3 Ways Communities Can Take Control of Gentrification

[M II A II R II K]

3 Ways Communities Can Take Control of Gentrification


DECEMBER 4, 2014

By SANDY SMITH

Read More: http://nextcity.org/daily/entry/gent...-housing-ideas

Is gentrification bad for low-income minority communities? The answer may depend on how you define “gentrification.” The panelists who participated in a discussion on “Gentrification, Integration and Equity,” hosted by Next City on Dec. 3rd, had definitions that varied widely, and not all of them agreed that it was a bane. But the issue of better-off residents moving into low-income neighborhoods, no matter how one defines or slices it, does call for cities and communities to come up with ways to counter the ill effects and develop alternative, inclusive visions for redevelopment.

- The panel’s scholar, New York University professor Ingrid Gould Ellen, said she didn’t even like using the term, because “all of us have something very different about it in our heads.” Activist Eric Grimes, co-founder of AAKT (Action, Advocacy, Knowledge and Training) Concepts for Social Justice and Community Development, had the most expansive and provocative definition, linking the term to the 18th- and 19th-century landed gentry who owned his ancestors, and tied the term to the systematic stripping of assets and exclusion from the power structure that blacks in America have experienced through history.

- Ellen gave the narrower, more common definition: the increase in rents and house values triggered by an influx of more affluent residents into a low-income neighborhood. While she noted that at the nationwide level, low-income minority neighborhoods are no more likely to gentrify than non-minority ones — “in fact, low-income black ones are less likely to gentrify because whites are still afraid to move into them” — Grimes did point out (and Ellen agreed) that blacks make up a larger share of the population in the nation’s 25 largest cities, and in those cities, especially New York, the process disproportionately affected black neighborhoods.

- Ensure every stakeholder in the community has a place at the table before the process advances too far. This means bringing community members into the planning process from the start and making sure developers respect community goals and priorities. Jennifer Rodriguez, executive director of the Mayor’s Office for Immigrant and Multicultural Affairs in Philadelphia, noted that this will require understanding how information travels through communities and how people within them voice their concerns. When she was involved in planning in eastern North Philadelphia with Asociación de Puertorriquenos en Marcha (APM), Rodriguez said, the group varied its outreach efforts depending on the community: “If a community was savvy about the Internet, that was how you communicated, but where I was working, it was all relationship-based, so you needed to knock on doors.”

- Learn how the planning and development process works. In Philadelphia, the main way for communities to shape their development is via the Registered Community Organization (RCO), a legally recognized group that has review power over developments that require zoning variances. But not all RCOs reach out to or represent the entire community, said Grimes, and when that’s the case, it may be necessary to “bogart the conversation.”

- Where they do reach out, RCOs can play a vital role in ensuring inclusive redevelopment, said Kira Strong, vice president of community and economic development at the People’s Emergency Center in Philadelphia, who noted that by working together, RCOs in several northern West Philadelphia neighborhoods got Drexel University and a realty trust company to slow down their rush to redevelop a 14-acre parcel of land they had acquired from the School District of Philadelphia and take into account community concerns and priorities.

- Use the policy tools available to protect residents and preserve housing diversity. Maintaining a supply of affordable housing is a key to ensuring that neighborhoods experiencing gentrification remain diverse. “The housing should be placed in asset-rich communities,” noted Strong. “It shouldn’t be out of the way.”

- A community that creates its own plan, Rodriguez said, can bring that plan to the table when large-scale redevelopment is proposed and use it as a tool to get developers to negotiate. Ellen added that public housing could and should still play a role in preserving affordability in gentrifying neighborhoods, and that other federal policies, such as the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit, can also be used to preserve housing diversity.

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[Chase Unperson]

I'm like so totally over perseverating about gentrification. Shit changes all the time. Over time good neighborhoods become bad neighborhoods and bad neighborhoods become good neighborhoods. Deal with it.

[10023]

Meaningless cliches, for the most part.

There is something to be said for pressuring developers to include an "affordable housing" (however one defines this) component in new developments that require special approvals. Of course this only works when special approvals are needed because that's what gives local councils/government leverage. And one can also argue that forcing the inclusion of affordable housing in projects has negative impacts as well (namely, it makes the "market rate" units more expensive, but then no one seems to have any sympathy for the upper middle class...).

Anyway, rich people can afford to pay more for things than poor people, so if they both want to buy or rent a property, the rich person is going to get it. That's about all there is to say about gentrification.

[pdxtex]

interestingly, portland which is suppossed to be the poster child for american urban planning is in a state which forbids inclusionary zoning statewide.

[MolsonExport]

Meaningless cliches, for the most part.

Basically this.

[Larry King]

They talk about rco's in phila but fact is they don't have any real teeth with the ZBA anymore

[mhays]

Originally Posted by pdxtex

interestingly, portland which is suppossed to be the poster child for american urban planning is in a state which forbids inclusionary zoning statewide.

That's helping Portland stay more affordable than most West Coast cities.

Washington doesn't allow it either. But Seattle in particular piles on the fees, and our construction projects are also subject to our 9.5% income tax, both of which make us substantially more expensive.

It's not about the "upper middle class." It about the 90% or 95% (wild guess) who pay market rate. Prices for market rate in a growing region are tied pretty closely to development cost...they vary a lot, but the wavy line tends to center in that direction. If you add fees you (surprise!) increase development cost. Homeowners and building owners benefit from the increased values, but renters and new buyers get screwed.

Since we're talking about growing areas, the exceptions are when the system breaks (like when few could finance anything in 2008-2011+) and when supply is so low that prices rise until enough enough people give up.

[10023]

Basically, rent controls suck.

There's talk from Labour about implementing them here. It's one of the reasons many people (myself included) are waiting until after the 2015 elections to buy property. And of course it'll screw up the market for renters too, squeezing supply even more than it is already.