Rethinking Gentrification: 18 Possible Solutions From Many Sides of the Debate
Buckle up, this article will upset segments of the left and the right.
If you live in a city, you’ve heard the term “gentrification.”
I’ve heard it everywhere. From New York to Barcelona to Medellín, I’ve heard it in many contexts across continents like a bad word. Frankly, I think it’s a loaded term. So in this article, I’m going to try and cut through the confusion.
In New York, gentrification is synonymous with new buildings that have gyms and co-working spaces. Whenever a new building pops up, somebody curses it and calls it gentrification.
In Barcelona, it’s synonymous with expats who visit or relocate.
What Exactly Is This Insidious “Gentrification” And How Do We Solve It?
So we’re on the same page about the definition, gentrification is when a group of people gets displaced by another group of people who have more money.
I think that’s the simplest way to keep this clear. New buildings are not gentrification, nor are more chain stores. Those may be signs that gentrification is happening, but the displacement is what, in my opinion, warrants the label.
In the United States, this often falls on racial lines because our economic disparity falls on racial lines. For example, neighborhoods in Brooklyn like Bushwick and Bed Stuy have historically been people of color. As wealthier, mostly white people have moved in, those people of color have been priced out.
In other countries, it’s on national lines. In Barcelona, wealthier foreigners from Europe and North America rent out Airbnbs for months at a time, or buy second homes, both of which increase housing costs that threaten to displace locals. We could call this “touristic gentrification.” I talk about it more in my article on ethical digital nomading.
These situations and others have similarities, but many differences too.
I’m No Expert: Just an Observer of Cities
You would hope this article was written by somebody who studies this in a formal setting. I don’t. However, I have thought and read about it a lot, and as a regular person, I will aim to break down the complex into simpler terms.
The cost of housing is the biggest expense in our lives. Housing costs have governed several of my major life decisions.
Yet, we rarely think a lot about what makes housing so expensive. Since it impacted me so directly, and since I traveled to so many places where I heard the term, I’ve tried to learn about gentrification.
For example, in Medellín, where I was a digital nomad, I saw an extreme version of it.
Right now it’s a part of my everyday life. I live in a new building in the Bronx, complete with a gym and a co-working space. I make significantly more money than the median income. I’m a textbook “gentrifier.”
The Right Answers for the Right Place Require Local Context
While “gentrification” has patterns, every situation is different. Housing markets and the migration patterns of humans are complicated stuff. I’m trying to write this article more as a menu of options to explore.
Some of what I’m saying is flat-out wrong or impractical for certain contexts.
All right. Time to share some ideas.
Community Ownership Solutions
Taking a step back, gentrification, first and foremost, is about who owns, holds power over, and has access to land.
If the people who live somewhere have power over the land (ownership or otherwise), they can’t be kicked off of it.
I think viewing gentrification through this lens will help you brainstorm the best long-term solutions for your area.
Instead of asking questions like “how can we lower the rent?” or “how can we resist displacement?”, you can ask, “how can we gain power over the land?”
Here are some ideas.
1) “Affordable Housing” Resources Should Move Towards Ownership
In New York, the vast majority of city resources for subsidizing housing go towards making renting less expensive through rent control, housing vouchers, and public housing initiatives.
These help in the short term and help the specific people who receive rent control, a voucher, or a spot in public housing.
However, they leave everybody else behind, and they don’t address the underlying ownership gap that drives gentrification.
Rent control can paradoxically worsen housing crises as it takes units off the market, limiting the supply. It can also incentivize landlords to force residents out when they can’t charge market rates. It’s not a magic wand.
A more sustainable approach shifts resources toward homeownership programs for existing community members. As Malcolm X said in a 1964 speech, “The Black man should own, operate, and control the economy of his community.”
This is a high-level idea. I’m not sure how to make this happen. But one of the most popular is the use of community land trusts.
2) Community Land Trusts
In a community land trust (CLT), a nonprofit community organization retains ownership of the land.
This nonprofit can then use the land how they see fit, which often means building or managing permanently affordable housing.
This ensures it remains accessible to lower and middle-income residents even as market pressures increase around them.
Rather than individuals buying land, the community land trust does so for the good of the community. Now the community controls it, and they can use it how they see fit.
The Guardian shared an example of this in London. On New York’s Lower East Side, the Cooper Square CLT owns and manages 23 buildings.
If you want to prevent gentrification where you are, see if there are community groups with land trusts fighting to gain control of their land.
3) Build Communities, From The Ground Up
Another root cause of gentrification that rarely comes up is the wealth gap between existing residents and those moving in.
