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Gentrification

Philadelphia: Billionaires’ Mayor Okays Arena

September 25, 2024 Betsey Piette, Workers World. , , , ,
Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker came out strongly in support of billionaire developers on Sept. 18 when she announced that she will present a legislative package to the City Council for approval of a controversial plan by the 76ers basketball team to build an arena in Center City. The pre-recorded announcement, released to select media in a closed-door session, was strongly denounced by protesters with the Save Chinatown Coalition who were gathered outside City Hall. For over two years, thousands of demonstrators have protested the arena they say will do irreparable harm to the city’s historic 150-plus year-old Chinatown.

The People Versus The Billionaires

September 11, 2024 Betsey Piette, Workers' World. , , , , , ,
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania - Several thousand people turned out for the Save Chinatown Coalition rally on Sept. 7 to protest the Philadelphia 76ers’ proposal to build a new $1.55 billion arena near Chinatown called “76 Place.” While the National Basketball Association team’s billionaire owners repeatedly say a new arena at 10th and Market streets would provide “economic opportunity for surrounding areas,” community residents, who have been fighting this proposal for over two years, argue that it would be an “existential threat” to this historic Philadelphia neighborhood. The impact studies commissioned by the city, released in late August, support the residents’ arguments.

Seattle Is Walking Back Its Promises On Community-Led Anti-Displacement

July 23, 2024 Quynh Pham, Ryan Curren and Ben Palmquist, Next City. , , , ,
When it launched a first-in-the-nation anti-displacement fund in 2016, Seattle established itself as a leader in racial equity. But a new attack on the City’s Equitable Development Initiative (EDI), part of a national backlash against government efforts to address systemic racism and inequality, threatens that progress. The EDI finances the construction of community cultural and commercial space developed by community-of-color organizations in Seattle, often co-located with affordable housing. As of March of this year, the fund had provided over $100 million in grants for 56 different community-led projects that are helping create an inclusive, multiracial city.

‘Keep Public Housing Public’: Texas Dispute Reflects National Tensions

July 10, 2024 Jared Brey, Governing. , , , ,
Even with low-cost housing harder than ever to find in most American cities, the stock of public housing is shrinking. The number of families living in public housing shrank 6.5 percent during a recent five-year period, according to the Urban Institute — not a huge decline, but a decline nonetheless. Several federal initiatives to redevelop public-housing towers with lower-density, mixed-income projects have helped improve the image of public housing from its nadir in the mid-to-late 20th century. But they have also changed the mission of public housing authorities. Once focused solely on building and maintaining public units for poor people, housing authorities now engage in a wide variety of housing-related activities, sometimes partnering with private developers to build apartments for people who make barely less than the median income.

In Chinatown, A Community Envisions Alternatives To Sixers Arena

February 6, 2024 Oscar Perry Abello, Next City. , , , ,
Joy. While it’s been a contentious 18 months of protests, marching, and debating about a proposed new basketball arena in Philadelphia’s Center City, for at least one Saturday morning, an urban planning and design discussion about the proposed arena location brought some joy to the conversation. At the Center for Architecture in Philly, just a few blocks from the site of the proposed arena, about a hundred people gathered on Jan. 27 to brainstorm alternative uses for the site. The public workshop was organized by the Save Chinatown Coalition, an alliance of 245 organizations from Chinatown and around the city who oppose the new arena because they fear its proximity to Chinatown will disrupt and displace the community.

Inside The Fight To Save Philly’s Chinatown From A New Arena

January 17, 2024 Justin A. Davis, Waging Nonviolence. , , ,
Since the summer of 2022, the city of Philadelphia has seen a fierce battle over the home of their professional basketball team, the 76ers. Currently located at Wells Fargo Center on Philly’s south side, economic power players have been shopping around a proposal for a new 18,000 seat arena called 76 Place, which would move NBA games to the city’s bustling downtown core (known as Center City). With a billion-dollar price tag, 76 Place represents a partnership between team owners Josh Harris and David Blitzer and real estate mogul David Adelman, who have argued that the arena would create new jobs, raise tax revenue and revitalize a part of downtown that many see as full of untapped potential.

Pollution Displaces Black Residents; White Homeowners Profit

November 25, 2023 Adam Mahoney, In These Times. , , , , , , ,
Englewood Chicago — Deborah Payne’s neighborhood of 35 years on Chicago’s South Side no longer exists. Dirt piles tower where families once gathered for Sunday dinners in single- and multifamily homes. Concrete lots cover backyards where children watched fireworks and caught lightning bugs. Streets that maintained generations of Black Chicago razed and left empty for railway cars. Today, less than 10 blocks from Payne’s old neighborhood, sits the repercussions of diesel pollution caused by the expansion of a railyard. Over a decade ago, the city, along with railroad giant Norfolk Southern, announced a plan to buy out Payne’s 12-block community of more than 200 households to replace it with the freight yard.

