Cities Mobilize to Help Those Threatened by Gentrification

Jacy Webster applied for a cap on his property taxes after the value of his home in Philadelphia quintupled amid a flurry of new construction. Credit Jessica Kourkounis for The New York Times

nytimes.com - by Timothy Williams - March 3, 2014

PHILADELPHIA — Cities that have worked for years to attract young professionals who might have once moved to the suburbs are now experimenting with ways to protect a group long deemed expendable — working- and lower-middle class homeowners threatened by gentrification.

The initiatives, planned or underway in Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, Pittsburgh and other cities, are centered on reducing or freezing property taxes for such homeowners in an effort to promote neighborhood stability, preserve character and provide a dividend of sorts to those who have stayed through years of high crime, population loss and declining property values, officials say.

Newcomers, whose vitality is critical to cities, are hardly being turned away.

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