Dealing with Gentrification

Comparative Gentrification Policy Displacement, Housing Instability, and Homelessness University of Pennsylvania, School of Design, Department of City Planning CPLN-702 Planning Studio This working paper was completed by Marcus Artusio, Zoe Axelrod, Brett Davis, Danielle Dong, Claudia Elzey, Joanna Joye, Alana S. Kim, Justine Kone, Gabriella A. Nelson, Katherine Randall, and Alexandra San Roman as part of the University of Pennsylvania's City & Regional Planning Fall Studio, 2017. TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT 2 INTRODUCTION 3 LITERATURE REVIEW 5 METHODOLOGY 14 CITY-BY-CITY FINDINGS 16 Denver 17 Los Angeles 22 New York City 26 San Francisco 30 Seattle 34 Summary of Patterns 39 STRATEGIES FOR LOCAL AND NATIONAL POLICY 46 Policy Development 46 Local Policy Toolkit 47 Local Goals 48 NEED FOR A NATIONAL URBAN POLICY 53 NATIONAL POLICY AGENDA 55 Right to Housing 55 Gentrification Index 55 Expansion of the Social Safety Net 56 CONCLUSION 57 APPENDICES 59 A. Recent Policies in Case Study Cities 59 B. Detailed Information of Proposed Policies 60 ENDNOTES 91 ABSTRACT Gentrification—a form of neighborhood change in which an influx of capital into urban neighborhoods prompts a shift in socioeconomic demographics and an improvement of public space—too often benefits newcomers to the detriment of long-term residents and communities. This phenomenon is the latest in a series of forced displacements of the United States’ most vulnerable populations, who can face housing instability and homelessness as a result. This paper investigates the conditions of five case study American cities — Denver, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, and Seattle — to illustrate the commonalities of this country’s most at-risk neighborhoods, as well as to distinguish the diverse local variables that influence the causes and consequences of gentrification. Drawing on these cities’ lessons, we envision a radical alternative to the status quo: growing American cities and regions will develop equitably and empower vulnerable residents to shape their communities and live where they choose. To support this vision, this paper proposes two policy responses that appeal to both lay advocates and policymakers: a programmatic toolkit that municipalities may employ in order to harness neighborhood change to create sustainably mixed-income neighborhoods, and an overhaul of federal policy that transforms the nation’s conception of fair housing and equitable development. • 2 • INTRODUCTION After a long interlude of deindustrialization and population loss, American cities appear to have entered a renaissance. Some have reemerged as engines of economic growth—this time on the world stage as capitals of global finance, technology, and real estate markets. Many are welcoming influxes of highly educated young people. Yet, rather than lifting a broad cross-section of city dwellers into a new era of prosperity, the urban renaissance has been accompanied by surging homeless populations. In Los Angeles County, a 2017 point-in- time count tallied an alarming 58,000 people living in encampments, emergency shelters, or simply on the street.1 The numbers represented a 23 percent increase over the previous year, despite urgent efforts to permanently house the homeless.2 Street homelessness soared in New York City, Denver, Seattle, Boston, Chicago, and other large cities, even as homelessness declined in the nation as a whole.3 Thus far, no research has explained the connection between the economic forces transforming large U.S. cities and the new homeless epidemic that is playing out almost exclusively in urban spaces. A rich tradition of literature on gentrification that goes back to the 1980s has yielded both quantitative and qualitative studies of what happens when high- income, well-educated people re-enter disinvested urban neighborhoods. They have turned up complex and sometimes contradictory evidence of rising housing cost burden, changing social structures, and displacement among low-income residents.4 A parallel literature on homelessness has documented the emergence of the “new homeless” in the 1970s and 80s. Whereas the traditional subjects of homelessness research were older white men struggling with substance abuse, disability, or untreated mental illness, the “new homeless” included women, young people, minority members, and families with children.5 Scholars linked the new face of homelessness to rising unemployment • 3 • and a large increase in the “precariously housed.”6 Jackelyn Hwang and Robert Sampson’s research on Recently, policy responses to homelessness have gentrification and racial inequality in Chicago; and begun to focus more explicitly on the link between studies of displacement in New York, Philadelphia, homelessness and the need for stable housing, for and other cities.99 In cases where studies have example, by recommending the direct provision of covered larger geographies, they have usually done housing to the homelessness as a first step rather so for the sake of a larger sample size rather than than the last in a series of interventions.7 However, to perform a detailed comparison of different local these two strains of research on gentrification and conditions. A good example is U.C.