Jacob L. Vigdor, in his essay “Does Gentrification Harm the Poor?” addresses the topic of whether gentrification disadvantages poor households, and offers two different possible explanations of the causes of these distributional effects on neighborhoods. One view holds that gentrification of urban neighborhoods causes the harm to the disadvantage households, while according to the other view, gentrification and its effects on these populations is merely a side-effect of other economic trends affecting these residents. If the original residents are being dislocated because they can no longer afford to live in their community, then gentrification is clearly the cause of their hardship. However, if changes to the neighborhood are taking place gradually and organically due to other factors, such as poorer residents moving to other neighborhoods for employment opportunities, or other economic factors, and more well-off residents are moving into the neighborhood in their absence, in that case gentrification might be merely the side-effect of changes that were taking place on their own.
Whatever the cause may be, however, we can’t ignore the fact that gentrification does largely impact the poor, and causes the disappearance of ethnically unique neighborhoods, while creating economic hardship for low-income residents. As Kathe Newman and Elvin K. Wyly point out in “The Right to Stay Put: Gentrification and Resistance to Displacement in New York City”, those who are forced to leave gentrifying neighborhoods are torn from their social networks, and must contend with a competitive housing market. They argue that all of the pressures of gentrification are enmeshed with the broader inequalities of class and race. And as Filip Stabrowski contends in “New-Build Gentrification and the Everyday Displacement of Polish Immigrant Tenants in Greenpoint, Brooklyn”, displacement causes not only economic hardship but also social and cultural dislocation.
- Any kind of redistributive policy will of necessity benefit some households while harming others; what can be done by policy makers to address these potential disparities?
- Newman and Wyly state that some proponents of gentrification argue that it can be can be done with little or no displacement. How might that be achieved?
