Gentrification is Rain

By Hexel Colorado on August 27, 2023

Rain causes depression in many people.

Devastating and deadly hurricanes rock the nation every year.

Rainy day funds are how we save for emergencies; “sunny day funds” aren’t a thing.

Increases in annual rainfall raise your insurance premiums while lowering your home’s property value.

Flash flooding often leaves neighborhoods completely unrecognizable. Families may be picking up trash, fallen trees, and destroyed houses for weeks or months after one day of intense rain.

The fear and disdain some people feel towards rain are rational. Even when people can’t articulate why (“I just don’t feel good when it rains”), their misgivings are grounded in lived experience and supported by academic truths.

Imagine someone saying “I hate rain!” and you responded, “Why? That’s unreasonable.” You would be the ignorant one in that conversation, regardless of your academic knowledge and theories about rain.

Clearly, rain is bad and has no place in a happy and healthy community.

Right?

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The topic was “The Future of Housing.”

Around 60 people attended Dallas Neighbors for Housing’s monthly meeting at Four Corners Brewery, including multiple DART board members, housing and transportation advocates, small-scale residential developers, non-profit leaders, and curious Dallas locals.

Dallas Neighbors for Housing co-founder D’Andrala “DeDe” Alexander hosted with guest speakers Tony Hidid (Dallas CPC, Chair), Andreea Udrea (Dallas PUD, Asst. Director), and Paul Carden (VP of Commercial Venture, urban real estate and zoning specialist).

Dede: “What is a widespread misconception about housing you want to address?”

With a cautious preamble, Udrea answered gentrification.

She described how it’s her department’s duty to listen to communities as they plan for the future of neighborhoods. She is often asked questions like “How do we prevent gentrification?” When any change is proposed for a community - whether it be new parks, bike lanes, upgraded streetscape, or zoning for new housing - there is loud pushback over the possibility of it causing gentrification.

After decades of people being pushed out of their homes by changes that benefitted those who took their place, it requires tremendous trust to assure them that a new change will be different this time around.

Udrea concluded her answer by saying she doesn’t know how, but if we are to fix the mistakes of the past and improve neighborhood health and stability for everyone, then we must figure out a way to bridge the gap in trust.

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Last summer was the second-longest dry spell in DFW history, lasting 67 days without rain.

The drought ended with the rainiest August in Dallas history, climaxing with the most rainfall within 24 hours in 90 years. As soon as there was a safe break in the weather, I biked down to the Trinity River to capture the river photos featured in this post. On my way to the river, I passed collapsed buildings and uprooted trees.

In one week, we witnessed the beauty and devastation of rain. A state of emergency was declared. Up to 15 inches of water flooded streets, destroyed homes, uprooted trees, cut internet and electricity, and killed at least one person after they were swept away by floodwater.

Yet we need rain.

A steady supply is important for the well-being of everybody and everything. I won’t patronize readers by belaboring the necessity of rain. Even those who hate rain already understand and accept this:

We need rain because we need water.

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The word gentrification has two common definitions:

1. When people with higher income move into a neighborhood predominantly occupied by low-income households.
2. When people with higher income move into a neighborhood predominantly occupied by low-income households AND when low-income households are forced out of a neighborhood by economic pressure.

People who use the term under either definition generally understand two other things: higher-income people moving into a gentrifying neighborhood tend to be white, and low-income households in those neighborhoods tend to be African-American and Hispanic.

It’s worth noting the racial implications of gentrification because while the pressures that push people out of a neighborhood are economic, the status of whether or not gentrification has occurred in a neighborhood is (for better or worse) typically measured by race due to the strong correlation between race and income. Thus, gentrification can reasonably be translated into one of two pseudo-definitions:

1. When white people move into a black and brown neighborhood.
2. When white people move into a black and brown neighborhood AND black and brown people are pushed out.

People don’t fear white people moving in.

We don’t want black and brown people pushed out.

It’s not the presence of white people that makes neighborhoods unrecognizable; it’s the absence of black and brown people and their culture that makes neighborhoods unrecognizable. New, tall, and modern buildings do not depress people; it’s the reminder that our uncles, aunts, and cousins used to live there, and now they don’t.

The displacement of black and brown people is almost always precipitated by white people wanting what colored people have. Dallas has a history of pushing black people out through seemingly innocuous accommodations. The question for urban planners and community activists isn’t “How do we prevent white people from moving in?” but rather…

1. “As new people move in, how do we avoid pushing people out?”
2. “As new people move in, how do we keep black and brown culture present and visible so that our built environment reminds us of a proud legacy rather than painful trauma?”

As we tackle these questions, the solutions we discover will have the following traits:

1. We don’t prevent people from moving in (because new people were never the issue).
2. We empower people with the ability to stay in their neighborhood if they choose (because this has always been the issue).
3. We increase the quantity of physical reminders of people’s legacy (because otherwise the existing artifacts of people’s legacy would be overshadowed by the increased quantity of outsider artifacts).
4. The neighborhood gains a greater diversity of colors, culture, and heritage (because diversity always was and is a virtue).

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We had two definitions of gentrification.

Let’s scrap the second one because we don’t want anybody to be displaced.

That leaves us with one definition of gentrification: higher-income people (who tend to be white but often include Asians too) moving into low-income neighborhoods (which tend to be predominantly black and brown households). This gentrification is rain.

• Like rain, gentrification is a natural occurrence; the condition of our climate forms it.
• Like water, people and wealth join a neighborhood through gentrification.
• Like floods, neighborhoods are destroyed not by the downpour itself but by our lack of preparation and infrastructure.
• Like rainstorms, people of color are most negatively impacted due to decades of redlining, disinvestment, and white flight from their communities.

For all the damage wrought by rain, no one is campaigning to stop it. No one works on a housing project with the precondition that rain will be prevented. Instead, all developments are built with the expectation that they will withstand rain. The savviest of projects go a step further to benefit from rain by capturing it (think rain barrels and water retention systems).

Like rain, we must adopt strategies to withstand, capture, and grow with gentrification. Rather than new white residents driving up property taxes and pushing out Hispanic long-time homeowners, new residents can move into an ADU owned by a legacy homeowner, thereby contributing to their generational wealth. Rather than see black culture replaced by yoga studios and boba shops, those new studios and shops can be the lessees of a community land trust formed by the legacy neighbors before the gentrifier’s arrival.

We need rain because we need water.

We need gentrification because we need people.