What's the feeling behind the structures that promote gentrification? This essay explores the background and personal impact of gentrification dynamics in New York, Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles to show how place-based inequality affects personhood.
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"Economic growth for a lot of cities is not that difficult to do... Equitable growth is very difficult to do." David D. Troutt, founding director of the Rutgers Law School Center on Law in Metropolitan Equity, on Newark, NJ's Commission to Fight Gentrification. Listen to the podcast here.
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Mayor Ras J. Baraka, Manager of the Office of Affordable Housing Al-Tariq Shabazz, President & CEO of the Newark Alliance Aisha Glover, and Founding Director of the Rutgers Center on Law, Inequality and Metropolitan Equity (CLiME) David D. Troutt, will hold a press conference to announce the creation of the Equitable Growth Advisory Commission on Thursday, December 6, at 11:15 a.m., in the City Hall Press Room, located on 920 Broad Street. The Municipal Council approved this initiative at its regular meeting today.
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"Displacement through gentrification comes about because cities make deliberate tax policy decisions that favor certain elements over others," said David Troutt, one of the authors of the report and director of Rutger's Center for Law, Inequality and Metropolitan Equity. "A city like Newark has to exercise that same authority to protect (residents)," he added. "This is an obligation to make sure as it plans for growth, it also plans for affordability. Otherwise people disappear.”
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The Terrell Homes public housing project, with over 200 units situated in Newark’s Ironbound area, has again been proposed for demolition by the Newark Housing Authority, in the face of residents’ protests. The Terrell Homes is comprised of primarily black residents, who make up 10% of the 07105 zip code where the housing development sits; demolition of the units could significantly lower the proportion of black residents in the Ironbound neighborhood and therefore violate the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule.
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This past September, CLiME began this series on housing issues in Newark by reporting on a demonstration at City Hall, part of the National Tenants Day of Action. I met many organizers and tenants from the Terrell Homes, who have been fighting to preserve the residences of over 200 families in this public housing development located in Newark’s Ironbound neighborhood. Terrell first made headlines in 2014 as the tenants fought against talks of demolition. Now the Newark Housing Authority …
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In this season of anniversaries, no two are more stark in their parallels than Ferguson a year after the shooting of Michael Brown and New Orleans 10 years after Hurricane Katrina killed 1,800 and displaced thousands. Both involve the senseless loss of black lives and the public horror at revelations long known in many isolated communities. Each said a lot about race relations in a country where the “postracial” election of the first black president suggested that we were too far beyond Katrina to produce Ferguson. Each also speaks of structural inequality and the idea of disappearance.
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If Occupy Wall Street protesters and tea partiers agree on anything, it’s the loss of a stable middle class. Yet while the public debate has focused on overarching federal policies, neither group has pointed to the threat right here on the ground: the inequity of place. Real estate agents and home buyers have long known that location — where we live, learn, shop and join in community — determines most of the opportunities available to Americans. Opportunity is the touchstone to becoming a member of the middle class. As much as brains, pluck or work ethic, geography is destiny …
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