For years, people have opened up about gentrification and how it’s affected their own lives and communities.
The Urban Displacement Project describes it as “a process of neighborhood change that includes an economic change in a historically disinvested neighborhood — by means of real estate investment and new higher-income residents moving in — as well as demographic change — not only in terms of income level but also in terms of changes in the education level or racial make-up of residents.”
Gentrification is a complex issue, and it has been known to negatively impact low-income communities and people of color, as it typically leads to forced displacement. And people online have shared the unexpected and clear signs it’s bound to happen in an area. Here’s what they had to say:
1.”I live in the Nashville area, and this has been an issue for a few years now. We have a particularly bad case of ‘tall/skinnies’ here. Developers buy an old house, tear it down, and put up two tall/skinny houses on the single lot, and they look absolutely ridiculous. Some of them honestly look like they aren’t much wider than a shipping container and are three to four floors tall.”
“They stick out like a sore thumb, and most are honestly just slapped together like Ikea furniture and sell for millions just because they are close to downtown.”
2.”Painted utility boxes are a huge sign of gentrification in PG County. Expect matchbox fancy $2K studio apartments next, and then a series of strip malls with the weird ash wood look.”
3.”When it happened in E. Austin. I noticed two things: the removal/replacement of anything frequented by poor people, and the lack of random roosters. It was already done by the time the vegan cat café showed up. But the developers will still tell you to move to the ‘historical part’ of Austin, even though all the history has been shoved out and painted over. And now, they call the cops on our ‘historic’ car club meetups.”
4.”When you start seeing/hearing a lot of positive press about a known-to-be-sketchy area. Gentrification doesn’t work if the place doesn’t become desirable to new businesses and residents. Investors want those who avoided the area before to start thinking of how great it could be to get that gentrification momentum going.”
“I watched it happen to a certain area in Los Angeles proper, just outside downtown, that you didn’t want to walk through after dark, 10 to 15 years ago. Now, it’s been very much reborn as a millennial Mecca and hipster haven.”
5.NorCal resident here. I’ve been watching all these new (mostly gated and HOA) housing communities go up, charging upwards of $700K at minimum, but most are more than that, and all these people moving inland from the Bay Area willing to pay for it are driving up the cost for the locals. And you’d think that would bring more businesses, but no, just more houses and warehouses. Then there’s competing with ‘investors’ buying the cheaper houses only to do the cheapest cosmetic changes and put them back on the market well above what they paid, or renting them out.”
“I just took a day trip recently and was reflecting how many awesome places my state has to visit and how many of them I’ve driven to, and how it’s a shame I’m being priced out of where I’ve lived my entire life.”
6.”The FIRST sign is the first quirky coffee shop that isn’t a Starbucks. See one of those, and grab you some real estate, because the bougies are coming, and they’re bringing wild housing prices with them.”
7.”Old buildings get torn down. Before the beginnings of gentrification, the lots weren’t worth removing the condemned buildings; renovation teams start showing up in neighborhoods that haven’t been renovated in decades. Lawns start getting cut on a weekly basis. Once a neighborhood goes from condemned to livable, all the other stuff starts to happen pretty quickly.”
“A lot of this is spearheaded by property developers/home flippers looking at analytics to find the next neighborhood to invest in.”
8.”At some point, an organic grocery store opens up. The crime rate goes down over time. Home prices/rents go up quickly. More coffee shops and breweries.”
9.”Recovering planner here. In the background, people look for parcels that are worth more than the improvements. If there are a lot of them in an area — especially an area with amenities and good transport bones, it is a good candidate.”
“I took a gander at my old Atlanta apartment that I moved into six or seven years ago that I rented for $800 a month. It’s now around $2K. It was a POS.”
11.”If an area is headed for gentrification, people who don’t have children start moving in. Artists, musicians, writers. College students. Restaurants, especially trendy restaurants. Galleries and music venues. Bookstores. Coffee houses. All the kinds of places young hipsters like. Housing stock that is neglected but can be
Content adapted by the team from the original source: https://www.yahoo.com/news/people-revealing-warning-signs-place-013105891.html
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