The Right to Stay Put, Revisited: Gentrification and Resistance to Displacement in New York City
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by Kathe Newman and Elvin K. Wyly
Summary. Displacement has been at the centre of heated analytical and political debates over gentrification and urban change for almost 40 years. A new generation of quantitative research has provided new evidence of the limited (and sometimes counter-intuitive) extent of displacement, supporting broader theoretical and political arguments favouring mixed-income redevelopment and other forms of gentrification. This paper offers a critical challenge to this interpretation, drawing on evidence from a mixed-methods study of gentrification and displacement in New York City. Quantitative analysis of the New York City Housing and Vacancy Survey indicates that displacement is a limited yet crucial indicator of the deepening class polarisation of urban housing markets; moreover, the main buffers against gentrification- induced displacement of the poor (public housing and rent regulation) are precisely those kinds of market interventions that are being challenged by advocates of gentrification and dismantled by policy-makers. Qualitative analysis based on interviews with community organisers and residents documents the continued political salience of displacement and reveals an increasingly sophisticated and creative array of methods used to resist displacement in a policy climate emphasising selective deregulation and market-oriented social policy.
In this paper, we report on a mixed-methods study of gentrification, displacement and low-income renters’ survival strategies in New York City between the early 1990s and 2003. We begin from the premise that one answer to Smith’s poignant question involves resistance: the powerful Real Estate Board felt compelled to defend its interests in the face of militant mobilisation drawing inspi- ration from the legal and political principles established in Chester Hartman’s famous essay “The Right to Stay Put” (Hartman, 1984/2002; see also Mitchell, 2003; Imbros- cio, 2004). After 20 years of intense gentrifi- cation and sweeping public policy changes, many of the people who would mobilise to resist displacement have themselves been dis- placed.
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We undertook a mixed-method evaluation of displacement in New York City to draw on the partial and selective strengths of: exten- sive, quantitative measurement of secondary datasets; and, intensive, qualitative under- standing of the multifaceted experiences of residents, community organisers and other individuals living and working in gentrifying neighbourhoods. First, we modify the econo- metric methods used by Freeman and Braconi, and we present an alternative view of displacement from the same dataset they used (the New York City Housing and Vacancy Survey, conducted every three years in order to implement the City’s rent regulation statutes). We hypothesise that dis- placement pressures worsened as the economy boomed and housing markets tigh- tened in the late 1990s; we also hypothesise that, as gentrification intensified, displaced renters regardless of whether they were directly forced out of gentrifying neighbour- hoods or moved for other reasons, have been forced to look farther away from the cores of housing market competition to find available affordable units. Secondly, we undertook a series of field investigations and interviews to understand the context for the quantitative results and to gain insight into the ways that individuals, organisers and neighbourhoods understand and resist displacement pressures.
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Measuring and Modelling Displacement
Our empirical analysis begins with a quanti- tative evaluation of displacement in New York City and its changes over the past decade. As did Freeman and Braconi (2004, 2002a, 2002b), we rely on the New York City Housing and Vacancy Survey (US Bureau of the Census, 2003), which provides information on a longitudinal sample of approximately 18 000 housing units every 3 years. The sample frame is augmented to account for additions and alterations to the housing stock. Households in occupied units are asked a wide range of questions pertaining to demographic characteristics, employment, housing conditions and mobility. One ques- tion asks residents who recently moved into the unit to choose the primary reason (from a list of more than 30 options) for their reloca- tion. Freeman and Braconi (2004, 2002b) examined renter households and defined as displaced those who chose any of three reasons: wanted a less expensive residence or had difficulty paying rent; moved because of landlord harassment; or, were displaced by private action (such as condo conversions, landlords taking over units for their own living space, etc.). Freeman and Braconi emphasise the many limitations of this measure: it may
overestimate displacement by including households who voluntarily move in search of cheaper living arrangements, but it under- estimates the problem by ignoring those who leave the city, fall into homelessness, or double-up with friends or relatives. Freeman and Braconi also provide a rationale for excluding evictions from the definition of displacement.4
We analysed the last five surveys—1991, 1993, 1996, 1999 and 2002—to identify all current renters who moved into their units since the previous survey.5 We excluded those who moved from another unit in the same building, as well as those moving from anywhere outside the city: thus our analysis is centred on the dynamics of local, intraurban mobility and sets aside the question of how gentrification is affected by newcomers to the city and those forced to leave it. The Census Bureau revised the NYCHVS sample frame several times, altering the correspond- ing weights for individual observations. Surveys from different years, therefore, are not strictly comparable and thus we must exercise extreme caution when evaluating small changes or differences over time.6 Nevertheless, the results provide a rare and valuable glimpse into the phenomenon (Table1).
