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Anna Cash

Program Director

Urban Displacement Project

Urban Displacement Project: Research and Anti-Displacement Policy Work

Sustaining Communities | September 26, 2019

University of Washington

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About the Urban Displacement Project

The Urban Displacement Project (UDP) is a research and action initiative at UC Berkeley. UDP conducts community-engaged, data-driven, applied research to help move cities towards more equitable and inclusive futures.

The goal of UDP is to produce rigorous research to reframe conversations, empower advocates and policymakers, and to train and inspire the next generation of leaders in equitable development.

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Multi-method Approach

Partnerships with state, regional, local gov and community groups

Redefine gentrification as a process, not an event

Non-linear relationship between gentrification and displacement

Incorporate exclusion

Retrospective and prospective maps

Undersupply and growing rents are contributing to displacement, which is what we study in depth. We’ve spent a lot of time at the Urban Displacement Project trying to understand the geography of displacement risks and what we’ve found in our Bay Area maps, which now go all the way out to Sacramento and down to Santa Cruz, is that displacement is not just happening in the Mission’s and Oaklands of the northern California region. Over 60% of low income households in the Bay Area live in neighborhoods at risk of or undergoing displacement. That is up roughly 10% in the two years since our previous mapping.

With funding from the California Air Resources Board, we were able to look at better quantifying displacement and the role of transit investment as well as the MTC Sustainable communities Initiative Grant process. This work was done in collaboration with Plan Bay Area.

Our gentrification typology maps analyze regional data on housing, income and other demographics to better understand and predict where gentrification and displacement is happening and will likely occur in the future. Purple tracts are low-income, and orange tracts are moderate or high-income. The lighter purple indicates at risk of gentrification or displacement, and the darker purple is ongoing gentrification or displacement. The lighter orange is for moderate/high-income neighborhoods that are at risk of exclusion of low-income neighborhoods, and the darker oranges are neighborhoods with ongoing or advanced exclusion. Striped purple are neighborhoods that were low-income in 1990, but have undergone such dramatic demographic change that they would now be characterized as moderate or high-income. Please see our website, urbandisplacement.org, to learn more about our methodology, and further explore the maps.

Operationalizing Gentrification:

Neighborhood vulnerability in year 1 (e.g., affordable housing, low income, etc.)
Demographic change between base and end years (e.g., growth in median income)
“Hot Real Estate Market”
Change in who is able to move into the neighborhood

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Gentrification:

Transit-induced gentrification:

Our research shows -- rail station areas areas more likely to experience gentrification and displacement than areas without a transit stop. Context, however, matters to determine the speed and degree of transformation.�

New Investment + �New Types of Residents

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Gentrification: a process of neighborhood change that includes economic change in a historically disinvested neighborhood —by means of real estate investment and new higher-income residents moving in - as well as demographic change - not only in terms of income level, but also in terms of changes in the education level or racial make-up of residents.

The historic conditions, especially policies and practices that made communities susceptible to gentrification.
The way that central city disinvestment and investment patterns are taking place today as a result of these conditions.
And the ways that gentrification impacts communities.

When new transit is located in low-income communities of color, tends to attract more affluent in-movers → neighborhood transformation
Impacts vary depending on location within region, specific local contexts
TOD without caring about gentrification / displacement may be self-defeating (environmental and equity goals):

Displacing people to further away

Only 5% of neighborhoods near rail have seen significant housing built

Need development to accommodate growing populations, meet GHG reduction goals

Transit station areas more likely to experience gentrification and displacement than neighborhoods without a transit stop – even after the development of TODs and new market rate housing

Since the enhanced accessibility offered by transit proximity is often capitalized into land and housing prices, many express concern that new transit investments will result in the displacement of the low-income populations likely to benefit most from transit access, a phenomenon which we term transit-induced gentrification. Others argue that even if TODs see an increase in housing prices, the total location affordability of locations near transit, factoring in housing and transportation costs, may still be lower, compared with locations in transit-poor suburban areas. In response to these concerns, policy advocates have proposed a variety of interventions designed to ensure that affordable housing for low- to moderate-income households is produced and preserved in areas proximate to transit stations. (Dawkins 2016).

Does transit-induced gentrification lead to displacement? To our knowledge, while a number of studies have discussed the potential for displacement as a result of transit investments (Pollack, Bluestone, and Billingham 2010; Greenwich and Wykowski 2012), no empirical study has been able to measure the extent of any transit-induced displacement. Nevertheless, since researchers have found that transit neighborhoods tend to have higher concentrations of renters (Greenwich and Wykowski 2012), and transit investments have been shown to increase property values and rents, there are enough reasons for community advocates to worry about transit-induced displacement (Rayle 2015; Dawkins and Moeckel 2016).

