Gentrification: What's Really Happening?

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Hi, I'm Wendy Zuckerman, and you're listening to Science Versus
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from Gimlet Media.
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On today's show, gentrification.
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We have to.
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Let them know that we were here first. There's a
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battle going on against gentrification. In cities around the country,
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people are saying they want to save their neighbourhoods from
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soaring rents and mass evictions. Fight, fight, fight!
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Housing is a human right!
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A few weeks ago, scores of people marched through some
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of New York City's fastest-gentrifying neighborhoods.
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Carrying signs saying, Brooklyn is not for sale.
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Take it back!
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Brooklyn's not for sale!
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Before it's gone!
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Take it back!
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Brooklyn's not for sale!
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Protesters told us that they were angry because their homes
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were being taken over by new, richer and often whiter people.
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I see a lot of white faces that I've never, ever, ever, ever,
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ever seen before and I've lived there 15 years.
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And these newcomers drive up the rent. I could not
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afford paying double the.
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Rent I was paying.
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Forcing longtime residents out of their homes. The people who
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I grew up with on my block are no longer there.
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They're not in that neighborhood anymore.
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Protesters told us that these newcomers, they made their lives harder,
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calling the cops on those who had been there for decades.
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For instance, in Harlem, there were drummers there for 40 years.
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And then once they built the new condo, the people
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in the condo kept calling 311 until the drumming stopped.
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It's a neighbourhood tradition and you killed it. And a
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lot of people have these feelings about gentrification.
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They say it's part of this bigger picture of growing
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inequality and a history of racial discrimination in America. Ultimately,
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they say that gentrification is bad and it needs to
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be stopped.
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But there is another side to this debate.
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People argue that these negative things that you hear about gentrification,
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they're a myth. They say that gentrification isn't forcing people
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out of their homes and that it's actually good for
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a community because it leads to more businesses, more jobs,
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better schools and even lower crime.
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And you can hear this argument on the news.
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We're talking about violent crime and people stealing from other people.
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All of it significantly down.
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I grew up in Harlem, central Harlem, and I don't
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lament those days.
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I got the heck out. Business comes in, jobs are created,
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home values increase.
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It's hard to identify a victim here.
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So what's really happening in gentrifying neighborhoods?
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On today's show, we're going to dig through the studies
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to look at the following questions.
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One.
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Is gentrification forcing long-time residents out of their homes? Two,
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do newcomers call the cops on their neighbours more often
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in gentrifying communities? And three, does gentrification lead to things
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like more jobs and better schools? And if it does,
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who really benefits? When it comes to gentrification, there's lots
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of opinions. But then there's science. Science vs Gentrification is
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coming up just after the break. Hey, it's Wendy from
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Science Versus, and I want.
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To tell you about a podcast that I love, Science Friday.
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They cover all sorts of amazing things in the weird
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and wonderful world of science, from how concussions affect our
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brain to the inner secrets of a snake with a
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spider on its tail.
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It's a lot of news that.
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You can use and some that you can't, but you're
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going to love anyway. It's hosted by Ira Flato and
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Phyllis Flora Lichtman, who is an old friend of the
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show and loves a pun as much as we do.
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Science Friday is on every day wherever you get your podcasts.
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Welcome back.
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Today we're tackling gentrification, which is basically the process where
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lots of people with money move into a low-income neighbourhood
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and start changing it. In America, you can't really talk
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about gentrification without talking about race, because these gentrifying neighbourhoods
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are often home to people of colour, who at times
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didn't have much choice about where they could live. And
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the wealthier people moving in, they're usually white. Lance Freeman,
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a professor of urban planning at Columbia University, remembers when
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Harlem started to gentrify. He'd always known it as a
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black neighbourhood, where you were pretty unlikely to run into
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someone who was white.
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For much of Harlem's history, you didn't really see many
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white people other than, you know, police officers or whatever.
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But then in the 90s, things started changing. He told
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Science vs. Senior Producer Caitlin Sori about it.
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You start to see surprising signs. And, you know, you
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start to see more white people walking around.
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Was it shocking?
