Science Vs - Gentrification: What's Really Happening?

Episode Date: October 11, 2018

You’ve probably heard that gentrification changes neighborhoods for the worse: first come the hipsters and then the bankers. Soon, the neighborhood is overrun with dog spas and wine bars, and the original residents are nowhere in sight. But what does the science say? And, is there anything good about gentrification? We speak to Prof. Lance Freeman, Asst. Prof. Rachel Meltzer and Nicole Mader to find out. Check out the transcript right here: http://bit.ly/2VQJsgp UPDATE 10/23/18: An earlier version of this episode misstated number of calls in our 311 analysis as "over 900,000." While the analysis started with over 900,000 calls, the number of calls over 6 years was a bit over 600,000. We've updated the episode to reflect that. Selected references: Lance’s study on displacement in gentrifying neighborhoodsRachel’s studies on jobs and businesses in gentrifying neighborhoods Nicole’s study on what’s happening with public schools with gentrification This study by NYU’s Furman study which has all sorts of stats on gentrifying neighborhoodsCredits: This episode was produced by Meryl Horn and Kaitlyn Sawrey with help from Wendy Zukerman, along with Rose Rimler and Odelia Rubin. We’re edited by Blythe Terrell. Fact checking by Michelle Harris. Mix and sound design by Emma Munger. Music by Emma Munger and Bobby Lord. A huge thanks to Kurtis Melby who helped us with the 311 call analysis. For this episode we also spoke to Associate Professor Japonica Brown-Saracino, Professor Elvin Wyly, Associate Professor T. William Lester, Assistant Professor Stacey Sutton, Amy Collado, Assistant Professor Francis Pearman, Dr Miriam Zuk and, Lorena Lopez. A big thanks to Francisco Lopez, Amber Davis, the Zukerman fam and Joseph Lavelle Wilson. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Hi, I'm Wendy Zuckerman, and you're listening to Science Versus from Gimlet Media. On today's show, gentrification. We have to let them know that we were here first. There's a battle going on against gentrification. In cities around the country, people are saying they want to save their neighbourhoods from soaring rents and mass evictions. Fight, fight, fight!

Housing is a human right! A few weeks ago, scores of people marched through some of New York City's fastest gentrifying neighbourhoods, carrying signs saying, Brooklyn is not for sale. Take it back! Brooklyn's not for sale! Before it's gone! Take it back! Brooklyn's not for sale!

Protesters told us that they were angry because their homes were being taken over by new, richer and often whiter people. I see a lot of white faces that I've never, ever, ever, ever, ever seen before and I've lived there 15 years. These newcomers drive up the rent. I could not afford paying double the rent that I was paying. Forcing long-time residents out of their homes. The people who I grew up with on my block are no longer there. They're not in that neighborhood anymore. Protesters told us that these newcomers,

they made their lives harder, calling the cops on those who had been there for decades. For instance, in Harlem, there were drummers there for 40 years. And then once they built the new condo, the people in the condo kept calling 311 until the drumming stopped. It's a neighbourhood

tradition, and you killed it. And a lot of people have these feelings about gentrification. They say it's part of this bigger picture of growing inequality and a history of racial discrimination in America. Ultimately, they say that gentrification is bad and it needs to be stopped. But there is another side to this debate. People argue that these negative things that you hear about gentrification, they're a myth. They say that gentrification isn't forcing people out of their homes and that it's actually good for a community

because it leads to more businesses, more jobs, better schools and even lower crime. And you can hear this argument on the news. We're talking about violent crime and people stealing from other people. All of it significantly down. I grew up in Harlem, central Harlem, and I don't lament those days. I got the heck out. Business comes in, jobs are created, home values increase.

It's hard to identify a victim here. So what's really happening in gentrifying neighbourhoods? On today's show, we're going to dig through the studies to look at the following questions. One, is gentrification forcing long-time residents out of their homes? Two, do newcomers call the cops on their neighbours more often in gentrifying communities? And three, does gentrification lead to things

like more jobs and better schools? And if it does, who really benefits? When it comes to gentrification, there's lots of opinions. But then there's science. Science vs Gentrification is coming up just after the break. Welcome back. Today we're tackling gentrification, which is basically the process where lots of people with money

move into a low-income neighbourhood and start changing it. In America, you can't really talk about gentrification without talking about race, because these gentrifying neighbourhoods are often home to people of colour, who at times didn't have much choice about where they could live. And the wealthier people moving in, they're usually white. Lance Freeman, a professor of urban planning at Columbia University, remembers when Harlem started to gentrify. He'd always known it as a black neighborhood where you were pretty unlikely to run into someone who was white. For much of Harlem's history, you didn't really see many white people other than, you know, police officers or whatever.

