Does urban growth automatically mean more gentrification? Not necessarily. Here’s some sure fire ways to avoid gentrification from coming to fruition.

1. More low-income housing!

This one seems almost too obvious of an answer. By making providing low income housing at an equal rate as high cost areas grow, displacement may still happen but at the poorest of a city are not literally losing ground in their city. Making sure that low income housing projects don’t disappear in the future is crucial to preventing gentrification from taking place.

Going back to our previous example of Rosewood Courts. While I agree that the land value of Rosewood has increased in value over the years, that does not given developers the right to tear it down and rebuild for the incoming upper to middle class families, thus displacing the previous residents.

However, there are various programs in place for those who do get displaced or just need low income housing today. The City of Austin has many different programs to choose from, therefore I cannot argue that the displaced residents will automatically become homeless. Most of the problem gentrification brings is the displacement of people from their homes that they’ve lived in for decades.

That being said, according to Roger Valdez from Smart Growth Seattle, neighborhoods have notoriously shifted from wealth to poverty to wealth again within the decades since it’s been around. The process of a changing area is not something new and cannot be solely blamed on gentrification. However, one it becomes to the point that only minorities are being displaced and there are no new low income housing areas to go along with the growth of the city’s wealthy metropolitan area, then that becomes a gentrification problem.

2. Protect existing low income housing areas

Again, this one seems too obvious of answer as well. Protecting existing areas will slow down the process of gentrification and it will keep families in the homes they’ve owned for the last couple of decades. It makes sure that families stay in the areas they want to, regardless of their income. Sadly, there are not many programs out there to help families keep their home as much as ones to help them find a new one. I suggest demanding a program for the families who do not wish to move out of the area so they can keep their home.

For more good reads on the subject, I suggest Kalima Rose’s blog post on Race, Poverty, and Environment.