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Researchers talk about gentrification and displacement

By Kathleen Maclay

Research released on Monday by UC Berkeley’s Urban Displacement Project is finding a resounding audience, as shown by the work headlining several newscasts this week.

Diridon Station neighborhood

The Diridon Station area in Santa Clara County is experiencing new housing pressures and changes as the Bay Area housing market becomes a regional rather than local issue.

The project led by Berkeley city and regional planning professor Karen Chapple and researcher Miriam Zuk has found that more neighborhoods in the Bay Area than have already experienced gentrification and displacement are at risk of it. Both caution, however, that it isn’t inevitable.

Chapple and Zuk took turns discussing their work on KQED’s California Report and Forum programs, fielding numerous questions along the way. They also were featured in KQED’s “The News Fix” report on the topic with “A Map of Gentrification in the Bay Area.” Click on the links to read or listen in.

Zuk said that while the region can’t simply build its way out of its housing crisis, it does need more market-rate housing, more affordable housing and more supportive government policies that invest in public transit as well as the neighborhoods themselves.

The researchers invite review of the project, which features an interactive map with what Forum host Michael Krazny called a “tsunami of data” on more than 2,000 census tracts from San Francisco to Concord, San Rafael to San Jose.

Read UC Berkeley’s original report on the Urban Displacement Project, on Berkeley News.