But then in the 90s, things started changing. He told Science vs Senior producer Caitlin Sori about it. You start to see surprising signs. And, you know, you start to see more white people walking around. Was it shocking? It was. Yeah, it was. And seeing Harlem change got Lance thinking seriously about what gentrification was doing. So at the time, I would have been thinking, you know,

people were living in the neighbourhood, gentrification starts, and then they have to move because, you know, the landlord says, you know, I'm not going to renew your lease, so I'm going to increase the rent. And this idea that Lance is talking about, that rich people come in, rents rise, and people lose their homes, this was a huge issue for the protesters in Brooklyn. And back in the 90s, Lance wanted to find out how bad this problem was.

That is, how many people had to leave their homes because of gentrification. And so he and a colleague looked at data from this really large survey of thousands of homes across New York City. So it's every three years. So you can look at the housing units over time. You know, they asked the person, when did you move into the unit? So you can see when people move. And Lance starts crunching the numbers to find out how many more people are leaving their homes in gentrifying neighborhoods compared to similar low-income places that hadn't gentrified.

And what he found was weird, even to him, and it was quite controversial. Lance found that people weren't actually moving out of their homes more often in gentrifying neighbourhoods. I'm going to say that again. Despite this fear of a mass exodus of locals, Lance found that people who live in gentrifying neighborhoods, they weren't more likely to move out of their apartments. That's right.

So it was counterintuitive, but, you know, that was the results were what they were. Did you look at those numbers and you're like, wait, is this right? Yeah, I did. I just know in general, I was surprised. Some people were like, nah, you're crazy. People thought it was crazy because it suggested that gentrification wasn't forcing people out of their homes en masse. And even today, there are academics who aren't convinced by this.

They say that the way Lance is studying gentrification doesn't fully capture everything that's going on. But since his work, other studies have looked at gentrification in cities across America, like Philly and Boston, and many of them basically find the same thing. When compared to similar poor neighbourhoods that hadn't been gentrified, people weren't leaving their homes any faster. And when you zoom in even more on the reasons that people are leaving gentrifying neighbourhoods, there's a concern that more locals are getting evicted. Now, while there's not much research on this, so far it doesn't seem like there's a clear link between gentrification

and a spike in evictions. Which all goes to say that this idea that people are getting forced out of their homes en masse because of gentrification, it doesn't seem to hold up. And Lance says that the fact that gentrification isn't to blame for displacing people actually points to something much bigger that's happening. Well, I think part of what's going on is that focusing on gentrification may be missing the larger problem, which is that people are being forcibly removed, but it's just that gentrification is not necessarily making the problem worse. Lance says the larger problem is that poor people all around America are more likely to move or get kicked out of their homes than rich people. There's more residential instability. People are moving in and out. People are being evicted. And there's no gentrification happening, but that still is what's going on. Point is, this happens in gentrifying and non-gentrifying neighborhoods.

The problem is they're already there and it exists, and gentrification is not necessarily making it worse. Okay, but when you look at these gentrifying neighbourhoods, it's clear that they look different. There's new people, new condos, new little dogs, new yoga studios with goats. Yeah, goat yoga. It's a thing.

Yoga enthusiasts are lined up with a chant of Bah-mah-stay. So if tonnes of people aren't getting kicked out thanks to gentrification, then what's going on? Like, how are these neighbourhoods changing? Well, Lance told us that what he thinks is happening is this. In poor neighbourhoods, when someone moves or gets kicked out, they often get replaced by another person who's like them and also might not have a lot of money. In gentrifying neighbourhoods, though, when poor people leave, they're often replaced by a different kind of person, someone who's often richer and whiter.

People tend to overlook that neighbourhoods don't stand still. People are always moving in and out. And so as soon as you change the flow of the people who move out look different from the people moving in, the neighborhoods are going to change. So Lance gave me an example of this neighborhood in Brooklyn called Bed-Stuy. And it's gentrified a ton, even in the last two years that I've lived in New York. 30 years ago, people were moving into Bed-Stuy and people were moving out of Bed-Stuy. They were predominantly Black. And so it might look like the neighborhood is not changing. Whereas I think now what's happening, you see more whites moving into Bed-Stuy.

