Rethinking the effects of gentrification on the health of Black communities in the United States: Towards a racialized health framework

ABSTRACT

Current research suggests that gentrification is an important determinant of health. Furthermore, this research concludes that the health impacts of gentrification are heterogeneous and may have adverse impacts on Black Americans. However, existing gentrification and health research has not fully engaged with the racialized processes that produce these uneven impacts. To address this gap, we develop a conceptual framework to describe how gentrification may create unique experiences and differentiated health impacts for Black Americans. Applying a lens of racial capitalism, we examine how an ongoing legacy of structurally racist urban and housing policy in the United States has disinvested from and devalued Black communities; thereby rendering them vulnerable to subsequent reinvestment through gentrification. Next, we consider how this history creates unique health vulnerabilities to gentrification for Black residents. Finally, we describe pathways of displacement—physical and symbolic—through which these unique health vulnerabilities are shaped to produce differences in health.

KEYWORDS:

• Gentrification
• health disparities
• race
• neighborhoods

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Dr. Derek Hyra, Dr. Melody Tulier, Emma Tran, and Marie-Fatima Hyacinthe for their helpful comments and suggestions.

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Funding

Support for Shannon Whittaker, MPH was provided by predoctoral fellowships funded by the National Institute of Mental Health under grant number T32MH020031 and the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities under grant number 1F31MD017129-01A1. Shannon Whittaker, MPH also received support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health Policy Research Scholars Program.

Notes on contributors

Shannon Whittaker

Shannon Whittaker is a doctoral candidate in social and behavioral sciences at the Yale School of Public Health. Her research interests lie at the intersection of place, race, health and history where she examines how social, cultural, and political processes such as gentrification impact the health of marginalized communities of color, particularly Black communities.

Carolyn B. Swope

Carolyn Swope is a doctoral candidate in urban planning at Columbia University. Her research interests focus on the relationship between housing and health disparities, with particular attention to the role of historical housing policies in shaping inequitable health impacts of present-day gentrification.

Danya Keene

Danya Keene is an associate professor of social and behavioral sciences at the Yale School of Public Health. Her research focuses on housing and housing policy as determinants of population health equity.