Real Estate expert and Community Advocate Robby Caban tells a foreclosure story that partially resulted from gentrification.
The implication of gentrification
From Robby Caban:
From a professional real estate perspective, it is always safer and healthier for communities to be mixed-income. In areas that have been divested in or are being gentrified, it’s in everyone’s best interest/community collective to protect legacy residents’ interest because when we do not, we as overall taxpayers wind up paying quadruple to subsidize affordable housing (be it for developers or in down payment programs) and/or face a homelessness crisis. At the same time, private investors, LLC‘s, flippers, cash buyers make a massive profit off of single-family housing.
Development (especially any that involves tax-funded incentives, whether city or federal) should always be balanced, transparent, and equitable. When it is not, we (taxpayers/public) often indirectly cause an inventory and or homeless crisis – which has an avoidable cost to taxpayers – and do irreparable harm to our communities and neighbors.
A definition of gentrification.
It is a process in which a poor area (as of a city) experiences an influx of middle-class or wealthy people who renovate and rebuild homes and businesses and which often results in an increase in property values and the displacement of earlier, usually poorer residents
The story that Robby reveals is a consequence that we have got to mitigate. Sadly, most of our politicians are not clueless but derelict in their duty to their constituents.
The solution to this problem is exactly what Robby is doing. She is giving a voice to many who would otherwise not have a voice. She has been doing this for some time. As more independent journalists and activists take this problem more seriously, consider it existential for many communities, we will see the necessary changes.