July 18, 2023 • 53 mins
The number of white Brooklyn residents has increased over the years while Black residents have been displaced. Host Roy Wood Jr. sits down with Daily Show segment producer, Jordana Hemingway and urban planner and Pratt Institute professor, Ronald Shiffman to discuss how gentrification directly impacts the displacement of people and culture, the relationship between gentrification and policing, and how people moving into Brooklyn neighborhoods can be part of responsible change.
Original air date: August 30, 2022
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbkLi2kC5Ig&t=27s
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
Hey, Welcome to Beyond the Scenes, the podcast that goes
deeper into segments and topics that originally aired on The
Daily Show with Trevor Noa. This is what you gotta
think of this podcast is all right, you got apple pie.
Everybody love apple pie? Right, It's warm, crispy apple pie.
It's good by itself. This podcast is the Ala mode.
You get that extra scoop of ice cream on that
(00:28):
apple pie and they take it to the next level. Baby.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Listen.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
Now we're gonna be talking about a recent segment on
the show about gentrification, specifically in Brooklyn, and how the people, landscape,
and culture of places like that have changed over the years.
Give it a clip. According to the latest census, the
white population is decreasing nationwide for the first time, the
(00:52):
white population in the United States has declined, But there's
one place there numbers are up almost nine Brooklyn. Healthy
white migration has led to increases in rent, cost of
living and request to speak to the manager. So I
follow the trail of succulents in West Anderson DVDs deep
into the den of gentrifying Brooklyn, where I sat down
(01:13):
with Tommy Holland. The white population is going up almost
nine percent. The black population is going down almost nine percent.
Would it be safe to say that that's how they're
showing black lives matter by just moving them out to
somewhere else.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
What they're doing is they just buying it out and
cleaned out the neighborhood. And it's not right.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
Thomma's lived in Brooklyn his entire life.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
Everything's going up sky high and it's hard to live.
So the way out is to sell the house.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
Tommy's mother bought their brownstone in nineteen sixty three when
black home ownership in Brooklyn was booming, But lately black
mortgages have been going the way of the Dodo bird. Today,
I'm joined by Daily Show segment producer and Brooklyn Night
Geordana him in Waye. Jordana, how are you doing today?
Speaker 4 (01:59):
I'm great?
Speaker 1 (02:00):
Thank you, well, good to see you. Good to see you,
Madam Brooklyn Night. And also joining us is a pioneer
in urban planning and a professor at Pratt Institute, Ron Schiffman.
Speaker 5 (02:11):
How you doing, Professor, I'm doing really great. I'm really
happy to be with you today.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
Well, we appreciate you for helping us break down this
very very difficult topic. You know, Jordona, Let's start with you.
The thing that I've always loved about The Daily Show
is that everybody has the freedom to pitch. It's not
set up in some structured system where you do not pitch,
you only produce what this pitch. It's like, No, if
you come in the building with an issue and you
can go, guys, I'm noticing this, then it's something that
(02:38):
could eventually work its way onto the show, as it
did with this. So walk us through your inspiration and
how this segment came together.
Speaker 4 (02:46):
Well, it was very personal.
Speaker 6 (02:47):
So I just bought my house, but that home buying
process was very difficult, and I wanted to be in Brooklyn.
I did not want to go to Queen's. I didn't
want to go to New Jersey. I was just like, no,
I will not leave Brooklyn where I grew up. And
I started noticing on the trains that like more white
people were like getting off later.
Speaker 4 (03:09):
And later on the train stops. And then I started realizing.
Speaker 6 (03:13):
And I was like, wait a minute, you know what's
going on here? And then I started realizing that there
was all these developments, but I couldn't afford these houses.
I couldn't get in and I'm like, you know, I
have a decent job, and I'm just like, why are
we being pushed out? And at that point I saw
this article where the white population decreased everywhere else in
the United States except Brooklyn, New York, and I said, Aha,
(03:35):
this is what's happening. I'm not crazy, I'm not seeing things.
I'm not being you know, going down the conspiracy rabbit hole.
Speaker 4 (03:42):
No, this is what's happening.
Speaker 6 (03:43):
And black people are selling their homes because it's very
tempting when you have a developer flying your house saying
they'll give you hundreds of thousands, if not millions to
buy your land. And therefore it's just like a rabbit
hole where you just kind of keep going down the
same thing over and over.
Speaker 4 (03:58):
It was frustrating.
