How would you feel if you got kicked out of your own neighborhood after living there for all your life? Gentrification is fixing up fixing up poor neighborhoods for the rich to live in. It is a huge issue that is affecting communities negatively rather than the positives that everyone hoped for because people are being forced out of homes that they lived in for decades. New York City is one of the places where we are seeing a lot of gentrification happening. East Harlem and Part of Brooklyn are suffering culturally and socially because of the sudden rise in the cost of housing.
Strolling down from 96th to 125th streets one can easily feel that they have been to several different continents just by listening to the surrounding music and by looking at the murals on side of buildings. This is East Harlem, more commonly known as Spanish Harlem or El Barrio. This neighborhood is alive with history and culture because of the diversity of Puerto Rican, African American, Mexican, and Italians living there. Unfortunately, the continual displacement of many Harlem residents is forcing the long and rich culture/community to be separated. Increasing housing cost is the reason for this displacement of communities in East Harlem. This is especially affecting older residents (residents who lived there all their life) because …show more content…
However, increasing the living standards isn’t benefiting the traditional residents are being kicked out of their housing. Gentrification may show some aspects of crime rate going down. However, homelessness has a direct correlation to higher rates of crime. In order to survive the harsh realities of living on the streets, people will eventually be forced to steal to be able to afford a meal. Gentrification in a way can be seen as backtracking because you are increasing homelessness and many cultural values are getting lost along the