Gentrification in Hamilton

Gentrification poses challenges, but none that the city can’t address

Lately, the subject of gentrification in Hamilton has gotten a lot of attention. Especially, of course, in Hamilton: in articles produced by the Spectator and CBC Hamilton, as well as in blogs and on social media.

It has also attracted attention beyond. The recent incidents on Locke Street were headline news on The National, and were covered in Toronto and national newspapers. More substantive followup discussions were scheduled by TVO, online and for The Agenda. And Hamilton even got a recent mention in the London Guardian.

The Guardian piece was especially interesting because, appropriately, it grouped Hamilton with Bordeaux and Leipzig, as places where gentrification was being driven by the prosperity of a nearby city.

But the Guardian reporter made the mistake of relying on the opinion of a Torontonian, in this case Randall Hansen, director of the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs.

Apparently Hansen commented that “as a direct result of Toronto’s gentrification, Hamilton too is gentrifying — and I think you’d be hardpushed to find anyone who would see that as a bad thing.”

Huh, I hear you say, what does he know? Obviously, not much. But more to the point, what do we know — about the extent and the impact of gentrification in our city? The short answer is ‘not much more, but some’.

Let’s begin with the ‘some.’ Gentrification involves an upgrading of the physical environment coupled with a rise in average incomes. It takes time to track physical changes in anything more than an anecdotal way, although using Google Street View it can be done, and indeed on a block-by-block basis.

In that way, a student of mine showed that, in Beasley, upgrading has happened more on some streets than others. Locals know that.

What we don’t know is the bigger picture. Fortunately, with its income data, the census allows us to sketch and track that picture, at least at five-year intervals.

Now I happen to be part of a nation-wide project that has been doing just this sort of thing. This project, which is taxpayer funded (thank you!) via the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, is led by David Hulchanski at the University of Toronto. It has produced maps of income change in seven Canadian cities. They show the areas where incomes have been declining, relative to the local urban average, where they have stayed about the same, and where they have risen.

It will surprise no one to learn that from the 1970s through the early 2000s, incomes across almost the entire Lower City declined, relative to the (changing) metropolitan average. So did large parts of the Mountain. See Map 1. The only partial exception was the south-west, around Aberdeen and Locke, which barely held its own. By way of contrast, incomes in the western suburbs and Burlington rose.

But since 2005, gentrification has begun to leave a mark. As you can see from map 2, there are two areas (three census tracts) in the Lower City where incomes rose between 2005 and 2015, one just north of downtown and the other adjacent to Locke Street. This, too, confirms what we might expect.

But the same map shows that these areas are exceptional. As of 2015, incomes across the rest of the Lower City had shown no significant sign of rising. Gentrification is very localized.

This fact should shape how we think about its effects. The usual concern is that this process may cause displacement and prevent lower-income households from moving into an area that might have suited them. Those are major concerns in a city like Toronto or New York where most inner neighbourhoods have been gentrified.

Hamilton is not in that position, yet, not even close. There are still many neighbourhoods, in the Lower City and also on the Mountain, that contain housing that is relatively affordable, relative, that is, to other areas in the city. But, because of its connection to Toronto, the gentrification of Hamilton means that for many people nowhere is affordable.

Gentrification in Hamilton poses challenges that the City can address. For example, as more lowerincome households are pushed onto, or kept on, the Mountain, it can try to ensure that public transit and social services follow. But the gentrification of Hamilton, and with it the growth of income inequality, is something that noone in Hamilton alone can prevent. At best, we can deal with the fallout.

That may sound like a counsel of despair. It shouldn’t. The important message is that if we hope to do anything useful about a problem we need to understand its causes. That goes for gentrification, and also for the militant opposition that it has aroused.