This story is part of The Art of Gentrification, an investigative series looking at how the Savannah College of Art and Design has impacted the city’s downtown neighborhoods.
Jacquez Campbell grew up in downtown Savannah, at the corner of Jefferson and 34th streets. He would see a pile of bikes in front of a neighbor’s house and know that’s where all the kids were hanging out for the day. When wealthier, mostly white people began moving in during the 1990s, he remembers backyards being cut off and friends moving out of the area.
“I loved it. I loved it. Everybody was pretty much family,” the 40-year-old comedian said. “It's not like it is now.”
He knows of one other family from his childhood who still owns a home in the area.
Credit: Richard Burkhart/Savannah Morning News
Credit: Richard Burkhart/Savannah Morning News
In the past decade, the neighborhood Campbell grew up in saw a 40% decline in its Black population. In the area between Forsyth Park and Victory Drive, MLK Boulevard and Habersham Street, every other race saw an increase in population.
Since 2000, home prices have nearly tripled and average monthly rent has increased 119%, according to U.S. Census data.
Like all the institutions of power fueling change in this city, SCAD has played a direct and indirect role in displacing hundreds of low- and moderate-income people from their downtown neighborhoods. It’s created a crisis of community and fueled urban sprawl.
The university vehemently denied any allegations of gentrification or displacement.
“SCAD is clearly a force for good,” the university wrote in a statement. “The university generates vitality and economic resilience for Savannah through jobs, student and visitor spending, events, preservation initiatives, alumni earning power, public safety, and charitable giving.”
Savannah's Self-Proclaimed Savior
In the three decades since Campbell’s childhood, SCAD acquired at least 31 properties, many in his neighborhood. Along with the arrival of students, faculty and parents buying homes for their children to live in (in the 1990s, it was cheaper than paying for a dorm room), SCAD transformed the Victorian and Streetcar Historic Districts south of Forsyth Park.
Home values in the area have increased 160% to $192,000 in the past two decades, and median income has more than doubled to $50,000 per household. The figures are in line with national averages, but wage data for local Savannahians has not kept up pace, widening the gap between earnings and cost-of-living.
The university said it revitalized the community, making it safer, cleaner and more livable for residents.
“They made the buildings prettier,” Campbell agreed. “But there’s still drugs and crime and everything else around your SCAD buildings.”
According to University Safety daily crime logs, there were 157 crimes reported in 2021 on the school’s campus. Similar to other universities, most reports were for theft, trespassing, alcohol and narcotics violations, and interpersonal violence (stalking, assault and rape).
A look at federal crime data between 1985 and 2019 shows that robberies have decreased considerably, but rates for aggravated assault, rape and homicide have remained steady or increased. Property crimes in Savannah are 20 percentage points higher than the national average, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Last year saw one of the deadliest in years, with gun violence soaring to levels not seen during or before the pandemic.
Credit: Photo Illustration by Richard Burkhart/Savannah Morning News
Credit: Photo Illustration by Richard Burkhart/Savannah Morning News
Crime in Savannah saw its peak in the early 1990s, according to FBI data, when reported violent crimes topped 1,700 cases in 1991.
The city’s high crime, coupled with its high poverty rates and minimal limited Black homeownership, paved the way for institutions like SCAD and the Historic Savannah Foundation to buy and restore property in Black neighborhoods for low prices.
SCAD said it rarely purchases occupied buildings for restoration. Displacement, however, is a symptom of a more nebulous change in neighborhood property uses and rising land values.
Amir Jamal Touré, a Georgia Southern and Savannah State University professor who studies local African American history, grew up in the Historic District during that time.
“This is all a part of the tools of regentrification; that everything is poverty-ridden and crime-ridden so that when things are undervalued, somebody else can come in and become the salvation for that community,” Touré said.
According to Mayor Johnson, displacement is a choice for property owners. Across the South, property owners are selling off what they own due to high profit margins, lack of occupants or issues with heirs’ property (what happens when there’s not a clear succession plan to property title, so ownership transfers to all living descendants.)
“There are a lot of people out there selling properties who don't have to sell,” Johnson said. “Some of the displacement is voluntary. If you sell your house, then you are voluntarily being displaced.”
Thanks to lower poverty rates and fewer blighted properties, Savannah’s downtown neighborhoods saw a decrease in crime. This allowed the city to blossom into the international tourist destination it is today, welcoming more than 14 million visitors a year, according to Visit Savannah.
The boom, boosted by several annual SCAD events such as the SCAD Savannah Film Festival, SCADStyle and the SCAD Sidewalk Arts Festival, has bolstered the annual Savannah economy by billions of dollars and put the city on the map.
Credit: John Carrington
Credit: John Carrington
Revenue generated from motel/hotel taxes contributes nearly $30 million to the city's annual budget, according to Visit Savannah, but locals like Touré said SCAD’s commitment to students and tourism is evidence they created a city for outsiders, not the locals who built it.
For those displaced, they are often pulled further into cycles of poverty, addiction and homelessness, according to the Urban Displacement Project, a joint program from the University of California-Berkeley and University of Toronto.
“When low-income families have to leave their homes, they are likely to move to lower-income neighborhoods. Displacement to worse-off neighborhoods can intensify poverty conditions and inhibit economic mobility,” an excerpt from the website reads.
