By Nina Gupta
In California, efforts to create cleaner and greener urban neighborhoods can contribute to the displacement of homeless and low-income people where environmental improvements are pursued without addressing the housing crisis in growing urban areas. In Los Angeles, the removal of homeless encampments for the reason of public health demonstrates efforts to improve spaces simultaneously displace the communities within them. This raises an issue of environmental justice; can a neighborhood be considered “green” when its residents are displaced and the environmental and social burdens are simply pushed elsewhere?
Cities often define environmental improvement by creating visibly greener spaces. This includes planting new trees, implementing renewable energy, and improving sanitation. However, these improvements overlook the unhoused population who use and inhabit the area. An encampment may be seen as a sanitation issue, but its existence is also evidence of a much larger housing problem. Los Angeles provides an example of this tension. As documented in the Sanford Journal of Public Policy, Los Angeles adopted two city ordinances allowing police to remove and impound personal belongings of the city’s homeless population, including mattresses and tents (Chawla, 2015). Skid Row, containing the nation’s largest number of homeless people, has been a target of this effort amid major redevelopment in downtown Los Angeles. Increased real estate prices and an influx of young, white professionals into the city results in the displacement of low-income communities of color including black and Hispanic communities (Chawla, 2015). When people experiencing homelessness are removed from one location, the underlying problem fails to disappear. Instead, people may be forced to relocate to another area, changing the visibility of homelessness without resolving its underlying causes.
Gentrification is often associated with new developments within a neighborhood that can make them increasingly expensive and inaccessible for its existing, low-income residents. At the same time, the issue of gentrification is not the sole cause of displacement or homelessness. Research examining eviction patterns across 72 large US metropolitan areas concluded that most evictions that occurred in low-income communities that were not undergoing gentrification (Hepburn et al., 2023). This suggests that homelessness and housing displacement are due to larger economic pressures, while gentrification remains one process that reshapes where low-income residents are able to live (Hepburn et al., 2023).
Displacement can occur due to an encampment being cleared, redevelopment impacting living areas used to sleep, or police and sanitation reinforcement. Often times, this urban redevelopment is implemented with the purpose of being “environmentally friendly”. The process of urban redevelopment often has a cost, such as construction waste and pollution, removal of green areas, loss of informal community spaces, etc. (Crisis House, 2025). The environmental intent of the redevelopment is lost, instead possibly resulting in increased pollution, also known as “greenwashing”. If cities are moving homeless populations away from redeveloping areas, are they working to solve the underlying causes or merely control the appearance?
A cleaner street does not necessarily mean less homelessness or that a housing crisis has been solved. If cities remove unhoused people from areas undergoing redevelopment without reliable alternatives, the visibility is changed rather than addressing why it exists. Therefore, environmental sustainability must be considered alongside housing stability as cities continue to redevelop.
References
Chawla, A. (2015, November 12). Gentrification and concentrated homelessness. Sanford Journal of Public Policy. https://journal.sanford.duke.edu/article/gentrification-and-concentrated-homelessness/
Crisis House. (2025, May 29). The hidden consequences: How homelessness and gentrification impact our environment. https://crisishouse.org/blog/the-hidden-consequences-how-homelessness-and-gentrification-impact-our-environment/
Hepburn, P., Louis, R., & Desmond, M. (2023). Beyond gentrification: Housing loss, poverty, and the geography of displacement. Social Forces, 102(3), 880–901. https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/soad123