Question

What policies or steps are in ppace to stop gentrification? and have they been successful?

Answer 1

Gentrification is a process of renovating deteriorated urban neighborhoods by means of the influx of more wealthy residents. The gentrification process is typically the result of increasing attraction to an area by people with higher incomes spilling over from neighboring cities, towns, or neighborhoods. When long-time or original neighborhood residents move from a gentrified area because of higher rents, mortgages, and property taxes. Gentrification is a housing, economic, and health issue that affects a community's history and culture and reduces social capital.

There can be certain steps taken to stop gentrification:

1. Building Middle Income Housing and resisting calls to devote all of the city’s housing resources in low-income housing production.

2. Reduce or freeze property taxes to protect long-time residents. Major cities are considering tax programs to help retain long-time homeowners in at-risk neighborhoods.

3.  Protect senior homeowners- Moderate-income seniors are choosing to sell because they cannot afford rising property taxes in gentrifying neighborhoods and cannot afford the upkeep on their homes. The city should dramatically increase funding for existing senior home repair programs, and these programs should prioritize gentrifying neighborhoods.

4. Change the fair housing rules. In order to provide federal resources disproportionately in at-risk majority-minority neighborhoods, such as the stabilization voucher described above, the fair housing rules need to be re-written.

These Policies have definitely worked for San Francisco’s Chinatown, San Jose’s Diridon Station, and East Palo Alto.

In Chinatown, the community and city undertook a concerted effort in the 1980s to implement policies preserving the low-income population there.

In East Palo Alto, numerous renter protections are on the books, including just cause evictions protections, rent control, condominium conversion limitations, and inclusionary zoning.

While in East Palo Alto and Chinatown, market conditions have made them less attractive to people and capital, in San Jose’s Diridon Station area, it appears the reverse is true: the rapid development of new, market-rate housing in the case study area has been a key to limiting the displacement of residents.