The New Housing Crisis: Gentrification and Residential Instability in the San Francisco Bay Area after the Great Recession

The Institute for Research on Poverty hosts seminars on the UW-Madison campus most Thursdays during the academic year. These presentations are free and open to the public. Room 8417.

media release: Lecture by Jackelyn Hwang, associate professor, Department of Sociology, Stanford University

The Great Recession was marked by the collapse of the housing market and foreclosure crisis, but many places now face a new housing crisis marked by the lack of affordable housing. In 2019, nearly 50% of renters reported paying more than 30% of their income toward rent, compared to 37% in 2000. Drawing from large-scale consumer credit data of over 240,000 Bay Area residents and in-depth semi-structured interviews with 80 low-income renters from the City of Oakland, this talk will present research assessing the relationship between gentrification and residential mobility and alternative forms of housing instability amidst a changing housing landscape. Findings have theoretical implications for scholarship on gentrification and displacement and policy implications for addressing housing needs for low-income renters and homelessness prevention efforts.