Special Issue Introduction: Gentrification, Housing, and Health Outcomes

Gentrification has been one of the most controversial and elusive concepts in the housing, community development, urban, and public health literatures in the last two decades (Brown-Saracino, 2017; Smith et al., 2020). Despite a voluminous literature, some pressing gentrification questions remain. What is it? What drives it? What are its effects, and what intervening factors mediate its impact on distinct community types and populations? In this special issue, we bring together a diverse set of authors and quantitative and qualitative papers focused on gentrification’s influence on various health outcomes.

Several scholars and policymakers hypothesized that gentrification—an influx of affluent people and investments into low-income urban spaces—would improve the health of low-income people who remain in place, through a variety of mechanisms. However, the health research results are complicated and highly mixed (Gibbons & Barton, 2016; Gibbons et al., 2018). This collection of articles highlights the different mechanisms associated with gentrification that can both hurt and help people’s health. This special issue digs deeply both theoretically and empirically to reveal some of the complex mechanisms and contradictions embodied in the relationship between gentrification and health. We hope this issue helps scholars, policymakers, and grassroots advocates better understand the nuances of gentrification so it can be harnessed, refined, and managed to facilitate the well-being of traditionally marginalized populations (Romero & Jaramillo, 2022).

While gentrification brings economic resources into underserved communities, it can also be associated with destabilizing and isolating forces that negatively impact health for certain populations. Gentrification is often associated with increased housing insecurity, as commercial and residential rents sometimes rise when there is greater demand placed on the revitalizing housing markets. In gentrifying neighborhoods, the housing stock is typically upgraded, which can lead to increased prices and a reduction in the number of affordable housing units. The potential prospects of paying more for rent can lead to stress among low-income people. When real estate prices increase, this can lead to residential, political, and cultural displacement (Versey, 2022). Various forms of political and cultural displacement can isolate individuals who stay behind (Hyra, 2017). Without friends, institutions, and systems of support, gentrified spaces can bring on feelings of loneliness, alienation, and isolation among low-income people, which may negatively impact their health and well-being. Some papers in this special issue suggest intervening variables including social capital (Barton et al., 2022), car density (Schachner, 2022), inclusionary zoning laws (Wang & Melton-Fant, 2022), and public housing (Rick et al., 2022) might mitigate some negative health effects associated with gentrification. But we know health outcomes can hinge on how gentrification is measured.

As much as these studies tell us about the consequences of gentrification, they also encourage further unpacking of gentrification as a process. How gentrification is operationalized has grown far beyond the class-based definition originally set by Ruth Glass (1955) to include, among other things, land value, rent, education, and race. Other research shows few places meet most of these criteria (Barton, 2016), and in the absence of a consensus (Brown-Saracino, 2017), most studies zero in on only one measure. However, the consequences of gentrification for health can depend on how it is measured. As Beck et al. (2022) show, while a multicomponent socioeconomic status (SES) measure of gentrification is related to improved birth outcomes, gentrification marked solely by an increase in income is not, and a comprehensive measure that includes both SES and race has no association with birth outcomes. This finding suggests that many of the results across our studies would have turned out differently had the authors measured gentrification another way; indeed, several highlight this possibility (Barton et al., 2022; Candipan et al., 2022; Hwang & Shrimali, 2022). While the existing scholarship and popular discourse on gentrification tend to treat its various indicators as interchangeable due to insufficient scrutiny, our studies caution away from this. Future research should use different measures of gentrification to compare its distinct outcomes.

The above being said, our various studies make clear across a host of outcomes that those who suffer health disadvantage from gentrification are people of color. The role of race and ethnicity in the gentrification process and related outcomes is noted in the works of Acolin et al. (2022); Beck et al. (2022); Hwang and Shrimali (2022); López et al. (2022); Versey (2022); and Wang and Melton-Fant (2022). While there is a growing body of work beyond this special issue tackling race and ethnicity in the role of gentrification (Boston, 2021; Dantzler, 2021; Rucks-Ahidiana, 2021), we need more studies to unpack how different gentrification processes impact racial and ethnic groups and communities in distinct ways. We also need more investigations to detail the racial components of gentrification to better understand the influence of discrimination, social exclusion, and antiblackness that might help explain why gentrification has distinct impacts and meanings for people of color.

Another important issue our studies highlight is the physical displacement of existing residents from gentrifying neighborhoods. Physical displacement’s centrality to the gentrification discourse dates back to Glass’s (1955) original research; however, until recently most work has at best highlighted the indirect consequences of displacement, such as the weakening of community (Barton et al., 2022; Romero & Jaramillo, 2022) or anticipatory stress about displacement (Candipan et al., 2022; López et al., 2022; Schachner, 2022; Versey, 2022). This is mainly a product of data limitations that have stymied work on gentrification’s full effects on neighborhood well-being. However, two of our studies were able to utilize cutting-edge research to directly measure displacement’s consequences. Interestingly, each study has a different takeaway on displacement. On the one hand, Acolin et al. (2022) found that a variety of health outcomes are worse for those who leave gentrifying neighborhoods than those who remain. On the other hand, Hwang and Shrimali (2022) found that in the Bay Area of California, residents of both upper and lower SES were less likely to move into crowded housing in gentrifying areas compared to nongentrifying areas. As such, they do not find grounds for claiming that gentrification put low-income populations at greater risk of COVID-19 exposure from overcrowding. These studies encourage more focus on those who have been displaced from gentrifying areas.

The relationship between gentrification and health has had a growing place in the larger discussion on residential well-being in cities. Building on this growth, this special issue has brought together a key group of studies that both highlight the current status of the field and chart future courses for research. The studies in this issue reaffirm the role gentrification has played in fostering health disparities for marginalized populations, especially African Americans. At the same time, however, these studies diverge regarding how, exactly, gentrification relates to health, revealing many different paths through which gentrification impacts neighborhoods—not all uniformly bad. Thus, there is still much work to be done with respect to what we mean when we say “gentrification,” with consequences for the kinds of effects it carries. This uncertainty is especially important if scholars, policymakers, and grassroots advocates are to devise ways to more effectively manage, and even harness, gentrification to benefit the well-being of historically marginalized populations (Romero & Jaramillo, 2022).

Disclosure Statement

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