Originally posted by ggwâ?¢:
The poor stay put
...in cities or neighborhoods/areas that have well developed rent control districts and public housing developments. Those residents don't have much of a choice.
The majority of the country is not set-up like this (DC included) and gentrification certainly exists. Look at Houston's Third and Fourth Ward for examples. This Freeman and Vigdor study cites two poor examples of smaller neighborhoods that may not be indicative of the city as a whole, and certainly aren't indicative of the rest of the country.
I can assure you that gentrification exists on a neighborhood basis in SF (like The Tenderloin and The Mission), but is less prevelant in the further south you go of Market due to the concentration of public housing in and around Hunters Point.
A really good study would be the effect new ballparks have on neighborhoods. When you build a new ballpark, the area is rezoned as a economic improvement district and certain limitations on public housing and rent control are removed/altered. Cleveland and the area around Pac Bell/SBC/AT&T Park have clearly been gentrified (and to some extent Baltimore, but that's a different conversation all together. Neither New York nor Boston have had a new ballpark in nearly 40 years.