Displacement

Urban Renewal and Freeways

Displacement of urban households became a major national issue beginning in the 1950s when the federally assisted urban renewal program displaced large numbers of residents in inner-city neighborhoods. Slum clearance typically targeted poor neighborhoods with substandard housing labeled “blighted.” Urban freeways also destroyed many inner-city neighborhoods. The same type of poor neighborhoods (with low land values and little political influence) were often chosen for these routes. Minority neighborhoods were often targeted for these projects. The urban renewal and freeway programs were supposed to provide relocation assistance and replacement housing. However, as critics argued and later congressional investigations and litigation showed, hundreds of thousands of displaced persons received neither. The growing protests of the residents of targeted neighborhoods finally led to the requirement in the late 1960s that residents be involved in redevelopment planning and that demolished low-income housing be replaced on a one-for-one basis. These protests also led to the 1970 uniform federal relocation reforms that significantly improved relocation benefits for displaced persons affected by federally subsidized programs.

Displacement Caused by Gentrification

Displacement has also been caused by the largely private phenomenon of gentrification. This reflects an influx of higher income newcomers in older (often historic) and poorer urban neighborhoods, resulting in the rehabilitation of substandard housing, the conversion of rental housing to ownership (including condominiums), and an increase in housing prices and land values. As a result, while these neighborhoods were physically improved, poorer residents (especially tenants with little tenure security) have been vulnerable to displacement. City governments have typically been supportive of gentrification, which increases the tax base, with public services improved in response to the newcomers.

Gentrification became an issue in some cities beginning in the 1970s where residents fearful of displacement organized to resist it and where conflicts arose between the newcomers and the existing residents. Such conflicts continue in cities where [Page 143]housing is especially expensive but which attract affluent newcomers. One type of housing that has largely been eliminated in some of these cities is single-room occupancy (SRO) housing. Usually located in downtown “skid row” areas, SRO housing has historically provided cheap housing for retirees and transients, including immigrants. However, the magnitude of involuntary displacement from gentrification has been debated, with the data much disputed.

Abandonment: Disinvestment and Foreclosures

Much displacement in older urban neighborhoods has resulted from disinvestment. Absentee landlords “milked” buildings, often occupied by poor tenants dependent on public assistance, reducing and eventually eliminating basic services and forgoing tax payments before abandoning these deteriorating apartment buildings. Many New York City neighborhoods experienced such disinvestment and abandonment on a massive scale in the late 1970s.

A different wave of abandonment hit many cities as a result of the foreclosure crisis that became a national crisis around 2006. Predatory lending of subprime mortgages, mortgage fraud, and a national recession resulting in high unemployment combined to cause millions of homeowners to default on their mortgage loans and lenders to foreclose. As a speculative housing “bubble” collapsed, the poor economy limited the resale of these foreclosed homes. All too many sitting vacant in older urban neighborhoods were quickly vandalized, and an increasing number have been condemned and demolished. In addition, an increasing number of homeowners whose homes are “underwater” (i.e., the outstanding mortgage loan exceeded the value of the home) have simply walked away. It is assumed that these displaced homeowners have “doubled up” with friends and relatives or have become tenants of necessity.

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