And Lance told us that other things are going on to amplify this feeling of change. Like in some cases, gentrifiers are moving into apartments that just weren't there before. Like when abandoned lots or factories that have been sitting empty are then turned into new apartments. That means new people can come in without displacing others.

And Lance says this is something that's clearly going on in some U.S. cities, like New York. That definitely could be part of what you're seeing. Say, for example, in Harlem, there was a lot of vacant space. The Lower East Side of Manhattan also, parts of Williamsburg, Long Island City and Queens and other places. You pretty much described all the gentrifying neighborhoods in New York. Yeah, well, yeah, that's a lot of them, I think.

Conclusion. From what science can measure, gentrification doesn't seem to cause mass displacement. People in gentrifying neighbourhoods don't leave their apartments any more often than people in other poor neighbourhoods. The difference seems to be that when people do leave, the newcomers who replace them tend to be white, have more money and perhaps some different tastes.

OK, next up, there's been a lot of news lately about white people calling the cops on black people for basically no reason. First, there was BBQ Becky... And charcoal grills are not allowed here. ..who called the police on a black family having a barbie in a park. I want the police to come and I've been waiting for two hours for them. Then there was permit Patty who called the cops on a girl

running a little business on the sidewalk. Yeah, and illegally selling water without a permit. She called the police on an eight-year-old little girl. And some people are saying this is happening more thanks to gentrification. That's some gentrification s***. And the idea here is that new people moving into a neighbourhood might not like some of what goes on,

and then instead of talking to their neighbours about it, they use the cops as a complaints department. So we wanted to know, is this something that we have data for? That is, are people calling the cops on their neighbours for mundane stuff more often in gentrifying neighbourhoods? In New York and some other US cities, it's pretty easy to knock out your neighbours to the city, because there's a number you can call to complain about stuff that isn't an emergency, like noise or barbecues. It's 311. And we thought that surely some scientist had figured out if 311 calls go up as neighbourhoods gentrify.

But what we found was basically nothing. Then we realised, though, that this 311 data, it's publicly available. So we got our producer, Dr Meryl Horne, PhD, to crunch some numbers. You want to see my data? Oh my god, I do want to see your data. And we know this is not peer-reviewed, but it's the best we've got. Okay, so Meryl, tell us what you did.

So you can call 311 for all sorts of things. People call it to complain about mosquitoes in their neighborhood or icy sidewalks. And the main reason people call it is to complain about noise, and that's what I focused on. What kind of noise do people generally complain about? People will complain about loud music, if there's parties, people talking too loudly, people banging on the walls. So Meryl got around 30 New York neighborhoods and split them into gentrifying and non-gentrifying. And she looked at more than 600,000 calls over the last six years. And I really wanted to see if these noise complaints were increasing as the neighborhoods were gentrifying. So she did some stats. I found the population normalized all of

the time points. I did a linear regression, looked to see if there is a statistically significant difference between the slopes to see if the p-value was less than 0.01. So what did you find? I found that over this period of time, you could see that the calls just kept going up and up in the gentrifying areas more than the other neighborhoods. Was it by a lot? Yeah, the calls in the gentrifying neighborhoods were going up like 70% faster. Oh, wow. Yeah, I think this is a real effect. There is one major caveat to our analysis, though. We don't know who's making these calls, so it's possible that longtime residents are calling 311 on their new neighbors. So we asked Rory Kramer, a professor of sociology at Villanova University in Philly, about this. And this is what he told us. I'll put it really bluntly. I don't think

longtime, predominantly minority residents call police to their neighborhood nearly as often for things like noise complaints as new white neighbors. If you are traditionally working class and police in your neighborhood have generally been seen as aggressive towards you, you're not going to call police for something like this. So from what Rory has seen on the ground doing research in these communities, he says it's more likely that the newcomers are making these calls. Without the scientific research, BuzzFeed also recently tackled 311 data and found similar stuff to us. And by the way, we wanted to see if people were calling 911 more often as well,

so we contacted a bunch of police departments, but they wouldn't give us their data. Conclusion. At least in New York, it does look like more people call officials for small stuff in gentrifying neighbourhoods. We need more research to know if this is true elsewhere. After the break, the good side to gentrification. When money flows in, can it help a neighbourhood? Welcome back. We just talked about how gentrification isn't causing tons of people to get turfed out of their homes, but new people are coming in and it is changing neighbourhoods. From what we could tell, one of those changes is that newcomers