Speaker 6 (03:59):
So I always try to pitch things, and as you
mentioned the Daily Show, we are allowed to pitch whatever.
And that's one thing that is great about working here,
and I try to pitching that very personal to me
because that's why I could get my teeth in it.
And I'm like, okay, no, I'm trying to buy a house.
Let me figure out what's going on. And that's how
it came about you.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
Were hired during COVID, during the social distancing era a
couple of years ago, and so you don't get to
hang and you lose the small talk that happens in
an office space. But once we got back in the office,
you know how you just know somebody like, oh, yeah,
J're donnad good to see you. But then when we
went out, when I went out to talk with Tommy Holly,
who was one of the subjects in the piece, it
(04:38):
was evident to me at that moment I was like, oh,
does she live on this street? Because for a segment
producer to also come out on shoots, it's not uncommon,
but it is not a regular occurrence. And so for
you to be there and to see the camaraderie between
you and Tommy between camera setups and all of that stuff.
(05:00):
A little bit about how you became so close to
the people in Brooklyn.
Speaker 4 (05:05):
Well, it's a little background to even go further.
Speaker 6 (05:07):
So I am married and my husband is African American
slash Puerto Rican, right, and I saw this happen to
him when his grandma, who came from South Carolina, they
saw that house in Crown Heights.
Speaker 4 (05:17):
And now sometimes we're in the neighborhood.
Speaker 6 (05:19):
We drive by it and it's you know, condos a
million dollars, right, and we're like, damn, that was where
we used to live.
Speaker 4 (05:24):
That was like his first college apartment.
Speaker 6 (05:27):
And then fast forward, you know, he has relatives and
Tommy is one of those guys in the neighborhood that's
always around, right, so we know him. He's always on
the block with his stick and he's just a very
cool dude. So we always used to talk to him.
And it started getting around that, like, you know, people
all over that block were basically considering selling their homes.
Speaker 4 (05:46):
And then I started noticing changes.
Speaker 6 (05:48):
I'm like, okay, well there's less cookouts now, people are
not as friendly, you.
Speaker 4 (05:54):
Know, yeah, block parties, right, there was less of those.
Speaker 6 (05:58):
It's gone. And I was just frustrated. I was frustrated
with the home buying journey. I was frustrated with not
enough homes. Like right now, to this day, America's five
million homes short of demand, right, so there's five million
homeowners that are looking for home.
Speaker 4 (06:14):
That cannot you know, buy in New York.
Speaker 6 (06:18):
It's just even if you see the videos on TikTok
and Snapchat where people are online trying to rent apartments,
and there's always that joke of like, you know, if
you can make it here, you can make it anywhere.
Speaker 4 (06:28):
But it shouldn't be like that in New York. You know,
New York used to be a community.
Speaker 6 (06:32):
You should be able to go to your corner store
and know your neighbor's name and know you know so
and so down the block. And I just feel like,
even in college, I just felt like that was that
was missing. And I think what we have to be
careful of with the word gentrification because it sounds so dirty, right,
it sounds really bad. But as black people, we have
(06:55):
to gentrify our own blocks. Our blocks are beautiful, right.
If we could jugify our own blocks, we could call
three one one, I mean all like, hey, listen, they
need to pick up this trash, not call three on
one on your neighbor. Right, we could actually, you know,
plant more trees. And I just think that there's always
this resentment like, oh, well, they only did it when
white people came in. And sometimes that's true because sometimes
(07:16):
police don't pay attention to the natives of that block
until more money is being invested into it. Yeah, So
it's kind of frustrating, and that's why I was just like, listen,
here is a said way, this is kind of funny
that the white population is kind of decreasing everywhere else.
This has Daily chow britten all over it. But let's
(07:37):
talk about the meat and potatoes. So that's why it
came out ron.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
When we talk about gentrification, j just as a phenomenon
for our listeners, first and foremost, can you define it?
Let's just start right there. Let's define gentrification for our listeners.
And also, what are some of the indicators that gentrification
is starting to happen, Like I know, once you get
Whole Foods, stuff is happening. When the bodega selling almond milk,
(08:05):
you see one of them hacky sack boys. You can't
trust nobody. What a hacky sack, that's what. But let's
define gentrification.
