GENTRIFICATION AND DISPLACEMENT EQUITY PLAN (G.A.D.E.P.)

(a) Gentrification profoundly impacts low-income individuals through physical displacement, rising living costs, and social alienation. As wealthier residents move in, housing demand spikes, leading to soaring rents, aggressive evictions, and reduced affordable housing.

(b) Forced Displacement: Skyrocketing property values and rents force long-time residents to relocate, frequently separating them from established community networks and support systems.

(c) Decreased Affordability: Even if residents aren't forced to move, rising costs for rent, groceries, and services leave less disposable income for essential needs like healthcare and transportation.

(d) Social and Cultural Alienation: Long-term residents often experience "socio-cultural displacement," feeling excluded or out of place as neighborhood businesses and social dynamics shift to cater to affluent newcomers.

(e) Mental Health Impacts: The constant stress of housing instability, financial burden, and the loss of community identity heavily correlates with serious psychological distress for low-income renters.

(f) As the next Governor, I have a people’s comprehensive plan to slow down gentrification and the displacement of poverty-stricken individuals living in urban sprawl neighborhoods. These individuals have lost hope of being a part of the economic equation of prosperity, but I am listening and will stop the hemorrhage of economic unfairness.

(g) Tennessee law prohibits local rent control, so rent stabilization for low-income individuals relies entirely on subsidized housing programs and income-based vouchers. Tenants typically pay 30% of their adjusted gross income for rent and utilities, with the government covering the rest.

(h) This process is going on all over the State of Tennessee, and no politician wants to address this genocidal act against poor people. Gentrification is “the process whereby the character of a poor urban area is changed by wealthier people moving in, improving housing, and attracting new businesses, typically displacing current inhabitants in the process.” In the State of Tennessee, many poor residents are being forced out of their culturally connected communities because of cities catering to the affluent creative class. It is a common and controversial topic in urban politics and planning.

(i) Sadly, the former urban ambiance of the urban projects and dilapidated homes is getting an upscale, glamorous makeover at the expense of everyday working-class residents with low-and-middle-income salaries. 

(j) HUD funding is no longer being allocated to low-income families, but is often given to rich developers to create apartments to rent to the poor, so these individuals will never accumulate generational wealth for their children.

(k) Across the State of Tennessee, citizens living in apartment buildings are slowly being priced out of their hometown or city, but more immediately, Tennesseans are being priced out of their homes.

(l) The new landlord’s rent hikes are massive, scaling up between $400 and $1,000 per month on what were mainly studio apartment rentals. The landlord, described by some tenants as decidedly pleasant at first, claimed the hikes were necessary to keep up with inflation. However, it’s important to point out that landlords know this information at the time of purchase, meaning they bought the building with the full intention of raising these rents by astronomical amounts.

(m) Other luxury apartments are being built in Memphis, Nashville, Chattanooga, Murfreesboro, and Knoxville with the intention of ensuring low-income or moderate-income families will not be able to move in, which is a form of desegregation.

(n) In our questionnaires, Tennesseans demanded answers about unfair treatment and lack of economic investments in their underserved communities, who “raised concerns about gentrification, displacement, and transformations in their communities.”

(o) Poor people are losing their homes in Tennessee because of discriminatory tax lien sales of family properties while tax incentives are given to large corporations and private investors to displace these economically strapped individuals. Local and state policies regarding tax lien sales have changed, and often deny poor people the right to hold on to their properties.

Atwater's Goal and Strategies

(a) I will cease the discriminatory actions against low-income, working-class, and rural citizens struggling to make ends meet with the increase in affordability costs due to unfair governmental policies, abusive tax incentives, strict zoning regulations, which have not addressed poverty, economic disparities, housing disparities, high crime, and inequitable budgetary actions.

(b) As the next potential Governor, I will address the neglectful actions that the Governor and Legislative Body have performed in the last decade that have further placed hardship on Tennesseans across this state while billionaires have become richer and richer on the backs of all taxpayers.

(c) As the next Governor, I would be focusing on rent-stabilized apartments and rent commission strategies. As a general rule of thumb, landlords of rent-stabilized apartments are only permitted modest rental increases as per some city or state standards.

(d) Aggressively promote bills to regulate slumlords and abuse of tenants.

(e) Set aside laws that address harassment of out-of-state and local investors from continually attacking Tennesseans who are struggling to hold onto their properties.

(f) Alter and reevaluate the criteria for senior citizens over 65 holding on to the homes of their choice to age in place.

(g) Entertain special property tax provisions for veterans.

(h) Repeal all discriminatory policies and laws that serve as a vehicle to create these atrocious actions on working-class Tennesseans and rural communities.

(i) Examine the Outcomes of Gentrification for New and Existing Residents

Analyze and address displacement and increasing rent burdens on displacement of underserved and marginalized individuals. The most common critique of gentrification is its potential to displace long-term, low-income residents. Displacement can happen in many ways: direct displacement, in which residents are forced to move out because of rent increases, building rehabilitation, or a combination of both; exclusionary displacement, in which housing choices for low-income residents are limited; and finally displacement pressures, when the entire neighborhood changes and the services and support system that low-income families relied on are no longer available to them.

