Gentrification hits the South Bronx

Like many other New York city neighborhoods with a poor reputation, the South Bronx is beginning to gentrify, according to the New York Times.

Still remembered for the crime and arson epidemic of the 1970s, the neighborhood offers low real estate prices, a decreasing crime rate and amenities brought to the neighborhood by Yankee Stadium that lure a new class of residents.

For the first time in four decades, the South Bronx’s non-Hispanic white population grew in the 2010 census — up 17.5 percent from a decade prior.

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They flock to elegant co-ops off the Grand Concourse, which can be had for less than $300,000, and the main thoroughfare itself, which has been fixed up and now includes yoga studios and a weekly farmers market.

Some say that changing perceptions among New Yorkers have helped engineer the change, as people no longer associate communities with a single race or ethnicity. Europeans unaware of the neighborhood’s reputation have also helped. But longtime residents expressed anger that only now that more white people have moved to the neighborhood is it considered more livable. [NYT]