The final version of gentrification is when hardly anyone lives in the neighborhood. A lot of these megamansions are crash-pads for the ultra-wealthy to have a secure place to invest in. The New York Times found that in a section of Midtown that's now referred to a 'Billionaire's Row,' something like 50% of the housing is vacant most of the year, because it's just investment properties for the ultra-rich, most of whom don't even live in the US.

Writer Peter Moskowitz explores the legal and corporate mechanisms of gentrification in American cities - as a class project between the government and capital that empties neighborhoods of the poor and working class - and calls for a politics that finally addresses housing as a human concern, not a matter of speculation and profit.

Peter is author of the new book How to Kill a City: Gentrification, Inequality, and the Fight for the Neighborhood from PublicAffairs.