Deconstructing Gentrification

Summary
 Deconstructing Gentrification – by Todd Swanstrom
 On the Significance of Gentrification in Low-Demand Environments: A Reply to Swanstrom – by Jason Hackworth
 Don’t Let the Word “Gentrification” Drive Us Apart: A Rejoinder to Hackworth – by Todd Swanstrom

Deconstructing Gentrification – Todd Swanstrom

Gentrification is a highly contentious issue. Some see it as a positive process that can revitalize disinvested urban neighborhoods, enhance racial and economic diversity, and expand the local tax base. Others see it as an overwhelmingly negative process that not only physically displaces longtime poor and working-class residents but also erases their local cultural expressions and retail opportunities. In this article I do not take a stand for or against gentrification. Instead, I deconstruct the concept of gentrification in a way that acknowledges the partial truths in both positions, freeing up space for broader political coalitions and constructive public policies. [1]

The unitary concept of gentrification: turning the Chicago School inside out

The way we think about gentrification is rooted in the Chicago School of Human Ecology’s invasion/succession model of neighborhood change. For Chicago School thinkers like Robert Park and Ernest Burgess, as neighborhoods age, they go through a life cycle (Park and Burgess 1925). Immigrants and industrial workers congregate in the center of the metropolis where the oldest and cheapest housing is located. As their population swells, they invade the next ring of neighborhoods, causing stable working-class neighborhoods to succeed into disordered communities or even slums. Affluent households move away from obsolete housing, eventually ending up in spacious new homes on the suburban periphery. Homer Hoyt, an economist heavily influenced by the Chicago School, viewed neighborhood invasion and succession as a law-like process in which “[h]igh rent or high-grade neighborhoods must almost necessarily move outward toward the periphery of the city. The wealthy seldom reverse their steps and move backward into the obsolete houses which they are giving up” (Hoyt 1939, p. 116).

We now know that Hoyt was wrong. Nearly half a century ago the British sociologist Ruth Glass introduced the term “gentrification,” rooting her conception within the basic logic of the invasion-succession but turning the directional flow inside out.

One by one, many of the working class quarters of London have been invaded by the middle classes – upper and lower. Shabby modest mews and cottages […] have been taken over when their leases have expired and have become elegant expensive residences… Once this process of ‘gentrification’ starts in a district, it goes on rapidly until all or most of the original working class occupiers are displaced and the whole social character of the district is changed (Glass 1964, p. xviii; emphasis added).

Glass conceptualized gentrification as a process by which the gentry “invades” working class communities in a zero-sum war-like process that, once begun, leads rapidly and inexorably to the forcible displacement of the previous residents and total disruption of the “social character” of the neighborhood.

I call this concept of gentrification the unitary (or invariant) model of gentrification. The central idea is that the many different aspects of gentrification fit together into a coherent whole. Following this line of thinking, for example, Eric Clark argues that gentrification may manifest itself differently in different places—from global metropolises to Scandinavian fishing villages —but the essence of gentrification, the influx of capital that disrupts and displaces communities, is the same everywhere (Clark 2010). Without a careful textual analysis of thousands of scholarly books and articles, it is impossible for me to prove this assertion, but I believe the unitary conception is the dominant way that scholars, practitioners, and even the general public think about gentrification.

The world is messy: from a unitary to a contingent concept of gentrification

The unitary concept of gentrification is not wrong, just radically incomplete. It takes one kind of economically ascending neighborhood and projects it onto all such neighborhoods. I agree with Robert Beauregard who argues that gentrification must be understood as a complex and even chaotic process: “In fact, there can be no single theory of an invariant gentrification process… The emphasis, therefore, must be placed on contingency and complexity, set within the structural dimensions of advanced capitalism” (Beauregard 2010, p. 11).