Speaker 5 (08:14):
What gentrification means to me is when one group of
people begin to move in, particularly white people, begin to
move into a neighborhood and displace people, displace people, displace jobs,
and displace culture. And to me, that is something that
one has to fight against. The fact that the area
(08:35):
improves economically and provides opportunity for people who live there
to make new connections and to live a better life.
To me is a goal in life, and Jordana, I think,
expressed it much better than I could. What really scares
me is that people want to find out what are
the indicators of gentrification before they want to do anything
(08:59):
about it. And if you study it and you come
up with the database to prove that gentrification is occurring,
you've already lost the community and the way to deal
with gentrification or with its placement issues, which I think
are really the most important one. And as Jordana alluded to,
also a housing program. We need to build housing that
(09:20):
people can afford, and that housing is too often thought
of as a commodity and not really as a right.
How do you really build those communities? How do you
really address that? Well, the way to know that your
area is gentrifying is to talk to the people there.
Is to see what's going on on the streets, To
go to the supermarkets and the storefronts and the commercial strips,
(09:42):
and to see how it breathes. And when I go
through neighborhoods, whether it's Bushwick or RedHook or others, it's
palpable that change is taking place. People are afraid. People
are afraid. In Bushwick, we were working with a team
of people Make the Road a number years ago, a
really great group that organizes and engages new immigrant populations
(10:08):
in the everyday life of the city, and people didn't
want to see the parks improved. They were afraid that
if they got a better park, if they had safer
streets and better schools, that they wouldn't live there anymore,
that it would be for somebody else. And that is
a condition that we can't accept. We have to arrive
(10:30):
at a point where people can improve the quality of
their neighborhood and have the choice to stay, not be
pushed out for economic reasons. In many ways, and a
friend of mine by the name of Carl Anthony from
the West Coast talks about it. It's almost like getting
on a bus years ago. When a white person walks
on the bus, the black person has to leave or
(10:51):
give up their seat. And that's what gentrification has been
doing as a dynamic. And what we've got to do
is do exactly what you guys did. That skit has
to be shown again and again because it is the database,
but we should be looking at not the statistics, but
the fact that people are talking about what it means
(11:14):
to them, what it means when neighbors come in and
don't really are not neighborly. That skit was dynamite, and
I think it really I'm being very serious and we
shouldn't be so serious, but it is a serious topic.
We really have to begin to talk about housing and
housing is a human right.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
How do we finance it? How do we make.
Speaker 5 (11:35):
Sure it's available so that my kids don't have to
compete with your kids or displace you or your neighbor,
so that we can all live together somehow?
Speaker 2 (11:45):
And I think that's the real struggle.
Speaker 5 (11:48):
And if you use a humor as a basis for
making this issue and making it an issue that people understand,
I think it's really important. And the deep dive into this,
I think is really extremely helpful. And I really want
to raise the glass and toast you guys.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
For doing it.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
Thank you, thank you so much for that. You hit
a Trevor Nola. He just said to give.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
Us a raise, to give us, Yeah, give him a raise.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
Are there ways for those moving in to ingratiate themselves
to the culture. There was a young man I can't
remember his name Jordana. But there was a young white
guy in his early twenties who lost a job after
moving to New York and walking around the neighborhood and
making fun of the bodegas, not realizing that he was
(12:38):
in a food desert. He was making a video complaining
that there were no grocery stores and every time he
googled a grocery store, Google sent him to a bodega.
And he didn't even He just was just completely unaware
that where you've chosen to live for so long has
marginalized the community.
Speaker 7 (12:56):
Okay, so I just moved to New York and I'm
trying to go grocery shopping. So I type him like
grocery stores on my Apple Maps, and like everything one
I go to, like I'm walking too, Like they're like
this or like like that.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
It's like, brother, that's not a grocery store.
Speaker 7 (13:11):
Like I'm trying to get like eggs, yogurt, like cheese
like that, right, Like where are the Krogers and like
the whole food's at.
Speaker 1 (13:19):
Is there a way to educate people so that they
don't come in and be disrespectful or is their presence
in a way inherently net negative for the neighborhood.
Speaker 6 (13:29):
I'll say right now, I don't think that guy should
deserve to get fired, right, I think he deserved to
get educated.
Speaker 4 (13:34):
I think that he didn't know. I think a lot of.
Speaker 6 (13:36):
People from you know, the Middlewest, the South, everybody comes
to New York and it's.
Speaker 1 (13:41):
It's like, which is where he was from?
Speaker 6 (13:44):
You know, and they're like, wait a minute, where's my publics?
