My neighbors in Oak Park are great and would love to spruce up their property a lot more than they have, but as renters they don't have much incentive to spend lots of money and sweat to help out their absentee landlord.
The renters are the ones living there day in and day out, keeping an eye on things, contributing to the neighborhood. The landlord just sits and watches their neglected house appreciate, largely on the backs of other homeowners' time and money and renters who will never be allowed to share in the gains (except in the form of rent increases).
My neighbors would love to buy in OP, they grew up here, but now home prices are coming up fast. Will they have to buy in a worse neighborhood or just try to ride out the coming rent increases as long as possible until they're forced out? Rents are going up in the core much faster than wages.
Gentrification brings a a lot of positives, no one is sad to see drug dealers and lowlifes pushed out of a neighborhood. But the trick is managing or at least discussing the negative impact to the good people who want to remain.
Things happen fast in America. The white flight to the suburbs that hollowed out city cores played out largely within a generation. Now cores are getting hot again and neighborhoods are turning around quickly. Just like Occupy, BLM, I think the hyper gentrification happening in places like the Bay, Brooklyn, etc is prompting a national discussion on gentrification and its effects. Maybe we live in a bubble and it's just largely within our own circles that it's discussed though
