I understand what it is and why it happens, but often when its explained it seems like no one ever gets into how it can be resisted, fought, or even outright prevented.
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There are several steps suggested by the Healthy Community Design Initiative to combat the negative effects of gentrification.
1: Create affordable housing for all incomes.
When gentrification occurs the lower income people find it harder to secure housing at a price within their budget. You could for example create a government housing project which fixes rents at a low rate for those of low income. Of course this also has the effect of reducing property values for surrounding area since living or operating a business near a housing project is less desirable. Gentrification is countered. Of course the increased crime and reduced business growth is undesirable.
Less overtly negative methods aim to simply scatter the lower income people throughout the community via zoning laws and incentives. Instead of being all single-family homes the policies would aim to have small apartment complexes distributed amongst them. By avoiding concentrating lower income communities the businesses would need to simply accept the combination of incomes as a package deal.
2: Approve policies to ensure continued affordability of housing units and the ability of residents to remain in their homes.
Similar to above, the strategy would aim to prevent property owners from capitalizing on the increase in property value and desirability by capping rental prices, and allowing lower income people to remain on their property by stopping their property tax from increasing. Also programs to aid homeowners with property improvements would help them to improve the quality of the community without burdening them financially.
Obvious problems with this include everyone involved basically hemorrhaging money. Property owners can’t charge as much as they could be getting, the local government is missing out on a bunch of property taxes, and is paying for private owners to make their own property better. Of course this is to be expected when opposing gentrification in the first place.
3: Increase individuals’ assets to reduce dependence on subsidized housing.
Maybe we could try making the poor people less poor with better jobs and helping them buy homes.
4: Ensure that new housing-related investments benefit current residents.
Think about if what we are about to do will make gentrification worse before we do it.
5: Involve the community
Listen to the community and consider what they find acceptable. Only the gentrification the community has a problem with is something to be worried about.
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