Some affordable housing advocates say the Cincinnati's recently completed Over-the-Rhine Comprehensive Plan will lead to further displacement of low-income people from the neighborhood.

        The master plan, released last week to kudos from city officials, developers, business owners and others, sets a goal of 50 percent market-rate housing in Over-the-Rhine by 2022.

        Councilman James R. Tarbell, a longtime proponent of development in Over-the-Rhine, went so far as to declare that the debate over “gentrification” had ended.

        But some of the activists that Mr. Tarbell has been battling for years aren't ready to give up.

        Mary Burke of the Over-the-Rhine Housing Network linked the struggle of low-income people in Over-the-Rhine with the demands for a boycott, and compared the master plan to the collaborative agreement on police-community relations.

        “When the Black United Front tore up the collaborative agreement, that makes more and more sense to me,” she said. “I spent so much time on this, and I feel no ownership of it. I feel like ripping it up.”

        The use of tax-increment financing as a way to fund the development almost ensures that low-income people will be displaced by rising property values and taxes, Ms. Burke said.

        And a proposed Community Development Corp. would almost certainly be dominated by corporate interests rather than neighborhood residents.

        Bonnie Neumeier of the Drop-Inn Center said some may take the master plan as “a license to displace people.”

        “Our lives are going to be affected by the august and monied interests that come into our neighborhood,” she said. “But just because we're going to be living next to an upscale housing development doesn't mean that wealth and that richness is going to find its way to us in the form of jobs and opportunity.”

        The Planning Commission unanimously approved the plan Friday. It goes to the City Council this week.

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