Revitalization without displacement (nee gentrification)

There were a couple sessions about this at the National Trust conference, featuring experiences from St. Paul and Macon, Georgia. I attended a conference about the Trust's Preservation Development Initiative a couple years ago, where these two organizations presented (the reports for most of the PDI projects are still available online). So I saw this stuff before. And the Macon project in particular is quite impressive, involving as a partner Mercer University, which made significant investment in distressed neighborhoods bordering the campus (which of course, is why they were motivated to invest, similar to how the University of Pennsylvania was compelled to invest in University City, in order to maintain the viability of the university).

But my response is pretty simple. It's easy to have revitalization without displacement in a weak real estate market experiencing little in the way of in-migration.

It's much harder, if not impossible, in markets where there is a great deal of demand, such as DC, Manhattan, Brooklyn, Center City Philadelphia, San Francisco, etc.

Unless people are willing to live in different types of housing and likely not single family houses, and if nonprofit organizations and/or municipalities make portfolio investments in apartment buildings, condominiums, and co-operatives, in order to maintain the affordability of affordable housing in otherwise high-demand markets.