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It was. Yeah, it was.
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And seeing Harlem change got Lance thinking seriously about what
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gentrification was doing.
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So at the time, I would have been thinking, you know,
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people are living in the neighborhood, gentrification starts, and then
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they have to move because, you know, the landlord says,
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you know, I'm not going to renew your lease, so
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I'm going to increase the rent.
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And this idea that Lance is talking about, that rich
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people come in, rents rise, and people lose their homes,
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this was a huge issue for the protesters in Brooklyn.
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And back in the 90s, Lance wanted to find out
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how bad this problem was. That is, how many people
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had to leave their homes because of gentrification. And so
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he and a colleague looked at data from this really
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large survey of thousands of homes across New York City.
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So it's every three years. So you can look at
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the housing units over time. You know, they asked the person,
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when did you move into the unit? So you can
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see when people moved.
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And Lance starts crunching the numbers to find out how
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many more people are leaving their homes in gentrifying neighbourhoods
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compared to similar low-income places that hadn't gentrified. And what
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he found was weird, even to him, and it was
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quite controversial. Lance found that people weren't actually moving out
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of their homes more often in gentrifying neighbourhoods.
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I'm going to say that again.
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Despite this fear of a mass exodus of locals, Lance
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found that people who live in gentrifying neighborhoods, they weren't
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more likely to move out of their apartments.
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That's right. So it was counterintuitive, but, you know, that
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was the results were what they were.
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Did you look at those numbers and you're like, wait,
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is this right? Yeah, I did.
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I just know in general, I was surprised. Some people
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were like, nah, you're crazy.
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People thought it was crazy because it suggested that gentrification
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wasn't forcing people out of their homes en masse. And
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even today, there are academics who aren't convinced by this.
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They say that the way Lance is studying gentrification doesn't
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fully capture everything that's going on. But since his work,
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other studies have looked at gentrification in cities across America,
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like Philly and Boston, and many of them basically find
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the same thing. When compared to similar poor neighbourhoods that
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hadn't been gentrified, people weren't leaving their homes any faster.
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And when you zoom in even more on the reasons.
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That people are leaving gentrifying neighbourhoods, there's a concern that
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more locals are getting evicted. Now, while there's not much
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research on this, so far it doesn't seem like there's
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a clear link between gentrification and a spike in evictions.
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Which all goes to say that this idea that people
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are getting forced out of their homes en masse because
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of gentrification, it doesn't seem to hold up. And Lance
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says that the fact that gentrification isn't to blame for
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displacing people is actually points to something much bigger that's happening.
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Well, I think part of what's going on is that
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focusing on gentrification may be missing the larger problem, which
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is that people are being forcibly removed, but it's just
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that gentrification is not necessarily making the problem worse.
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Lance says the larger problem is that poor people all
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around America are more likely to move or get kicked
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out of their homes than rich people.
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There's more residential instability. People are moving in and out.
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People are being evicted. And there's no gentrification happening. But
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that still is what's going on.
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Point is, this happens in gentrifying and non-gentrifying neighborhoods.
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The problem is they're already there and it exists. And
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gentrification is not necessarily making it worse.
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Okay.
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But when you look at these gentrifying neighbourhoods, it's clear
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that they look different. There's new people, new condos, new
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little dogs, new yoga studios.
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With goats? Yeah, goat yoga. It's a thing.
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Yoga enthusiasts are lined up with a chant of Bah-ma-stay.
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So if tonnes of people aren't getting kicked out thanks
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to gentrification... Then what's going on? Like, how are these
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neighbourhoods changing? Well, Lance told us that what he thinks
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is happening is this. In poor neighbourhoods, when someone moves
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or gets kicked out, they often get replaced by another
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person who's like them and also might not have a
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lot of money. In gentrifying neighbourhoods, though, when poor people leave,
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they're often replaced by a different kind of person, someone
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who's often richer and whiter.
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People tend to overlook that neighbourhoods don't stand still. People
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are always moving in and out. And so as soon
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as you change the neighbourhood, the flow of the people
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who move out look different from the people moving in,
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the neighborhoods are going to change.
