Getting Ahead of Small Business Displacement: Strategies for the Early Stages of Gentrification

Abstract

This report examines how commercial gentrification unfolds in its earliest phases and identifies practical strategies to prevent displacement. Drawing on focus groups, conference sessions, and webinars with members of the Small Business Anti-Displacement Network (SBAN), as well as a review of existing research, this report finds that the earliest signs of gentrification appear long before the characteristics typically associated with gentrification, such as rising rents, an influx of higher-income residents, and physical redevelopment. Instead, early signals of gentrification are identifiable in long-term patterns of disinvestment, redevelopment planning decisions, and regulatory changes that quietly reshape neighborhoods.