Source: Enwemeka, Z., Ma, A., and Datar, S. March 31, 2022. “Boston gets billions in home loans, but white areas get ‘much bigger piece of the pie.’” WBUR. Available at: https://www.wbur.org/news/2022/03/31/boston-home-lending-neighborhood-data
Gentrification is a process that unfolds in three stages: segregation, migration, and displacement. Until redlining was banned in 1968, Black communities in Boston and across the United States were legally segregated from white ones and structurally impoverished due to the economic legacies of chattel slavery. In the decades since the Fair Housing Act was passed, white people have begun to move into formerly redlined neighborhoods, taking advantage of relatively cheaper housing prices and a tenfold racial wealth gap, and claiming a disproportionate share of home loans. The influx of wealthier white residents into majority-minority communities drives up housing prices, pricing people out of their own neighborhoods.
In neighborhoods like Dorchester and Roxbury, where white residents claim two to three times their population share in home loans, the socioeconomic changes associated with gentrification are inextricably paired with notable shifts in racial demographics as communities of color struggle to keep up with the rising costs of living in their own neighborhoods.
There are clear signs of gentrification in Boston, and they’re hard to miss—they have “For Sale” written all over them.
