Affordable Housing & Gentrification
The Cities of Venice, IL, Madison, IL, and the Village of Brooklyn, IL, have recently begun undertaking community revitalization efforts, with affordable housing being a keystone issue. Located north of East St. Louis, the VMB communities comprise a population of approximately 5,737, based on estimates from the 2019 American Community Survey. Once thriving and bustling communities, VMB now faces a recent history of job loss, crumbling infrastructure, low incomes, and a lack of housing. The proximity of these cities to St. Louis and the Mississippi River waterfront positions them as ripe for urban renewal, community development, and investment. However, planning for housing must go hand in hand with infrastructure improvements to streets, sewers, road access, traffic planning, and utilities (Levy, 2017, p.222).
Affordable housing and gentrification are two concepts. Furthermore, that must be addressed in a complex balancing act. When there is an imbalance between urban renewal and investment and prioritization of current residents, it is often those residents who are historically disadvantaged that pay the greatest price. According to the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), affordable housing “is generally defined as housing in which the occupant is paying no more than 30 percent of gross income for housing costs, including utilities” (U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, 2011).