I knew that long term lower income residents were being displaced by the increasing numbers of well heeled yuppies that were settling into the neighborhood, and that was sad to me, but that's the way gentrification works. Whether it's "fair" or not is for someone else to decide, but once an area becomes desirable to people with more money, people with less are often forced to move. I was one of those lower income residents, and so it goes. House prices were steadily climbing and continue to do so, making buying in the area something fewer people could afford.

My street was transformed over a period of three years. Developers bought every available lot, and began building cookie cutter town homes as fast as they could, and they could build them fast. After a while most of the older homes were either for sale, or sandwiched between giant new places that loomed over them. The weird thing I noticed was that a pattern seemed to emerge with the people buying those new town homes. They were mostly young white professionals, some barely out of college judging by the zeal they showed in advertising what school they'd gone to with a banner draped over their balconies, but a lot of them sold their new place only a year or two after moving in. By the time I moved away, some of those almost new town homes had switched hands two or three times in five years. It was strange.

But driving around the Heights area recently, I noticed that while there is still a lot of development going on, particularly around the edges of the neighborhood, much remains the same. The Heights is probably nearer now to Oscar Carter's original concept of a community intended to serve white collar people more than it has been in many recent decades, so perhaps that vision has come full circle, rising like a Phoenix after a long period of decline. It's no longer affordable to many of the people that once called it home, and prices will likely continue to rise, but the Heights continues to retain its place as one of the Inner Loop neighborhoods with an abundance of its own unique character, charm, and appeal.

Flashback: The Changing Face of Houston: The Montrose, Then and Now