how does gentrification keep happening if there are less rich people than poor people?
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Clearest examples of gentrification often describe relatively small areas: individual neighbourhoods, specific parts of a city. Let’s focus on that scale.
Imagine a hypothetical gentrified neighbourhood. Let’s say there are 1000 properties to live in in that neighbourhood (apartments / houses), ready to be filled by whoever can afford them. Then, let’s say that in the city at large, there are 10 000 rich people and 1 000 000 poor people.
In this hypothetical, there are many more poor people than rich people. Nevertheless, if the neighbourhood is ultra-desirable as a place to live, there are still *enough* rich people to occupy all the properties. And it’s hard to blame the sellers for selling/renting to the highest bidder.
The process could be accelerated even more if those sellers start targeting the richer buyers specifically. Maybe they could merge two small apartments into one nicer one, and sell/rent it with a nice markup. If that happens at a large scale, you’re suddenly looking at your original 1000 properties to live in becoming just 500, admittedly nicer, but definitely pricier, properties to live in.
In other words, the absolute numbers of people matter, not just the proportions of rich vs. poor.
Another factor is that housing isn’t the end of the story. Businesses in a gentrified area may make the reasonable decision of targeting the new, richer inhabitants. Think: pricer stores, more luxury goods stores, fewer basic ones, etc. If the businesses’ own rents increase along with the tenants’ rents (and why wouldn’t they?), then businesses may essentially be forced down that path.
That means people either have to eat up the additional costs they may not have wanted in the first place (further driving up the cost of living in the area) or they have to travel outside their immediate area to fulfill basic needs (which makes the area not so great to live in anymore).
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