might be calling the cops on their neighbours more often, which can explain some of the frustrations people are feeling here. But what about the flip side, the positive side to gentrification? Some economists say that gentrification brings money into a neighbourhood, which can be a benefit. And one of the big things that we heard is that it can drop the crime rate. Here's basically how it would work. Studies tend to find

that lower income neighbourhoods have higher rates of some kinds of crime. So perhaps a neighbourhood getting wealthier could mean less crime. We spoke about this with Rachel Meltzer, an Associate Professor of Urban Policy at the New School in Manhattan. I was born and bred in Midtown, New York. Midtown? How does anyone get born and bred in Midtown? Yeah, I was there before Midtown was happening. If you're less familiar with New York, Midtown is where all the tourist traps are,

from Times Square to the Empire State Building. It doesn't really have a residential vibe. But anyway, back to crime. Since the 90s, two things have been happening. One, some cities across America have been gentrifying. And two, generally speaking, the crime rate has been dropping as well. Well, I think that's right. I mean, I think that's the broader context of crime

has been going down for a while. And when you zoom in on gentrifying neighborhoods specifically, most studies have found that as places gentrify, the crime rate drops faster. This happened in New York City and Cambridge, Massachusetts. But it wasn't true for all cities. Like, so it's just more complicated than a gentrifying neighborhood equals lower crime. I mean, I think that's right. This is not all happening in a vacuum.

It's not this like one-to-one of like, you know, rich people come in and then crime goes down. So while it is complicated, generally speaking, over time, we do tend to see lower crime rates in gentrifying neighborhoods. Economists, they win this time. But what about other things that economists say? Like, can all this new money be a boon for the people in the neighbourhood? Well, one place where people stand to benefit is if you own your own house in a gentrifying neighbourhood. If you do, you can sell it for heaps of money when property values go up.

Problem is, because of America's long-standing history of housing discrimination, many people of colour living in gentrifying areas don't own their own homes. So, that's property ownership. Next up, businesses. And this is actually the focus of Rachel's research. And she says there's good reason to think that you'd get more shops and other services in a gentrifying neighbourhood.

One story is that when you see increased investment in these neighbourhoods, local residents could benefit, right? And Rachel, as well as other researchers, have found that across the US, gentrification does bring new business. Over a number of studies, it does seem like when these neighbourhoods change,

they are attracting more commercial investment. One huge study on New York found that gentrifying areas saw 45% more businesses opening up compared to other neighbourhoods. That's over 15 years. And Rachel told us that we're not just talking about dog spas here. When she studied this, she found that some gentrifying neighbourhoods landed more grocery stores, doctor's offices and pharmacies. And there's this idea that gentrification wipes out local businesses. But when Rachel looked into this in New York City, she found that local shops

weren't closing at a higher rate in gentrifying neighborhoods. I didn't find any significant differences, which was interesting. And I understood that as just there's a certain level of turnover and it wasn't at an accelerated rate. That is interesting because just looking around our neighborhoods that we have lived in, you do know, like, I think I noticed that these shops that seem like they've been there for ages, the feeling is they are shutting down and being replaced for like nail salons and fancy coffee shops. But that's not what you're finding. Not on average, right? This was, again, looking across all neighborhoods. I kind of sliced and diced it all different ways. And there wasn't anything telling me that these businesses were exceptionally more vulnerable.

So ultimately, you get more businesses in the area. And with that comes more jobs. Yes. So I find that the total number of jobs goes up in gentrifying neighborhoods. OK, so it looks like gentrification has some upsides. You see more businesses and more jobs. But there is this very big question of who gets to enjoy those benefits. Do long-time residents get these new jobs in the neighbourhood? Can they afford to shop at the new stores?

The truth is, there's not a lot of research on any of this. And anyone who's making big claims in either direction is probably overstating the research. I think gentrification, it's complicated. It's a puzzle to disentangle. There is one final area, though, that we got curious about. Public schools. Because it's possible that more money in the neighborhood could mean more money for the local schools. To sort through this question, we talked to Nicole Mader, who is a teacher in New York. Oh yeah, I taught for six years in two different public high schools in New York City. And one of these schools was in a poor neighborhood that wasn't gentrifying.

It was declining alongside the neighbourhood, so there was a sense of giving up on it and there were stories written about how unsafe it was and just had a very bad reputation. Nicole worked there for several years and then she got a job at another school, one in a gentrifying neighbourhood. And this school, she said, had a lot going for it.