Displacement can’t happen without a wealth gap. If the locals can pay the same prices, they will stay. This means looking into ways to build the same access to well-paying jobs as those moving in.
This is not easy. But it does signal us to broaden the options beyond housing alone.
Local job training programs, small business incubators, and economic development initiatives that prioritize existing residents can help address the income inequality that makes gentrification possible. For incoming businesses, it can mean local hiring requirements.
Both/And Not Either/Or
As I introduce more ideas, keep in mind that many of them can go together. No matter how you feel about allowing or restricting free markets in various contexts, the idea of community ownership should stay at the front of your mind.
Build-More-Housing Solutions
Many would argue that this article could end after three words: build more housing.
Housing costs for most of us are about supply and demand. While community ownership addresses who controls land, increasing supply tackles the market forces that drive displacement.
4) Build More Housing, Even Market-Rate
Here is where the left will get mad at me. I can live with that. We can’t talk about housing costs, displacement, and gentrification unless we’re all on the same page about the basics of supply and demand.
People think new buildings are the cause of gentrification, but often, they’re a consequence of more demand. Correlation does not equal causation.
When a lot of people want to move somewhere, that means prices will go up and (hopefully) more housing will pop up.
The new housing keeps rent prices from going up further by meeting the demand and keeping the existing housing stock for those already there.
The alternative is for existing housing to become a battleground for competition, driving up prices and accelerating displacement.
If you want to fight gentrification, think twice before you oppose new housing, even if it’s “luxury.”
bUt tHat’S TRicKle D0Wn
Critics often compare building market-rate homes to “trickle-down economics,” suggesting that building luxury housing only benefits the wealthy. This is a flawed analogy.
Unlike tax cuts for the wealthy (which may never “trickle down”), housing works through a direct filtering process.
New housing, even expensive housing, satisfies demand from those who can afford it, reducing competition for the existing housing.
Without new construction, wealthier newcomers compete for and renovate older housing that would otherwise remain affordable.
When you build more housing, housing prices go down or at least rise more slowly, a fundamental principle consistently shown in research.
This is called “supply skepticism,” and if you’re not sold, I recommend this journal article by researchers at NYU.
When You Build More Housing, Housing Costs Go Down: The Austin Case Study
Austin is one of the fastest-growing cities in America. Even with growing demand, rents in Austin have gone down 23%. Why? They’ve made it easy to build housing and keep up with that demand.
Where as New York has piles of restrictions, in Austin it’s easy to build, meet demand, and keep rent reasonable.
In recent years, Austin has permitted more housing construction relative to population growth than many other high-demand cities.
This isn’t magic. It’s supply meeting demand. When newcomers arrive and find new housing waiting for them, they don’t have to bid up the prices of existing homes or apartments.
When You Don’t Build More Homes, Housing Costs Go Up: The San Francisco Case Study
The San Francisco and Bay Area present the opposite case. Despite tremendous economic growth and job creation over the past decades, the city has added new housing at a glacial pace. Restrictive zoning, lengthy approval processes, and powerful neighborhood opposition have severely limited construction.
The result? Some of the highest housing costs in the nation and the displacement of working-class communities and communities of color. When housing supply can’t grow with demand, prices skyrocket, and gentrification accelerates.
While Austin has built 37 units of housing per 1000 existing units, the Bay Area has built a whopping 4.
Edward Glaeser in The Triumph of the City puts this nicely. “The failure of places like New York and San Francisco to build up has pushed Americans elsewhere, to places that embrace new construction.”
The Counterpoint to This: “Induced Housing Demand”
Now I will critique my own point.
“Induced Housing Demand” refers to the phenomenon where new development can sometimes make a neighborhood more attractive to outside investors and higher-income residents, potentially accelerating interest in an area.
An area becomes more popular with the middle and professional classes, so more middle and professional-class people want to live there. This is the only reasonable argument to oppose new housing in places like Bed Stuy.
This is complicated, and you’d have to study the social, cultural, and economic situation of the specific place to understand if it’s happening.
Regardless, it brings up a good point that I hope we can all agree with: working-class neighborhoods should not have to shoulder the needs of new housing. Bushwick, Bed Stuy, and the South Bronx should not be saddled with what is a region-wide problem. Greenwich, Connecticut and Greenwich Village need to pitch in for their fair share too.
New housing in already wealthy areas is NOT gentrification.
