Climate Gentrification

Cosette Gunter

Miami University, Strategic Communication

STC436: Intercultural Communication

Dr. Katie Day Good

November 20, 2021

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Little Haiti, home to Miami, Florida’s Haitian-American community, is a bright

neighborhood full of Haitian and Caribbean art, food, dancing, music, architecture and more.

Histories and cultural practices constitute the heart of Little Haiti, keeping old traditions alive

inside their long-occupied blocks. But now, there’s something growing in the area that threatens

the integrity of the community: climate gentrification. A relatively new research area, climate

gentrification reflects the intercultural tension between race and class that normally comes with

gentrification, and pairs it with the growing concern surrounding the impact of climate change on

coastal communities, specifically with rising sea levels. Little Haiti is already experiencing the

consequences of this phenomenon, which has historic roots in the country’s history with

gentrification and urban, Black spaces. It also exploits a long-standing social tension between

wealthy, white individuals and poorer Black communities, where economic contexts like real

estate, insurance and income differences mean the difference between keeping and losing your

home. Gentrification, which operates on a local level, relies on local policy for any solution or

relief, and in the case of climate change, on infrastructure funding. Rising sea levels, the driving

force behind Little Haiti’s problem with climate gentrification, is an issue climate scientists have

been warning the public about for years.

Little Haiti, with an elevation of 7-14 ft. above sea level, has recently proven to be a safer

area to live in than Miami beachfront houses which are sitting at only 4 ft. above sea level. As

changing sea levels introduce chronic flooding to the area, property values rise in areas like Little

Haiti where the housing is less vulnerable and drop in high risk areas due to higher insurance

costs and disruptions from storm surges and flooding. According to The United Nations Ocean

Conference factsheet (2017), ⅔ of the world’s cities with populations of 5 million are in areas at

risk of sea level rise. 600 million people (10 percent of the world’s population) live in coastal
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areas that are less than 32 ft above sea level, and NASA Climate Scientists (2018) say sea levels

will rise 26 inches by 2100, which they call a conservative estimate and enough to “cause

significant problems for coastal cities.”

Climate gentrification has its roots in America’s established history with gentrification,

which is the process of middle and upper class residents invading lower, working class areas and

raising property values with new developments. This practice has nearly always displaced the

original, predominantly Black, residents who are stuck in cycles of poverty within urban spaces.

Practices of gentrification began with redlining from the 1930s through the late 60s, where the

federal government deemed different areas where people of color lived unfit for investment

(Collaborative, 2021). Now, people of color still inhabit these neighborhoods, but for coastal

communities, this means that less expensive areas that lay inland are more attractive to wealthy

buyers in anticipation of worsening climate issues. As the wealthy investors move inward, they

invade these long-held Black spaces and buy out businesses and homes, jacking up property

values in areas where residents don’t make enough to afford them. In Little Haiti, the median

income is 24.8k and 95% of households make less than 25k. 73.4% of Little Haiti is made up of

Black residents and 19.9% are Hispanic (Atlas, S.).

Jesse Keenan, an urban development and climate adaptation researcher at Harvard,

coined the term climate gentrification, and said in an interview with Bloomberg News that the

issue, “evokes matters of equity and justice that have very limited historical precedent” (Keenan,

2018). So tracking with the historical implications of gentrification are issues of social justice

and the disproportionate effects of gentrification on communities of color. The social tension

between predominantly white buyers and residents of color goes hand in hand with

socioeconomic statuses, where wealthy buyers can more easily uproot communities that can’t
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afford to keep homes and businesses which skyrocket in value. Economically, these communities

of color are at a disadvantage of being unable to afford appreciating home values, high costs of

flood insurance and remedial costs to flood-prone housing they’ve been displaced to. According

to a CNN article by Ivana Kottasová (2019), more than 120 million people could slip into

poverty within the next decade because of climate change. It’s being called the “climate

apartheid” and it divides the rich who can protect themselves and the poor who are left behind.

Those facing climate gentrification are no exception to this projection. Solutions to these

problems lie in the hands of policy-makers and political figures, who dictate housing and

infrastructure funding for communities. Unfortunately, with climate gentrification still a newly

researched field, arguments for halting climate gentrification don’t have years of comprehensive

data to back them up. It’s only been three years since Keenan published his research on climate

gentrification, spurring the interest in the field.

