Shelterforce: It Doesn't Matter if Your Neighborhood Is Going to Eventually Gentrify

I think this particular exchange is one we should all commit to never having again.

Why You're Both Right About Gentrification

Those who dismiss concerns of gentrification have some data behind them. Rapid housing cost appreciation and demographic turnover is a very real and growing problem, but it is still concentrated in a few high-cost markets, and a few select neighborhoods of other cities. Most poor census tracts have stayed stubbornly poor for decades, and more have slipped into poverty recently than climbed out of it.

Housing affordability and displacement are actually problems everywhere, but in most places it's not due to gentrification. Many of the people who are frustrated when gentrification is brought up see the topic as part of a coastal/hot-market narrative that leaves their places out, and gives them policies that aren't relevant for their realities—like hot-market centric inclusionary housing policies or funding models that don't account for an appraisal gap. They worry that the very real, current needs of places being left behind are going to be sacrificed by fear of some unlikely future scenario.

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Courtesy of Shelterforce