It often screws over the residents who worked hard to make an area desirable. A typical pattern goes like this: 1. An area is cheap because it is considered undesirable and all the rich folk move away. 2. Poor folks move there - artists, minorities, families. 3. These folk work for years to make the area safer, nicer to live in, more interesting. 4. Now that poor folk have improved the neighborhood, rich folk flood back in and buy up property or just drive up rents, pricing the original residents out. 5. Lower class folk forced to move to the next crappy neighborhood, and repeat the process.

Decreased quality of life for those who rent and can no longer afford to live in the gentrified neighborhood.

Increased property taxes for those who already own can force even long-time residents to move, regardless of whether they actually want to, simply because their home has suddenly and unexpectedly increased in value. You could argue that this is a windfall - but being forcibly displaced by increased cost of living isn't fun, even if you do get a bunch of money for your house (that you didn't want to sell in the first place).

Also, change is scary.

Gentrification is fundamentally a dramatic increase in local prices. The change isn't usually driven by locals earning more but by new people moving in and pricing the former residents out of the market.

It's great for the new residents. It is terrible for the old – particularly old residents who don't own their own home or are otherwise unable to capitalize on the price shift.

Because in order for cities to function properly, it's important that blue collar workers are able to afford to inhabit them. Un-governed gentrification and unreasonably low levels of low income housing result in situations like exist in the SFBA now, where many middle class households are either forced into extraordinarily long commutes (leads to higher stress, worse health and increased mortality) or cramped living in shared multi-family apartments/houses.

It goes hand in hand with an increased cost of living (e.g. the nicer things get the more expensive it is to live there) which in turn causes a displacement of people and communities who lived there before the gentrification happened. In many western countries there is also a strong correlation between the above displacement and it overly effecting minorities, who due to economic/political/social disenfranchisement have congregated communities in low cost areas.

If you are a member of the more affluent population who moves into a gentrified area, it's great, but if you're a part of the community who has lived there for a long time and you suddenly can't afford to any more, it's really not great at all (to it mildly).

So in a narrow sense 'gentrification' isn't a bad thing, however put in the wider context it can have very significant negative effects on poorer communities. Especially when combined with a lack of social/affordable housing.

It's a double edged sword: it generates wealth and regenerates an area. On the other hand people who may have lived there for 20+ years can get priced out of their own neighbourhood.

Arguably, people have a right to continue living where theyve always lived, and should be able to live close to work. This is at least believed in the UK, in theory.

Unfortunately, what normally happens is that house prices in the area grows exponentially fast and serves to only make the rich richer. Rental prices are usually pegged to housing prices and thus, the original inhabitants are pushed out.

Because changing environment unintentionally pressures previous long-standing residents into leaving the area, and causes discomfort as two divergent groups meet in the same location and one feels the other is destroying, ruining, or usurping their culture.

It's not "bad" as a moral stance, but certainly some claim it is bad from their perspective if they end up on the losing end of gentrification.

To give an example that more people might empathize with. Parts of central London used to be affordable by the mid to upper classes, but these scenic locations are now 100% owned by others who only buy them for use as vacation homes. It's an odd case of gentrification pushing relatively wealthy people out of an area so that extremely wealthy people can live there instead.

THANK you for comments, I honestly did not know that someone would be against it.

I assume this is from a left POV, I see it as plus that a local business succeeds, or a new local hosting gets built, at worst more tax revenue = more services. I wonder to self if higher education is also viewed as bad, as it has same effect - higher local prices. So the outcome to anti-gentrification is the abandoned neighborhoods that investors would not want to develop. Not something we can solve, just a warning to business to not grow in the anti-gentrification areas.

Basic reason is that it displaces the existing population through increasing prices in housing and services and alienates the existing population socially and culturally. The only people that experience the benefits of gentrification are wealthy newcomers, whereas existing populations suffer varying degrees of harm with the gradual destruction of their communities.

Because not many people own homes in the US. So if local prices go up, renters have to move elsewhere. If you own a house, chances are you still have to move because other services become too expensive for you, but at least you made a nice profit on the house. If you rent, it's a lose-lose situation.

I think it is generally seen as a process that ends up pricing out and displacing the people who used to rent within an area (or even own, if property taxes end up spiking), thus dissolving the original community.

In this case, the newcomers regard the residents generally as undesirable and specifically as criminals.

In general, things which disrupt a community are not readily welcomed by the community.

Why is outsourcing bad? Change is all good and fancy, until you are the one left behind/on the receiving end.

The West right now - especially US and UK have a bad track record of redistributing the gains.

Because it means that society is rationing resources at a level of scarcity well above the actual level of scarcity. It means that some of the potential utility of just building more housing is being left on the table so that an artificial class conflict can be created between new and existing citizens.