BY ED FELIEN
Why do poverty pimps push the myth of gentrification?
According to Myron Orfield, “Brighton Development made at least a $10 million profit building 3,000 units of low income housing. We only know this because Peggy Lucas had to disclose her assets when she was on the Sport Facilities Commission and the Board of Regents.”
They made outrageous profits: “Our reports show that a unit that cost $133K to build in Eagan, cost $300k in Minneapolis.”
In his latest study on the myth of gentrification, Orfield argues: “Instead of getting sidetracked into a rancorous—but ultimately misguided—debate over gentrification, regional leaders would be wise to pursue policies that arrest neighborhood decline and open up expensive, affluent areas to lower-income populations.
“In areas where gentrification fears are felt most acutely, poverty and segregation is growing, with potentially dire impacts on local schools, the economic well-being of residents, and access to opportunity.
“The portion of the population that was white declined in every neighborhood except one—Powderhorn in Minneapolis, where it increased from 45% to 51%.
“The widening gap suggests that the greatest risk is not that the lower-priced neighborhoods are gentrifying; it is that they are falling further behind.
“It seems that many in the Twin Cities really do feel that Minneapolis or St. Paul could be next. For example, a Minneapolis City Council member hosted a community forum on the topic, which was attended by several hundred local residents. Panelists at the forum presented videos showing neighborhood battles in San Francisco as an example of the problems facing Minneapolis.
“But places like San Francisco or New York make for poor analogies to the Twin Cities.
“The comparisons rely on three fundamental measures of local housing markets— median home value, median rent and median income. Ultimately, they show how the housing market in Minneapolis and St. Paul differs noticeably from much of the nation. At times, this difference is dramatic.
“But at every point in time, the median housing price in Minneapolis or St. Paul is lower than in any comparison city.
“Indeed, in 2000, median rents in the two Twin Cities were higher than median rents in Atlanta and roughly equivalent to those in Chicago. But by the most recent period, all comparison cities had become significantly more expensive than either Minneapolis or St. Paul.”
When Orfield compared the median rents and home prices of the Twin Cities, he concluded: “Extreme care must be taken when comparing Minneapolis or St. Paul to cities with prominent gentrification fights, because for most residents, housing is far cheaper to obtain here than in those cities. Relative to these places, the Twin Cities have become more affordable over time.
“Regardless of whether they are well-founded, concerns over gentrification can have a real impact on municipal and regional policy. Efforts to spur economic growth in struggling neighborhoods are often criticized as a cause of ongoing displacement, while efforts to make affordable housing available in suburbs or higher-income neighborhoods sometimes come under attack as ‘dispersion’ intended to clear the way for gentrification of poorer neighborhoods. When the degree of ongoing neighborhood change is exaggerated, these critiques take on an undue urgency.
“For this reason, it is essential that policymakers not be misled about the true scope of gentrification in the Twin Cities. An analysis of 12 key indicators shows little to no evidence of gentrification in any Minneapolis or St. Paul neighborhoods. The neighborhoods that are most often cited as candidates for gentrification were more likely to show signs of decline between 2000 and 2009-13 than signs of gentrification.
“One candidate neighborhood—Powderhorn—did show increases in its white population and in rents compared to Minneapolis averages.
“However, at the end of the period, the area still showed more characteristics of a neighborhood at risk of decline—lower than average income, higher than average poverty, increasing poverty populations, lower than average owner-occupancy, lower than average home values and rents and greater than average amounts of low-income housing—than of an area undergoing gentrification.
“To begin remedying this situation and narrow the gap between the Twin Cities’ haves and have-nots, policymakers should focus on providing a more equitable distribution of subsidized and affordable housing units. Leaders should recognize that public and private economic development of struggling neighborhoods is to be welcomed, not feared. Concerns about displacement, dispersion and disruption may be well-intentioned, but they do not appear to be well-founded. When struggling areas are held apart, inundated with subsidized housing, and treated with unusual delicacy for fear of causing gentrification, it only helps cement the divide between their residents and the residents of the region’s most prosperous places. All neighborhoods in Minneapolis and St. Paul should be permitted to benefit from economic growth and expansion; all residents should have access to the cities’ thriving neighborhoods.”
In another study that he did on racial segregation, Orfield asked: “Why are the Twin Cities so segregated?
“Since the start of the 21st century, the number of severely segregated schools in the Twin Cities area has increased more than sevenfold; the population of segregated, high-poverty neighborhoods has tripled. The concentration of black families in low-income areas has grown for over a decade; in Portland and Seattle, it has declined. In 2010, the region had 83 schools made up of 90% nonwhite students. Portland had two.”
We need to ask ourselves whether the continued concentration of poor people in inner city neighborhoods is in the best interests of the greater community and in the best interests of young people seeking educational and employment opportunities. Poverty pimps use poor neighborhoods to milk government agencies for money, but the slickest pimps on Lake Street could take lessons from developers like Brighton on how to take advantage of federal subsidies for low income housing and tax increment financing and convince the City Council and neighborhood groups that they’re doing everybody a favor by making millions off of poverty.
