In London they mostly come from the suburbs, other parts of the UK or other countries in Europe. The British ones tend to leave no empty homes because they just lived in their parents’ homes or student halls before moving to the poorer areas of the city. They’re usually from richer families who can give them substantial amounts of money for a deposit on a home.
What if you live in said place, but don’t own a home? For example, in London there’s a lot of social housing. It used to be that social housing tenants, if they earnt enough, could move out and buy a place without having to move away - and moving away means changing job, changing your kids’ schools, and leaving your community. Now we can’t. The homes in my area have increased by 1800% in twenty years. No, that’s not an extra zero, that’s the increase.
It also means the children of locals can’t afford to stay in the area, often even when renting. So they either reluctantly stay at home, often sharing bedrooms, until well into adulthood, or move so far away that they can’t help their parents when they fall ill and can’t get parental help with childcare, you know the sort of thing.
The thing with gentrification is that, like with immigration, there’s nothing bad behind the motivations of those moving in, and often it’s even a laudable motive, but it’s ridiculous to pretend that the people who are already there won’t be affected. Some of my best friends are hipsters :(:D) and I don’t think they’re bad people or anything, but them using their family money to move here has caused problems for me.
Gentrification also tends to change the local demographics so that the locals still there don’t have the choices they once had. A lot of the businesses near me, useful businesses like ironmonger’s or mechanics’ yards or stationers’, have now been turned into coffee shops, bars and clubs (often private members’ clubs) that I can’t afford to use and that create a lot of noise at night in an area that was once actually fairly quiet at night. That’s because hipsters tend to be young and childless - they move further out to get more space and a garden within a couple of years after they have kids.
BTW I am SO extremely local that my Grandad lived on this exact street and some of my ancestors lived in this borough going back to at least 1420. I think anyone’s who’s been here for ten years or more and put down roots can say “my city,” really, but by any standards I certainly can.
And now I’m trying to move out and, like someone above said, am hampered by the lack of public transport in areas I could afford to move to (I’m disabled and can’t drive, and so is my daughter), and also I’d be leaving my work, my partner’s work, my daughter’s school, my hospital, etc, and would have to start over again. All because other people from other places drove the places up where my family has lived for pretty much ever.
I know people are forced to do that all the time, but let’s not pretend they like it or that it isn’t without its problems.
Also, you talk about decayed neighbourhoods; my area was not decayed before and isn’t now. It’s just that people started noticing that and took advantage of it.