We endorse the Los Angeles Tenants Union definition of Gentrification:
- Gentrification is the displacement and replacement of the poor for profit.
- Gentrification is not natural or inevitable but a human-made process.
- Gentrification is rooted in colonialism and white supremacy. It disrupts family ties, uproots communities, and erases the cultural heritage of working class communities of color.
- Gentrification has many code words: urban renewal, revitalization, vitality, infrastructure. All entail the accumulation of wealth through dispossessing the poor of their housing and communities.
- Gentrification draws on multiple tactics to defeat resistance: e.g. gang injunctions, racist policing that targets poor communities, policing anti-gentrification activists, denying tenants knowledge about their rights, and the co-optation of non-profits as “legitimate” brokers for the poor.