The Renter Squeeze: Minority and Low-Income Renters Feel Pressures from Housing Boom and Weak Labor Market

The housing market boom over the last decade has been welcomed by most Americans as a positive economic phenomenon, with beneficial effects on families and neighborhoods. However, this housing boom, while benefiting homeowners, has hurt America's renting population, a population among which minorities and the poor are vastly overrepresented. As rents have risen, renters have been forced to commit a greater percentage of their resources to simply keeping their homes, and thus found it difficult to invest in their own properties. Steady or falling incomes have exacerbated this bind, while a worsening public education and transportation system has added to the burden, particularly for poor and minority renters. The Federal government has failed to respond to this growing crisis, instead choosing to cut or curtail major renter-assistance programs. Copyright 2005 by The Policy Studies Organization..

'Weak Center' gentrification and the contradictions of containment: deconcentrating poverty in Downtown Los Angeles

This case study of recent efforts to deconcentrate poverty within the Skid Row area of Los Angeles examines processes of ‘weak-center’ gentrification as it applies to a ‘servicedependent ghetto,’ thus filling two key gaps in prior scholarship. We document the collaboration between the government, business and development interests, and certainnon-profit agencies in this process and identify two key mechanisms of poverty deconcentration: housing/service displacement and the criminalization of low income residents. Following Harvey, we argue that these efforts are driven by pressures to find a ‘spatial fix’ for capital accumulation through Downtown redevelopment. This process has been hotly contested, however, illustrating the strength of counter-pressures to gentrification/poverty deconcentration within ‘weak-center’ urban areas