Measuring the Effect of Gentrification on Displacement: Multifamily Housing and Eviction in Wisconsin's Madison Urban Region

ABSTRACT

Gentrification research is often based on aerial units that function as proxies for neighborhoods. Despite the applicability of this approach, the method is susceptible to the modifiable aerial unit problem that obscures sociospatial patterns of interest both within and across units. This research seeks to complement and problematize findings from aerial unit-based approaches to gentrification through the use of georeferenced temporal data representing two specific processes that are generally understood to occur in real estate-led gentrification processes: new multifamily housing development and displacement in the form of recorded eviction filings. Interrupted time series analysis is used to compare two time points in the development process for various types of new multifamily housing projects with different distance thresholds of recorded eviction filings in the City of Madison, Wisconsin. Findings demonstrate that large multifamily housing developments produce increased eviction filings within a small radius (a tenth of a mile).

KEYWORDS:

• eviction
• gentrification
• displacement
• multifamily housing development

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank the participants of the University of Cincinnati’s Kunz Research Summit and the anonymous reviewers for their valuable feedback.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The first two building types were reduced to a single category in the analysis, to produce a single category of residential structures with two to four units.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the The Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Graduate Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison [135-AAC1868].

Notes on contributors

J. Revel Sims

J. Revel Sims is an assistant professor in the Department of Planning and Landscape Architecture at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. His research focuses on the geography of urban displacement through eviction and gentrification and critical urban theory.