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ABSTRACT
A gentrification wave is sweeping across metropolitan America, yet we know very little about the health consequences of this current neighborhood redevelopment trend across different community contexts. This article describes an interdisciplinary, comparative, community-based participatory action (CBPA) research project investigating how housing, community change, and health are connected. We first discuss the linkages among America’s affordable housing crisis, increased rates of gentrification, and health concerns for low-income people in revitalizing neighborhoods. We then lay out our initial hypotheses of how early- and late-stage gentrification processes might affect the health of low-income residents. This is followed by an explanation of how our CBPA approach influenced and altered our gentrification-related research questions and methods. This article contributes to the housing and community development literature by explaining an innovative theoretical and methodological framework for understanding the complex relationships among housing, neighborhood change, and health.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1. Some scholars associate this affordable rental crisis with the Great Recession and its subprime/foreclosure impact, which forced millions of people from homeownership into the rental market (Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University, Citation2017).
2. Here we cite Ruth Glass’ original definition of gentrification; however, we are aware that the term has evolved and there are several definitions of gentrification (see Brown-Saracino, Citation2010; Lees, Slater, & Wyly, Citation2010). Part of our project involves an interrogation and reconceptualization of this term.
3. The magnitude of gentrification is increasing in metropolitan America (Ellen & Ding, Citation2016) and it is also a commonly researched phenomenon in cities throughout the world (Lees, Shin, and Lopez-Morales, Citation2016).
4. We assume the arrival of upper income people in a low-income community alters the social structure of the neighborhood and this can produce new or exacerbate existing social stressors that can affect the mental and physical well-being of long-term residents (see Aneshensel, Citation1992; Pearlin, Citation1989; Thoits, Citation2010).
5. Quote from Abdallah Fayyad, December 20, 2017, “The Criminalization of Gentrifying Neighborhoods,” The Atlantic, https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/12/the-criminalization-of-gentrifying-neighborhoods/548837/ (accessed May 5, 2018).
6. Another gentrification stressor might be the increased visibility of income inequality and relative deprivation felt by low-income people as more resources and upper income people and amenities move to formerly low-income communities (see Kawachi & Kennedy, Citation1999; Tach, Citation2014).
7. This research was funded for a 3-year period beginning in 2016 by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Interdisciplinary Research Leaders program. The grant was awarded to teams of researchers and community members who are committed to working together to produce community-relevant, action-oriented research to understand and improve health and well-being. See https://www.rwjf.org/en/library/funding-opportunities/2017/interdisciplinary-research-leaders.html (accessed January 7, 2018).
8. Although there is some black- and minority-led gentrification in the United States, most of the gentrification in urban America is white led (Ellen & Ding, Citation2016; Freeman & Cai, Citation2015; Goetz, Citation2013), likely caused in part by the legacy of discrimination, segregation, and racial economic inequality (Massey & Denton, Citation1993; Shapiro, Citation2017).
9. The Great Recession, and its association with the subprime lending and foreclosure crisis, disproportionately affected communities of color and wiped out significant levels of black wealth (Hyra, Squires, Renner, & Kirk, Citation2013; Rugh & Massey, Citation2010; Shapiro, Citation2017).
10. We are also assisted by Carley Weted, a doctoral student in the field of public administration and policy. She manages the research team and assists with all aspects of the study.
11. ONE DC’s website is http://www.onedconline.org (accessed January 6, 2018).
12. The University of Orange’s website is http://www.universityoforange.org/newsite/ (accessed January 6, 2018).
13. Our situation analysis method is similar to the vertical, ethnographic approach (Hyra, Citation2008) and the extended case method (Burawoy, Citation2009) in that it attempts to understand and explain local processes and events by assessing forces originating outside of the research sites.
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Notes on contributors
Derek Hyra
Derek Hyra is an associate professor in the Department of Public Administration and Policy and founding director of the Metropolitan Policy Center at American University. His research focuses on processes of neighborhood change, with an emphasis on housing, urban politics, and race. He is the author of The New Urban Renewal: The Economic Transformation of Harlem and Bronzeville (University of Chicago Press, 2008) and Race, Class, and Politics in the Cappuccino City (University of Chicago Press, 2017). He is currently working on another manuscript entitled Roots of the Riots.
Dominic Moulden
Dominic Moulden is the resource organizer at Organizing Neighborhood Equity (ONE DC), a collectively-led organization that builds people power and economic and racial equity in Washington, DC. He has taught courses at the University of the District of Columbia and the Maryland Institute College of Art, and served as a 2018 Urbanist in Residence at the University of Orange. Dominic is a frequent lecturer at universities and conferences regarding equitable revitalization, cooperative economics, affordable housing, workplace democracy, community development, and public policy.
Carley Weted
Carley Weted is a PhD student in the Department of Public Administration and Policy at American University. Her research focuses on the intersection between climate change and politics, and the effect that climate change might have on humans, health, cities, and towns.
Mindy Fullilove
Mindy Fullilove is a professor of urban policy and health at The New School. Her research focuses on the consequences of sorting American cities by race and class. She has published Root Shock: How Tearing Up City Neighborhoods Hurts America and What We Can Do About It and Urban Alchemy: Restoring Joy in America's Sorted-Out Cities. She recently issued a third edition of Homeboy Came to Orange: A Story of People’s Power, written with her father, Ernest Thompson.