Gentrification and Affordability

LA's urban centers are subject to migratory movements that are like weather patterns—impervious to rent control, affordable housing trust funds and other kinds of government intervention. Moderate homes and apartments give way to McMansions and condos, occupied by the same kind of people who fled to the suburbs 20 years ago. Last week's LA Weekly explored that pattern. Thirty years ago, there was white flight out of the central city to avoid school busing for integration. That expanded into the flight of the middle class. What nobody realized was that the process might take place all over again in the other direction. Neighborhoods are unrecognizable to the people who grew up in them. Who wins and who loses in "Gentrification City?"