public databases, such as the Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD), Department of Buildings (DOB), Department of Finance’s Automated City Register Information System and Property Tax Bills, and the CUNY Graduate Center’s Open Accessible Space Information System. The DAP map categorizes residential properties under several risk indicators including, new sales of residential buildings, 5 or more complaints filed by the HPD, 10 or more violations issued by the HPD, 2 or more complaints filed by the DOB, and new DOB construction permits. If a property falls under two of these indicators for a month, the map displays a yellow color on the property. Orange properties share three of these risk indicators and red properties have four or more. This map will prove to be useful in order for officials to identify trends of displacement and strive towards keeping the remaining affordable housing. Mireya Navarro, the author of a New York Times article on the DAP map, shares that rent-stabilized buildings also face problems of being too old and rarely renovated until new tenants replace the previous residents and basically pay for these renovations through the increase in their rent. The DAP map’s creators goal is for the map to “be a strategic tool for tenant organizing and neighborhood and city-wide housing advocacy […] [and demystify] the information used to target neighborhoods for gentrification, often at the expense of a community’s long-term residents” (Smith, para. 4). Therefore, this tool could drastically improve how scholars understand gentrification and displacement and can be represented in their future research. In turn, public policy can be shifted to ensure that rent-stabilized buildings and affordable housing are not being jeopardized.
Sources:
Stabrowski, F. (2014). New‐Build Gentrification and the Everyday Displacement of Polish Immigrant Tenants in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Antipode, 46(3), 794-815.
Newman, K., & Wyly, E. K. (2006). The right to stay put, revisited: gentrification and resistance to displacement in New York City. Urban Studies, 43(1), 23-57.
Vigdor, J. L., Massey, D. S., & Rivlin, A. M. (2002). Does gentrification harm the poor?[with Comments]. Brookings-Wharton papers on urban affairs, 133-182.
