Talk given at All Souls Unitarian Church in DC on Monday, October 26, 2015.

1. Gentrification in DC
Johanna Bockman
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
George Mason University
Blog: Sociology in My Neighborhood: DC Ward 6
October 26, 2015

2. Outline
• Definition of Gentrification
• Data on Gentrification
• Four Gentrification Myths and some of my
current research
• What can be done?

3. Definition of Gentrification
• Ruth Glass (1964): the replacement of working class
households by a “gentry,” by affluent middle-class
households.
• More generally, gentrification is the replacement of
lower-income residents and businesses with higher-
income residents and businesses.
– Gentrification reduces housing opportunities for
working-class people, and expands housing
opportunities for middle-class people.
– It is part of a much larger economic, social, and spatial
restructuring of the city for a new class, the gentry.
– This restructuring continues racial segregation.

4. 1950 Census Tract - % Income
$10,000 or more
www.socialexplorer.com

5. 1960 Census Tract - % More than
$15,000
www.socialexplorer.com

6. 1970 Census Tract - Average Family
Income
www.socialexplorer.com
Capitol Hill
NW
NE
SW

7. 1980 Census Tract - Median
Household Income (in 2000 dollars)
www.socialexplorer.com

8. 1990 Census Tract - Median
Household Income
www.socialexplorer.com

9. 2000 Census Tract - Median
Household Income
www.socialexplorer.com

10. ACS 2006-2010 Census Tract -
Median Household Income
www.socialexplorer.com

11. %African American in 1980

12. %African American in 2010

13. %African American in 2013

14. DC Data
• Population
– Today: 658,893; African American = 49%; White = 43.6%
– 1980: 638,333; African American = 70.3%, White = 26.9%
• Income
– Today: Median household income in DC = $65,830
• Today: Median household income in US = $53,046
• Today: Median household income in Washington Metro Area = $109,200
– 1979: Median household income in DC = $16,211
• 1979: Median household income in US = $16,841
• Poverty
– Today: Poverty rate = 18.8% (US = 14.8%)
– 1979: Poverty rate = 18.6% (US = 12.4%)
Census Quick Facts, District of Columbia 2014: http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/11000.html; 1980 Census:
http://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0056/tab23.pdf

15. Gentrification Myths
1. Gentrification is a new trend.
2. Gentrification is a DC trend.
3. Gentrification is a costless, positive trend.
4. Gentrification is inevitable.

16. 1. Gentrification isn’t new
First Wave: 1930s to early 1970s
• 1930s: Georgetown
• 1950s: Capitol Hill
• 1950s and 1960s: Urban renewal in Southwest DC
Second wave: late 1970s to late 1980s
• Washington DC “a city widely acknowledged as a
gentrification ‘hotbed’” (Lee, Spain, and Umberson 1985).
• More corporate, more developers, public-private partnerships
• Wealthier professional gentrifiers
Third Wave: mid-1990s-now
• Large-scale corporate developers of new build.
• Wealthier business gentrifiers.

17. 1. Gentrification isn’t new
• My research on Navy Place and the Ellen Wilson
Dwellings.

18. –

19. 1. Gentrification isn’t new.
• Letter from Lydia Burklin, Friendship House, to
John Ihlder, head of National Capital Housing
Authority, Aug. 16, 1935.
“Since your visit here the other evening I have been
thinking a good deal about our problem at Friendship
House due to the increasing number of negroes in our
immediately community. I also have been thinking of the
possibility of developing a housing scheme for white
people in Navy Place. The more I think of it the more
eager I am that such an experiment be made. I believe it
would change the character of quite a bit of the
surrounding area.”
NARA, RG 302 Records of National Capital Housing Authority, Records Regarding Alleys Considered and Not Considered
for Reclamation. Box 4.

21. 1. Gentrification isn’t new:
Townhomes on Capitol Hill

22. Gentrification Myths
1. Gentrification is a new trend.
2. Gentrification is a DC trend.
3. Gentrification is a costless, positive trend.
4. Gentrification is inevitable.

23. 2. Gentrification is global.
• In the 1970s and 1980s, cities experience
severe fiscal crisis.
– In 1975, NYC almost defaulted.
– Federal government reduced funding to cities.
• Global urban strategy
– Inter-urban competition: Cities compete with each
other for the new class and for corporate
investments.
– Global hierarchy of cities.

