Gentrifact and Gentrifiction
Former Editor-in-Chief Ryan Avent writes a weekly column about neighborhood and development issues.
I don’t suppose it would surprise most District residents to hear that there are sharp differences in income between the city’s neighborhoods and racial and ethnic groups. We see it all around us, but especially in those parts of the city where the lives of the haves abut and intermingle with those of the have-nots. These gentrification frontiers are often a locus for crime and social unrest, as well as hand-wringing by residents and their leaders about how best to reduce the negative impact of neighborhood change (or forestall it altogether). But Washington, such change is largely out of our hands. We can only hope to mitigate such population shifts, but we should do so carefully. Serving low income families successfully very well might accelerate the process of gentrification.
The evidence of income divisions in the city has been confirmed, once again, with the latest release of income and poverty statistics from the Census Bureau. The Washington region enjoys the highest median income of any metropolitan area in the United States, but behind that number lurk some unpleasant figures, for the District especially. As of 2006, the median income for a non-Hispanic white Washingtonian household was a whopping $91,000, while the median black household earned a mere $34,000, with Asian and Hispanic households in between. What’s more, median incomes in D.C. have grown fastest in recent years for non-Hispanic whites. Asians and Hispanic households have made impressive but slower gains, and black households, already the poorest, have experienced the slowest income growth.
The comparison between groups is imperfect, however, without taking into consideration numbers for the rest of the metro area. Looking at Greater Washington, one finds that median income for whites is slightly higher than it is in the District (and is still the highest for all groups), but median household earnings for minorities are far higher than in D.C. While blacks in the District remain very poor relative the population at large, black household incomes in the suburbs are some of the highest in the nation.
These statistics are perfectly in line with nationwide trends in income and settlement patterns. Data suggest that households nationally generally fall into one of three groups. The first contains the rich and the young and upwardly mobile. This group has a high lifetime earnings potential and is able to accept, ignore, or work around high housing costs in the center of large cities in order to take advantage of the production, consumption, and cultural goods in those places. The second group is the squeezed middle, which values those same amenities but is nonetheless filtered by high housing costs into the outer suburbs of large cities or into sunbelt towns where vast and rapid sprawl has kept housing costs down. The third group is the immobile poor, stuck by low returns to their work in concentrations of urban poverty.
In the Washington area, we see these group dynamics in action. The young and rich generally live where they like. Middle income households, including many black families who have done well enough to escape the enclaves of urban poverty but not so well that they can easily afford life in Northwest Washington, increasingly populate the outer suburbs of the region. The poor are stuck. They can’t afford to escape eastern D.C. or western Prince George’s County, and so they remain behind.
Photo by Captain Easychord
Many in the city remain concerned about gentrification, but it’s important for those individuals to understand these underlying trends. If the city succeeds in shifting individuals out of poverty, it’s highly likely that those individuals will then leave the city. The best tools at the city’s disposal for improving the lot of those in poverty—improving schools and reducing crime—are also sure to boost property values in downtrodden areas, increasing pressure on mobile families to depart. Worst of all for the city, when success stories depart for the suburbs, they take with them their tax revenues, enriching the coffers of places like Charles County, Maryland, where revenue demands aren’t nearly as intense as in the District. The District, by contrast, is left to deal with the most difficult poverty cases, and the job of handling a wide and broadening income gap.
By no means should District leaders throw up their hands in defeat, but in many ways, the city has its hands tied. Nationally, wage distribution is polarizing, making it difficult to support a middle class anywhere; until the federal government changes its attitude toward tax cuts for the rich and reduced bargaining power for the poor, this will not change. Federal transportation funding, moreover, is strongly biased toward road construction, meaning that most new housing supply is built around new roads in outer suburbs and sunbelt boomtowns. It should be no surprise to find that households constrained by housing costs are following the new supply.
Within the metropolitan region, similar factors are pushing those in the middle outward. Without regional coordination of tax revenues and planning, there’s nothing the District can do but hope that the tax payments of the wealthy allow it to do its best by the remaining poor.
In a perfect world, the jurisdictions in the center of the metropolitan area would commit themselves to investing heavily in education, in dense housing growth, and in transportation solutions to facilitate that housing growth. Too often, central neighborhoods fight dense growth, limiting supply and contributing to high housing costs, while the suburban states focus on transportation and development strategies that encourage housing supply to move out, dragging middle-income families with it.
The District doesn’t get to choose the national economic environment or the federal policies that make addressing its own internal inequities more difficult. It doesn’t get to veto moves by suburban neighbors that entice middle-income families and their tax revenues away. All it can do is invest in its schools and neighborhoods and lobby its neighbors for their support. Washingtonians need to understand that improving the lives of the District’s poor citizens is going to mean neighborhood change. Our concern should be for the welfare of individual households; we should care about how they're doing rather than where they are.