SIGNS OF A CHANGING NEIGHBORHOOD

Gentrification is a nebulous urban concept. Even if you could control all the variables that influence neighborhood dynamics – and who even knows all the variables, let alone has sway over them – would you even know what to do that would be most fair, most reasonable, most Kingdom-like? The concept itself is hard to define. In fact, I have yet to hear a good hard definition; the closest I’ve gotten is symptoms and characteristics.

And yet while it may be cloudy in the textbooks, it is clear as day here in my neighborhood. Four years and three weeks after buying our house, it is likely we could sell it for three times what we paid for it. A PENN alum friend of mine who started renting in the area and who is now looking to buy has completely ruled out this neighborhood, saying prices are way too high to even consider. Two students in my youth program, both of whom come from low-income families, are in the process of moving, forced out by high rents and in search of more affordable neighborhoods nearby.

The block still has some flavor – a homeless guy staggered up to our front porch to converse with my friend who rents our third floor, two Ethiopian establishments on our corner continue to draw hordes of visitors, and the neighborhood remains an eclectic mix of immigrants, grad students, and bohemians. But I see the signs and wonder if in five to ten years I’ll recognize the neighborhood my wife and I decided to live in when we first moved here four years and three weeks ago.