In fact, it’s a solution to it. That glass tower on the Upper East Side is not gentrification, nor are a string of flashy condos in Bethesda, Maryland. New housing in these places means professional class people who otherwise would’ve looked to Bushwick have housing available for them on the Upper East Side.
The core problem is that it’s often hard to build in these wealthy areas.
This brings me to more ideas for how we can build new housing everywhere, and take the burden away from gentrifying neighborhoods.
5) Eliminate Restrictive Zoning Regulations
This is an area where democratic states have failed, and republican states have succeeded.
“Restrictive zoning” or “exclusionary zoning” is perhaps the single biggest barrier to housing affordability in American cities.
This term refers to a range of housing regulations.
Single-Family Zoning + Minimum Lot Sizes
The most famous is called “single-family zoning.” This is when places are only allowed to build a single-family home. This means per lot, you get one unit of housing. Apartments, townhouses, and attached condos are literally illegal.
This may be fine in rural areas, but in cities and even suburbs, this is a huge contributor to a lack of housing. Land near jobs, culture, and community is a finite resource.
In some places, it gets worse, with “minimum lot sizes.” This requires homes to be built on large pieces of land, making them more expensive by design.
Height Restrictions + Air Rights
In cities, “height restrictions” limit how tall buildings can be, reducing how many people can live in a given area. The West Village in New York is the perfect example of this. It’s illegal to build tall buildings, limiting the housing stock. It’s often even illegal to build the 8-12 story housing that’s a gem of neighborhoods like the Upper West Side.
The neighborhood has become outrageously expensive, and as you’ll often hear in New York’s streets, “gentrified.” How hard it is to build housing has accelerated this.
Related to this is the issue of air rights, the ability to build upward. In many cities, developers can’t use all the vertical space above their lot, even if there’s demand for housing.
Of course, tall buildings have some downsides. Height restrictions do decrease how much light hits the street, and rows of exclusively old brownstones with nothing else allowed have their charms. However, as Edward Glaeser says, “We shouldn’t pretend that these benefits come without a cost.”
“Historical Preservation” Has a Cost
While architectural history has value, we must acknowledge the trade-offs. Excessive historical preservation designations often prevent new housing development.
The lack of housing in neighborhoods like the West Village, Upper East Side, or Upper West Side (three extremely wealthy areas in New York) means professional class people who would like to live there can’t afford it, so they go to Williamsburg or Bushwick or Long Island City instead, driving gentrification in those areas.
This doesn’t mean we should demolish the West Village, but the entire neighborhood is historically preserved. There’s a middle ground to be found here.
Other Building Codes
Other building codes like staircase requirements that mandate multiple staircases in small apartment buildings, or minimum unit sizes that force apartments to be larger than necessary, may seem minor but can dramatically raise construction costs. Reforming these regulations can make building housing more affordable without compromising safety. They can also speed up the process.
Do you really think a second staircase or a third ADA-accessible elevator is necessary?
Eliminating these “exclusionary zoning” rules would open the door to more diverse housing types in neighborhoods that have historically kept out lower-income residents, whether city or suburb.
6) Eliminate Parking Minimums
Parking minimums are a personal nemesis of mine.
Parking requirements dramatically increase the cost of housing construction. They require developers to build housing for cars that could house people. They’re often required regardless of the car ownership rates or transit access in the area.
Some research estimates the cost of a single structured parking space as $19,000 to $75,000 per space. Stop the insanity.
Places with good access to transit should not have parking minimums.
Parking minimums don’t mean developers can’t build parking. It means they decide how much they want to build to suit the needs of the building.
Sadly, much of New York City, the most transit-rich city in North America, is full of these and other zoning restrictions.
By eliminating mandatory parking minimums, cities can reduce construction costs, enable more units to be built, and stop subsidizing car ownership through housing policy.
All of these reforms allow us to build more housing for lower costs, whether it’s market-rate or subsidized in any form.
7) Build Housing in Wealthy Areas (Fight NIMBYism)
Often, it’s the wealthiest areas with the most resources that reject new housing. Affordable housing and city planning advocates have invented an insult for this, “NIMBY,” or “Not in My Back Yard.”
By restricting housing, the demand gets shifted to the poorer areas.
Addressing NIMBYism requires both policy changes (like streamlining approval processes) and cultural shifts around the moral imperative of housing abundance. We need to recognize that preventing new housing doesn’t preserve neighborhoods. It often prices out existing residents more rapidly. Ask the (likely former) residents of the once working-class Greenwich Village.
Something we can and should all agree on is that the already wealthy neighborhoods must open the fire hydrant of development so they can build as much housing as possible. That means fighting the NIMBYS.
