Join the Party for Socialism and Liberation in Columbia, South Carolina for a forum on Gentrification!

Gentrification is defined as a shift toward wealthier residents and/or businesses resulting in higher property values. When wealthier people move into poor neighborhoods pushing out the people who had lived there, property values go up. We mostly know gentrification by what it looks like.

Typically, gentrification is perceived as the advent of coffee shops, vintage stores, organic food outlets, fusion restaurants, and yoga studios that had never been there before.

Gentrification is a capitalist profit-driven process that landlords, politicians and bankers like to call “urban development.” Landlords raise rents and throw out working people in historic communities in order to attract more affluent sectors of society. The goal is to “revitalize” a community and increase property values.