Not that you were, but please don't throw this word around our neighborhood lightly. The Eliot neighborhood is bisected by some of the most blighted stretches of MLK and Vancouver/Williams. Development and progress here has been slow and painful, sometimes taking 1 step forward and 2 back. We are quick to gain used car dealers, pay-day loan shops, mental health clinics and halfway houses, but slow to gain goods and services that would benefit the immediate neighborhood (if you're thinking that mental health and halfway houses benefit our neighborhood, they really don't -- they bring in clients from OTHER neighborhoods, and take up space that could be used for goods and services such as grocery stores).
Eliot has one of the lowest owner-occupied housing ratios in the city, at only 35% (source: Portland Magazine). Most neighborhoods are around 60%.
If you call replacing empty blighted lots with new development that increases the livability of Eliot, such as owner-occupied housing and commercial buildings "gentrification," that is incorrect. I'll take that type of gentrification any day.