Where's my We don't got that. We got Carlos bodega,
you know. And another thing we kind of touch on
the piece, and I kind of feel like it matters
in this point is sometimes gentrification is not necessarily a
race thing either, Right.
Speaker 4 (14:00):
I think sometimes it could be a class thing.
Speaker 6 (14:01):
I think it could be sometimes maybe who has more money,
because you know, maybe I'm a gentrifier, right, maybe I
probably gentrify somebody, and maybe I'm complaining about the lack.
Speaker 4 (14:11):
Of almond milk. Right. There was one guy in the piece.
He was a Jewish guy in our piece.
Speaker 6 (14:16):
I don't know if you remember him, and he lived
in Crown Heights and he got pushed out.
Speaker 4 (14:19):
So sometimes it's not necessarily like the little.
Speaker 6 (14:23):
White girl, the little white guy who come to New
York with these you know, big dreams. Sometimes it's these
finance bros that are gentrifying. Sometimes it's just you know,
people with more money. And I think housing as a
right is the bigger conversation everybody should have for access
to housing. You know, the black home ownership rate right
now is less than what it was like ten years ago.
It's getting worse for black home owners and we have
(14:45):
to ask ourselves why is that we don't necessarily have
the access, we don't necessarily have the tools. I mean,
I don't want to go down the whole rabbit hole,
but you go from forty acres of the mule and
it's just like, oh, that was so long ago. Real
estate is the greatest trans of wealth there is to mankind, right,
like every generation. Right, if you have real estate, your
family is just set up for better, you know what
(15:06):
I mean.
Speaker 4 (15:07):
And there's no it is what it is.
Speaker 6 (15:10):
If you have some land, you could leverage that, you
could borrow against it, you could housing. You need housing
and transportation you need. So when you look at just
people like that guy on that TikTok video, who's just like,
why is it Nobodega's And it's sad that black people
people of color have been living in these neighborhoods, like
where there isn't like a regular grocery store. Why is
(15:31):
that my grocery store only has like chips and snacks
and stuff like that. I'm not trying to get at
the bodega, bros. But we should have that equal opportunity too.
And what Ron touched on, like sometimes there is a fear.
I remember living in Red Hook, this one neighborhood in Brooklyn,
you know, back then when even my black friends didn't
want to go there because it was hood.
Speaker 4 (15:49):
They're like, where are you going?
Speaker 6 (15:51):
And I remember seeing it and I remember being scared, like, well, shoot,
there's a new tesla being built, the Ikea coming down?
Speaker 4 (15:57):
Are they going to raise my rent? And that fear
something that.
Speaker 6 (16:01):
You can't describe because it's just like, well, I'm working,
I graduated college. How do I keep up right? And
you see the influx of people. What do you do
in that case as a black person, as a black woman.
There's not enough programs, you know, and it's bad enough
that like maybe our parents didn't have the home, or
maybe our parents sold the home right not knowing, not
realizing that maybe I should hold onto it.
Speaker 4 (16:23):
So it's just really messed up all around.
Speaker 5 (16:26):
You know, the whole issue of housing as a means
for building wealth. Obviously it occurs, and it's a major
benefit for many, but for others. You know, a lot
of people bought homes and invested their life savings, and
if they lived in some parts of Detroit, or they
lived in some parts of Cleveland, or even parts of
(16:48):
New York City, they lost that wealth, they lost that housing.
They lost the housing because they couldn't afford to improve it,
they didn't have access to loans. And when I started
working again in Bedstein in the sixties, we held hearings
on insurance redlining because somebody, because of the color of
their skin could not get the kind of insurance they
(17:09):
needed for the building. They couldn't get the home improvement loans.
And so how do we really deal with this systemic
racism that permeates a lot of what we're talking about.
At the same time, we also have to think about
how we create housing as a right that doesn't diminish
over time other people of low income getting it. It's
(17:31):
not if everybody makes so much housing money on housing,
it means the next generation is not going to be
able to afford it. So housing as a financial vehicle,
as a commodity is really something I think we have
to address, and we have to find other ways of
really building wealth in communities as well as investing in
(17:53):
housing and.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
In real estate.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
Ron what are some of those other negative and paths
of impacts if any of the gentrification has on a
particular community. We've talked about loss of culture, but what
about also, you know, from educational aspect, are there any
ripple effects?