-Berkeley’s Urban homelessness have yet to converge—especially Displacement Project, which includes the entire Bay in the context of the recent wave of urban Area in its analysis but highlights regional trends homelessness. This paper therefore proposes to rather than city-level variables.10 One exception to map the relationship between gentrification and this trend is journalist Peter Moskowitz’s recent homelessness using a comparative case study of book, How to Kill a City, which gives case studies of five American cities. gentrification in Detroit, New Orleans, San Francisco, and New York. This approach allows Moskowitz Surprisingly, there have been few truly comparative to identify the unique conditions that shape studies of gentrification. Most researchers have local patterns of change (such as recovery from preferred to focus on one or more neighborhoods bankruptcy in Detroit and Hurricane Katrina in New within a single city. Noteworthy qualitative examples Orleans), but also highlights striking similarities.11 include Monique Taylor’s early ethnography of We endeavor to use a similar approach to examine Harlem and Derek Hyra’s contemporary look at the how gentrification and rising homelessness interact 8 Shaw neighborhood in Washington, D.C. Landmark in large American cities. A thorough comparison quantitative work includes Rachel Meltzer’s articles of cities’ experiences and of the approaches they on gentrification and employment in New York; Figure 1. Change in homeless population (2007-2016) in our case study cities (indexed to 2007 count) • 4 • have taken thus far allows us to suggest local policy areas of disinvestment and decline. interventions both powerful and flexible enough to have real impact. This paper has three principal sections. In the first section, we draw on both gentrification and Our case-study cities are Denver, Los Angeles, homelessness literature to trace links between the New York City, San Francisco, and Seattle. All two. We also investigate how past housing policy five are experiencing both gentrification in many has affected access to housing in cities and set the neighborhoods and rapidly rising homelessness stage for the inequitable way the current “return to (figure 1). In addition, all five can be characterized as the city” is playing out. In the second section, we “global cities” in line with Saskia Sassen’s definition, detail our research methodology, which includes allowing us to observe the aggregation of highly a mix of quantitative and qualitative methods. We specialized firms, growing income inequality among then dive into a city-by-city analysis, teasing out residents, and the financialization of urban buildings key similarities and differences in both the process at work.12 Yet they are also different enough to of gentrification and the way local players (from prompt important questions. For instance, the government officials to grassroots coalitions) population gap of several million people between have responded. This leads us into our proposed Los Angeles and Denver allows us to ask whether solutions, which make up the final section of the sheer size is important for gentrification and paper. Here, we present a toolkit of local policies homelessness policy. We can also consider the that policymakers can mix and match according difference between cities that have already entered to local conditions. We propose that these policies late-stage gentrification and those just beginning to be implemented in the context of a bolder, but feel its effects. Differences in local housing markets absolutely necessary, national urban policy. beg the question: Can we build our way out of homelessness, or perhaps voucher our way out? Finally, we can consider how state legislation both enables and constrains different cities. This paper excludes cities such as Philadelphia that are LITERATURE REVIEW experiencing gentrification in some neighborhoods, but have not seen the same frenzied growth citywide.13 Nor do we consider places like Houston and Atlanta, which have managed to combine What is Gentrification? growth with declining homelessness.14 The addition The characteristics of gentrification have been of such cities would make our analysis richer, and much debated, but scholars generally agree that it is we hope that future research will

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