The unitary concept of gentrification bundles the various aspects of gentrification into one coherent whole. For many critics of gentrification, displacement of longtime residents is analytically part of the meaning of gentrification. Analytically, however, it is possible to separate the core process of gentrification from its many possible effects and research the empirical evidence on their connection. The core idea of gentrification is the movement of higher income households and investment dollars into lower income older communities. Understood this way, gentrification is happening in cities around the world, but how it manifests itself on the ground varies across cities, neighborhoods, and historical periods.

The unitary concept of gentrification masks variation and can lead to a misunderstanding of the process. For example, the unitary conception projects that gentrification targets the poorest neighborhoods and neighborhoods of color. Neil Smith’s bid rent theory (1979) predicts that gentrification is most likely in areas that have been severely disinvested, where developers can profit from the gap between the land rent given its current use and the potential land rent if gentrified. In fact, however, the evidence is clear: the gentrification vector is not aimed at the poorest most disinvested black neighborhoods but more often at working class, often white, neighborhoods with an intact urban fabric. [2]

Another corollary of the unitary conception, the idea that once set in motion gentrification leads inexorably to the forcible displacement of nearly all the previous lower income residents, is also weakly supported by empirical research. Involuntary displacement is notoriously difficult to study. Demographic data showing that a census tract has lost low-income and black households does not prove that those households were forcibly displaced by rising rents from gentrification. Neighborhoods are always changing. Over one-fifth of renters move each year for all sorts of reasons, and they are often replaced by people who look different from them. Neighborhoods may change because of “replacement,” not “displacement.” This is not the place to summarize the voluminous literature on displacement, but most rigorous empirical research does not support the conclusion that gentrifying neighborhoods have significantly higher rates of involuntary displacement than neighborhoods that are not gentrifying. [3]

Does this mean that gentrification never causes displacement and never targets poor black neighborhoods? Of course not. In the hottest market metros, where the supply of “gentrifiable” neighborhoods is low, developers may be willing to take a chance on the most vulnerable black neighborhoods (Hyra 2017). Extreme cases of gentrification in superstar cities may capture much attention, but they do not reflect the diverse pathways of neighborhood change.

Looking at gentrification through the lens of the unitary conception can lead to political polarization and paralysis. If gentrification leads inevitably to the invaders displacing longtime residents, then any efforts to attract newcomers and investment into a neighborhood are suspect. Many efforts to improve communities, including community gardens, green infrastructure, LEED-certified buildings, hiking and biking trails, mixed-income housing, and vegan restaurants, have been attacked as stalking horses for gentrification. As Rick Jacobus, a prominent voice in progressive housing circles, put it in 2013: “The way most people talk about [gentrification] seems to create a black hole of self-doubt from which no realistic strategy for neighborhood improvement can escape.”

Perhaps the most serious damage caused by the unitary concept of gentrification is that it distracts attention from the more serious problem of housing deterioration and disinvestment. A recent study by Matthew Desmond and colleagues at the Eviction Lab examined 6 million evictions in the 200 largest metros. Using four different measures of gentrification, they found no correlation between gentrification and displacement between 2000 and 2016. Based on a strong correlation between formal evictions and involuntary displacement, the authors conclude that displacement is primarily caused by disinvestment and disadvantage, not gentrification and reinvestment (Hepburn, Louis, and Desmond 2023). Notwithstanding this and other studies documenting disinvestment and deterioration as drivers of involuntary displacement, most research focuses on gentrification induced displacement.

The gentrification discourse is a valuable corrective to the Chicago School’s depiction of perpetual outward movement by affluent households. In fact, however, we live in an age of simultaneous urban decline and renewal—and the dominant trend is still the movement of affluent households away from the poor, not toward them.

The truth in the unitary concept: gentrification anxiety

The unitary concept of gentrification is empirically flawed but in one sense it reflects a crucial reality: low-income and minority residents of cities perceive neighborhood change in ways that closely track the unitary understanding of gentrification. The word “gentrification” has come to represent inequities of race and power that operate far beyond the neighborhood scale. The anxieties triggered by gentrification are real and cannot be ignored by policy makers and political activists.