Speaker 5 (18:12):
Well, one of the benefits that occurs is when you
have a mixed income community and it doesn't have to
be based only on race. As Jordana mentioned on economic diversity,
is that the younger kids who are impoverished and grow
up in mixed neighborhoods apparently are doing much better than
kids who grow up and are isolated from the contacts.
(18:36):
Just pure contacts are important to have within a society.
And I'm a great believer in social and economic integration.
It's in my roots, it's in my blood, and it's
something I've always fought for and have really worked towards
over my life. But the fact of the matter is,
I think we need to begin to look at investing
(18:57):
in communities so the people who are in those communities
can grow, So they can grow culturally, they can grow economically,
and they can really benefit. And what we now have
is this idea that you improve communities by replacing them.
So we now have to start thinking about providing the
best education for kids wherever they are.
Speaker 2 (19:20):
We have to make.
Speaker 5 (19:21):
Sure that what we're doing is we're providing opportunities for
people to access all of the mechanisms that they need
in order to get housing, the technical expertise, the initial financing,
the ability to stay within their own homes if they
have some economic difficulty.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
A home is more than just the four walls.
Speaker 5 (19:45):
It's the people who are in the neighborhood, the person
you can call who can take care of your kids
if you have an emergency have to go off somewhere.
It's the churches, that's the networks, it's the friendships. And
how do we really begin to value that. I think
what we need to do is really develop a universal
housing program that everybody has the right to a house.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
Everybody has a right to a house.
Speaker 5 (20:12):
In a community that provides them with education and health.
You know what we do often as professionals is we
go into a community and we ask them what's more
important education or housing or health. Well, you know, if
you're living in the community, you want all of those,
and the community should work to doing all of those
and weaving those together. So I would argue we need
(20:35):
not only comedians, but we need weavers, people who will
take these ideas and weave them together to create more
viable communities.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
And the first one is to stop the speculation.
Speaker 5 (20:48):
I think we really need to make sure that people
can get the invest in housing, they can make, get
their money back, that savings can grow, But you can't
get this enormous speculation where somebody buys the building two
years later flips it for two million dollars more than
they had before, and as a result, everybody loses, You
(21:12):
lose the quality of the neighborhood, and you're losing the
networks that you had established before. So I would argue
that we need anti speculation taxes. I would argue that
we'd take those taxes and direct them to low income families.
Speaker 1 (21:28):
Okay, now I want to get into that after the break,
because I want to talk about who's to blame. Is
it the people that are buying? Is the people that
are selling is it. The red lining is that the
government will be back with more. This is beyond the scenes.
Beyond the scenes. We are back now. We have broken
down what gentrification is and the ways that it negatively
(21:48):
impacts communities on a socioeconomic level, and education and opportunities
and the stripping of culture. And we didn't forget to
talk about your data. They paint over murals in some
of these spots. They just what's that a nice picture
that an artist did to add some character to the neighborhood.
Let me just put a nice code for no reason. Uh,
(22:12):
but Ron, I'd like to start with you, and let's
talk a little bit about how crime and policing changes
in the gentrification piece. When I had spoken with some
of the wonderful, wonderful women that are Brooklyn Knights, they
talked about how you know people will just call three
to one one for random the snitches. I wouldn't gonna
(22:32):
say it, but you said it, so let's get it
to it run.
Speaker 5 (22:35):
Well, you said it, and I'm copying you because you're
absolutely right. And three one one, you know people move
into and should move into a neighborhood because they know
it all right, and they should be move into that
neighborhood because they want to be part of that community.
They want to be able to walk down the streets.
When I again, I'm an old man, so I always
(22:56):
refer to the past. Right when I moved first New
Bedford Stuyvesant, it had four hundred or five hundred block associations.
There was even a group called the Association of Associations.
Speaker 2 (23:10):
It was a network of people. They were friends, they
were neighbors.
Speaker 5 (23:14):
And if you want to move into a neighborhood, do
you move in there and become part and adopt its culture.
And over time cultures will change, they'll adapt. But it's
the abrupt speed that people want to change places. It's
the speculative nature. Why should people get a call a
week from a real estate agent to sell their property.
(23:37):
Why should they be harassed to sell their property? Obviously
that's skit with you and Tommy Holly. You know, he
talks about how much he paid and how much he'll
get if he sells the house. It's a very attractive
thing to sell. But what is he going to do
when he sells? Is he going to move to Florida
and face the racism and aganism of that state, or
(24:02):
is he going to lose all his friends on that block?
