Does gentrification really push out longtime residents?

Sometimes, and the evidence is surprisingly mixed on how often. Gentrification is the process whereby a neighbourhood's character changes through the influx of more affluent residents and investment. The word comes from the British sociologist Ruth Glass, who in 1964 used it to describe middle-class people moving into working-class districts of London, such as Islington, and displacing the people living there. She wrote that once the process starts it goes on rapidly, until all or most of the original working-class occupiers are displaced.

Decades of research have not settled whether that is typical. Displacement is often seen as a key effect of gentrification, but evidence is mixed on whether gentrification leads to displacement, or even reduces it, and under what circumstances. In 2002 the economist Jacob Vigdor wrote that the literature had failed to convincingly show higher involuntary displacement in gentrifying neighbourhoods. A 2018 study found that gentrification displaces renters, but not homeowners. A 2017 study by Matthew Desmond found no higher eviction risk for renters in gentrifying neighbourhoods.

Those studies look at people being forced out. Studies in the UK suggest a different cost: exclusionary displacement, where low-income households are prevented from moving in because rents and prices are too high.

Other findings cut the other way. A 2023 study found that large new apartment buildings in low-income neighbourhoods attracted high-income households but also lowered rents nearby by increasing supply. And benefits and harms fall unevenly: homeowners can gain, while renters can be displaced without much compensation.

So the question has no single answer. It depends on whom you count, renters or owners, people who left or people who could never arrive, and on whether new homes get built.