24. Gentrification Myths
1. Gentrification is a new trend.
2. Gentrification is a DC trend.
3. Gentrification is a costless, positive trend.
4. Gentrification is inevitable.

25. 3. Gentrification is costly
• Individual costs
– homelessness
– loss of community, mental and physical illness
• City-wide costs: a Divided City
– Displacement and destruction of communities.
– Reorganization of city for the wealthy.
– Homogenization, the hollow city (Rebecca Solnit).
– Revanchism: vengeful attitude by (often recently arrived)
professional middle class against those who
have “taken our city from us”: African Americans, the
working class, the poor, recent immigrants, and so on (Neil
Smith 2002).

26. Revanchism: A
Colonial Attitude
Capitol Hill Vigilantes:
“If the ‘Hill’ is to be
stabilized and preserved, that
is just what we must
become, and what we must
remain.”
1963 Capitol Hill Restoration Society
brochure,
http://sociologyinmyneighborhood.blogspot.com/2012/08/capitol-
hill-vigilantes.html

27. Gentrification Myths
1. Gentrification is a new trend.
2. Gentrification is a DC trend.
3. Gentrification is a costless, positive trend.
4. Gentrification is inevitable.

28. 4. Gentrification isn’t inevitable
• Recognize that there is a political struggle over space in the city.
• Governments, businesses, social movements, and residents have
successfully minimized displacement at some times (and not others).
– In the early 1970s, Model Inner City Community Organization (MICCO) and
other programs in Shaw fought gentrification.
– In 1974, Capitol East Community Organization (“local group committed to
halting the process of private urban renewal and preserving the rights of the
renters in the community”) with the Adams-Morgan Community Organization
approached city council members, who introduced Real Estate Transaction Tax
of 1975, commonly called the Speculator Bill.
– Today:
• Displacement-Free Zones (Dulchin 2003/2004)
• Work with renters: http://righttothecity.org/cause/rise-of-the-renter-nation/
• EmpowerDC working in Ivy City and Barry Farm: http://www.empowerdc.org/
• OneDC: http://www.onedconline.org/
• Work to change the Area Median Income (AMI) calculation from the regional AMI
($109,200) to the DC AMI ($65,830), which would allow for many more affordable units
for very low-income individuals and families. “What is AMI?”

29. 4. Gentrification isn’t inevitable
• Look out for gentrification language:
– Inevitability.
– Territorial stigmatization.
• Chaos, hell
• Urine, rats
– Stigmatization of the poor.
• Culture of poverty arguments.
• Concentrated poverty arguments.
• Recognize that DC residents
have made this city a great city
and should be able experience the
benefits.

30. Suggested Readings
• Dulchin, Ben. 2003/2004. “Organizing Against Gentrification, Fighting the Free Market:
The Displacement-Free Zone Campaign.” Social Policy 34(2/3): 29-34.
• Fullilove, Mindy. 2004. Root Shock: How Tearing Up City Neighborhoods Hurts
America, and What We Can Do About it. One World Books.
• Gillette, Howard. 1995. Between Justice & Beauty: Race, Planning, and the Failure of
Urban Policy in Washington, D.C. U of Pennsylvania Press.
• Logan, John R. and Harvey L. Molotch. 1987. Urban Fortunes: The Political Economy
of Place. UC Press.
• Marcuse, Peter. 1985. “Gentrification, abandonment and displacement: connections,
causes and policy responses,” Journal of Urban and Contemporary Law 28: 195-240.
• Sassen, Saskia. 2005. “The Global City: Introducing a New Concept,” Brown Journal of
World Affairs 11(2): 27-43.
• Shaw, Kate and Libby Porter, eds. 2009. Whose Urban Renaissance? An International
Comparison of Urban Regeneration Policies. Routledge.
• Slater, Tom. 2011. “Gentrification of the City” or “Gentrification and the Displacement
Question.”
• Smith, Neil. 2002. “New Globalism, New Urbanism: Gentrification as Global Urban
Strategy.” Antipode 34(3): 427-450.
• Steinberg, Stephen. 2009. “The Myth of Concentrated Poverty.”