A Personal Finance Fix to the Gentrification Problem

We need seemingly crazy ideas because what we’re doing now isn’t working

Rocco Pendola

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Photo by Marian Kroell on Unsplash

I have a somewhat long history studying — off and on — gentrification, particularly in Los Angeles.

It started in and around 2006. While a PhD student at the University of California, Irvine, I conducted research in Skid Row. On the eastern edge of the Downtown Los Angeles core, Skid Row faces ongoing and intense gentrification-related pressure.

I wrote a short eBook about my experience, on the ground in Skid Row, in 2012. In it, I include the proposal I wrote to secure federal government funding to pursue my research. You can preview the book at Amazon. If you’re into the subject matter, I think you’ll enjoy it. It also helps further color this article.

As I look back on that time and contrast it with the here and now, it’s incredible how little has changed. On the ground, the same dynamics apply. In the political sphere, there’s still no viable solution to the housing or homeless crises, particularly in relatively expensive cities such as Los Angeles and regions like Southern California.

It would be helpful if we had regional governments with power to not only write policy, but make and enforce laws. In this perfect world scenario, we might then have a chance at increasing housing affordability. But it’s difficult to solve a regional problem when individual cities (from Los Angeles to Santa Monica to Pasadena to the myriad San Fernando Valley outposts) do their own thing, acting in their own interest.

However, there’s nothing I can do but digress and choose where to most effectively direct my intellectual and emotional energy. So I have opted to try to make a contribution, even if small, by connecting personal finance to gentrification in an attempt to, if nothing else, open a brainstorm for new and different ideas.

So here we go — installment one. While the idea I present might suck (or not), it’s a starting point to thinking differently. We need this.

I wrote an article for an urban planning website in 2008 about my experience in Skid Row. Rereading it, two things (both sort of suck) stick out at me.

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