Blocking new housing is the cause of gentrification. Here's why.

Not unrelated: let 'em put in the corner store. Means you don't have to drive for groceries.

TL;DR: Gentrification isn't caused by building too much housing—it's caused by building too little, in too few places. When neighborhoods block development out of fear, they actually accelerate the very gentrification they're trying to prevent. Only by allowing housing development by right across the entire city can we distribute growth evenly, meet demand, and prevent concentrated price spikes that displace communities. And no, Philly's population decline doesn't mean we have enough housing—we have a mismatch between where people want to live and where housing is available.

Wildly expensive older homes surrounding a few (also expensive) new apartment buildings: the marquee image of gentrification. This is not uncommon across the states, and regrettably present here in Philly, too—with longtime residents struggling to keep up with rising costs.

By and large, you hear folks react by blaming the new apartments: "We never should have let them build new apartments: they’re driving up rent!" But that reaction gets the causality exactly backward.

The Neighborhood Bottleneck Effect

Here's what's actually happening in cities like ours: When the bulk of the city’s neighborhoods successfully block new housing through community opposition, zoning restrictions, and councilmanic prerogative, it doesn’t mean folks stop looking for housing—it just means they have to look to fewer areas where building is allowed.

That is to say: we’re in a housing shortage, so housing needs to get built, whether we block it or not.

When neighborhoods do block new housing, we get a bottleneck effect that plays out in one of three problematic ways:

Scenario 1: No New Housing Not hard to imagine: with no new housing coming online, but folks still wanting to move in (because it’s desirable or just because people need to live somewhere), the price of the limited existing housing goes way up. Longtime residents get squeezed out—or, if the area was already wealthy, they make a premium at everyone’s expense.

Scenario 2: The Trickle of New Housing In neighborhoods where community opposition prevents all but a small amount of new housing to be built, you get increased desirability without the supply to match. The area becomes trendy, demand shoots up, but with minimal new units, prices for existing housing skyrockets. Longtime residents get squeezed out, though perhaps to a lesser extent than scenario 1.

Scenario 3: The Island of New Housing In neighborhoods where substantial development does occur, you get somewhat better outcomes—new buildings absorb some demand, moderating price increases in existing housing. But since this neighborhood is essentially on its own in accommodating citywide housing needs, you still get price hikes because the city at large is still not meeting demand.

All three scenarios stem from the same root problem: when the city's housing needs are forced through just a few neighborhood "bottlenecks," those areas bear the entire burden of growth while other neighborhoods remain artificially frozen in time.

"But Philly Had 2 Million People in the '70s!"

An understandable question: "How can we possibly have a housing shortage when our population is lower than it was 50 years ago? Aren't these new high-rises just sitting empty?"

This argument misses several crucial realities:

First, the Philly of 1970 had different household sizes. Back then, the average household had 3-4 people. Today, we have more single-person households, more couples without children, and smaller families. So even with fewer total residents, we need more housing units.

Second, the housing we have doesn't match where people want to live now. Yes, there are vacant properties in Philadelphia—roughly 10% citywide—but they're not evenly distributed. In some neighborhoods, vacancy rates are near zero, while others have much higher rates. When people say "just fix up abandoned homes," they're ignoring the complex reasons those properties stay vacant (cost of renovation, absentee ownership, tangled titles) and the fact that they're often not where housing demand exists.

Third, those supposedly "empty" new high-rises? They simply aren't empty. Our citywide vacancy rate of around 10% is comparable to other similar cities. And while newer buildings might have a temporarily higher vacancy rate (around 20%) as they lease up, that's a normal part of the development cycle, not evidence of oversupply.

Not to mention: who does it hurt if they sit empty? Let the landowners keep paying taxes (in fact, let’s raise them). Yes, they ought to lower rents, but that objection doesn’t mean it makes sense to block new housing where people would move in.

The real issue is not that we have too many housing units across the city—it's that we have too few units in the places where people actually want to live.

Who Benefits From Blocking Housing?

Let's be blunt about who wins and who loses in our current system:

Who benefits from blocking housing development?

• Current homeowners in desirable neighborhoods since their property values skyrocket with artificial scarcity

• Landlords who can charge higher rents when housing supply is constrained

• Wealthy neighborhoods with political clout to prevent change (while less powerful areas bear the brunt of development)

• Politicians who gain power by serving as gatekeepers to the development process

• Land speculators holding vacant properties waiting for values to rise

Who's harmed when we allow housing across the whole city?