In 2018, we conducted a series of focus groups with St. Louis residents, most of whom were African American (Swanstrom, Guenther and Theus 2018). When given an opportunity to elaborate, angry feelings about gentrification burst out. Respondents viewed gentrification as a zero-sum process in which newcomers invade a neighborhood to benefit themselves at the expense of long-time residents. Displacement was a common theme, often closely associated with race, using terms such as “whitewashing.” We asked the participants to identify neighborhoods on a map of St. Louis that were either already gentrified or would soon gentrify. Surprisingly, many areas they identified were neighborhoods in North St. Louis, an area suffering from extensive housing vacancy and abandonment with little evidence of gentrification pressures. When asked to talk about gentrifying neighborhoods, the conversation quickly pivoted to economically declining neighborhoods. In line with rent gap theory, focus group participants viewed neighborhood rise and decline as intimately connected: disinvestment was an intentional effort, they said, to prepare neighborhoods for gentrification. If we had taken a poll, there is little doubt that focus group participants would have endorsed the unitary concept of gentrification.

I am not the first to point out that low-income and minority residents of cities often express fears of gentrification and displacement even when there is little evidence of such pressures (Axel-Lute 2019; Frank 2018; Swanstrom and Plöger 2020). How do we make sense of the apparent disjuncture between the facts on the ground about neighborhood change and people’s perceptions of those facts? I argue that anxieties about gentrification express people’s fears not about neighborhood change per se but about broader processes of cultural marginalization and political powerlessness.

Gentrification anxieties do not come out of thin air. The term “gentrification” has come to represent the cultural dominance of highly educated affluent professionals in the knowledge economy. You can now “gentrify” just about anything, including “social movements, chai, jobs, American health care, language, Mt. Everest, and gefilte fish” (Mallach 2019). Highly educated professionals dominate the cultural scene and retail opportunities in the urban core. Not surprisingly, less educated lower income denizens of the city resent the displacement of their culture and consumption opportunities. Philosopher Michael Sandel argues that those left behind by globalization, those who work with their hands instead of manipulating symbols in the “knowledge” economy, resent being disrespected and branded as “losers” (Sandel 2020). The meritocratic myth—that those who have college degrees and high paying jobs in the knowledge economy deserve their privileged position and those who lack advanced degrees deserve their low pay and status—fuels anger about gentrification.

Besides cultural displacement, gentrification also symbolizes power inequities rooted in race and class. Lower income residents of St. Louis, especially African Americans, have collective memories of government using the coercive power of the state (eminent domain) to forcibly displace thousands of families to make way for interstate highways and urban renewal projects. Over 20,000 African Americans were displaced by the Mill Creek Valley urban renewal project in St. Louis (Gordon 2008). The term gentrification stirs up those painful memories.

In short, the unitary concept of gentrification captures people’s lived experience. Processes of invasion and succession are going on, but they operate not only at the neighborhood level but equally, if not more powerfully, at the societal level. People’s feelings about gentrification are just as real as census data about neighborhood change. We ignore these facts at our peril.

Conclusion: the way forward

If gentrification is a complex and contingent phenomenon, then our thinking needs to reflect this reality. Of course, especially in superstar cities with tight housing markets, we need policies, such as land trusts and inclusionary zoning, to ensure that long-time residents can remain and benefit from neighborhood change. If gentrification comes in many different varieties, however, including varieties that do not lead immediately to displacement, we do not need to oppose gentrification but rather strive to leverage it for the benefit of all citizens. But in doing this we need to realize that the idea of gentrification activates anxieties about race and power. The best way to deal with these fears is not to deny them but acknowledge them upfront and then pivot to offer evidence that socioeconomic mixing, if planned properly, can be beneficial to both lower-and higher-income residents, and discuss how the community can encourage inclusive development (Volmert et al. 2016, p. 29).

Whether gentrification benefits only affluent in-movers or society more broadly depends on the context and one of the most important characteristics of the context is the presence of progressive political will. If the local political system lacks the political will to enact anti-displacement policies in hot market communities, no amount of verbal reassurance will matter. An example of meaningful response would be local governments and school districts taxing the unearned increment, as Henry George would call it, of rising land values to pay for public goods and services that are freely available to everyone.

