(URBAN MATTERS) Pierina Ana Sanchez, Moses Gates, and Sarah Serpas, February 22, 2018 — In New York City’s tristate metro region, more than one million low- to moderate-income households, 70% of them Black or Hispanic, are vulnerable to displacement. As the Regional Plan Association’s recent report on this crisis shows, those most at risk live in pedestrian-friendly urban communities with good access to jobs and services. As demand pushes rents and sale prices in such areas upward, lower-income households are pushed outward. There is a clear link between increasing rents, displacement, and homelessness. In New York City, a 5% rent increase has been associated with an additional 3,000 residents becoming homeless.

The current situation is largely the result of decades of discriminatory policies, such as unequal access to financing and restrictive covenants that prohibited people of color from living in the suburbs. Black and Hispanic families were largely confined to urban areas that today are experiencing growth and reinvestment, and were also often prevented from owning homes and building equity and stability, increasing vulnerability to the shifting forces of the housing market.

Source: http://www.centernyc.org/pushed-out?mc_cid=dcc6530eb7&mc_eid=92d414d023