A NIMBY group may be satisfied with stopping a housing project in their neighborhood but I wonder if they realize that their efforts are discriminatory – creating displacement and relegating people of color to areas of greater poverty. According to a recently released study, that’s exactly what those efforts produce.
The study, conducted by the California Housing Partnership (CHP) along with UC Berkeley and UCLA, revealed:
* • By a large margin, rising rents and home prices during the last decade and a half displaced thousands of Bay Area and Los Angeles people of color;
* • Displaced families tended to move to lower-income neighborhoods with high concentrations of poverty;
* • Displaced families ended up paying a greater percentage of their incomes for rent in the new neighborhoods;
* • The lower-income households examined were more vulnerable to rent increases – for example, a Bay Area rent increase of 30 percent during the 18 months led to a 21 percent decrease in low-income households of color; and
* • A large proportion of displaced families moved out of the areas entirely.