An awesome principal and great teachers. And this got, she said, had a lot going for it. An awesome principal and great teachers. And this got Nicole thinking about what makes some schools better than others. So she actually became a senior research fellow at the Center for New York City Affairs, where she started looking into this idea that maybe gentrification could help local schools. And she says here's a very direct way that that could work. The wealthier families are going to go into these schools and then that's going to help bring more resources to the school or bring more political attention to the school

and then you'll eventually see the test scores rise. So to find out if this was actually happening, Nicole first needed to know if these new rich gentrifying parents were even taking their kids to the local schools. And she had good reason to question this because more than 40% of kids in the US can go to a public school other than the one in their neighbourhood. So Nicole homed in on New York City, where parents have this choice. And she got government data on every kindergarten kid

who studied in a public school in the city for the last decade. So what did she find? We found that the gentrifying neighborhoods have twice as many parents not going to the school that they were assigned to. They're sending their kid to a different kindergarten than in the non-gentrifying neighborhoods. Bottom line, Nicole found that many parents were moving into gentrifying neighborhoods and then taking their kids to school elsewhere.

And these choices add up. Despite New York's reputation as being a progressive liberal heartland, it's actually one of the most segregated school systems in the U.S., which means all these promises of lots of rich parents coming in and helping the school. That's not going to be true if these gentrifier parents aren't going to their local schools. And studies out of Washington, D.C. and Chicago also couldn't find evidence that gentrification was good for the local schools. From our perspective, when we read your study, the first thought was, oh boy, the whites are

just winning on all fronts. Like they get to move to these cool diversified neighborhoods, but then they get to send their kids to whatever school they want. Are we wrong? No, I guess that is definitely one way to put it. They are changing the types of businesses and restaurants and stuff that are moving in there and then they get all the amenities of being in the cool neighborhoods but then they don't have to send their kids to that school that they think is a bad school. Conclusion. Despite new money coming into a community,

there's no good evidence that gentrification helps the local schools. So, when it comes to gentrification, does it stack up? One. Is gentrification forcing lots of people out of their homes? Probably not. As best as science can measure, on average, people aren't leaving their apartments in gentrifying neighbourhoods faster than similar places that haven't gentrified. Two, do newcomers call the cops on their neighbours

more often in gentrifying communities? Well, while there's not a lot of data on this, from what we could find, calls to officials about neighbourhood gripes do rise in gentrifying areas, at least in New York. And three, can gentrification lead to things like more jobs and better schools? And if it can, who really benefits? Well, the crime rate might go down and you will get more businesses flocking to the area,

which means more jobs. But those jobs aren't necessarily going to the locals. Plus, there's not good evidence that gentrification will help the local school. So, from what the science tells us, gentrification isn't the ultimate boogeyman that it's often touted as, but it's not a godsend to a community either.

One thing that gentrification does, though, is that it really shows the stark differences of how people in America are living today. Now people who struggle to pay the rent are living next door to those who have enough money to spare on $6 lattes and goat yoga. And people who feel comfortable calling the cops, like it's tech support, are living side by side with people who see the police as a threat.

So the thing is, gentrification didn't cause these differences, but it is forcing some of those tough realities into the spotlight. That's science versus gentrification. Hello, Meryl. Hey, Wendy. You're back. I am back in the studio. Back in the studio to tell us how many citations were in this week's episode.

76. 76. Yep. And if you want to see the details, you could head to our transcripts, which is on our website, along with our own results. That's right. If you want to see a pretty graph of all of Meryl's research, please head there. Yep. You can head to gimletmedia.com slash scienceverses.

This episode was produced by Merrill Horne and Caitlin Sorey with help from me, Wendy Zuckerman, along with Rose Rimler and Odelia Rubin. We're edited by Blythe Terrell. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris. Mix and sound design by Emma Munger. Music written by Emma Munger and Bobby Lord. A huge, huge thanks to Curtis Melby,

who helped us with the 311 call analysis. For this episode, we also spoke to Associate Professor Japonica Brown-Saraceno, Professor Elvin Wiley, Assistant Professor Stacey Sutton, Amy Collado, Assistant Professor Frances Perman, Dr Miriam Zook, and Lorena Lopez.

A big thanks to Francisco Lopez, Amber Davis, the Zuckerman family, and Joseph Lavelle Wilson. Next week, a murder at Harvard that scandalized the nation. They tip over a tea chest and an entire human thorax basically falls out. I'm Wendy Zuckerman. Back to you next time.