To address problems of economic inequality and racial injustice, we need to act at multiple scales: neighborhood, city, state, and nation. To ignore legitimate fears about broader processes of cultural marginalization and political powerlessness triggered by “gentrification” generates deadlock and distrust. On the other hand, to saddle civic dialogue about neighborhood change with responsibility for these broader processes invites confusion, political polarization and policy paralysis. If we deal with neighborhood change as it is, not as we fear it to be, the opportunity space for broader political coalitions and progressive policies expands.

On the Significance of Gentrification in Low-Demand Environments: A Reply to Swanstrom – Jason Hackworth

A few months ago, the Metropolitics board sent me a manuscript written by Professor Todd Swanstrom. His central point resonated with me. Ideas about gentrification are often constructed in isolation and remain insulated from different perspectives. I proposed that we expand the Swanstrom intervention into a broader dialogue on the topic. He and I write about similar cities, and our reference points are similar, even if our perspectives are not. I felt this was an opportunity to have a more respectful conversation about the topic than has generally been the case in most urban journals. While I agree that Rust Belt cities are fundamentally different from high-demand coastal cities, I still believe that gentrification and displacement are serious issues for low-income households in the region.

Common ground

Let’s begin with a few points of common agreement. First, I agree that Rust Belt cities are different than coastal ones (Hackworth 2021). While New Yorkers and Washingtonians struggle to afford $500,000 one-bedroom condominiums, there are thousands of three-bedroom single-family detached houses available for less than $50,000 in Cleveland, Buffalo, and Detroit. The lack of supply that drives gentrifiers and developers to renovate difficult sites, or plunge into neighborhoods that are seen as dangerous in coastal cities, just does not exist in Detroit or Buffalo. Second, Rust Belt cities have indeed been virtually emptied of their middle class. The first wave of this abandonment was primarily white, but recent years have seen a substantial flight of the Black middle class to surrounding suburbs. Poverty is unusually concentrated and separated through municipal boundaries in the Rust Belt. Many people live in the core city because they cannot afford the suburbs, and their life chances, access to education, and quality of life suffer because of it. Most people living in such environments want them to improve, and to be able to stay in them after those improvements occur. Third, Rust Belt cities are not as multicultural as places like Los Angeles and New York. The vast bulk of Rust Belt denizens identify as either Black or white, and vast majorities are native born. Among the many reasons this matters, scholars have shown that there is a notable aversion to gentrifying Black-majority spaces in the Rust Belt (among others: Hwang and Sampson 2016; Hackworth 2021). Concentrated poverty is often a euphemism for concentrated Black poverty. And no city in the Rust Belt has meaningfully helped that population in the past 100 years. In fact, many cities, investors, corporations, and white majority suburbs have treated Black people and Black-majority spaces as no-go zones. Ramping up incarceration and demolishing low-income housing are the two most common policy interventions. Understandably, many Black residents in places like North City (St. Louis), the east side of Cleveland, and east of Main in Buffalo are distrustful at best, hostile at worst, with regard to interventions and even ideas about redevelopment. Finally, while the downtowns of Detroit, St. Louis, Cleveland and Buffalo are commercially thriving today, the vast bulk of those cities are not gentrifying in any meaningful sense. Most concentrated poverty census tracts in Detroit and Cleveland will remain as such for the foreseeable future. There is virtually no link between their fortunes and the commercial redevelopment taking place in the downtowns of those cities. In short, I wholeheartedly agree with Swanstrom about these dimensions of his argument. I do, however, disagree that any of this makes gentrification insignificant, tolerable, or even hopeful for low-income households in Rust Belt cities.

