Comment 114633

By RobF (registered) | Posted November 05, 2015 at 09:13:09 in reply to Comment 114624

There's long been a debate in academic circles about "gentrification" ... including the suggestion that it is chaotic concept, or a term that stands for so many things that it has lost its descriptor and explanatory usefulness.

Whatever one wishes, and I believe it doesn't matter what the phenomenon "gentrification" describes is called (white-painting, social upgrading, revitalization, studentification, middle-class resettlement), the basic issue is involuntary displacement. That is a real problem that impacts existing residents, particularly lower-income tenants.

But it's not a reason to allow buildings, infrastructure, or cities to fall into disrepair. The more fundamental issue has always been poverty, income inequality, and differential access to credit/mortgage capital in a competitive, market-driven housing system. You can either begin to address that or devise and implement policies to intervene via rent-to-income geared housing, expand the co-op housing sector, or subsidize homeownership and encourage the production of lower-cost housing units. (in Canada the postwar suburbs are largely a product of the last option).

My point is we do have a choice. And it isn't between allowing widespread urban decline or the formation of islands of slum housing and vibrant, revitalized urban centres. The "gentrification debate" is just a tidy way to talk about that which makes us most uncomfortable: class. After several months of listening to politicians talk about the "middle class" maybe we should acknowledge what that acknowledges ... that to have a "middle" you must have a "lower" and "upper" too.

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