Reflection Paper for the Weeks Assigned Material

Student NameWeek X –Week’s topic Professor EkpaguPUAD XXX OR PPIA XXX Gentrification Gentrification is viewed as a positive process which brings in new life to old neighborhoods as well as investment. In this case competition for new businesses is promoted in neighborhoods, infrastructural development and property values are also improved. This can cause reduction in social vices in societies, improved schools and other facilities for the public. Advocates for gentrification believe that the improvement of an area through the influx of capital and wealth would boost the economic activity of the locality thereby ensuring availability of employment as well as improving the standard of living just like how one of the articles presented in class. Additionally, beautification, additional public amenities, and increased security observed with gentrification will make areas more desirable and livelier for all clients, including original occupants. But on the other hand, gentrification cannot always function as a positive factor for all the people in a neighborhood to be gentrified. There is such a situation that owners and residents of apartments, who are representatives of low-popular layers, can be evicted due to the increase in property values and the cost of living. This can have the negative effect of disintegration of close-knit communities and culture bearing population as original inhabitants are being pushed out of the area. Some people contend that gentrification benefits only new people at the behest of existing inhabitants and increases social injustice and the lack of affordable housing. Moreover, the outcome of the old inhabitants for a newly improved place, where rent sky rocketed and mortgages are shooting the roof, homelessness will be inevitable. Homelessness The idea of homelessness is not a simple matter that many people can actually understand. For some, this idea can erupt towards a negative comment, or maybe in a positive one. In this case, gentrification can be the cause for homelessness and I bid to say that such things should be reconsidered once more. I doubted the idea of gentrification after hearing and knowing the word revitalizing. Though both words aim to have a better housing and environment, both have different purposes. It is true in society that as days goes by, the number of homeless people is also increases, but yet, only few people have started to take this into a serious social issue. There are several causes for this, not just the increasing rent and so, but also the rate of being jobless or a low-income earner. Through this lesson, my idea of homelessness has been given more knowledge as though I can now connect the dots of how people become homeless. And in my side of the story, I also believe that several factors take place for people to be homeless and that each factor should be addressed in different ways. Like how some people have low income, and it is not because they are lazy, but rather they were unprivileged from the start. So, the question is now, how and why were they unprivileged from the start if the government funds some free education and low-cost housing? Is the problem both ways? My take here is that both government and people have their own faults, as the government tend to cut costs, providing only the minimum needs, which in return, does not function viably in society in a positive manner. While for the people who takes adv...