#degentrification

You got to make it okay to be a burnout

What is “degentrification”?  Degentrification looks at the reversal or restoration of cities by funding opportunities for people to afford living in those areas. Gentrification has often uprooted BIPOC cultural roots that have been cultivated for decades. Gentrification is considered the displacement of low-income and working-class people by wealthy individuals. Disproportionately, low-income BIPOC with less than median years of school completed, and the elderly are the most affected. Gentrification's rhetoric often situates itself as portraying cities that are "undiscovered" or “on the rise", as if they had never been developing their own rhythm, or their existing cultures and communities were deemed undesirable by often racist individuals. Even before gentrification, cities still experienced social, environmental, and racial injustices in their community. However, gentrification is not the solution for these issues and contributes to these types of injustices by displacing, terrorizing, or harming community members rather than supporting them.

Some people have argued that "gentrification was merely a continuation of urban renewal by private means" (Marcuse 1993). Around 1.5 million people in the United States are estimated to be experiencing homelessness. It is always important to recognize that the community will and still always exist in these spaces.

Simultaneously, degentrification has been situated in some text as providing affordable housing as the solution while ignoring the current economic impact that has artificially oppressed the way the city governments operate. Investing in local governments to buy housing units or land will also further hurt the community. Some cities have had issues building new units and advertising these luxury apartments as affordable to wealthy individuals when they are not affordable to lower class displaced communities. How can we talk about degentrification? 1) Rent Control: Many housing justice activists have been saying this for decades. 2) Acknowledge decades of systemic racism and divestment, including redlining that forced Black, Indigenous, and People of Color into certain zip code areas. 3) Pushing for housing justice policies, community investment, and local business investment.