In defense of the "gentrification building" - YouTube

The US doesn't have enough homes.

This line shows how many months it would take

for the current supply of housing to run out.

It's a measure of housing supply and it's been dropping for a decade.

And this line shows how housing prices have changed.

They've skyrocketed in the past year.

For rental units, the percentage of empty buildings is the lowest it's been in 3 decades

while rent prices keep going up.

But here’s the thing.

Often, when new buildings go up in these places

people hate them.

"It's hard to describe... but...

you know it when you see it."

"Gentrification building."

Most often, they’re talking about new buildings like this:

boxy, modern, multi-family homes.

I saw one one day that sort of hit me.

And it was a TikTok that was showing this building in Camden, New Jersey.

That’s Jerusalem Demsas, a Vox policy reporter.

You know, the comments range from a bunch of different things.

It was people kind of deriding the building itself

saying that it was causing displacement

saying, get ready for a Starbucks to come and pop up.

Comments like this are a common narrative.

To many, these buildings don’t just look bland and artificial.

They signal raised rents, displacement, and

the complete transformation of a neighborhood

to a place that’s richer and whiter.

But in this case, what happened next might surprise you.

So I started like, kind of like, going around

trying to find the specific location, walking around Google Maps.

And eventually, I find it.

And I find the building, I look at the address.

I look into property records to figure out what this building was.

And not only is it new housing, it's actually new affordable housing.

Turns out, there’s a lot we get wrong

about how we see new construction in the US.

Whether it’s DC, Oakland, or Austin

newer apartment buildings in the US have a distinct look

one that sticks out against older architecture.

But these buildings don’t look like historic homes for a reason.

This building is actually one of the cheapest ways

to build an apartment building right now.

The design is strategic.

According to reporting from Curbed

this kind of architecture is built to fit within restraints

like cost, height limits, and safety requirements.

It’s why many of these structures are what’s known as “5-over-1” or “1-plus-5”.

That means there’s several levels of wood-framed construction

which usually contain apartments and is known as Type 5 in building code.

That’s over one level with a concrete base

which usually contains commercial space or parking, known as Type 1.

The light-frame wood construction, flat windows, and paneling around the building

are all ways to build as affordably as possible.

And that means you're able to build more affordable housing.

I think a lot of the time people don't understand that

in order to get affordable housing, the actual components of the building have to be

cheap to develop and to construct.

The results can be bland and look artificial

but that authenticity problem is an old one.

In this book, "The Invention of Brownstone Brooklyn"

Suleiman Osman writes about the iconic brownstones of Brooklyn

a design that today, is widely considered to be deeply authentic to New York.

But in the 19th century, compared to the mostly wooden homes which predated them

critics actually dismissed brownstones as "modern and artificial”.

They called them out as “products of the mechanical age”

”poorly built and subject to decay” with a “dehumanizing monotony”.

Sound familiar?

Comments in a lot of those Tik Tok videos, they say things like,

"Oh, it looks mass-produced. They look phony."

I mean, that's literally the exact same language that was being used

in the 1900s to talk about the brownstones.

That building we mentioned earlier in Camden, New Jersey

was built using low-income housing tax credits.

It has 245 units, geared towards seniors

and families making less than 60 percent of the area’s median income.

It’s easy to see why the construction of affordable housing like this is a good thing

but what about the new, market rate buildings that service middle and higher-income people?

They’ve come to symbolize displacement.

Or the idea that existing residents could be forced, involuntarily, to move out.

Often for reasons like rent increases or eviction.

Since developers like to build in places where prices are already rising

new buildings tend to correlate with those increased rents and displacement.

But a growing number of researchers have tried to find out whether these new buildings

are the cause of displacement.

They were testing “the demand effect”

or the idea that the new buildings increase demand for the neighborhood

which in turn causes rent hikes that force people to leave.

But the research suggests the opposite.

An overwhelming “supply effect”.

Where increasing the supply of new buildings

even if they are market rate

made housing less scarce and decreased rents and risks of displacement

especially in the areas closest to the new buildings.

New housing freed up space within a neighborhood

for new residents to move in without taking up existing homes.

And it also meant when they moved from theirpast homes

they freed up housing units in those neighborhoods as well.

But here’s the thing:

less displacement was happening near new construction

but it didn’t necessarily mean less gentrification was happening.

Because gentrification and displacement aren’t the same thing.

While displacement happens to people, gentrification happens to a place.

When an area experiences demographic change

typically going from lower income tenants to higher income ones

shown here in the darker green.

Over time, demographic shifts in the neighborhood could still occur

not because existing residents were displaced

but for other reasons: maybe people decided to move to more desirable neighborhoods

or some passed away.

And the research suggests when that happened

residents were more likely to be replaced by richer people.

Meaning gentrification was happening, but without forced displacement.

So, to reduce both displacement and gentrification

you need more market rate and affordable housing

like that building in New Jersey.

Affordable housing, along with policies like rental assistance

preserve income diversity, making sure those with lower incomes

can always live in a particular neighborhood.

If there is a scarcity of a product, we know this in every market:

when there is not enough of something, the only people who get anything are rich people.

And so you have to make sure that there's enough for everyone at every level.

But there’s one very big obstacle to building housing for everyone, everywhere.

Wealthy neighborhoods across the US are really good at blocking new housing developments.

Take a look at this map of New Haven, Connecticut

compared to the nearby, wealthier town of Woodbridge, Connecticut.

When we take a look at local zoning laws and where multi-family developments

are allowed in these areas.

There’s virtually no land in Woodbridge zoned for them.

Single-family zoning laws block the vast majority of apartments

or affordable housing in this area.

When you have political power concentrated in the hands of very few wealthy homeowners

and they say, "We're not going to allow housing here."

Of course, there's going to be an unequal distribution of housing.

In 2020, after a 4-unit multi-family building was proposed in Woodbridge

a group of residents even created these flyers saying “Do we want this next door?”

Pitting single-family homes against multi-family buildings.

And this kind of conflict happens everywhere

from Woodbridge, to Soho, to San Francisco.

In some places, activists have found a way to use the language of gentrification

against changing zoning laws.

For example, in response to a proposed California bill

pushing for more housing near areas with transit

including a specific percentage of affordable housing

a group called Livable California said

building more housing would add “jet fuel to a gentrification crisis.”

They see the power of this rhetoric

and they are using it as a tool to muddle the debate to make it seem like

building new housing is actually going to create displacement

when we know what creates displacement

is not building new housing.

That's what's so kind of dangerous about this entire debate.

We have gotten to a place where the actual policy solution

is seen as part of the problem.