Points of disagreement

1. On the relationship between housing supply and price

All else being equal, abundant excess housing supply should keep prices low. On the surface, that might mitigate concerns about displacement and overall cost—as even in extreme cases there are copious other nearby housing units available. But a few qualifying points about Rust Belt housing vacancy need to be made. First, much of the “available” vacant housing is not really available. Much of it is damaged beyond repair—stripped of wiring and pipes, often with major fire or water damage. Many of the current “vacant” housing units are just shells of buildings that will be demolished in the coming years. Second, much of the housing is not financially available to conventional buyers. As Jang-Trettien and others (Jang-Trettien 2022; Garboden and Jang-Trettien 2020) note, the conventional market does not work well for very low-cost properties. The conventional market is structured by appraisal, inspection, and mortgage requirements. Typically, a buyer needs a realtor to help facilitate the transaction. In places like Detroit, Cleveland and St. Louis, it is nearly impossible to find professionals willing to facilitate this transaction. Banks are very reluctant to originate a mortgage in a declining environment for a house worth less than $50,000. The realtor commission is paltry. Appraisers and home inspectors are often not interested either. The market is thus dominated by investors who can bypass these intermediaries. They advertise with handwritten “We buy homes” signs knowing that they have virtually no competitors in the conventional market. When they point this out to panicked sellers and promise a quick cash-only transaction, they can often get the property at a steep discount. Such absentee investors are looking for a revenue stream, so they rarely lower rents. If they cannot find a tenant at their chosen rate of return, they flip it to an even less experienced investor or in some cases just leave the house to rot. In short, while it is true that Rust Belt cities have “extra” housing, comparatively little of that housing is functionally available to low-income households. The abundant vacant housing is often very damaged, and real-estate intermediaries refuse to participate in the transaction. The real choice for a renter family displaced (no matter what the cause) is to move to another slumlord-owned home and try to make it work. The abundance of “extra” housing has little effect on their housing options or on price.

2. On the meaning and measurement of displacement

Swanstrom cites two recent studies illustrating that neighborhoods of concentrated poverty displace at rates equal to, or higher than, gentrifying environments. I do not dispute that turnover is frequent in highly distressed environments, but I disagree that this fact somehow negates the impact that gentrification has on low-income households. Finding distress and turnover in concentrated poverty environments is not a convincing refutation of the challenges that gentrification places on low-income households. Finding high turnover in highly impoverished, stagnant neighborhoods reflects the challenges of having a very low income in the United States. As Desmond’s (2016) Evicted illustrated, life is incredibly challenging when your income is very low and volatile. You are forced to negotiate increasingly usurious arrangements with your slumlord when you are short on rent. You are forced to navigate a labor economy that excludes those with criminal records, and a mainstream housing market that shuts you out if you have an eviction on your record. If you are able to find employment in the service sector, it is difficult with the prevailing minimum wage to pay for basic expenses. High turnover does not mean that displacement is insignificant in gentrifying environments. First, it is hard to imagine how rent increases would improve stability for a low-income household. Second, by the time a neighborhood registers as “gentrifying” to social scientists, the initial culling of low-income households has already taken place. So, finding lower levels of turnover in an environment where rents are increasing is likely more a sign that the neighborhood is composed of fewer very low-income people at that point. They have already been displaced.

The second point of disagreement I would make about Swanstrom’s framing of displacement is the emphasis on eviction as the primary or main form. Eviction is a narrow way to operationalize displacement. In my view, displacement is any means that inhibits or prohibits a household from living where they currently reside and wish to remain. That desire is much more likely in a neighborhood that is getting cleaner, safer, and acquiring better amenities. Most of the time, displacement occurs through a simple, private notice of rent being increased. Even in states with relatively strong tenant laws, it is rare to challenge rent increases. Evictions, as Desmond warns us, are overused and common in very low-income non-gentrifying markets, but they are also used frequently in other environments. Like displacement more generally, evictions can happen for a variety of reasons.

