What is Gentrification and its Impact on Affordable Housing

Gentrification, as a somewhat complex and often contentious phenomenon it has great social, economic and cultural repercussions in cities.

Urban renewal has become a contentious issue in many cities, as long time residents find that their neighborhoods are changing around them and new investment drives up the cost of living.

It is therefore the twin dovetailing forces of property market-driven gentrification and a housing strategy premised upon affordable living that conspire towards an inclusive development landscape.

Here is a deep dive on what gentrification is, how it effects communities and the role of affordable housing in moderating its benefits.

Understanding Gentrification

Gentrification is a process of neighborhood change that involves the influx of higher-income residents and businesses and reinvestment in distressed properties, which can catalyze further new development, revitalizing polluting industrial sites.

You can also witness this transformation with renovated buildings, trendy cafes or boutiques that move in and price of land as well.

Gentrification can lead to positive developments like lower crime rates, better public works and infrastructure, while returning capital investments many times over in terms of taxes paid by those on the flip side who are priced out.

This usually take place when a developer, investor or upper earner sees an opportunity to redevelop and make money on lower income area.

But as the desirability of location increases, so does property prices and with it more affluent residents.

The downside of all this is that property values can sometimes increase to the extent they displace lower income residents either because rents escalates beyond their means or rental units convert into higher-valued properties.

The Negative Impacts of Gentrification on Communities

Gentrification can lead to investment and improvements in tired urban areas, but typically at a heavy price for low-income residents.

These are the most significant negative effects.

1. Changes to a Neighborhoods Character and Culture:

Gentrification can additionally change the face of cultural attributes which characterize an entire neighborhood, as new businesses establish themselves, replacing sense normative behaviors between neighbors.

Local businesses that are established parts of their neighborhood might move out because they can no longer afford to operate there or new, more upscale places open.

This shift can be a major threat to cultural diversity.

2. Gentrification Displacing Long-Term Residents:

The most important flaw in gentrification is how poor families and people have been displaced.

With rents rising and affordable housing disappearing, many longtime residents are being pushed out of their original communities into other areas further afield.

This stasis can result in the neighborhood losing their social networks, means of access to services and its cultural identity.

3. The higher cost of living:

With property values and rents rising, you can expect increases in the costs associated with food, transit activities or services.

However, the increasing cost of living can also add to challenges for such a family that may be able to remain in their neighborhood.

Such fiscal burden can amount to a series of financial vulnerabilities among the most marginalized communities.

How Affordable Housing Can Mitigate the Effects of Gentrification

One of the big ways to mitigate or solve gentrification is affordable housing.

Supports affordable housing to remain available for low and moderate-income residents so that cities align their goals of growth with being inclusive by age, income, and race.

Other ways that affordable housing can assist:

1. Retaining Community Diversity:

Efforts to provide affordable housing, such as rent control and subsidized or community land trusts, preserve room for lower-income residents in a neighborhood even after real estate values increase.

This view is held because it protects the social fabric of their neighborhood and enables them to co-live with residents from a variety of income levels and cultural backgrounds.

This helps to ensure the area keeps its mixed neighbourhood enabling all the additions that come with it, not only culturally but economically too.

2. Stabilizing Rents and Property Prices:

Ensuring enough affordable housing stock (e.g. via inclusionary zoning where certain percentages of new developments are required to contain an amount of units specifically for low- or moderate-income individuals) can help stabilize both rents and property prices.

That limits the wholesale shoot-up in housing costs, to which enables traditional residents of these neighborhoods still be able to afford living there.

Such policies are an invitation for cities to grow strategically with measures that complement rather than exclusively submit the drivers of market-led development.

3. Encouraging Balanced Development:

One of the key ways that affordable housing can be leveraged to benefit all residents in a community is by ensuring that not only is an investment being made (to revitalize urban areas for example) it benefits all people across socio-economic divides.

In addition, when cities invest in affordable housing projects along with market-rate development — which helps fund the former through a mix of cross-subsidization (within individual developments) and linkage fees or impact taxes imposed on new private construction elsewhere — they can open the door for low-income residents to enjoy many improvements accompanying gentrification.

An equitable development approach to address the divide between new investment and existing community needs is crucial.

Conclusion

Gentrification as an Urban and Development Planner, I genuinely believe that gentrification is somewhat of a double-edged sword; it offers opportunities to revive social housing & construction in urban downtown environments often utilized by low-income residents.

Although it can bring better infrastructure and products into those urban areas, for a lot of the existing community members who have been living there for ages, it often involves forcing them to move out due to high housing costs or changing society.

It is also the most cost-effective way cities can shield their vulnerable citizens from displacement in an era of gentrification and ensure more inclusive growth.

Affordable housing helps to maintain diversity in a community, clamps down on escalating rents and promotes equity-oriented urban renewal that serves all residents—not just the most affluent new arrivals.

In a rapidly urbanizing world, it will be crucial to build affordable housing seamlessly into city planning in order to create economically sustainable and diverse communities.

Also read: An Anatomy of Gentrification Processes