Who does urban renewals benefit?

It is a known fact that the gentrification push out the poor community. Most of the poor people rent their homes or live in public housing. They work locally in low wage jobs and have barely enough to get by.

When the neighborhood gets nicer, residential rents go up, more expensive “quirky” stores open as there is more street lighting and parking spaces and the commercial rents go up. Food gets more expensive, the landlords may renovate their homes and residential rents go up more, making it unaffordable for the poor to stay.

This disruption not only cause the poor to lose their jobs as it is too expensive to travel from their lower cost areas to the now “nicer” part of town, their children may also not go to school as it may now be too faraway.

The end result usually see a lot more middle income people move to the area, and less lower income people remaining, and not the lower income people getting more opportunities to move to middle income earners.

-- Robin Low