3. On the impact of private investment in poverty-concentrated neighborhoods

Swanstrom notes the overuse of the term gentrification in urban studies literature. I tend to agree that the concept is overused, but I disagree with the notion that affected communities are being emotional and misinformed when they point to “gentrification” as their challenge. Swanstrom notes how the word came up in focus groups in a clearly-not-gentrifying neighborhood in St. Louis. I tend to think that the comments were grounded responses to a cruel, disembedded housing market. I would like to suggest that there are many instances of failed gentrification in Rust Belt housing markets. By failed gentrification, I mean that investors are always trying to increase the monthly rent, overall value, or both. What other point would there be to real-estate investment? In low-cost markets, rent-to-value ratios are often very high so rent revenue is the focus—getting as much rent, with as little upkeep, out of tenants as possible is a common model. Profit-seeking of this sort is neither new nor contained to the Rust Belt, but certain investor strategies are more common in such markets because of contextual factors.

In Rust Belt cities prior to 2000, homeownership rates were quite high compared to coastal cities. But when the Great Recession hit, hundreds of thousands of housing units were sent into mortgage and tax foreclosure. Investor seminars across the US trained would-be landlords on how to acquire and profit from the mess. In suburban environments, with more expensive housing, predatory investment often took the form of larger investment firms that would then go on to manage thousands of formerly owner-occupied homes as rentals. But in environments like East Cleveland or North St. Louis, where properties were available at foreclosure auctions for less than $500, investors tended to be smaller, less experienced, and often non-local. Fresh off an investment seminar at their local airport hotel, investors collectively bought thousands of previously owner-occupied units sight-unseen and attempted to make a profit. Many real-estate seminars are specifically built around targeting the most distressed neighborhoods. Many neophyte investors were ill-equipped for the reality that awaited them. After visiting the property, many witnessed how much it was going to take to make it profitable and walked away. Those units were largely left to the elements, and many were eventually demolished. Those who were able to create a rentable unit often increased the rent (if it had a tenant) or proposed rent higher than surrounding properties. Their hope was, as with all investors, to get in on the ground floor and be able to sell the unit for more money later, or generate greater returns on investment—in other words, to generate gentrification. From the investment and social-science perspective, most failed; rents and home values never increased at all, or at least not enough to call it “gentrification.” But from the perspective of a low-income person living in such an environment, the distinction between successful and failed gentrification is inconsequential, as it resulted in the same thing—private market interventions that pushed them and their neighbors out. They often witnessed private market actors enter their neighborhood with poor intentions. Those investors left properties to rot. They pushed out tenants or made it difficult for new tenants to locate there because of rental increases. As the aforementioned displacement studies illustrate, turnover is very high in such concentrated poverty environments. But it is rooted in the same dynamic—a wholly private market approach that is materially cruel to the lowest-income households in the United States. Whether the efforts of investors materialize in gentrification is of greater consequence to social scientists and investors than it is for longtime residents.

The market is not the solution…

Many of the differences that Professor Swanstrom and I have about gentrification are rooted in normatively different conceptions of the market—particularly its ability (or lack thereof) to generate adequate, sustainably affordable housing. In my view, conventional markets have never generated adequate housing for very low-income people. Adequate, abundant housing for low-income people has only been sustainably built and maintained with some form of subsidy (usually state-led) or regulation. Before public housing and rent regulations, the extreme urban poor lived in self-built housing or overcrowded tenements with dozens of families sharing a single bathroom.

I do not dispute that city coffers would benefit from a partial return of the middle class, but I do dispute that their in-movement is inconsequential or even beneficial to very low-income households. There are direct forms of displacement associated with gentrification, but more frequently the long-time residents of Rust Belt cities are subjected to the disembedded real-estate market that makes living in the same place more difficult. State-organized action is necessary for the return of the middle class to benefit low-income households. While American public housing policy has been decimated in the last 50 years, there are still programs that generate robust amounts of housing. Low-income housing tax credits (LIHTC) have generated more affordable housing than any other program since their inception in 1986, and housing choice vouchers (often paired with LIHTC in individual projects) make rent affordable to hundreds of thousands of low-income Rust Beltians. But these measures are often framed as “unnecessary” because of the aforementioned housing supply or even as anathema to neighborhood redevelopment, so cities often fight to make sure they are built far from gentrifying areas or not built at all. Though it is “common sense” in some circles that subsidized housing will destroy market viability, the empirical truth is more complicated (Nguyen 2005). The Brewster Homes Complex in Detroit, for example, sits directly adjacent to the city’s most rapidly gentrifying neighborhood, Brush Park, where condominiums are selling for over $1.5 million. There is no social upheaval occurring there. It is just a public housing complex with hundreds of low-income tenants who can now benefit from better public spaces and grocery stores, among other amenities. If we are so willing to use state policy to create “social mix” in public housing complexes, why can’t we bring the same effort to gentrifying environments?

