Microsoft News, August 5, 2021, Is Gentrification the Answer for Struggling Real Estate Markets, or Is It the Problem?
Gentrification has become a controversial topic in our country, with its impacts on areas and their residents being heavily debated. Billions of dollars in development money, municipal grants, and national and local tax incentives have enabled some of the most distressed and poor neighborhoods across the country to be redeveloped.
Neighborhoods in cities like New York, Washington, D.C., Denver, New Orleans, Seattle, and Portland, Oregon, have undergone complete transformations over the past few decades. The result? More affluent, higher-income earners (of whom the majority are white) move into neighborhoods once known for high concentrations of poverty (wherein the majority of residents were minorities) — aka gentrification.
It’s easy for struggling cities to look at gentrification as a solution to a problem, but the answer isn’t so simple. Gentrification has both positive and negative impacts on real estate markets, and there are things investors and government officials should consider when looking to gentrify an area.
