What are the problems gentrification brings? Isn’t fixing up a neighborhood a good thing? How can gentrification stop?
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The main issue with gentrification is that it rarely helps the people who were originally living there. When a neighborhood is gentrified, when it’s fixed up, property values increase. This is great if you own property, but if you don’t then it means that your rent is going to go up, sometimes significantly.
So when you gentrify a poor neighborhood a number of the people and businesses cannot afford the higher rents and costs of living, and have to move or close. In many cases this means that gentrification changes the culture of a neighborhood, but it also means that the poor people who lived there don’t actually benefit from gentrification.
The way to prevent these negative effects is mainly to build affordable housing, to make sure that the people who live in the neighborhood can continue living there.
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