Squeezed in and pushed out: dual and contradictory displacements in Santa Ana, CA

Abstract

This research examines housing insecurity and displacement within a gentrifying context. Through an interpretive analysis of four years of survey data produced through a community-based research (CBR) project on households in the Lacy neighborhood within the City of Santa Ana, California, we find that the neighborhood is simultaneously a site of eviction-based displacement and extreme overcrowding. The results complicate assumptions in the literature regarding the quantification of gentrification and suggest that in addition to direct spatial dislocation and the outward movement of households, highly localized micro-gentrification and regional exclusion may together produce forms of extreme spatial concentration within neighborhoods that make estimating gentrification-induced displacement difficult. Ultimately, by drawing attention to the combination of contrary displacement forms and observable housing deprivation, we argue that the special conditions that have emerged in the Lacy neighborhood are representative of a housing submarket that combines exclusion and insecurity with unequal exchange for renters.

Keywords:

• displacement
• overcrowding
• community-based research
• gentrification
• eviction

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 According to the U.S. Census, occupied housing units with 1.01 or more occupants per room and with a householder who is Hispanic or Latino in tracts 750.02 and 744.05 declined 40 and 21 percent, respectively, between 2000 and 2019.

2 A revised version of this research presently displayed on urbandisplacement.org has replaced the original results. The current version complicates the analysis with an expanded ‘Displacement Typology’ that includes eleven neighborhood classifications—compared to the previous four—and extends the timeframe from its previous cutoff in 2015 to 2018. While the new version adds some important nuance—e.g., the Lacy neighborhood and central Santa Ana are now identified as sites that are either ‘Low-Income/Susceptible to Displacement’ or ‘Ongoing Displacement’ rather than the previous, ‘Disadvantaged, Did Not Gentrify’—they are still represented as geographically removed from gentrification processes. For example, the new version continues to identify South Santa (tract 6059074003) as a location of ‘Advanced Gentrification’ from 2000 to 2018 and adds two locations to the west of downtown (tracts 6059099249 and 6059099247) that are also marked as sites of ‘Advanced Gentrification’ that occurred between 1990 and 2000 only.

3 The American Housing Survey (AHS) offers more refined estimates on overcrowding however data are limited to large regions—e.g., census regions and census divisions—that are inappropriate for neighborhood-level analysis and has been shown to produce fewer incidents of overcrowding (U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development 2007).

4 For a notable exception, see the innovative mixed-methods investigation deployed by Goetz et al. (2019).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

J. Revel Sims

J. Revel Sims is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Planning and Landscape Architecture and the Chican@ and Latin@ Studies Program at the University of Wisconsin - Madison. He is an affiliate in the Center for Community and Nonprofit Studies (CommNS), the Department of Geography, and the Institute for research on Poverty. His research focuses on gentrification and neighborhood change through the concept of “eviction-based displacement” that includes both empirical investigations and theoretical contributions to the question of urban displacement.

Carolina S. Sarmiento

Carolina S. Sarmiento is an Assistant Professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in the School of Human Ecology and an affiliate with the Department of Urban Planning and Landscape Architecture and the Chican@ and Latin@ Studies program. Her research examines the struggles of working-class communities to transform and shape their neighborhoods and cities through diverse forms of community organizing, community-based planning, transnational development, and the creation of new democratic processes and spaces.