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So Lance gave me an example of this neighborhood in
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Brooklyn called Bed-Stuy. And it's gentrified a ton, even in
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the last two years that I've lived in New York.
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30 years ago, people were moving into Bed-Stuy and people
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were moving out of Bed-Stuy. They were predominantly Black. And
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so it might look like the neighborhood is not changing.
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Whereas I think now what's happening, you see more whites
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moving into Bed-Stuy.
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And Lance told us that other things are going on
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to amplify this feeling of change. Like, in some cases,
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gentrifiers are moving into apartments.
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That just weren't there before.
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Like when abandoned lots or factories that have been sitting
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empty are then turned into new apartments. That means new
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people can come in without displacing others. And Lance says
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this is something that's clearly going on in some US cities,
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like New York.
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That definitely... could be part of what you're seeing. Say,
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for example, in Harlem, there was a lot of vacant space.
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The Lower East Side of Manhattan also, parts of Williamsburg,
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Long Island City and Queens and other places.
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You pretty much described all the gentrifying neighborhoods in New York.
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Yeah, well, yeah, that's a lot of them, I think.
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Conclusion.
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From what science can measure, gentrification doesn't seem to cause
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mass displacements. People in gentrifying neighbourhoods don't leave their apartments
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any more often than people in other poor neighbourhoods. The
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difference seems to be that when people do leave, the
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newcomers who replace them tend to be white, have more
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money and perhaps some different tastes. OK, next up, there's
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been a lot of news lately about white people calling
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the cops on black people for basically no reason. First,
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there was Barbecue Becky.
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And charcoal grills are not allowed here. Who called the
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police on a black family having a barbie in a park.
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I want the police to come and I've been waiting
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for two hours for them.
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Then there was Permit Patty who called the cops on
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a girl running a little business on the sidewalk.
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Yeah, and illegally selling water without a permit. She called
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the police on an eight-year-old little girl.
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And some people are saying this is happening more thanks
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to gentrification.
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That's some gentrification s * * *.
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And the idea here is that new people moving into
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a neighbourhood might not like some of what goes on.
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And then instead of talking to their neighbours about it,
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they use the cops as a complaints department. So we
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wanted to know, is this something that we have data for?
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That is, are people calling the cops on their neighbours
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for mundane stuff more often in gentrifying neighbourhoods? In New
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York and some other US cities, it's pretty easy to
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knock out your neighbours to the city. Because there's a
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number you can call to complain about stuff that isn't
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an emergency, like noise or barbecues.
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It's 311.
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And we thought that surely some scientist had figured out
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if 311 calls go up as neighbourhoods gentrify.
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But what we found was basically nothing.
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Then we realised, though, that this 311 data, it's publicly available.
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So we got our producer, Dr Meryl Horne, PhD, to
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crunch some numbers.
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You want to see my data?
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Oh my God, I do want to see your data.
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And we know this is not peer-reviewed, but it's the
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best we've got. OK, so Meryl, tell us what you did.
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So you can call 311 for all sorts of things.
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People call it to complain about mosquitoes in their neighborhood
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or icy sidewalks. And the main reason people call it
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is to complain about noise. And that's what I focused on.
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What kind of noise do people generally complain about?
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People will complain about loud music, if there's parties, people
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talking too loudly, people banging on the walls.
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So Meryl got around 30 New York neighborhoods and split
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them into gentrifying and non-gentrifying. And she looked at more
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than 600,000 calls over the last six years.
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And I really wanted to see if these noise complaints
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were increasing as the neighborhoods were gentrifying.
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So she did some stats.
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I found the population, normalized all of the time points.
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I did a linear regression, looked to see if there
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is a statistically significant difference between the slopes to see
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if the p-value was less than 0.01.
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So.
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What did you find?
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I found that over this period of time, you could
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see that the calls just kept going up and up
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in the gentrifying areas more than the other neighborhoods.
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Was it by a lot?
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Yeah, the calls in the gentrifying neighborhoods were going up
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like 70% faster.
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Oh, wow.
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Yeah, I think this is a real effect.