The other form of state intervention that would be helpful is more distant and foreign to American urban policy. For the excessive supply of vacant housing to have any material impact, there needs to be some kind of assistance and intervention provided to make such housing viable in something approximating a conventional market. Perhaps the return of postal banks—which has been suggested by several congresspeople in recent years—could specialize in low-value loans. Or some kind of governmental assistance for repairs, appraisals, inspections, and basic facilitation of property exchange. The market currently cannot, or at least does not, do those things. But if we want the excess abundance of vacant housing to have any impact on price and availability, we have to be serious about mechanisms that might make that housing actually available to existing low-income residents.

Don’t Let the Word “Gentrification” Drive Us Apart: A Rejoinder to Hackworth – Todd Swanstrom

I have great admiration for the scholarly work of Jason Hackworth, especially his Manufacturing Decline, a penetrating analysis of the huge and continuing problem of housing vacancy and abandonment. He shows how urban decline is not the result of free-market forces but was engineered by conservatives who employed a politics of racial backlash to enact a period of urban austerity and devastating disinvestment. I found Hackworth’s focus on disinvestment and decline refreshing given what I see as a scholarly preoccupation with re-investment and gentrification. I strongly encourage readers to get a copy of Hackworth’s insightful analysis.

Given our simpatico scholarly interests, I was surprised and puzzled by Hackworth’s critique of my essay, “Deconstructing Gentrification.” As I read his critique, I kept saying to myself “I agree, I agree, I agree!” As I will explain below, I think that the disagreement between us is mostly caused by the baggage the term “gentrification” carries and how it sows misunderstanding.

Hackworth’s critique focusses on gentrification in low-demand cities, what are sometimes described as older industrial cities or legacy cities. My scholarly and applied work has been almost entirely in these kinds of cities. Hackworth’s analysis directly attributes to me, or implies I support, the following propositions: (1) eviction is the “primary or main form” of displacement; (2) an oversupply of housing is good for low-income people because it will drive down the price of housing; (3) residents of weak market cities who express concerns about gentrification are “emotional and misinformed;” (4) “conventional markets” can generate “adequate, sustainably affordable” housing. I believe a fair reading will show that I neither supported nor endorsed any of these four propositions in “Deconstructing Gentrification.”

#1: The first one can be addressed quickly: it is not I but Matthew Desmond and his colleagues at the Eviction Lab who make the connection between eviction and displacement. They do not state the eviction is the “primary or main form” of displacement but that there is a strong correlation between eviction and displacement. As readers know, it is difficult to identify involuntary displacement. Ultimately, you need to get into people’s heads to determine why they moved. I have no independent empirical evidence to support or refute the connection between eviction and displacement. I simply reported what the researchers wrote. While the connection seems plausible, I don’t have a dog in this fight. I leave it to the readers to evaluate whether this proxy for involuntary displacement is valid or not.

