What People Get Wrong About Gentrification
To many wealthy individuals, gentrification is merely the revitalization of dilapidated urban spaces, which includes making neighborhoods more clean and safe, attracting businesses, increasing public services, and improving infrastructure. However, these same people fail to realize that these improvements rarely benefit low-income residents and often end up pushing them out of their own communities. But why is it that gentrification disproportionately affects minorities the most? The answer lies in historical policies like redlining that kept black people and other minorities in substandard urban neighborhoods, while white people were able to move to nicer suburban areas. White families had more opportunities to accumulate wealth through home ownership, building generational wealth. On the other hand, minorities were stuck in disinvested neighborhoods—places that the government and businesses had abandoned. As urban geographer Tom Slater said, "gentrification is the spatial expres...