Is Chatham being gentrified?

From www.thechicagoneighborhoods.com/

Was alerted to this posting at Nextdoor, a resource we should all utilize although to be honest I haven't utilized it enough myself. Regardless a longtime neighborhood leader - Dr. Marc A. Robertson - wrote this post and decided it was worth sharing here:

• Chatham is being Gentrified 
  Gentrification is taking place in our community. Just open up your eyes and see. How is Gentrification affecting you, your home/property value and your quality of life?
  
  GEN- TRI- FI-CATION (Noun) The buying and renovation of houses and stores in deteriorated urban neighborhoods by upper or middle income families or individuals, thus improving property values but often displacing low-income families and small businesses.
  
  How Does Gentrification work and what are the signs? 
  
  The system, the world order (Kosmos) allows certain elements into chosen neighborhoods in order to destroy them (John 10:10). These elements are drugs, thugs, gang bangers, crime, burglary, guns, killings, prostitution, unpaid property taxes, foreclosures, deteriorated homes and unattended cars and trucks parked on our streets for months. Once this takes place, property values go down, home owners can’t refinance and investors come in and renovate the homes. They increase the property value of the homes thus increasing prices and pushing people out, while upper or middle class people start moving in. Just open up your eyes and see. Look on your block. Look around our neighborhood. I ask you! What do you see? Was Chatham like this, 20, 25 or 30 years ago? So why do you keep silent? Don’t you see what is happening or maybe you just don’t care about the inconsiderate, rude, selfish, destructive behaviors from others. We need to stop making excuses. Like Marvin Gaye, said In Inner Blues, “This ain’t livin, it makes me wanna holler and throw up both my hands.”
  
  Please get involved. Be informed. Please attend SOME of our community meetings and your block club meetings. If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem. We need to preserve our neighborhood. Who’s there to hold up a standard of excellence and pride on our blocks, if not you, then who? We have very few visible role models, but have a lot of gangsters/thugs, harlots/pimps, Ahab’s and Jezebels. “Am I therefore become your enemy because I tell you the truth”? (Galatians 4:16) Just examine the facts. Look around. Open up your eyes and see. Truth stands alone. You cannot go against THE TRUTH (John14:6). Chatham is being GENTRIFIED. It is part of the system’s plan to gentrify Chatham, while most of us are sleep walking, not paying attention, don’t understand or don’t care to understand how the master plan works until it’s too late “For my people are destroyed for a lack of knowledge” (Hosea 4:6).
  
  Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., said, “Our lives begin to end when we keep silent about the things that matter.”
  
  The Struggle Continues………….

In the earliest days of this blog we tackled this issue at least the theory that Chatham is better off with gentrification - or the dreaded G word. Regardless it's interesting that longtime Chatham leaders such as Dr. Robinson is already speaking out about it.

Do you think gentrification is the future in Chatham?