Downtown LA’s 90014 Heads the List of Fastest-Gentrifying ZIPs since the Turn of the Millennium

There’s a lot of things an urban area can and should aspire to excel in. This is not one of them. Yet, even if gentrification is not something to strive for, it happens all the more often—and as there are ways to quantify it, we did just that, and a ranking arose. A less-than-glorious elite, if you will.

To find out which areas were most affected by gentrification since the turn of the millennium, our analysts took to the 2000 Census and the 2016 American Community Survey and looked at the changes that took place over a decade and a half in 11,000 US ZIP codes. They turned their attention to three data points crucial in determining whether gentrification is present: the median home value, the median household income and the population that holds a bachelor’s or higher degree. The gentrification coefficient that gave us the final ranking is a simple average of the ranks the ZIP codes obtained in these three categories.

The table below showcases the 20 ZIP codes across the US that have gentrified the most from 2000 to 2016, starting with the most gentrified. Click the column headers to sort the entries by the partial results.

Top 20 Most Gentrified ZIP codes 2000-2016

The East Coast dominates the Top 20, Urban cores were hit the hardest

Although the problem does exist in pretty much every major city, the really spectacular cases of gentrification seem to be limited to relatively few, and the composition of the top 20 gives a pretty good indication of this. More than half, 12 of the top 20 most gentrified ZIP codes in the US are parts of East Coast cities. As you can see in the table, 5 out of the top 20 most gentrified ZIP codes are located in Brooklyn while Manhattan, Philadelphia and Washington, DC each have 2 entries on our list, and Baltimore is present with one ZIP code.

Two ZIPs in Los Angeles and one in Tacoma represent the West Coast, Texas joins the list with two in Houston and one each in Fort Worth and Austin, and 63103 in the Midtown-Downtown West area of St. Louis is the only Midwest market to have made the top 20.

The many faces of gentrification

So far we have only been discussing the most gentrified ZIP codes, as ranked by taking all three contributing factors into consideration. But when looking at the growth of home value, income and education level separately, some of the numbers are so outrageous on their own, we felt that they need to be discussed separately.

As the most in-your-face indicator of why gentrification is a major issue and how it leads to the displacement of long-time residents of a neighborhood, the home value increase is entitled to be the first one to go under scrutiny:

Home Values through the Roof – Good for Statistics, Devastating for Communities

The average home value in 2016 for our top 20 most gentrified ZIPs was $446,730 with an average increase of no less than 224% since 2000. And if that wouldn’t be enough of a blow on the wedge that is spreading the income gap ever wider, this happened amidst a wave of supply growth—19 of the top 20 gentrified ZIP codes experienced increases in the number of households between 2000 and 2016. Baltimore’s 21224 is the only exception, but even there the number of households decreased by only 2.26%.

New York City dominates the top of the list, with some dizzying figures. That the median home value in New York’s 10044 (Roosevelt Island) exploded, going from just over $48K to almost $655K is just one way to put it. Proportionally, it is an astonishing 1,258% expansion rate. Or a thirteenfold increase. Expressions that you rarely hear in any context…

Even in the tenth ZIP code down the list, Chattanooga, TN’s 37402, the median home value has more than tripled, passing $574K from less than $169K  in just 17 years.

When Income Growth Is Bad News

In terms of income growth, ZIP code 20001 in Washington, DC stands out from the 11,000 ZIP codes analyzed with a 163% growth rate of its median household income. From a just shy of $37K, it went to almost $97K!

Second on the podium is Houston’s 77007, which ranked #19 overall, and which is also the only one out of the top 20 with a median household income above $100K. But what landed it on this list is the fact that just a decade and a half ago its median income was less than half of the current sum.

ZIP code 20005 from DC takes home the medal for third-highest income growth – the neighborhood in the State Capital’s downtown area saw its median income blown to the stratosphere, from around $46,000 to over $95,000!

Talking about incomes, a sobering example is Downtown LA’s ZIP code 90014, which although didn’t make the podium in this breakdown with its 95% increase in median household income, it took the first place overall. In spite of both the significant income growth, the majority of its residents still live under the poverty line as the median household income in 2016 was $24,670. The same is true to its next-door neighbor, 90013 which also registered a high, 77% income growth, and which is the 12^th most gentrified in the nation, with a median income of just $23,078.

Long-Time Residents Forced to Compete with High Influx of Intellectual Newcomers

The share of the population holding a bachelor’s degree has more than doubled in 16 of the nation’s top 20 most gentrified ZIP codes, the exceptions being Brooklyn’s 11222 and 11211 with 97%, and 95%, respectively, 10026 in Harlem with 92% and DC’s 20010 with 84%.

Yet again, we revisit 90014 in Downtown Los Angeles, as this is where the number of residents holding a higher education degree has increased the most out of all ZIPs analyzed, more than nine times, registering a whopping 857% increase. Next in line are 33547 in Lithia, FL near Tampa, with a much lower, yet still frightening 449.9% expansion; and another ZIP at the edge of Downtown LA, 90017 with 445.5%.