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There is one major caveat to our analysis, though.
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We don't know who's making these calls, so it's possible
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that longtime residents are calling 311 on their new neighbors.
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So we asked Rory Kramer, a professor of sociology at
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Villanova University in Philly, about this.
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And this is what he told us.
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I'll put it really bluntly. I don't think longtime, predominantly
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minority residents call police to their neighborhood nearly as often
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for things like noise complaints as new white neighbors do.
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If you are traditionally working class and police in your
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neighborhood have generally been seen as aggressive towards you, you're
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not going to call police for something like this.
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So from what Rory has seen on the ground doing
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research in these communities, he says it's more likely that
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the newcomers are making these calls. Without the scientific research,
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BuzzFeed also recently tackled 311 data and found similar stuff
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to us. And by the way, we wanted to see
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if people were calling 911 more often as well, so
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we contacted a bunch of police departments, but they wouldn't
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give us their data. Conclusion. At least in New York,
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it does look like more people call officials for small
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stuff in gentrifying neighbourhoods. We need more research to know
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if this is true elsewhere. After the break, the good
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side to gentrification. When money flows in, can it help
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a neighbourhood?
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Welcome back.
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We just talked about how gentrification isn't causing tonnes of
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people to get turfed out of their homes, but new
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people are coming in and it is changing neighbourhoods. From
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what we could tell, one of those changes is that
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newcomers might be calling the cops on their neighbours more often,
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which can explain some of the frustrations people are feeling here.
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But what about the flip side, the positive side to gentrification?
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Some economists say that gentrification brings money into a neighbourhood,
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which can be a benefit. And one of the big
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things that we heard is that it can drop the
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crime rate.
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Here's basically how it would work.
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Studies tend to find that lower-income neighbourhoods have higher rates
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of some kinds of crime. So perhaps a neighbourhood getting
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wealthier could mean less crime. We spoke about this with
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Rachel Meltzer, an associate professor of urban policy at the
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New School in Manhattan.
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I was born and bred in midtown New York.
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Midtown? How does anyone get bought and bred in Midtown?
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Yeah, I was there before Midtown was happening.
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If you're less familiar with New York, Midtown is where
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all the tourist traps are, from Times Square to the
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Empire State Building. Doesn't really have a residential vibe. But anyway,
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back to crime. Since the 90s, two things have been happening. One,
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some cities across America have been gentrifying. And two, generally speaking...
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the crime rate has been dropping as well.
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Well, I think that's right.
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I mean, I think that's the broader context of crime
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has been going down for a while.
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And when you zoom in on gentrifying neighbourhoods specifically, most
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studies have found that as places gentrify, the crime rate
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drops faster. This happened in New York City and Cambridge, Massachusetts.
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But it wasn't true for all cities. Like, so it's
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just more.
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Complicated than a gentrifying neighbourhood equals lower crime.
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I mean, I think that's right. This is not all
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happening in a vacuum. It's not this, like, one-to-one of, like,
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you know, rich people come in and then crime goes down.
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So while it is complicated, generally speaking, over time, we
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do tend to see lower crime rates in gentrifying neighborhoods. Economists,
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they win this time. But what about other things that
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economists say? Like, can all this new money be a
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boon for the people in the neighborhood? Well, one place
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where people stand to benefit is if you own your
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own house in a gentrifying neighbourhood. If you do, you
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can sell it for heaps of money when property values
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go up. Problem is, because of America's long-standing history of
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housing discrimination, many people of colour living in gentrifying areas
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don't own their own homes. So that's property ownership. Next up, businesses.
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And this is actually the focus of Rachel's research. And
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she says there's good reason to think that you'd get
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more shops and other services in a gentrifying neighbourhood.
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One story is that when you see increased investment in
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these neighbourhoods, Local residents could benefit, right?
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And Rachel, as well as other researchers, have found that
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across the U.S., gentrification does bring new business.
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Over a number of studies, it does seem like when
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these neighborhoods change, they are attracting more commercial investment.
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One huge study on New York found that gentrifying areas
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saw 45% more businesses opening up compared to other neighbourhoods.
