Through interviewing my extended family who are originally from the Fillmore district of San Francisco before they were forced out by the ever increasing property values, I gain insight on just how much gentrification in their neighborhoods affected their lives. When property values increase, poor residents who rent are forced out of the their community because they are unable to pay their rent. They had been living in the Fillmore for over two decades from the 1980s to the mid-2000s until the tech boom in San Francisco made their property value rise up and they were soon unable to pay their rent. As a result, they were forced to leave San Francisco and move to Bakersfield where the rest of my family had been living. My auntie explained me that “The young, privileged people in your generation don’t care where we go, they care that they live some place trendy” making me feel ashamed of my own generation (J.WIlliams,Personal Communication May 10th, 1017).
The situation my family experienced was similar to Freeman’s book There Goes the Neighborhood where he interviews a man whose property was worth $18,000 when he first purchased it, but is now worth a couple hundred thousand (2006, p. 60). Freeman finds similar results of gentrification as the experience my own family has had to endure. The interview with my family and Freeman’s interview with the local residents supports my overall thesis argument in this blog that when a community is experiencing gentrification, the lower class people who rent in that community are uprooted. Poverty, and displacement are all the result of the housing takeover due to the flow of higher class residents moving into the neighborhood being revitalized through gentrification.
