California has 5 of the top 20 most gentrified US cities, topped by San Francisco-Oakland, study shows. Here's the list.

San Francisco-Oakland. San Jose. Sacramento. San Diego. Los Angeles.

Of the country's 20 most intensely gentrified cities, California has five of them, according to a new study.

The National Community Reinvestment Coalition used data from the American Community Survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau to rank the cities on gentrification during a five-year period ending in 2017. 

San Francisco-Oakland was No. 1, followed by Denver, Boston, Miami-Fort Lauderdale and New Orleans. A similar study released last year ranked cities from 2000 to 2013, with Washington, D.C. as the most gentrified city. The nation's capital dropped to No. 13 in the newest study, released last month.

"NCRC once again found that gentrification and displacement was highly concentrated, and that most low-income neighborhoods, and the vast majority of cities, continued to deal with a chronic lack of investment," the study's authors wrote.

Researchers identified 954 gentrifying neighborhoods for the study, mostly in 20 metropolitan cities.

The other California cities on the list: San Jose (8), Sacramento (10), San Diego (14) and Los Angeles (15).

"The coastal cities always show up as most gentrifying, so it's not surprising at all," said Karen Chapple, faculty director of the Urban Displacement Project at University of California, Berkeley.

Coastal cities have "the hottest housing markets" and "most intensive job growth," Chapple told USA TODAY.

The study shows that cities experiencing rapid population and economic growth were rare. Chronic disinvestment and poverty, rather than growth and displacement, were more common in nearly all low- or moderate-income neighborhoods, according to the study.

As the coronavirus pandemic has ravaged the U.S., it highlighted health, racial and economic disparities as Black and Latino communities have been disproportionately affected.

“COVID-19 struck a nation that was already mostly struggling,” Jesse Van Tol, CEO of NCRC, said in a news release. “Recovery in most places will be even more challenging than in those where investment was already concentrated. There is no doubt that the protests that have erupted nationwide are at least in part motivated by the nation’s long history of racial economic inequality.”

The gentrification in the 2010s was related to job growth and transit, Chapple said. But as the pandemic continues, the demand to live in central cities may decline.

"I would expect that a lot of the real estate markets are going to soften considerably as people, particularly in tech jobs, begin working at home," she said.

One way to attack gentrification, Chapple said, is to preserve affordable housing before buildings are bought and flipped into high-end apartments — the Small Sites Program in San Francisco, for example, provides loans to nonprofit organizations to buy and convert buildings.

The full list:

1. San Francisco-Oakland
2. Denver
3. Boston
4. Miami-Fort Lauderdale
5. New Orleans
6. Austin, Texas
7. New York City
8. San Jose, Calif.
9. Phoenix
10. Sacramento, Calif.
11. Minneapolis
12. Indianapolis
13. Washington, D.C.
14. San Diego
15. Los Angeles
16. Baltimore
17. Chicago
18. Philadelphia
19. Detroit
20. Dallas