The read

From my Sunday column in the Athens Banner-Herald ...

Likewise, it's why the argument that private developers should do more to provide affordable housing for those displaced by gentrification can't be rationalized using basic economic principles.

Offering quality affordable housing means offering below-market rents to low-income individuals. Unfortunately, there's no profit motivation behind that proposition, meaning such efforts are almost completely nonexistent in the private sector. In fact, it's why we have public entities and nonprofit organizations such as the Athens Land Trust, the Athens Housing Authority and Habitat For Humanity, among others, working to fill this gap.

Profit potential drives investment decisions, and the market offers no incentive to minimize displacement or offer affordable housing options.

And while a pair of recent studies from Lance Freeman, an assistant professor of urban planning at Columbia University, and Jacob Vigdor, a professor of economics at Duke University, have suggested displacement from gentrification is statistically overstated, the financial pressures put on low-income individuals in these areas remain very real.

It can be argued, then, that gentrification is less the result of the private market functioning as it theoretically should, and more the result of inaction in the public sector. If there is little economic incentive for the private market to alleviate the burdens that come as a result of redevelopment, then that incentive must be created through public policy or, in some cases, fostered through regulation.