And the home turf of NIMBYs is often the suburbs.
The Suburbs Must Do Their Fair Share
One of the fundamental reasons why white Americans want to move to Brooklyn is that their suburban hometowns are lame.
Suburbs lack culture, diversity, and, literally by the way they’re designed, opportunities to walk to meet up with neighbors. They’re boring. And young people like me want to leave. So we go to cities where there are jobs, social groups, excitement. This puts pressure on city neighborhoods and contributes to gentrification.
If we’re serious about addressing gentrification, suburban areas must take responsibility for creating more housing options.
8) Build Up Around Commuter Train Stations
Every time I ride Metro North, I’m disgusted by what’s around the train stations: parking lots. Acres of asphalt where mixed-use developments, apartment buildings, and affordable housing could exist.
This is called “transit-oriented development”—building dense housing, retail, and office space within walking distance of transit hubs. It allows people to live car-free or car-light lifestyles while still accessing job centers.
Transit-oriented development also makes these spaces around train stations desirable. The land around transit is some of the most valuable real estate we have, and using it for parking instead of housing, shops, and restaurants is perhaps the most inefficient use possible.
By building apartments and condos near suburban train stations, we can:
- Create housing for those who can’t afford single-family homes
- Reduce car dependence
- Bring more foot traffic to nearby businesses
- Provide alternatives for those who might otherwise move to gentrifying urban neighborhoods
Communities like Evanston, Illinois and Arlington, Virginia, have successfully transformed areas around their transit stations into vibrant, walkable communities with a range of housing options.
9) Build in Town Centers
Ideally, the train station or main bus station is in the town center. But this isn’t always the case.
Many suburban towns already have walkable centers that could support more density.
Adding apartments above retail, converting underused office buildings to residential, and encouraging infill development can bring life back to these areas.
I’m not suggesting suburbs turn into cities. The idea is to create pockets of density and walkability that provide housing options for different income levels and lifestyle preferences. Instead, in most suburbs the only choice is a single-family home.
10) Bring Culture
My best friend Kelly is from Burlington, Vermont. Our metro area is the classic “hometown you want to leave because it’s not cool.” Through his music brand, Love Kelly, he has thrown shows with huge hip-hop artists in Burlington, giving the youth something culturally to look forward to.
(Burlington is a city, but it’s small and white enough that it’s culturally more like a suburb in most of it.)
Suburbs need culture beyond chain restaurants and shopping malls. For young people to stay, they need local music scenes, public spaces that encourage community, diverse food options, and something that reflects a local spirit.
When suburbs become more culturally vibrant, they become places people want to stay in or move to, reducing pressure on urban neighborhoods.
11) Show up to Town Meetings to Fight NIMBYism
It drives me nuts how, around my hometown in Vermont, there are all kinds of signs saying “Hate has no place here,” while people simultaneously oppose the development of any housing that’s not a single-family home.
The progressive politics that claim to value diversity and social equality must extend to housing policy. Some of the most vociferous opposition to multi-family housing comes from politically liberal suburbs.
To counter suburban NIMBYism:
- Attend town meetings and speak up for housing diversity
- Form or join YIMBY (“Yes In My Backyard”) groups to advocate for more housing
- Challenge the assumption that apartments and townhomes will “destroy neighborhood character.”
- Point out the hypocrisy of claiming to value diversity while maintaining exclusionary housing policies
Every suburban town that refuses to build its fair share of housing is effectively exporting its housing needs to cities, contributing to the displacement.
Addressing gentrification requires a regional approach.
Housing Policies That Can Fight Gentrification
Beyond community ownership and increasing housing supply, specific policy interventions can directly address displacement pressures. These policies target the immediate needs of vulnerable residents while longer-term solutions take effect. However, these are often marketed as complete solutions, which they are not.
12) Build Public Housing
New York City, for all its challenges with gentrification, has an advantage over other U.S. cities: a robust network of public housing. Over half a million New Yorkers live in public housing.
These public housing units are city-owned and remain permanently affordable regardless of market pressures.
Of course, public housing has big challenges in New York. However, the fundamental role of public housing in preserving economic diversity cannot be overlooked.
In Vienna, Austria, about 60% of residents live in some form of social housing. Whereas in the U.S., public housing has a, well, a bad reputation, in European cities, public housing is often well-maintained and integrated into mixed-income communities.
No U.S. city has a vision for a renaissance of public housing. It’s an idea worth considering.