• Actually, no one—at least not in the long run

• Some neighborhoods might experience more change than they're used to

• Some homeowners might see slightly slower property value growth (though still positive)

• Some developers might face increased competition and lower profit margins

• Some politicians might lose power as the process becomes more predictable

Gotta say, I much prefer the second bullet point list.

The key insight: blocking housing doesn't prevent change—it just ensures that change happens in the most harmful, inequitable way possible. It concentrates development pressure in the neighborhoods with the least political power to resist it, while making housing citywide more expensive for everyone.

The Spatial Math Doesn't Work

Let's look at the spatial math. Philadelphia has 1.6 million residents, and our population is growing again after decades of decline. Housing development isn't keeping pace with this growth, creating a citywide deficit that drives up prices everywhere.

When communities oppose new housing out of fear of gentrification, they're missing a fundamental truth about urban economics: restricting supply doesn't prevent demand—it just makes that demand more expensive to fulfill.

Think about it this way: if we need 5,000 new housing units annually to keep pace with growth, and 90% of neighborhoods successfully block new development, those 5,000 units must be crammed into the remaining 10% of neighborhoods, instead of 500 units per 10%.

Concentrating 100% of development in 10% of neighborhoods means gentrification in those areas is virtually guaranteed.

The By-Right Solution

The only real solution is allowing housing development "by right" across the entire city. When builders can create housing without navigating endless community meetings and councilmanic vetoes, development spreads organically, following actual demand patterns rather than political paths of least resistance.

And it means you don’t need massive apartment buildings surrounded by single-family homes. Distributing new development across the city means any given neighborhood can stick to a single increment of densification—think single-family to duplexes. Duplexes to triplexes. Triplexes to small apartment buildings, and so on.

It’s only when you block housing for long enough, and make the need so great, that you need to jump straight from single-family homes to high-rises. Put differently, if you block a duplex, you are asking for a high-rise.

Here's how citywide by-right development prevents gentrification:

1. Distributed Growth: New housing spreads across all neighborhoods, preventing any single area from bearing the entire burden of growth.

2. Gradual Change: When development happens everywhere, each neighborhood experiences modest, manageable change rather than dramatic transformation.

3. Market Response: Builders can respond directly to demand, placing housing where people want to live rather than where politics allows them to build.

4. Price Stabilization: With supply meeting demand citywide, price increases moderate across all neighborhoods.

The Counterintuitive Reality

I know this runs counter to the intuitions of many well-meaning neighborhood advocates. The instinct to protect one's community by opposing new development feels right on a gut level—and it was the right response to genuine government overreach when highways destroyed our neighborhoods. But it is the wrong response to a good-faith effort to make housing affordable for everyone.

When every neighborhood thinks it's protecting itself by blocking housing, the collective result is a housing shortage that harms everyone—especially the most vulnerable residents who can't absorb rising costs.

The False Downsides

"But what about the downsides of density?" opponents ask. "What about parking, traffic, school overcrowding?"

Here's the beautiful paradox: by-right development across the city creates precisely the conditions that make these concerns less problematic, not more.

With housing distributed citywide, no single neighborhood's infrastructure gets overwhelmed. Better yet, the increased population density makes public transit more viable, local businesses more sustainable, and public services more efficient.

And if opponents' worst fears came true and new housing went unoccupied? Then there would be no "downsides of density" at all—because there would be no additional density! The housing would simply wait for eventual demand.

But in reality, I don’t think anyone would argue that we need more housing, not less. Our housing shortage is real and getting worse.

The Bottom Line

Gentrification isn't caused by new housing—it's caused by not building enough housing across the entire city. When we restrict development to just a few neighborhoods, we guarantee the very outcome we fear: concentrated change that displaces vulnerable communities.

The solution isn't fighting development—it's ensuring development can happen everywhere, ensuring no single neighborhood bears an unfair burden of the city's growth.

By-right development isn't just about making housing more affordable citywide (though it would do that). It's about creating a more equitable process where every neighborhood accommodates its fair share of growth, preventing the intense gentrification that happens when we try to funnel all of the city's housing needs through just a few neighborhoods.

Let's make gentrification suck less by making housing possible everywhere, not just in the few neighborhoods where residents have the least political power to block it.