El Paso Tried To Turn This Historic Neighborhood Into A Sports Arena

November 17, 2023 Christian De Jesus Betancourt, Next City. , , , ,
Sitting on a street bench on the closed-off Chihuahua Street on a crisp El Paso evening, Romelia Mendoza and Selfa Chew recall the seven-year struggle to save the historic Duranguito neighborhood from demolition. Since 2016, they and other locals have believed a sports arena would be built atop the home where Mendoza saw her siblings grow through the 1970s. Today, fences placed by the city surround the building. One of El Paso’s oldest barrios, Duranguito, sits along the border between El Paso and its Mexican sister city, Juarez. Once the “Ellis Island of the South,” as local historian David Dorado Romo puts it, was the entry point for hundreds of thousands of Mexican immigrants and even Chinese immigrants, some of whom made a home in Duranguito.

New York City Tenants Battle Eviction

September 24, 2023 Paul DeRienzo, WestViews News. , , ,
West Side Congressman Jerry Nadler faced boos and catcalls September 6th at the Fulton Senior Center in Chelsea. Dozens of tenants of the Elliott-Chelsea and Fulton Houses jammed the meeting chanting “My house is not for sale,” and “no demolition.”  Residents of the two housing projects located between Ninth and Tenth Avenues are enraged by Nadler’s support of a plan to demolish and rebuild the half dozen buildings and replacing the public housing with a luxury 3500-unit development.  Three-quarters of the new units would rent at New York City’s astronomical market rate. One quarter would be reserved for low- and middle-income tenants.

When Green Spaces Displace Residents, Our Cities’ Health Suffers

September 9, 2023 Viniece Jennings, Alessandro Rigolon and Na’Taki Osborne Jelks, Next City , , ,
It’s an undeniable fact: Green spaces are crucial to our health and wellbeing. Again and again, researchers have found that access to urban green spaces – from parks to gardens to greenways – positively impacts multiple measures of health, such as community satisfaction, social cohesion and access to healthy foods. Having a stable, quality place to call home is associated with various positive life outcomes, from lower mortality rates to lower rates of drug use. However, in a process known as ecological, green or environmental gentrification, green amenities can contribute to gentrification and, over time, the displacement of low-income residents.

A Village Of Hope In The City – Latin Village

August 27, 2023 AX, Unicorn Riot. , , , ,
An urban area, or a borough, can be perceived as an organism and the communities that constitute it can be considered its active living cells. Depending on their passive or dynamic stances, communities can act as catalysts to the quality and direction of urban development in the area. A very good example lies in Tottenham, which aside from its globally known football / soccer team the Tottenham Hotspur, is also known for the Latin Village. In the borough of Haringey in north London, about half of Tottenham’s 130,000 people are white, and half of those are immigrants from Eastern Europe. A big Latin American community mostly of Colombian ancestry thrives among the very diverse other half.

Louisville’s Black Neighborhoods Want To End Publicly-Funded Displacement

August 8, 2023 Oscar Perry Abello, Next City. , , , , ,
Jessica Bellamy wants to stop paying almost a thousand dollars a year to help displace the community that shaped her as a child: Louisville’s historically-Black Smoketown neighborhood. That’s the current property tax bill for the camelback shotgun house her grandmother gifted her a few years ago. It’s the house where Bellamy spent part of her childhood, just steps from her grandmother’s soul food restaurant, Shirley Mae’s Cafe. The restaurant, where Bellamy often took orders and served drinks over the years, is still hanging on as a neighborhood landmark. But like so many other homes in the redlined neighborhood, the house had gradually fallen into an unlivable state of disrepair.

Immigrant Residents Move To Stop Coney Island Casino Bid

July 31, 2023 Amir Khafagy, Hampton Institute. , , ,
Inside a small taco stand located in the heart of the Coney Island amusement district, a small but vocal group of community members gathered over a platter of tacos al pastor, to discuss how a proposed casino would affect their lives. “They will push us out and push local business out,” Jenny Hernandez, 30, said at the event. She has lived in Coney Island since she immigrated with her family from Mexico when she was a child. To her, a casino would destroy everything that she loves about her neighborhood. “I love Coney Island and what I love the most about it is the diversity of nationalities that is here. I want it to stay that way and I want my kids to see all the nationalities.”

‘The Tower Has Fallen;’ A Win For Anti-Gentrification Movement

July 28, 2023 Ax and Niko Georgiades, Unicorn Riot. , , , ,
“This is a huge victory for Brixton … Brixton has defended itself from further gentrification,” said Jordi, an organizer with the #FightTheTower campaign. The proposed construction of what’s been called Hondo Tower, or Taylor Tower, has been withdrawn. The project was to be a 20-story building built right next to Brixton’s vibrant Pope’s Road street market in London. This particular movement, #FightTheTower (FTT), is now considered one of the most effective, persistent, hard fought and victorious anti-gentrification struggles currently held in the United Kingdom. Unicorn Riot previously explored the history of Brixton, the planned tower and the anti-gentrification movement.

To Stop Demolition, One London Home Transformed Into An Art Exhibit

June 30, 2023 Agatha Scaggiante, Waging Nonviolence. , , ,
London’s residents face the highest rents and have the lowest rate of homeownership in the U.K. today. One solution would be for local councils to expand public housing, known as “council housing.” However, the waitlist for these homes has jumped by 50,000 since 2020. This has happened partially because London councils have reduced their housing stock by 10 percent since the beginning of the pandemic, often due to privatization. Building complexes made up of only council housing, called council estates, are becoming increasingly rare sights in the capitol.
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