(j) Measures of Displacement Are Imperfect: Measures of displacement generally focus on exit from a unit, rather than exit from a neighborhood, which can tell an incomplete story of the varying pressures of low-income households. The primary potential for harm to low-income families in gentrifying neighborhoods is normal housing succession, in which a vacant rental unit is more likely to be leased by a middle-income household, or the gradual shrinking of low-rent housing

(k) Loss of Affordable Housing Units, Exclusionary Displacement: Displacement can also occur when neighborhood choices become limited from the lack of affordable housing units, excluding them from the realm of possibilities for low-income families. Exclusionary displacement from the loss of affordable housing units occurs across the nation, even in non-gentrifying neighborhoods, due to the rental affordability crisis. HUD’s most recent worst-case housing needs assessment estimated that the number of renter households with worst-case needs, defined as renters with incomes less than 50 percent of the Area Median Income who do not receive government housing assistance and who pay more than one-half of their incomes for rent, live in severely inadequate conditions.

(l) Urban revitalization often brings new amenities that attract higher-income in-movers but that are not always aligned with the needs of existing residents. Cultural displacement of a neighborhood defined at least partly by the mix of shops and restaurants is another often cited critique.

Policy Responses to Gentrification:

A progressive collaboration between HUD and local policymakers is that a broad-based approach to housing affordability is necessary for its success. We must encourage housing development and affordable housing preservation, as well as community engagement from all residents. Four key strategies that could alleviate pressures on housing affordability and community resistance to change at all policy levels:

(1) Preserve Existing Affordable Housing

Rental Assistance Demonstration, Public housing developments, in which subsidies are attached to particular units, may be an effective tool for helping low-income families stay in place.

Housing Choice Vouchers

(2) Preservation-Friendly Incentives:

On the local level, aligning incentives for existing affordable housing owners with the community’s preservation priorities can be effective in maintaining affordable units. Examples of preservation-friendly policies include tax abatements to lower property taxes for owners who agree to preserve units as affordable.

(3) Preservation Catalog

Because of uncertain congressional appropriations, localities are asked to do more with less when it comes to affordable housing development and preservation. Using existing resources in the most efficient way can help governments react in an uncertain budgetary environment. Lubell (2016) suggested numerous policy responses that could improve the efficiency of resource utilization, including a preservation catalog that identifies when subsidies or rental assistance will expire. The national online preservation database. org currently identifies when assistance will expire but focuses on federal subsidies and would greatly benefit from information on state and local subsidies (Lubell, 2016). This database can assist communities in prioritizing preservation targets well ahead of subsidy expirations and help them react with the appropriate tools.

(4) Encourage Greater Development

In addition to preserving existing affordable units, encouraging greater development of rental units at all levels can lower housing costs and expand housing choice for residents, particularly in areas with significant rent growth. Most of the current affordable housing stock is not subsidized but rather consists of older units that no longer command the highest rents or have filtered downward.

(5) Housing Supply and Local Regulations

Given rising rents, the question remains why has the supply of housing not caught up to demand? Researchers have increasingly focused on the role of restrictive land zoning regulations, which have risen since the late 1970s, in increasing construction costs.

(6) Inclusionary Zoning Policies

An empirical debate is ongoing about the magnitude of benefits and associated negative effects of inclusionary zoning policies. Some experts have noted that inclusionary zoning policies often fall short of their goals and, in hot housing markets, can raise construction costs significantly (Quigley and Raphael, 2005). They can potentially lead to a decrease in unit production and, ultimately, affordability.

(7) Engage Community Residents

Greater development is needed to meet current demand and to compensate for decades of restricted supply. High-density and affordable housing development is often met with community resistance, however. Successful development plans will seek the buy-in of the community in a variety of ways that reach beyond only housing.

(8) Regional Cooperation and Strategies

As the number of lower-income and poor households continues to grow faster in the suburbs than in the nation’s biggest cities, local suburban agencies struggle to keep up with demand for services because they lack the fiscal and nonprofit architecture (Kneebone and Berube, 2013). Historically, social service resources were more likely to be supported and funded in urban centers, where large concentrations of poor households resided. However, gentrification, along with the rental affordability crisis and housing bust in the mid-2000s, has resulted in an influx of lower-income and poor households into suburban communities.

(9) New Innovations in Responding to Gentrification

Local governments and organizations are also looking at innovative and comprehensive ways to ensure equity in neighborhood development and change. This section highlights several communities whose innovative work incorporates elements of the four strategies discussed previously.

1. Preserve existing affordable housing

• Rental Assistance Demonstration

• Housing choice vouchers

• Preservation-friendly incentives

• Preservation catalog

2. Encourage greater development

• Federal Housing Administration insurance rate cuts

• Property acquisition.

• Housing supply and local regulations

• Inclusionary zoning policies

3. Engage community residents

• State and local measures on affordable housing development.

• Support for community-led organizations.

4. Regional cooperation and strategies

• Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing.

• Convening and sharing best practices.

• Data sharing.

• Award coordinated efforts.

Local Policy Platforms That Address Equitable Development

(a) Preserve existing affordable housing through property acquisition and rehabilitation of units in disrepair.

(b) Encourage greater housing development including, but not limited to, affordable housing.

(c) Engage and educate existing community residents on tools needed to participate in planning and zoning decisions and incentivize local and minority hiring.

(d) Improve data collection to adequately address the degree of displacement and craft effective policy solutions from these findings