Proposition
• Integrated neighborhoods
o Race
o Income
o Age
o Education levels
o Religion
o Ethnicity
• Safer neighborhoods
o Connection between low
income and crime
• Property value goes up
o Government gets more
money from taxes
• Better business opportunities
• Resources become available in
neighborhoods where it was
previously hard to get investors
• Schools improves
o Often the upper class people
who move in have a higher
interested in their children’s
education
• DC has highest percentage of
residents with post graduate degrees
• Development of U Street, post
1960s riots
• Columbia Heights developments
• Improves quality of life
• Enables renters to move up the
housing ladder
o Government requires
developers to make certain
amount of housing (10%) to
be affordable under HUD’s
Section 8, a program under
which low-income families
receive a government
subsidy equal to, in most
cases, the difference
between 30 percent of their
income and the HUD-
calculated maximum
allowable rent for an area
• Higher security for more educated
and wealthy residents
• More house owners, more pride in
neighborhood
• DC’s Inclusionary Zoning (IZ)
program is a new affordable
housing tool that allows
communities to create mixed
income housing—
www.Greaterwashington.org
• DC's IZ program, like many land-
Opposition
• Raises home prices and property
taxes and mortgage
• Pushes out poorer people and often
original residents (usually happens
only in working-class or
poor neighborhoods Local
landlords and politicians
also appreciated the
economic wisdom of
inner-city renovation as a
means to attract middle
and upper class workers
to the area.------ In San
Francisco during the
1960s, for example, the
Height-Ashbury district
became a popular refuge
for young adults displaced
by gentrification efforts
elsewhere.) PG county’s
new chief executive,
Rushern Baker,
commenting on a recent
rash of murders (13 in the
first 11 days of the year)
blame it on gang violence.
A myfoxdc.com news
article stated that DC law
enforcement has been
cracking down on gang
violence in areas like
Columbia Heights, and the
gangs have moved on to
PG county. Columbia
Heights has undergone
major gentrification with
many retail chains,
restaurants, and
condominiums catering to
middle class, white
professionals who
displaced the long term
residents.
• Young people cannot afford homes
in gentrified neighborhoods
• Poor are sent out into suburbs and
bring plethora of issues with them
• Columbia Heights violence and
high home prices
• Carries racial stigma, and is often
true
• Bad for small businesses
 Gentrification of Washington, D.C.

Gentrification is the restoration of run-down urban areas by the middle class (resulting
in the displacement of low-income residents).