gentrification

The social phenomenon in which homes in formerly poor, overcrowded ghettos are purchased and privately rehabilitated by more-affluent families for their personal dwellings or for investment. This has the effect of raising the property values, rents, and property tax rates of all the homes in the neighborhood, forcing the removal of the remaining less-affluent people and their replacement by those who can afford to live there. The gentrified neighborhood may seem more desirable, but the people who are displaced have to crowd into other neighborhoods, and the resulting overcrowding causes those neighborhoods to decline. See also urban homesteading and redlining.