"Displacing the Poor: Photographs of Richmond’s Vanishing Working Class" by Aachary Taylor and Daniel Barney
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Journal of Undergraduate Research

Keywords

working class, taxes, Richmond, Virginia

College

Fine Arts and Communications

Department

Art

Abstract

The renovation of deteriorated urban neighborhoods, otherwise known as gentrification, has been happening in Richmond, Virginia’s inner-city neighborhoods at an alarming rate over the last four years. This renewal has brought explicit benefits to those in its reach. For one, it has helped restore neglected and under-managed properties. It has also brought added social and cultural amenities to the city as a whole. These changes have come with a price however, as Richmond’s gentrified inner-city districts inevitably experience drastically higher rent and property taxes as a result of escalating property values. These surges in value have brought proportionally high taxes with them, and many of the city’s lower-class can’t afford the increase. In 2005, over 2,400 homeowners throughout the city filed for property tax relief (Holmberg, “Tax”). As one native of the city reported to The Richmond Times Dispatch: “Some of these people get [Social Security] checks. They can’t pay for this. [Revitalization]’s really going to make property values go up. They’re running the [poorer] blacks out of the neighborhood” (Holmberg, “Taming”).

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Fine Arts Commons

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