Speaker 3 (24:05):
Prices this skyrocketing, the houses going for three.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
Million before wait, I'm sorry, what'd you say?
Speaker 3 (24:10):
The house is in the best tag of for three million?
Now three million dollars?
Speaker 1 (24:16):
How would you pray for the hull?
Speaker 3 (24:17):
Twenty three seven twenty three.
Speaker 1 (24:19):
Thousand dollars and you can sell it.
Speaker 3 (24:21):
Right now for closer to me?
Speaker 2 (24:24):
Oh, you got to go.
Speaker 3 (24:26):
Wait a minute, you don't want to say that was his.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
Stake, like of that's before you told me what you
was hidden.
Speaker 3 (24:31):
You know, the money is great, but it's not everything.
Speaker 5 (24:36):
We've got to provide alternatives, and we've got to make
sure that we are we slow down the speed of
change and get to people to understand the neighborhood they
move in.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
It's not just a place to buy a house.
Speaker 5 (24:50):
It's a place to live in, and you have to
live and you have to work with your neighbors. And
if people don't do that, if they don't understand that,
then they really shouldn't be welcomed.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
I think one of the issues, or at least what
I gathered in Jordana. You can correct me if I'm wrong,
but one of the issues that I think Tommy Holly
was dealing with was that he could stay there and
preserve the culture, or he could take the money and
have an increased quality of living for the back half
of his life. And I think that's ultimately what I
felt like he was kind of struggling with, because you know,
(25:23):
your dollar's going to go a lot further in Florida.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
Now.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
Granted, you're gonna probably get called an in word a
couple of times that there's an inward tax you have
to pay depending on the county. But you know, I
think that that's what a lot of residents, you know,
are dealing with. It's just what I found so interesting though,
Jordana was despite of people calling in noise complaints and
increases in racial profiling or even the stealing of Amazon packages,
(25:47):
it seems that a lot of the black Brooklyn Knights
still have a resolve where, even with the changes in
their relationship with law enforcement, as white residents become uncomfortable
with black people who were indigenous to that block, somehow
they're still okay with staying. Why do you think that is.
Speaker 6 (26:06):
I think it's just the principle, right, It's like, I'm
not leaving I'm not leaving, you know, And that's how
I felt too. Previously we talked about some of the
signs of gentrifications, and for me, the sign is like,
there's three There's the white woman running with her dog
late at night. If I see that happening, Okay, something's
going down. There is the white woman asking the Jamaican
(26:26):
restaurant for a free stample, I'm like, okay, what's going on.
And then there's the white person that's just basically complaining
about the Labor Day parade or complaining about a block party.
Speaker 4 (26:36):
Right.
Speaker 6 (26:36):
I think the issue that we have as Brooklyn Knights
is I love Brooklyn so much.
Speaker 4 (26:42):
I love it. I talk.
Speaker 6 (26:43):
You ask any Brooklyn Knight where they're from. They don't
say I'm a New Yorker. They say I'm from Brooklyn.
That's how I introduce myself. So of course I want
to share my burrow with anybody and everybody. The issue
I have is that when you guys come here and
you call the cops instead of introducing yourself and you know,
you complain about a block party that has been happening,
(27:05):
like like the Labor Day parade for instance, that has
been going on for over thirty years. You complain about it,
You complain about the jerk chicken being sold on the corner,
and that's the issue we have. Of course, I would
love people to talk and talk about Brooklyn, visit Brooklyn,
and live in Brooklyn. But I think the sense of
community has just gone. And I feel like, and Tommy
points it to it, he would stay if he didn't
feel like an outsider. Do you understand how hard it was?
(27:28):
I remember when he told that story. You know, he
was moved to tears, this white woman holding her purse
and this is the old man with his old magic
stick member and it's just like the how degrading was that?
Speaker 4 (27:39):
Right?
Speaker 6 (27:40):
And this guy has been there for decades, and it's
just like that feeling of feeling like an outsider in
your own neighborhood, where you were born, where you grew up.
Speaker 4 (27:48):
It just it sucks. So there's two people.
Speaker 6 (27:51):
There's some people that says, you know what, I'm going
to leave because the area around me, the neighborhood's not
the neighborhood no more. I can't afford the bodega, right
because the bodegas would to hemp milk, all my milk,
all these different type of milks. I can't afford anything
else going on, like the laundrymat, the nel salon, everything
has gone up. So let me just take my dollars
to South Beach wherever right like Lebron and just move.
