During a town hall event at the University of Maryland Friday, President Barack Obama said that gentrification — the migration of higher-income individuals into lower-income neighborhoods, which creates a cycle of increasing rents and can lead revenue-seeking landlords to attempt to hustle longstanding residents from their homes — is "probably not a bad problem to have." "It means the city is growing and attracting new business and energy," Obama said, given that most cities are suffering declining investment and the fallout from the mortgage crisis that beleaguered the start of this presidency. Indeed, some urban development policies tried to kickstart the gentrification process. In Jersey City, N.J., the Waldo Lofts development was part of an entire district where half of the units were supposed to go to artists — who preceded the arrival of upwardly mobile young professionals in neighborhoods like Brooklyn, N.Y.'s Williamsburg — but that plan didn't gain as much traction as was hoped. I was part of a research team that suggested Staten Island's leadership could make the island's north shore an attractive location for young professionals commuting to jobs in Lower Manhattan through a combination of residential development and other initiatives, which might bring new blood and new opportunities to the borough. Our advice came in 2007, not long before the bottom fell out of New York City's housing market and it financing for development projects dried up, leaving vacant or half-finished projects throughout the city to languish for years. In 2009, Obama appointed former Bronx, N.Y. Borough President Adolfo Carrión Jr. to be the director of the then-new White House Office of Urban Affairs; without much to take credit for after his time in the White House, in 2010 he was moved to the department of Housing and Urban Development, where he is now regional director for New York and New Jersey. — Nick Judd
