Grassroots Groups
Gentrification, or urban gentrification, is the change in an urban area associated with the movement of more affluent individuals into a lower-class area. The area experiences demographic shifts, including an increase in the median income, a decline in proportion of racial minorities, and a reduction in household size. More households with higher incomes result in increased real estate values with higher associated rent, home prices, and property taxes. Industrial land use can decline with redevelopment bringing more commercial and residential use. Such changes often result in transformation of the neighborhood's character and culture.
Gentrification can result from urban reinvestment efforts by local governments or neighborhood groups, which directs money to invest in deteriorating city infrastructure, offer incentives for redevelopment, improve access to housing loans for low-income mortgage seekers, assist lending to first-time home purchasers, and improve rental properties.These efforts have been linked to reductions in local property crime rates, increased property prices, increased revenue to local governments from property taxes and increased tolerance of homosexuals. Grassroots efforts for existing residents to guide or oppose gentrification generates community activism.
The process has a human cost to the neighborhood's lower-income residents. The increases in rent often result in the dispersal of communities whose members find that housing in the area is no longer affordable. Additionally, the increase in property taxes (due to increased property values) may sometimes force or give incentive for homeowners to sell their homes and move to less expensive neighborhoods. While those who view gentrification positively cite local reductions in a neighborhood's property crime rate, its critics argue that overall crime rates have not actually been reduced, but merely shifted to different lower-income neighborhoods.
The concept of gentrification has received significant attention in a number of academic disciplines, most notably urban geography and urban sociology. Some academics argue that the concept has become so broad as to lose its applicability. Others, however, contend that it has become the fundamental idea for understanding market-driven urban class relations.
In many cases, existing residents of gentrifying neighborhoods have organized into grassroots groups to develop political and social strategies to retain affordable housing in their communities. Many such organizations arose in the 1960s, particularly using tactics inspired by Saul Alinsky. Some, like the Young Lords street gang active in Chicago's then-heavily Puerto Rican neighborhood of Lincoln Park, used direct action techniques like sit-ins and occupation of vacant land. In the Liberty City section of Miami, Florida, the local organization Take Back the Land seized control over land and built rustic dwellings for the homeless in a shantytown which became known as Umoja Village. In many other neighborhoods, neighborhood institutions have founded community development corporations to give the community an active role in neighborhood development. In many cases, though, even a well-organized community cannot muster enough resources to counter gentrification.
