Community Update Newsletter
Mobilizing For Sustainable Development
Volume 1, Issue 1 Winter, 2007 Sojourner-Douglass College
Gentrification Targets Low-Income Residents
Gentrification is uprooting the neighborhoods surrounding Sojourner-Douglass
College's East Baltimore campus and causing residents facing displacement
to seek ways to create more stability in the community. The word gentrification,
which derives from the word gentry, means to change the makeup of a neighborhood by
replacing the low-income residents with those considered more economically viable.
This can occur when the people who are planning the changes have the political and
economic resources to implement their plans, while the residents who face displacement
lack those resources. Moreover, a recent Supreme Court decision that “eminent
domain” can be used to seize property for economic development that serves
a “public purpose” will exacerbate the problem. In a scathing rebuttal of
that decision, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor acknowledged as much when she
stated, “the government now has license to transfer property from those with
fewer resources to those with more …” Clearly, a remedy is needed whereby
the residents can become viable partners with other stakeholders in revitalizing urban
communities instead of a top-down approach where the affluent can simply exercise the
prerogatives of an unequal playing field.
