“Gentrification” is frequently used as a pejorative to oppose new and more costly development in an older neighbourhood attracting more affluent buyers – as though it was the development itself creating the change. Ipso facto, stop the development, stop the change. Reality, it appears, is more complicated.
An almost incidental article in Business in Vancouver by long-time real-estate reporter Peter Mitham explores a phenomenon noted in Seattle by a Portland researcher (and referenced here in PT): “Our focus on gentrification is misplaced … since the spread of concentrated poverty is a much larger trend, and has a far more negative impact on the lives of poor people.”
Here’s Peter’s coverage that looks at what Stats Can data says about Vancouver. It deserves more attention and follow-up research:
.
Gentrification? Maybe not
.
Portland, Oregon, think-tank City Observatory issued a report last month pointing to persistent poverty rather than gentrification as the key challenge cities face.
City Observatory takes a particular interest in the proliferation of neighbourhoods where more than 30% of the households are living in poverty and the more prosperous precincts where just 15% of households or fewer are below the poverty line (Canada’s closest equivalent are households with low income after tax).
The glare of media attention falls on those places that are gentrifying – previously poor neighbourhoods that have experienced investment and which have gained wealthier new residents,” the report states.
“While such instances of change are striking, this study shows they are rare.”
With some activists critiquing the effect new developments have on property values and affordability, and others lamenting the loss of vintage homes to new mansions, the report raises the question: is a similar phenomenon at play in Metro Vancouver?
Statistics Canada census data from 1999 to 2012 indicates that poverty in the Vancouver census metropolitan area is indeed both persistent and growing.
While gentrification transformed some neighbourhoods between 1999 and 2012, the proportion of census tracts with 30% or more of tax filers living in low-income households increased to 7% from 5%. Moreover, the number of prosperous census tracts – those where 15% of tax filers or fewer are low-income – dropped to 25.5% from 32% over the period.
In addition, three key Metro Vancouver areas remain hubs for low-income tax filers: Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside as far east as Nanaimo Street; downtown New Westminster; and the tracts along Garden City Road in Richmond, from the Fraser River to Westminster Highway.
Yet if poverty is quietly spreading across the region, creating more tracts with high concentrations of low-income households, many tracts that formerly had high rates of low-income households are now faring better.
In fact, 20.8% of families were deemed low-income in 2012, only slightly higher than the 20.2% rate posted in 1999.
