Presenter(s): Hannah Schandelmeier-Lynch − Economics
Co presenter(s): Simoan Waldron
Faculty Mentor(s): Katie Meehan
Oral Session 2M
Research Area: Social Science
With Portland’s rapid population growth, urban renewal projects are being shaped to the preferences of the city’s incoming wealthy population. An increased demand for seventies-charm bungalows and city center amenities has resulted in the displacement of communities of color and reshaped those historically neglected neighborhoods. This process is called gentrification and disproportionately affects African American and Latino residents in the form of income disparities, higher unemployment rates, and lower rates of home ownership (Bates, 2015). Our research examines the sociodemographic movement of African American and Latinos from newly gentrified areas to places further east on the outskirts of town and find that this movement has not gone unacknowledged by those being pressured to leave. We found that displaced Portlanders have been engaging in infrapolitics– the small acts of barely visible resistance (Kelley, 1994)– by keeping ownership of their homes despite having the potential to capitalize on the growing market value of their houses. Urban design and planning professor, Dr. Lisa Bates of Portland State University, has created an advisory action plan for cities to prevent further gentrification and cites original homeownership as a keystone element to resisting it. Dr. Bates’ plan calls for the act of not just individual but also collective homeownership. Using this plan framework as an evaluative tool, we analyzed existing organizations’ strategy plans that have developed in response to gentrification. Our research discovered two prominent groups already incorporating Dr. Bates’ criteria, the Portland African American Leadership Form and Living Cully, and that their city lobbying efforts, affordable housing projects, and home owning education initiatives have given people a greater chance to remain their neighborhoods. These measures, compounded with collective and individual homeownership, serves to protect these marginalized groups’ right to the city, (Kelley, 2008).
Works Cited
Bates, L. (2015). This is gentrification. State of Black Oregon, 134-37.
Harvey, D. (2008). The Right to the City.
Kelley, R. (1994). Race Rebels: Culture, Politics and the Black Working Class.