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That's over 15 years.
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And Rachel told us that we're not just talking about
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dog spas here. When she studied this, she found that
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some gentrifying neighbourhoods landed more grocery stores, doctor's offices and pharmacies.
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And there's this idea that gentrification wipes out local businesses.
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But when Rachel looked into this in New York City,
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she found that local shops weren't closing at a higher
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rate in gentrifying neighborhoods.
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I didn't find any significant differences, which was interesting. And
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I understood that as just there's a certain level of
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turnover and it wasn't at an accelerated rate.
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That is interesting because just looking.
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Around our neighborhoods that we have lived in, you do know, like,
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I think I noticed that These shops that seem like
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they've been there for ages, the feeling is they are
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shutting down and being replaced for like nail salons and
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fancy coffee shops.
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But that's not what you're finding. Not on average, right?
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This was, again, looking across all neighborhoods. I kind of
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sliced and diced it all different ways. And there wasn't
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anything telling me that these businesses were exceptionally more vulnerable.
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So ultimately, you get more businesses in the area. And
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with that comes more jobs.
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Yes.
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So I find that the total number of jobs goes
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up in gentrifying neighborhoods.
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Okay. So it looks like gentrification has some upsides. You see,
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more businesses and more jobs.
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But there is this.
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Very big question of who gets to enjoy those benefits.
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Do longtime residents get these new jobs in the neighborhood?
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Can they afford to shop at the new stores? The
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truth is, there's not a lot of research on any
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of this. And anyone who's making big claims in either
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direction is probably overstating the research.
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I think gentrification, it's complicated.
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It's a puzzle to disentangle.
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There is one final area, though, that we got curious about.
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Public schools. Because it's possible that more money in the
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neighborhood could mean more money.
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For the local schools.
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To sort through this question, we talked to Nicole Mader,
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who is a teacher in New York.
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Oh, yeah.
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I taught for six years in two different public high
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schools in New York City.
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And one of these schools was in a poor neighborhood
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that wasn't gentrifying.
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It was declining alongside the neighborhood. So there was a
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sense of giving up on it. And there were stories
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written about how unsafe it was and just had a
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very bad reputation.
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Nicole worked there for several years, and then she got
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a job at another school, one in a gentrifying neighbourhood.
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And this school, she said, had a lot going for it.
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An awesome principal and great teachers. And this got Nicole
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thinking about what makes some schools better than others. So
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she actually became a senior research fellow at the Centre
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for New York City Affairs, where she started looking into
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this idea that maybe gentrification could help local schools. And
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she says here's a very direct way that that could work.
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The wealthier families are going to go into these schools
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and then that's going to help bring more resources to
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the school or bring more political attention to the school.
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And then you'll eventually see the test scores rise.
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So to find out if this was actually happening, Nicole
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first needed to know if these new rich gentrifying parents
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were even taking their kids to the local schools. And
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she had good reason to question this because more than
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40% of kids in the U.S. can go to a
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public school other than the one in their neighborhood. So
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Nicole homed in on New York City, where parents have
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this choice. And she got government data on every kindergarten
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kid who studied in a public school in the city
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for the last decade.
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So what did she find?
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We found that the gentrifying neighborhoods have twice as many
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parents not going to the school that they were assigned to.
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They're sending their kid to a different kindergarten than in
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the non-gentrifying neighborhoods.
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Bottom line, Nicole found that many parents were moving into
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gentrifying neighborhoods and then taking their kids to school elsewhere.
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And these choices add up.
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Despite New York's reputation as being a progressive liberal heartland...
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It's actually one of the most segregated school systems in
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the US, which means all these promises of lots of
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rich parents coming in and helping the school.
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That's not going to be true if these gentrifier parents
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aren't going to their local schools.
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And studies out of Washington, D.C.
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And Chicago also couldn't find evidence that gentrification was good
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for the local schools. From our perspective, when we read
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your study, the first thought was, oh boy, the whites
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are just winning on all fronts. Like they get to
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move to these cool, diversified neighborhoods, but then they get
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to send their kids to whatever school they want.
