ARCHIVE_Central District

Gentrification has been taking place for decades in the Central District of Seattle, the city’s oldest identifiably African American community. Due to racial restrictions preventing people of color from buying homes in most of the city, the Central District became Seattle’s Black neighborhood (Cohen, 2019). However, the neighborhood looks drastically different now compared to several decades ago. In the 1970s, more than 70 percent of the Central District’s residents were Black. Today, it’s less than 18 percent. Meanwhile, the population of White residents has escalated to nearly 60 percent (Beason, 2020). The housing and rental market within Seattle’s Central District has skyrocketed in the last decade. Between the years of 2015 and 2019, the median sale price of a home increased by 49% from $510,000 to $760,000 (Johnson, 2019). While the market continues to climb, the number of homes owned by Black residents in the area has declined significantly. According to recent estimates, there are 800 Black homeowners in the Central district, compared to over 2,500 in 1970 (Johnson, 2019).