Uphams Corner, Boston: revitalization "without" gentrification

Transforming a building.  "Now and There" by Faith Ninivaggi, 555 Columbus Avenue, Uphams Corner neighborhood, Boston.

The Boston Globe has an interesting article, "Gentrification is washing over America’s wealthiest cities. Here’s how Uphams Corner held back the tide," positing that the neighborhood is a rare example of urban improvement where people of color have not been displaced. 

-- Uphams Corner Planning Initiatives, City of Boston

It cites the work of Common Good Labs, which using "machine learning" came up with eight distinguishing factors identifying 193 neighborhoods across the country where this was the case.

The study identified a small but significant number of high-poverty census tracts — 193 in metropolitan regions all over the country — that managed to slash poverty rates by 10 percentage points or more between 2000 and 2015 without dislodging the areas’ usually Black and Latino populations.

-- "REDUCING POVERTY WITHOUT COMMUNITY DISPLACEMENT: INDICATORS OF INCLUSIVE PROSPERITY IN U.S. NEIGHBORHOODS," Brookings Institution

The eight factors:

External or metropolitan factors

1. Economic growth in the surrounding metropolitan region; low-income people tend to work in service sectors like retail and hospitality and are especially sensitive to the state of the local economy. 

2. Low homicide rates in the county matter, too — likely because violent crime can be a significant source of anxiety for young people, crimping their academic performance and knocking them off track. 

3.  Low risk of displacement in nearby areas; a high-poverty census tract that abuts one with large numbers of 25- to 34-year-olds earning $100,000 or more is more likely to gentrify.

Internal to the neighborhood factors

4.  Higher rates of home ownership (ownership builds wealth); 

5.  Lower vacancy rates (vacancy is associated with crimes like burglary and arson);

6.  Higher rates of self-employment (entrepreneurship can be a path to mobility and set an example for younger people); 

7.  Increases in housing density in the decade leading up to the study period (more units mean low-income people have a place to live even as higher-income people move into the neighborhood); and 

8.  The presence of community-building organizations (which can put up housing and strengthen social ties)

Discussion.  The article has an interesting discussion about how this came about.  First, disinvestment led to a lot of vacant housing, which made it cheap and attractive to immigrants from Cape Verde.  Immigrants are often a source of revitalization energy in cities when communities are otherwise abandoned.

The summer of 1978 saw the first of several block parties on Monadnock Street in Uphams Corner. Bob Haas, who lived on the street for decades, took a series of photographs that captured the joy of the gatherings. A long-time community activist, Haas played a pivotal role in the revival of the once burned-out neighborhood. He died last year at age 76. Photos by Bob Haas

Second, people with choices did move into the neighborhood some, and unlike the in-migrants described in the movie "Flag Wars" in the Old Towne East neighborhood of Columbus, Ohio, they were very much focused on working with the people in the community, not being disconnected "urban pioneers."  

Multi-racial block parties were organized, a community association open to all was created, and eventually, a community development corporation was created which focused on improving properties, and developing new ones, including developing a portfolio of affordable housing which would always be affordable.

Having community organizations that represented community interests and worked on improvements in focused ways is key.

Having heavy rail transit service helps too.  Although its railroad based and inadquately integrated into the intra-city transit network ("A key to a better Boston, hiding in plain sight," Boston Globe).

And that it was adjacent to the Dudley Street neighborhood, which had its own community improvement organization too, Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative, documented in the book Streets of Hope: The Fall and Rise of an Urban Neighborhood.

When neighborhoods become attractive at the scale of the metropolitan area, prices go up.  There is a book on commercial district revitalization, Paths and Pitfalls: On the way to a new vibrancy in Older Retail Districts, about the Manayunk neighborhood of Philadelphia, and he discusses how once the Philadelphia Inquirer wrote about the neighborhood as a changing and desirable place, perceptions changed, and people began buying houses that had previously been overlooked, leading to a long term change in the neighborhood and its demographics.

Being disconnected from what I call the regional landscape of attractive neighborhoods.  Key to warding off displacement is not having to compete with the highest earners for housing, which raises prices, and leads to lower cost housing being converted to higher cost housing.

I've discussed this a lot and it is counter to the Live Baltimore resident recruitment program of what they call "one over neighborhoods" meaning that if you can't afford Bolton Hill, live in Reservoir Hill, can't afford Charles Village?, how about Waverly etc.  This does drive neighborhood improvement, but it comes at the cost of rising housing costs and the possibility of displacement.

Economics.  The economics argument is pretty clear.  Since the 1950s, the reason that the poor congregated in cities is because when city land values declined in the face of suburbanization, the impoverished could afford housing, especially as desperate property owners wanted tenants.  (Before the 1950s, most people lived in cities anyway, so they were a mix of all classes.)

Now that residential choice trends include cities (I won't say "favor" but now cities are seen as equal or superior to suburban location by many segments of the housing market), urban locations are seen as desirable.  

In such situations, the poor will be outbid. 

I've written this for years, but more in terms of the middle class.  

-- "Exogenous market forces impact DC's housing market," 2012
-- "Applying the super-gentrification thesis to San Francisco, Santa Monica, and other cities experiencing hyper-demand," 2014
-- "The nature of high value ("strong") residential real estate markets.," 2017
-- "Why "gentrification" is visible now... the Diffusion of Innovations Curve of Everett Rogers," 2018

As urban neighborhoods become more desirable at the scale of the metropolitan residential choice landscape, prices will go up, and people who had been able to afford to live there will be outbid.  In short, the highest wage earners are driving the market in the "best" neighborhoods, not average wage earners. 

Equity.  The counterargument is equity, that all people should be able to live in the city, regardless of income (see the "right to the city" arguments" originally articulated by Henri Lefebvre, and extended by people like David Harvey).

In a market economy for housing, to ensure a place for the economically less well off, that requires public intervention to build, own, and operate housing, as well as other subsidies, such as vouchers for people to pay for private market housing.

 

So creating the Dorchester Bay Economic Development Corporation was key, as was the critical mass of housing purchases by immigrants and others, committing residents to the neighborhood for the long term.