According to SCAD, Savannah is lucky.
“Other cities are desirous of the urban renewal and revitalization SCAD has brought to Savannah — so much so that civic and governmental leaders from across the U.S. have invited SCAD to seriously consider opening a new location in their cities, including: St. Augustine, Florida; St. Petersburg, Florida; Dallas, Texas; Santa Fe, New Mexico; and others,” a statement reads.
'Creating Crisis Circumstances'
Brooke Fortson grew up a few blocks south of Touré and Campbell, near the infamous Jefferson Street brothel. She heard gunshots, but they never punctured the sense of community she felt. Her neighbors looked out for her, they sat on front porches and spoke with each other. Faces had names, families and memories attached to them.
Now, “we might be the only Black people on the block,” she admitted.
When low-income people are pushed further — in Savannah, it’s to the west, south and outlying suburbs such as Pooler and Garden City — out of city limits, it strains the wider community. Commutes get longer and create traffic, people lose access to public transportation, churches lose congregants and the working-class’s political power is diluted.
Credit: Richard Burkhart/Savannah Morning News
Credit: Richard Burkhart/Savannah Morning News
The burden of this change is not on SCAD alone. Dozens of factors influence gentrification, of which displacement is a symptom. Real estate investors, infrastructure improvements, a COVID-driven migration of wealthy professionals from across the country into the city and the energetic tourism industry have all contributed to the city’s housing crisis.
For Mayor Johnson, the rise of short-term vacation rentals and real estate investors is the main cause for the contemporary housing crunch. “When you look at it, there's more equity firms buying the properties than SCAD,” he said.
According to real estate company Redfin, investors represent about 10% of the Savannah real estate market, purchasing about 250 homes a quarter in 2021. A 2015 research study from the University of Wisconsin found that the presence of real estate investors drives home values up 10% in a market, without any real improvements to the broader community.
But the investors were drawn to Savannah for a reason.
Rev. Leonard Small, a pastor and civil rights leader in Savannah, said SCAD was the catalyst for the “regentrification” of metropolitan Savannah.
“SCAD is the strongest impetus for — and this is my phrase — supplementing regentrification for the economic resegregation of Savannah,” Small said.
Wealthy people are returning to downtown Savannah after the white flight of the 1960s, which saw crime on the rise and white people moving to midtown and the suburbs. White flight was a national phenomenon and led to the disinvestment of urban neighborhoods as middle- and upper-class taxpayers dispersed their influence and affluence. The rise of crime and disinvestment lowered property values, enticing investors and developers to redevelop low-cost properties.
“I live in Bingville, and I've lived there since 1980. So, you know, we got 40-some years there. I moved there when the street was about half-white and half-Black. Then it went to about 75 to 80% Black,” he explained. “It is shifting back relatively quickly. We're at about 40% white now and it’s rising fast.”
Small has nothing against the arrival of white people on his street — his next-door neighbor of 42 years, Tommy Holland, is white. Their front porches are close enough that they can sit and talk every night.
“So, it's not just that ‘the white folk are coming.’ Okay. It’s that we're not a neighborhood anymore,” Small said. “The long-term relationships that you would have are not going to be built by people associated with SCAD buying or renting for students or faculty.”
Credit: Richard Burkhart/Savannah Morning News
Credit: Richard Burkhart/Savannah Morning News
Bingville no longer has a neighborhood association. There are no signs marking the historically African American neighborhood. The 15-block neighborhood has been swallowed by SCAD real estate investments in the past decade, when nine parcels have been bought and developed by SCAD, including Barnard Village, Montgomery Hall, the Gulfstream Center for Design and Victory Village.
Small sees how the arrival of SCAD is changing his neighborhood.
A neighbor’s rent went from $975 to $1,600 in January. She couldn’t afford it, so she couldn’t stay. Businesses tucked between SCAD developments are depreciating in value, according to Chatham County appraisal records, making them attractive for developers looking to build next to the university. Property taxes are skyrocketing as land values rise. A Black church sold its property to SCAD and moved to the southside.
The university said it has always sought to be an inclusive university for both its students and neighbors.
Credit: Courtesy of SCAD, Timothy Hutto
Credit: Courtesy of SCAD, Timothy Hutto
“Throughout its existence, SCAD has actively celebrated and uplifted Black culture and achievement in our hometowns of Savannah and Atlanta, and we are proud of this history and our witness within a nation suffering from systemic racism and continued acts of racial injustice against members of the Black community,” a university statement reads.
But no matter SCAD’s intentions, Small said his neighborhood has become a place for transient people since the university moved in: Students who live somewhere for, at most, four years before moving on. Faculty who come and go as jobs become available. Artists and young families who follow millennial moving patterns (50% live in their homes two or fewer years before moving one, according to Zillow.)
“What we're doing is creating crisis circumstances for families. And that's what's happening in Bingville…. SCAD is supplanting all these people, using their power to their economic advantage in these neighborhoods,” he said. “And it's affecting us every kind of a way.”
Zoe covers growth and how it impacts communities in the Savannah area. Find her at znicholson@gannett.com, @zoenicholson_ on Twitter, and @zoenicholsonreporter on Instagram.
This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: As SCAD, tourism and other local economic drivers moved in, long-time residents were forced out
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