Argumentative Essay: Why Gentrify?

Why Gentrify? Many people, as they grow up, move to different places and explore the world. They decide that they are tired of being stuck in their hometown and they move away. Many times when this happens after many years of being away they decide to take a trip home to go and visit their old city or town and to especially check up on their childhood home. For some that house may still be occupied by a relative or still there just vacant. Others return home to find that their house is no longer their house, their neighborhood is not the same as it once was. There are new shops and apartments and their house has either disappeared or is now a “modern” house. This is caused by gentrification. Gentrification affects the whole community of neighborhood, past, present and future. The past wants to hold onto the memories of what they are used to. The present want to come in and change the

The most topic brought up is that the rich whites are kicking out black families from their homes. While this may be true in a very simplistic form. It is not the aim of the wealthier class to completely rid the poorer class from their homes. Davidson mentions, “Hispanics made up 52.9 percent of southeastern Harlem’s population in 2000; a decade later, that figure had fallen to 47.5. Whites took their place (11.5 percent before, 17.5 percent after).” (Davidson 353). Dashka Slater combats this argument by stating “A 2005 study by Lance Freeman, a professor of urban planning at Columbia University, found the chances that a poor resident of a gentrifying neighborhood would be forced to move were only 1.5 percent—compared to a 1 percent chance of that same resident being displaced in a nongentrifying neighborhood.” she then adds “This is partly because poor people tend to be transient anyway, and partly because poor neighborhoods tend to have high vacancy rates.” (Slater