- Between weeks 8 and 12, each student should provide a weekly reflection (500 words) on the data you have collected to date.
- What data did you collect?
- What is your initial impression of the data?
- How have the data you have collected this week changed/progressed your thinking about your research project?
- What challenges did you encounter while collecting the data?
- What are your next steps?
- 2-3 annotations
While I focused more specifically on the connection between homelessness and housing insecurity and its influence on physical and mental health last week, this week is more about the broader framework of understanding how issues like homelessness and housing insecurity arise. More specifically, I focused on understanding how they stand as one of the main issues produced as a result of gentrification and its inherent neoliberal thinking. In the article “What Makes Gentrification ‘Gentrification’?” Redfern discusses about the motivations of gentrifiers, suburbanites and displacees being the same as the concern for defining and preserving their identity in the modern world. However, what distinguishes them is the means and access to resources that each group has at their disposal. Identity stands as a crucial component in this analysis in which the gentrifiers and suburbanites are members of different status groups who use housing and modern buildings as status symbols to define their identity and membership into certain exclusive groups and projects while the displaces are more concerned about maintaining their identity. From this, it is seen that the solution to the gentrifiers’ identity crisis actually takes place at the expense of the displacee, indicating the struggles toward everyday life, including stable housing, in a capitalistic context (Redfern, 2003).
This rises questions of whether the new wave of investment is actually good for people and neighborhoods and who is really benefiting from this urban development. The article “Planning for People, Not Profit” by Dawn Phillips examines these questions in analyzing the housing segregation that this presents among Blacks and Latinos especially through increasing displacement in cities like San Francisco whose housing prices have continually been on the rise. Phillips argues that as a result of this over reliance on the private sector for urban development, racial and economic inequity has been deepening. For instance, while some communities are in need for basic infrastructure, such as low-cost housing, grocery stores, and family-serving retail stores, others have had increasing prioritized investments on businesses and services designed for new and high-income residents. Thus, in such a model, the public sector has actually made the private developers and the landlords more rich at the expense of working class communities of color (Phillips, 2015).
My initial impression of this data is based on how further understanding such a process and structural framework provides more insight into the ways in which it affects many other things for the displaces, including their health. The data researched for this week has changed; however, it was important for me to take a step back and look at it through a broader lens. This also allowed me to consider the importance of intersectionality, in terms of race and socioeconomic status, in relation to gentrification. This, in turn, further ties into health where, for instance, Black and Latino populations tend to have greater physical health and mental health incidences, potentially as a result of this crucial issue of gentrification and housing displacement. Challenges in encountering this data includes finding sources that tie in gentrification as a result of neoliberal thinking in relation to housing insecurity and health. Those connections may be implicit; however, I intend to do further research to establish a stronger link between those concepts.
Phillips, Dawn. 2015. Planning for People, Not Profit. Race, Poverty and the Environment, Vol. 20, No. 2, pp.78-83
Redfern, P.A. 2003. What Makes Gentrification ‘Gentrification’?. Urban Studies, Vol. 40, No. 12, 2351-2366.
Swapnika,
I like the depth you use to examine the long term effects of gentrification on communities of color. I want to make sure you have enough time to sit on the data you gather. When are you planning to conduct your interviews?