Gentrification​

I am Thomas Lewis, a graduating senior at the University of Michigan studying economics with a minor in writing.  As part of my writing minor, I got the opportunity to spend a semester researching and writing about a topic of my choice.  I chose a topic that drew on my knowledge and understanding of economics, but in terms of content, went beyond the scope of what I have learned in my economics classes.  

 

I chose to study gentrification, or the process by which city neighborhoods undergo drastic changes in their demographic and social makeup that is often heavily resisted by the native population.  In many of America's largest cities, college educated people are moving to cities and choosing to reside in historically working class and minority districts, which places pressure on rent prices and the costs of living that often displaces the native population.

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I grew up in the suburbs of New York, and from a young age, was fascinated with New York City and its vast, diverse boroughs.  I appreciated New York's contributions to American culture, which I attributed as being a consequence of its large and dynamic mixed population of immigrants, minorities, and a variety of social classes.  New York was the melting pot of America, and everyone had a place there - whether they were a doctor, a policeman, a shopkeeper, a banker, or a chef.  When I visited New York as a kid, I saw all these people crammed together in the subways, going up and downtown, to work and to school, and I always thought New York was still the historical melting pot of my imagination.

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When I got older, and started to spend more time in the city - visiting friends who lived there, working there at an internship, and talking to long-term residents, I learned that the city was changing fast.  One of my friend's mother spoke nostalgically about growing up in an Italian neighborhood in lower Manhattan, and when I asked her if she ever wanted to move back, she responded "no, I'm never going to move back there.  I don't belong there anymore, the entire city is built for rich people, and if you don't have money, you can't get by."  

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The next year, I went to look at apartments in Brooklyn with one of my friends who was moving there for school.  He told me the rent was so expensive that the closest he could live to school was in an infamous neighborhood I had known for being the home of two of some of America's most famous rap musicians: Jay-Z and the Notorious B.I.G.  The neighborhood, Bedford-Stuyvesant (Bed-Stuy), was painted grimly in their music.  They rapped about surviving financially by selling drugs, and depicted the horrors of gang violence that plagued the streets.  I asked why he was interested in living in a dangerous neighborhood, and he told me it wasn't as dangerous anymore, and that many of the poor people who once lived there could no longer afford it.  He told me it was getting much wealthier, but with a completely different set of people.  

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When we got off the subway, we began walking down the street.  As we approached the building he was seeing a unit in, we passed by a young black boy sitting on the stoop, staring at us, rapping: "white man comin' to the hood, kickin' us out for good."  Next door, an elderly black women was shaking her head in disappointment as a man in a suit came to look at the building she lived in, with the intention of purchasing it to use as a real estate investment. My heart sunk, as I looked at my friend and said "What are we doing here? Surely you can afford an apartment somewhere else, what are these people going to do?" My friend assured me he could not afford to live anywhere else, and that he felt bad too, but what was he to do about it?

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I became fascinated by the cultural effects of gentrification on New York, and it shook me that my image of the city as a melting pot was being challenged.  As I discovered more about gentrification, I learned that many activists blamed real estate investors and young, white college graduates for ruining New York City.  I became faced with a deep personal conflict: I was a young, white college student with aspirations to be a real estate investor, but I cared deeply about New York as a melting pot for a diverse array of people, and would never want to challenge that.  

 

I knew that economics would have a lot to say about gentrification, and was concerned by my hunch that a free and open housing market might be the cause of New York's cultural destruction.  However, I also knew that there was so much about gentrification I didn't know, so I sought to resolve my internal conflicts by spending the semester trying to better understand gentrification from an unbiased perspective.

 

To check out the interesting topic I've taken on this semester, click on the button below to get started.  

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