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Are we wrong?
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No, I guess that is definitely one way to put it.
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They are changing the types of businesses and restaurants and
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stuff that are moving in there. And then They get
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all the amenities of being in the cool neighbourhoods, but
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then they don't have to send their kids to that
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school that they think is a bad school.
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Conclusion.
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Despite new money coming into a community, there's no good
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evidence that gentrification helps the local schools. So, when it
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comes to gentrification, does it stack up?
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Probably not.
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As best as science can measure, on average, people aren't
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leaving their apartments in gentrifying neighbourhoods faster than similar places
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that haven't gentrified.
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Two, do newcomers call the cops on their neighbours more
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often in gentrifying communities? Well, while there's not a lot of.
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Data on this, from what we could find, calls to
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officials about neighbourhood gripes do rise in gentrifying areas, at
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least in New York.
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And three.
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Can gentrification lead to things like more jobs and better schools?
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And if it can, who really benefits? Well, the crime
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rate might go down and you will get more businesses
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flocking to the area, which means more jobs. But those
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00:27:20.960 --> 00:27:25.240
jobs aren't necessarily going to the locals. Plus, there's not
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good evidence that gentrification will help the local schools. So
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from what the science tells us, gentrification isn't the ultimate
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boogeyman that it's often touted as. But it's not a
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godsend to a community either. One thing that gentrification does, though,
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is that it really shows the stark differences of how
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people in America are living today. Now, people who struggle
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to pay the rent are living next door to those
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who have enough money to spare on $ 6 lattes and
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00:27:57.190 --> 00:28:01.240
goat yoga. And people who feel comfortable calling the cops,
493
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like it's tech support, are living side by side with
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people who see the police as a threat. So the
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thing is, gentrification didn't cause these differences. But it is
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forcing some of those tough realities into the spotlight.
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That's Science vs Gentrification.
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Hello, Meryl.
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Hey, Wendy.
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You're back.
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I'm back in the studio.
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Back in the studio to tell us how many citations
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were in this week's episode.
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00:28:39.460 --> 00:28:39.869
76.
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00:28:39.869 --> 00:28:42.640
76. Yep. And if you want to see the details,
506
00:28:43.039 --> 00:28:45.779
you could head to our transcripts, which is on our website,
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00:28:45.940 --> 00:28:47.569
along with our own results.
508
00:28:48.240 --> 00:28:48.869
That's right.
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00:28:48.980 --> 00:28:50.769
If you want to see a pretty graph of all
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00:28:50.789 --> 00:28:52.589
of Meryl's research, please head there.
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00:28:53.069 --> 00:28:56.190
Yep. You can head to gimletmedia.com slash scienceverses.
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This episode was produced by Meryl Horne and Caitlin Sorey,
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with help from me, Wendy Zuckerman, along with Rose Rimler
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and Odelia Rubin. We're edited by Blythe Terrell. Fact-checking by
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Michelle Harris. Mix and sound design by Emma Munger. Music
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written by Emma Munger and Bobby Lord.
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A huge, huge thanks.
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To Curtis Melby, who helped us with the 311 call analysis.
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00:29:17.049 --> 00:29:21.390
For this episode, we also spoke to Associate Professor Japonica Brown-Sarasino,
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00:29:21.779 --> 00:29:25.630
Professor Elvin Wiley, Assistant Professor Stacey Sutton, Next week, a
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00:29:25.630 --> 00:29:26.750
murder at Harvard that's scandalous.
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00:29:30.029 --> 00:29:30.730
Renna Lopez.
523
00:29:31.150 --> 00:29:34.839
A big thanks to Francisco Lopez, Amber Davis, the Zuckerman family,
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00:29:34.930 --> 00:29:39.039
and Joseph Lavelle Wilson. Next week, a murder at Harvard
525
00:29:39.500 --> 00:29:41.359
that scandalized the nation.
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00:29:41.660 --> 00:29:46.200
They tip over a tea chest and an entire human
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thorax basically falls out.
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I'm Wendy Zuckerman. Back to you next time.