Crain’s Chicago Business, March 26th, 2019: Gentrification an issue here? Sure, but not as much as elsewhere.
Chicago, where skirmishes over gentrification and displacement have flared up around the 606 Trail, Pilsen and rent control, is facing significantly less gentrification pressure than many other big U.S. cities, according to a new report.
A key reason, according to two of the study’s authors, is Chicago’s less dynamic economy overall, which doesn’t flush cash through its housing market, pushing gentrification of moderate-income neighborhoods. Another limiting factor may be Chicago’s traditional racial divide.
Though third-largest by population, Chicago ranked seventh in the number of census tracts that gentrified between 2000 and 2013, according to the report “Shifting Neighborhoods,” released last week by the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, based in Washington D.C.
Some cities that had more census tracts gentrify in those years are much smaller than Chicago. Among them: Washington (the nation’s 20th-largest city) and Baltimore (30th). That is, Chicago’s number of gentrified census tracts is disproportionately small.
Chicago also had a markedly small ranking on another pair of measures: displacement of black residents and, separately, displacement of Hispanics residents. Chicago was the tenth-ranked city for Hispanic displacement, and did not appear on the list of the 16 cities where black displacement was most pronounced.