#2: I do not believe (nor did I state in the essay) that an oversupply of housing will benefit low-income households by driving down the cost of housing. In The Changing American Neighborhood (Chapter 2), Alan Mallach and I criticize filtering theory and its close cousin, neighborhood succession theory. Filtering is not a smooth gradual process that enables low-income households to move into better homes. It is rapid and destructive, leaving neighborhoods at the end of the filtering chain with an urban and social fabric utterly in tatters. Housing oversupply and the neighborhood decline it engenders strips homeowners, primarily African American households, of household wealth. As Hackworth insightfully suggests, when older homes and neighborhoods deteriorate, the price of housing does not come down commensurately. One of the main reasons is that landlords cannot count on profiting from rising land values so they must keep rents unnaturally high to stay in the game. In contradiction of market theory, there is not a trade-off between price and quality. [4] As quality goes down, prices remain high. We could add to this market power of landlords, especially for tenants who have been the victim of a legal eviction and therefore have fewer choices of where to live. In short, I agree with Hackworth; indeed, a central theme of my essay was that weak market (non-gentrifying) neighborhoods have devastating consequences for their residents and the political opportunity space for addressing these issues is constricted.

#3: I do not believe that residents of weak market neighborhoods who express fears about gentrification are “emotional and misinformed.” This is a tricky issue. It has taken me a long time to realize that it is wrong and politically damaging for me to go into a neighborhood in St. Louis and present data on neighborhood change to alleviate their fears. I took pains in my essay to point out that these fears are based on “people’s lived experience” and that they are “just as real as census data about neighborhood change.” The term “gentrification” has come to symbolize “power inequities … rooted in race and class,” largely disconnected from neighborhood change. As Paul Krugman has stated, “California as a whole is suffering from gentrification.” [5] The rich are moving in and erecting barriers to affordable housing and driving up regional housing costs. We need to address these broader regional inequities of wealth and power. On the other hand, when doing community development in weak market neighborhoods, residents need to find ways to attract new residents and investment in ways that will benefit them. The unitary concept of gentrification can distract them from this task.

#4: I do not believe that free markets can ever generate adequate affordable housing. I totally agree with Hackworth that state action will be required if the return of the middle class is going to benefit low-income households. As I put it in my essay, whether gentrification benefits a narrow group of gentrifiers or society more broadly depends on progressive political will.

If I never expressed support for free market fundamentalism in the essay, why are these views attributed to me? I believe my embrace of a variable or contingent concept of gentrification implies, to many people, a faith in free markets. Under the unitary concept of gentrification, the process is understood as being driven by unregulated markets, leading inevitably to higher rents and forcible displacement. To argue that gentrification does not always cause displacement is to, seemingly, endorse the view that markets can benefit the poorest members of society. But if you view gentrification not as a unitary invariant phenomenon but one that varies based on context, including the political context, then to admit the possibility of gentrification without displacement is not an endorsement of unfettered markets.

Hackworth’s dismissal of empirical research about displacement is an example of how the unitary concept of gentrification can suppress empirical variation. He rejects research documenting lower levels of turnover in areas with rising rents by stating that the research must have begun after the low-income people had already been displaced. Research on the relationship between gentrification and displacement, however, starts by identifying “gentrifiable” neighborhoods that have high numbers of low-income and households of color – and then researching what happens as the number of gentry increases. Hackworth cannot assume that finding no relationship between gentrification and displacement is proof that the research was started too late; he needs to provide evidence.

Hackworth also states that it is “hard to imagine” how an environment with rising land values and rents could “be a positive for displacement.” According to the unitary concept, it makes no more sense to think of gentrification without displacement as it does to think of bachelors who are married. Under the unitary concept of gentrification everything fits together into a tight unified whole. But it certainly is possible to “imagine” neighborhoods with rising rents not causing displacement. People might be willing to pay more to live in a neighborhood with better amenities, retail choices, government services, and lower crime. I am not saying this will automatically happen, but it is a possibility that needs to be researched and not assumed one way or the other. I could also mention new-build gentrification that does not have any direct displacement and weak or halting gentrification that may increase rents but not enough to force people to move.

In conclusion, I wholeheartedly endorse Hackworth’s analysis of the problems facing low demand neighborhoods and the need for strong progressive housing policies. Let’s not let loaded words like “gentrification,” however, push natural allies apart. I do not think this is only a problem in rarified scholarly circles; it is also a barrier to building broader alliances for progressive housing policies on the ground in cities.

Bibliography

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