As a result of this, there is relatively little precedent to go off of as far as climate

gentrification campaigns, but for my campaign, I wanted to keep the focus on the people and

places affected by the issue. My campaign is two-pronged, featuring an advertisement push and a

mural component. My target audience is members of coastal communities and more specifically,

the buyers and investors that are coming in to buy the properties. With the advertisements, I

didn’t want them to just be informational or word-heavy, I wanted to really appeal to people’s

emotions and help them understand the gravity of the issue of climate gentrification. Sometimes

it is difficult for people in privileged positions to really grasp what it’s like for people in

cocultural groups. As the Standpoint Theory points out, groups with more power than those

lower in the social hierarchy do not need to understand the perspective of others, and even have a

vested interest in not understanding it. In regards to climate gentrification, it’s in the interest of
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the wealthy buyers not to know how the original residents feel or what happens to them, because

it would just get in the way of them buying property where they want to. So for my campaign, I

put the pictures of three Miami, Florida residents who were being affected by climate

gentrification, and I modeled the posters to be pretty big. Accompanying the faces of the people

being affected are different phrases, including, “My home is not your safe getaway,” “I deserve

safe, affordable housing,” and, “My business, my housing, my community.” These posters

ideally take up a large portion of the side of a city building, or a wall in an alleyway within a

community that is being affected. I think this makes it so that the posters cannot be missed, and it

makes it so that any buyers that come into the community see the residents that they are

displacing. At the bottom of the posters, I also include a little phrase that says, “Learn more

about climate gentrification.” For my second approach, the murals attempt to accomplish the

same as the posters. The murals in my mockup take up one side of the outside of an apartment

complex, so you can’t miss the message and so they could potentially denote the actual buildings

that residents might be being pushed out of. Two phrases I chose for these murals are, “Families

live here,” and, “Protect our rights to safe housing.” When painted on the entire side of the

building, anyone driving or walking by can be informed about the gentrification taking place or

be intrigued to learn more.

One of the limitations of my campaign is the presence of a follow through. I think to

improve this campaign, there needs to be some sort of call to action near or on the materials, like

a website link, a QR code or email. This way people that view the messages don’t just see the

materials, think it's unfortunate and move on. To really ensure the campaign is effective, people

must know what they can do to help, and it starts with getting them to want to learn more.
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Prior Campaign Visuals: These visuals communicate a more artistic and representative view of

climate gentrification, whereas mine are more advocate and awareness driven. My campaign

visuals are uploaded separately.

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References

Anderson, E. (2015). “The white space.” Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, 1(1), 10–21.

https://doi.org/10.1177/2332649214561306

Atlas, S. (n.d.). Household income in little Haiti, Miami, Florida (neighborhood). The

Demographic Statistical Atlas of the United States - Statistical Atlas. Retrieved December 1,

2021, from

https://statisticalatlas.com/neighborhood/Florida/Miami/Little-Haiti/Household-Income.

Chukwueke, N. (2020, September 4). Climate gentrification: Rising waters & damaged

Communities. Brown Girl Green Blog. Retrieved December 1, 2021, from

https://browngirlgreen.org/blog/climate-gentrification-rising-waters-damaged-communities/.

Collaborative, G. C. (2021, November 3). What are gentrification and displacement. Urban

Displacement. Retrieved December 1, 2021, from

https://www.urbandisplacement.org/about/what-are-gentrification-and-displacement/.

Green, N. (2019, November 7). As seas rise, Miami's black communities fear displacement from

the high ground. WLRN. Retrieved December 1, 2021, from

https://www.wlrn.org/news/2019-11-04/as-seas-rise-miamis-black-communities-fear-displaceme

nt-from-the-high-ground.

Hovland, O. (2021). Climate Gentrification. OivindHovland.

https://www.oivindhovland.com/climate-gentrification. Retrieved November 19, 2021.

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Keenan, J. M., Hill, T., & Gumber, A. (2018). Climate gentrification: From theory to empiricism

in Miami-Dade County, Florida. Environmental Research Letters, 13(5), 054001.

https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/aabb32

Kottasová, I. (2019, June 27). 'climate apartheid' to push 120 million into poverty by 2030, Un

says. CNN. Retrieved December 1, 2021, from

https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/25/world/climate-apartheid-poverty-un-intl/index.html.

The Ocean Conference. (2017, June). Factsheet: People and Oceans. New York; United Nations.

Weeman, K. (2018, June 13). New study finds sea level rise accelerating – climate change: Vital

signs of the planet. NASA. Retrieved December 1, 2021, from

https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2680/new-study-finds-sea-level-rise-accelerating/.