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Reviewing the literature

Types/Causes of Displacement
	Forced	Responsive
Direct or physical causes	Formal eviction Informal eviction (e.g., landlord harassment) Landlord foreclosure Eminent domain Natural disaster Building condemnation	Deterioration in housing quality Neighborhood violence or disinvestment Removing parking, utilities, etc.
Indirect or economic causes	Foreclosure Condo conversion	Rent increases Increased taxes Loss of social networks or cultural significance of a place
Exclusionary	Section 8 discrimination Zoning policies (restriction on density, unit size, etc.) NIMBY resistance to development	Unaffordable housing Cultural dissonance Lack of network

Source: “Gentrification, Displacement, and the Role of Public Investment: A Literature Review.” (Zuk et al 2015)

Linking gentrification and displacement.

So what counts as displacement? Lots of people move. Displacement refers to moves that:

1) are beyond the household’s reasonable ability to control or prevent (e.g., rent increases);

2) occur despite the household’s having met all previously-imposed conditions of occupancy; and

3) make continued occupancy by that household impossible, hazardous or unaffordable.

Plus what we call “exclusionary displacement.” This is a more indirect form. It means that you have far fewer options now than you did 5 years ago because middle-class neighborhoods are becoming more exclusive.

Displacement can result from gentrification when neighborhoods become out of reach for people or can occur at earlier stages through disinvestment, increasing vacancies and facilitating demographic turnover.

And what does displacement actually look like? We just launched an explainer video with the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank and the Great Communities Collaborative (an initiative of San Francisco Foundation).

“Pushed Out: Displacement Today and Lasting Impacts” – watch here: http://tinyurl.com/udp-video

Key takeaways:

Displacement is often a misunderstood crisis, and there are a few key things that can often be left out of the narrative:
Displacement happens in many different ways – it cannot be fought effectively until it is recognized it in all its forms. Displacement is not just evictions, but also lots of other pressures that force people to move.

Like foreclosure, demolition, and what’s often called “soft evictions” (like landlord neglect, landlord harassment, utility shutoffs, and extreme rent increases -- things that make it impossible for families to stay.)

Displacement is not just a one-time unfortunate event — it has long-lasting impacts for families and their opportunities, with low-income people and people of color often being hardest hit.

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Displacement Impacts

Household-level

Regional

New concentrations of poverty and segregation throughout the Bay Area

San Mateo:

33% of household respondents left the county
Displaced to worse-off neighborhoods

Santa Clara:

Only 9% were able to move within a mile of previous home
20% ended up in “precarious” housing (hotel, doubling up, couch-surfing)

~One in three displaced households reported some period of homelessness or marginal housing in the two years following their displacement. Several of these households remained homeless even months after they were displaced.

After being displaced, only 20 percent of households reported staying in the same neighborhood (within one mile of their previous home). Thirty-three percent of households left San Mateo County, generally moving to the Central Valley or eastern communities in the East Bay.

After being displaced, households moved to neighborhoods with fewer job opportunities on average, leading to longer, more costly commutes for households who left the county. These new neighborhoods also had more environmental and safety concerns as well as fewer healthcare resources.

Displacement was a significant disruption and trauma for respondents and their children. Two out of three children in displaced households had to change schools.

Source: Marcus, Justine and Miriam Zuk, “Displacement in San Mateo County, California: Consequences for Housing, Neighborhoods, Quality of Life, and Health,” (2017).

Forthcoming expansion of the study in Santa Clara County, preliminary results show:

Similar disparities in experiences of homelessness/marginally housed
More crowded; more rent burdened
More folks staying within the city, but still a significant proportion who leave the city (1/3) and 1 in 5 leave the county
Participants who were displaced were significantly less likely to be able to rely on neighbors to lend or exchange things or favors or to be willing to take collective, political action.

These individual impacts are in addition to the potential community/city impacts of displacement, such as less racial and economic diversity, workforce shortages, etc.

•Between 2000 and 2015, as housing prices rose, historically Black cities and neighborhoods across the Bay Area lost thousands of low-income Black households.

•Large increases in the number of low-income people of color living in areas that became newly segregated and high-poverty suggests that rising housing costs and migration patterns are contributing to new concentrations of segregation and poverty in the region.

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Disseminating Work and Reframing Conversations

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Explainer Videos

urbandisplacement.org/pushedout

urbandisplacement.org/gentrificationexplained

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Informing & Analyzing Policy

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Anti-Displacement Policy Book Chapters

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Policy Tool Maps

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Policy Briefs

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Technical Assistance

Heightened Displacement Risk Indicators for �Seattle’s Equitable Development Initiative

Opportunities for Site-Specific Action	Indicators of Displacement or Elevated Displacement Risk
Income- and Rent-Restricted Housing Expirations Condominium Conversion Applications Tenant Relocation Assistance Ordinance (TRAO) Requests Loss of Cultural Spaces Homeowner Tax Arrears	Housing Cost Burden Foreclosures Evictions Supply of Rental Housing Affordable at Low -Income Levels Increase in Private-Market Residential Rent Housing Sales Velocity Housing Sales Price Increase Home Flipping New Housing Construction Permits Commercial Rent Increase

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Forthcoming Research - Policy Evaluations

Analysis of the displacement impacts of policy:

Rent control and just cause evictions protections (funded by SVCF)
New housing production – affordable and market rate (funded by CZI)
Climate change mitigation investments (funded by SGC)

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Thank you!

anna_cash@berkeley.edu