13) Restrict Short-Term Rentals
While domestic migration drives gentrification in many U.S. cities, international tourism creates similar pressures in global destinations. Short-term rental platforms like Airbnb have accelerated this process by converting potential long-term housing into de facto hotels.
In Barcelona, gentrification is not fueled by suburbanites wanting to move there. It’s fueled by the Brits, Germans, and Americans on vacation, many of whom work from home and can stay for months at a time.
When apartments become more profitable as short-term rentals than as homes for locals, displacement inevitably follows.
Both Barcelona and New York have implemented restrictions on short-term rentals to address this issue. Barcelona requires all short-term rentals to have proper licenses, while New York implemented a law in 2023 requiring hosts to register with the city and be present during guests’ stays.
How Has New York’s Airbnb Law Panned Out?
When this law went into effect, I always said that it was just a band-aid, not a solution.
This Wired headline from 2024 sums it up: “New York Cracked Down on Airbnb One Year Ago. NYC Housing is Still a Mess.” Yup.
There’s no doubt this law opened up thousands of units for residents. In that sense, it’s a win.
However, without addressing underlying housing supply shortages, the impact on overall affordability has been modest at best.
Restricting short-term rentals, like something like rent control, is a tool in the toolkit, but it hasn’t and won’t address housing crises or touristic gentrification on its own.
14) Tenant Protection Laws
In New York, news stories often pop up about landlords trying to force out tenants of their rent-controlled apartments so they can tear them down and build a new building, for which they can charge more on rent, contributing to gentrification.
Strong tenant protection laws can prevent the most egregious displacement tactics.
These are important tools in the toolkit, but again, they won’t solve the bigger problems alone.
15) Rent Control Laws: A Double-Edged Policy
Who doesn’t love rent control? I’ve come to believe it’s not so simple.
On one hand, rent control provides immediate relief to existing residents and prevents the rapid rent increases that often drive displacement.
Rent-controlled units experience lower turnover rates and provide housing stability for vulnerable populations.
However, rent control takes units off the market, contributing to a housing shortage and therefore increases rents for those looking for housing.
Basically, it pits those who have housing against those looking for it.
It has a place, for sure. But rent control alone cannot solve gentrification. We can’t “freeze the rent” our way out of this.
“Gentrifiers” Like Myself Can Be Part of Solutions
I will define a gentrifier as anybody who moves to a place where they make significantly more money than the average person on a neighborhood scale. By this definition, I am undoubtedly a gentrifier in my current home in the Bronx.
Before that I was a gentrifier on the Lower East Side as an NYU student. In between those, I’ve been sort of a touristic gentrifier in cities like Medellín and Barcelona. It’s easy to call me and people like me the bad guys. But the reality is, people are going to move to where there are things that attract them, whether a job or adventure, and that they can afford, which for me now means outside Manhattan.
But this doesn’t excuse me either. When I moved here, I knew I wanted to be involved in the community.
16) Listen and Learn
Before attempting to “help” a community you’ve just moved into, take time to understand the existing dynamics, challenges, and assets.
For me, this started by going to the local community garden. That’s where I met neighbors and connected with local non-profits.
I knew that I didn’t know about this community, so my first step was to listen and learn.
17) Support Existing Neighborhood Groups
Once I met people, I got the opportunity to volunteer with South Bronx Unite, an environmental justice organization.
I’ve followed their lead on the challenges they’ve been working on for decades. I contribute my skills and knowledge to support their work.
To me, this has been an absolute blast. Find groups doing great work and join them.
18) Support Local, Existing Businesses
Another classic tip is to support local businesses, not the chains that often follow gentrification to cater to wealthy residents.
There are no chains here, aside from fast food, but there are tons of local restaurants that make this corner of the Bronx what it is.
This helps transfer my money to those who have been here.
Remember: You’re Not a Savior
Perhaps most importantly, I’ve come into this recognizing that I’m not “revitalizing” the neighborhood.
Our role is not to “fix” these communities but to integrate, contribute, and work to ensure that the economic changes we’re part of don’t result in the displacement of those who made the neighborhood what it is.
Conclusion: A Balanced Approach to Fighting Gentrification
Gentrification is not a simple villain. It’s a complex process reflecting broader economic forces, housing policies, and social dynamics that have developed over decades.
The solutions must be equally multifaceted.
Fighting displacement requires action at multiple levels. No single approach is sufficient on its own.
I think a less gentrified future embraces this complexity rather than seeking a single silver bullet.
They involve coalitions between existing residents, newcomers, developers, policymakers, and suburban communities, all recognizing their role in creating more equitable cities.
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