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Not surprisingly, those living in lower-cost units are more likely to have been displaced compared with those able to afford high-rent apartments. Renters living in sub-standard units or in seriously overcrowded homes are more likely to have been displaced; those who are highly satisfied with the housing stock in their neighbourhood are less likely to have been displaced.
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Not surprisingly, renters moving from the Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens are less likely to have been displaced compared with similar movers leaving Man- hattan. Viewed another way, renters moving into Brooklyn and Queens are much more likely to have been displaced than otherwise identical renters moving into Manhattan. The odds that a new renter is a displacee are two and one half times higher in Brooklyn than in Manhattan, even after accounting for all demographic and housing circumstances. Geographical variations, even measured at a very crude scale, post the largest standardised coefficients for the entire model, meaning that they contribute the most to understanding the distinguishing features of displaced movers. There is also some evidence, although it is far from conclusive, that displacement has changed over time in ways that cannot be explained in terms of the characteristics of renters, homes and different parts of the city. Compared with the 1991 sample, recently moved renters surveyed in the 1996 panel were less likely to have been displaced (note the odds ratio of 0.76), while the situation worsened in subsequent years (to the 2002 odds ratio of 1.29).17
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By 1999, broad sections of Brooklyn and Queens serve as destinations for displa- cees. The 2002 panel seems to suggest a slight return to the spatial patterns of earlier years, with strong displacement effects in the Mott Haven, Hunts Point and Throgs Neck/ Co-op City sections of the Bronx. But the effects are even stronger among renters moving into areas all the way from Fort Greene to Flatbush in Brooklyn.
Overall, the quantitative analysis provides an essential overview of the magnitude of displacement across the city and changes in the process over the past 15 years. Direct displacement is involved in a relatively small proportion of moves within the city, but it cannot be dismissed or ignored: dis- placement affects 6 – 10 per cent of all rental moves within the city each year. For those displaced renters who are able to find new accommodations in the city, and who are not forced to double-up, our multivariate models suggest that they are looking farther afield in the outer boroughs to find affordable arrange- ments. As gentrification swept with renewed intensity across Manhattan through the 1990s, renters forced to seek homes elsewhere moved farther into Brooklyn and increasingly into Queens and the Bronx.
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We found that between 8300 and 11 600 households per year were displaced in New York City between 1989 and 2002, slightly lower than the total number identified in earlier estimates (Freeman and Braconi 2002a). However, our displacement rates are slightly higher, reaching between 6.6 and 9.9 per cent of all local moves among renter households. We expect that both figures underestimate actual displacement, perhaps substantially, because the NYCHVS does not include displaced households that left New York City, doubled up with other house- holds, became homeless, or entered the shelter system—all of which were identified as wide- spread practices in the field interviews. The dataset also misses households displaced by earlier rounds of gentrification and those that will not gain access to the now-gentrified neighbourhoods in the future.
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For decades, New York has sought to attract new middle-class residents and federal priorities echo these strategies. But the recent gentrification wave has fundamen- tally altered the development context in many formerly disinvested neighbourhoods. Focused on market-based solutions, the neo-liberal state and even some community- based developers, have neglected the housing needs of poorer residents. Inclusion- ary zoning, housing preservation and new construction can complement the market rate and high-end affordable housing development and rehabilitation well underway in these neighbourhoods. Community organisations, residents and organisers are strenuously working to ensure that affordable housing exists, but the urgency of the need has yet to reach policy-makers at city, state or federal levels.
US cities are at a critical turning-point and New York City, as a global city with a long history of gentrification, is facing these issues earlier than many other places. It is an instructive case that suggests the benefits of housing protections for low-income residents in gentrifying communities and the potential pitfalls of weakening these supports. The goal of home-ownership and revitalisation of mixed income/mixed race neighbourhoods will not produce the beneficial changes policy-makers seek if protections for low- income residents are not also included. Community actors and policy-makers have argued that gentrification is necessary to revitalise low-income neighbourhoods. But the context for redevelopment has changed. Gentrification is not a minor phenomenon that affects a few communities; it is evidence of vast urban restructuring. The recent wave of gentrification washed through the city with a speed and a force that few, if any, predicted. Low-income residents who manage to resist displacement may enjoy a few benefits from the changes brought by gentrification, but these bittersweet fruits are quickly rotting as the supports for low- income renters are steadily dismantled.
