Study Shows Corrosive Effects Of Gentrification In East Austin

EAST AUSTIN, TX —To nobody's surprise, residents who have experienced the effects of gentrification in the historically black neighborhoods of East Austin hold overall negative views of development-fueled changes disrupting their sense of community, a new study finds.

That's the conclusion reached by urban policy researchers at the University of Texas at Austin. As previously reported by the Institute for Urban Policy Research and Analysis (IUPRA), Austin was the only fast-growing major city in the United States to show a decline in African Americans between 2000 and 2010. The reason for the exodus, researchers found, was rapid gentrification to Austin’s former “Negro District” — established through Jim Crow in 1928 — priced out long-term residents, uprooting and displacing them to the surrounding, more affordable suburbs, according to researchers.

Within the decade, East Austin’s white population increased by 442 percent, the black population decreased by 66 percent and the Latino population decreased by 33 percent, according to the findings.

“African Americans who were previously so singularly confined to East Austin became singularly displaced by gentrification,” IUPRA researcher Eric Tang, UT Austin associate professor of African and African diaspora studies, said. “Few people have been able to hang on, and they aren’t hanging on because the changes are beneficial. Rather, they’re hanging on because they feel a responsibility to black and brown East Austin — a right to the city.”

Tang and Bisola Falola, an East Avenue researcher and UT Austin geography and the environment alumna, interviewed long-term East Austin residents who chose to stay, finding that 74 percent held negative views of the rapid change taking place around them. While nearly all (93 percent) voiced concerns about raising property taxes, respondents felt change had delivered its deepest blow to their sense of community.

Perhaps the most telling aspect of the trend was a decline in the number of children, a group that once accounted for 30 percent of the neighborhoods’ population and now makes up less than 12 percent, researcher learned. As gentrification began, families were the first to leave, seeking economic relief and better schools, researchers said. In their place, passers-by walk their dogs where children once played, engaging with their pets more than with their neighbors, as some respondents pointed out.

“A true metric of gentrification is the loss of children,” said Tang. “Children are the glue or the common thread that hold a community together, bringing vibrancy and visibility to the neighborhood. The loss of children took away a sense of community that was once at the heart of black East Austin.”

Respondents reported feeling left alone and left out of decisions to “improve” their neighborhood, with 93 percent indicating they did not patronize new restaurants in the area because they were either uninterested or felt unwelcome.

“Changes are happening to them, not with them,” Tang said, adding that some residents reported feeling as if their new neighbors would rather they just disappear. What's more, in excess of 70 percent of respondents said they had been routinely asked to sell their homes by prospective buyers — citing the offers as aggressive and insultingly low compared with market value.

“East Austin has been resilient through segregation, civil rights, desegregation, urban renewal, the drug epidemics of the ’80’s and ’90’s, and the re-zoning and re-development of downtown,” Tang said. “The people who stayed reflect that very sense of resilience that once encompassed all of black East Austin. As a city, we should be doing more to address these issues of race and culture that profoundly and disproportionately impact our whole community.”

The study is the latest in a series of three IUPRA reports on the impact of gentrification in Austin: “Outlier: The Case of Austin’s Declining African-American Population,” published in 2014; “Those Who Left: Austin’s Declining African American Population,” published in 2016; and finally, “Those Who Stayed: The Impact of Gentrification on Longstanding Residents of East Austin,” published March 2018.

>>> Image: Rhapsody, a 50-foot-long mosaic mural designed by John Yancey in conjunction with master artisan Luis G. Alicea and artist Stephen B. Jones, was installed in Dr. Charles E. Urdy Plaza in October 2004. The 50-foot long mosaic mural pays homage to the longstanding African American institutions and community buildings of East 11th Street, which once upon a time was Austin's jazz and blues mecca. Photo by Wally Gobetz