Untangling Gentrification: Neighborhood Level Analysis for Service Delivery in DC

Rapid gentrification has important consequences for health outcomes of vulnerable populations. While the effects of involuntary displacement on health have been the subject of study in the past, the effects of gentrification on those who have neither the resources to move nor the means to benefit from surrounding gentrification have yet to be thoroughly examined. This study examines the ability of service providers to reach these isolated communities by analyzing the dynamics of poverty and its intersections with other socio-economic characteristics in Washington, DC’s neighborhood clusters. To test how this methodology could provide insight into health policy and service delivery, it was used to examine the distribution of at-risk mothers and children who could benefit from one of the District’s three MIECHV-funded home visiting programs.

Using extant data from the 2010-2014 American Community Survey, the number of individuals with one of seven core demographic and socioeconomic indicators that generally characterize home visiting clients were calculated at the census tract-level, crosswalked to the neighborhood-cluster level, and then mapped. The correlation between increased median income and the number of families in poverty was used to indicate the degree of entrenched poverty. To visualize the penetration of current home visiting services in at-risk communities, the addresses of current home visiting clients were georeferenced, aggregated at the neighborhood cluster-level, and compared to the potential at-risk population.

Comparison of the geographic spread of this at-risk population with the current reach of home visiting programs reveals an unexpected challenge to the typical understanding of need in DC. Spatial analytics revealed that the concentration of vulnerable families in the historically impoverished Wards 6, 7, and 8 was uneven: several neighborhood clusters within those wards were responsible for the majority of the need. More surprisingly, several neighborhoods in Wards 1 and 4, which are subject to intense gentrification, have an at-risk population as large or larger than that of-risk neighborhoods in Wards 6, 7, 8. Analysis of economic trends in these clusters reveals that while median income has increased in these communities, the number of families who are living in poverty has remained stable or increased. Home visiting programs that have the flexibility to work outside of Wards 6, 7, and 8 have a higher levels of service deliveries in these areas than those that do not.

Through the examination of the temporal effects on intersectional communities, health service providers in DC can be alerted to the presence of at-risk populations that are otherwise masked by rapid gentrification and adjust their policies accordingly.