This is an excerpt from an article I wrote today for Firefly Living:
“While you all are dining out at fancy restaurants, some of us are struggling to find a cheap meal,” says Dannette Lambert, a community organizer and resident in Oakland, California. This pretty much sums up the problem of gentrification, which is when wealthy newcomers completely transform a lower-income urban neighborhood into a yuppie or hipster haven, pricing out and pushing out original residents, who made the place interesting in the first place. Gentrification is the major issue facing urban core revitalization today. As urban living becomes more attractive and fashionable, long-time urban residents are watching with mouths agape as their corner stores turn into expensive organic markets, their apartment buildings become “quaint”, “vintage” and more expensive, and their Asian grocery store become a froyo joint…”
Read the rest at Firefly Living…