Positive Effects Of Gentrification

Essay 15 Gentrification happens to most cities at one point or another. It means that investors renovate neighborhoods to make them more appealing to people of the middle and upper classes. In theory gentrification sounds like a positive thing, but in reality it can have a negative effect on the lower class people who inhabited these neighborhoods first. Short writes that every city has projects where very poor people live, often in public housing. The projects often come with crime, food deserts, and a lack of educated men, women, and children. Projects typically exist because the local government group the poor people into one area with public housing, and wealthy people would never feel comfortable living in an area with the lower class.
Families like the Devos’s and the Meijer’s have pumped money into the small Michigan city, bringing it to life. On Michigan Street you will find some of the best health care facilities in the state. Trendy small businesses thrive on the business from middle to upper class white folks. Events like Art Prize, the Hispanic festival, concerts, and ice skating have greatly increased tourism. Grand Rapids is where many millennials and well off young couples desire to live. Gentrification has brought a lot of great things to Grand Rapids. Growing up in a suburb of Grand Rapids, I have only experienced the positive aspects of gentrification, but there are many who have not been so lucky. My boyfriend lives in the the Burton Heights area of Grand Rapids where there is a high Hispanic and African American population. He claims that as Grand Rapids has become gentrified, the poor people that once lived near downtown Grand Rapids are moving into his already impoverished neighborhood. He believes that gentrification is causing his neighborhood to becomes even worse when it comes to crime, poverty, teen pregnancies, and a lack of good
There are parts of the city that are still the home of impoverished families. My aunt and uncle have lived in the city for the past 10 years. They purchased a home in a neighborhood of Chicago called Pisen where most residents were Mexican. They purchased this home at a low cost with the hope that the neighborhood would soon undergo gentrification. Their hope was that they would be able to sell their home for much more than they initially paid for it as the property values went up in the area. Unfortunately my aunt and uncle never saw the gentrification that they were planning on. Instead, they continued to experience regular shootings on their street, car break ins, and robberies at the local stores. After living in Pilsen for seven years, they gave up on the hope of gentrification for the neighborhood. There is not always a sure way to know if an area will fully be gentrified or not. People that buy property to benefit from gentrification don’t always get the financial return that they were hoping for. Overall gentrification has both positive and negative effects. Typically the poor people are financially unable to live in a gentrified neighborhood, which attracts the well off people. The upper and lower middle class tend to boost the economy, so once a place is gentrified, the city becomes greater and greater. I personally have benefitted from the gentrification of Grand Rapids and I am thankful for