(28:13):
And then there's the people that are like myself that
are just really trying to hold on. I think it's
so important for black people in Brooklyn if you have
the might, if you have the will, to stay into
your homes, because we're losing that. And I don't think
I think it's just really sad when I talk about it.
I get emotional when I hear people selling their homes.
(28:35):
I'm like, damn, come on, man, what do we gotta do?
Speaker 4 (28:38):
You know?
Speaker 6 (28:39):
And it's really hard when you have flying at your house.
As Ron mentioned, you know, you could be house rich
but cash poor. So now how do you maintain your
house right? How do you, you know, keep the furnace
or the boiler and all that stuff. So it's it's
bigger than just having a house. Having a house is
a lot of responsibility. But we need the access. And
there's a lot of grant program that people like to
(29:00):
throw around that word, oh you can get a grant.
Speaker 4 (29:02):
You could get a grant where tell me I would
love to know.
Speaker 6 (29:06):
It's so hard to get some of these programs, and
it's unfortunate that the easy way out is leaving. Who
has the will to really just fight all the time.
Speaker 4 (29:16):
It's really hard.
Speaker 6 (29:18):
But I implore people to try to stay in Brooklyn
and try to meet your neighbors I think white, Spanish
or whatever, because even I had to have a moment
of reflection where like, crap, am I a gentrifier because
I moved into a predominantly Spanish neighborhood and they play
bad Bunny all times of night? But I'm like, okay,
well I can't call it.
Speaker 4 (29:36):
You know, I can't call the cops on these people.
Speaker 6 (29:38):
I don't want to be the person that Tammy and
Trudiful talking about. So it's like meeting my neighbors, right,
meeting people, going to the community garden and introduce it
myself saying hey, you know what, I'm really good at
garden and how can I help out? And I think
if people who moved into Brooklyn took that approach versus
just moving here, going to their you know, fancy coffee
(30:00):
shops and just treating us like outside, we have no problem.
I promise you every Brooklyn Knight loves to boast about Brooklyn.
I don't know when Brooklyn nighte that's like I know,
you know, we would love to share it. I just
think it's the way I think Tommy touched on it.
Or don't Judith did about like, you know, integration.
Speaker 1 (30:15):
Right, people from Brooklyn today? From Brooklyn when you didn't
need mass where he was from, what would you like
to eat? That's for sure, Brooklyn, you say so.
Speaker 5 (30:28):
I grew up in the Bronx and it took a
it was a psychic change to move to Brooklyn. Yeah,
because Bronx sites would never move to Brooklyn in those days.
We moved there because we were able to get a
house at a very low price. And that was in
the sixties, so we've been living there for a long time.
(30:49):
And it was when people were leaving the city. The
city was losing population in the seventies. You know, New
York City was losing maybe thirty thousand apartments a year.
It was shrinking. And what saved the city were the
community based organizations and the groups like Betsy Restoration. The
(31:10):
groups had fought green, the groups in Red Hook and
all other places that stabilize the neighborhoods, that fought for
federal government to stop what were basically discriminatory lending policies,
changing the FHA to begin to lend money to stop
(31:31):
what was really what were fast foreclosure schemes. You would
go into a neighborhood East New York, for instance. You'd
go into that neighborhood predominantly working class white, some people
were beginning to integrate it. Then all of a sudden,
people's racist fears came up. They would hire people to
(31:51):
have stage fights in the street. They would then panic
buy the buildings low. They would then get the federal
government to ensure them they'd sell to a black or
a Latino family. The next thing they did six months later,
they would foreclose on that and turn the building over,
and a couple of years later the neighborhood was abandoned.
(32:14):
They pitted whites racist fears against whites and blacks, and
it really was and we had to take them to court.
We could document that there were places that were basically
using government programs and manipulating them for fast for these
fast foreclosure schemes.
Speaker 1 (32:34):
To that point, rin then this sounds like gentrification to
a degree is something of a bunch of different entities
all working in concert. So if that is true, who
is the real villain of gentrification? Like, what is the
root of the problem contributing to it? Because we talk
about the commodification of housing, the real estate developers that
are predatory. Airbnb is a big issue as well, that
(32:57):
everybody wanting to flip a house because they don't watch
two sh a role on HGTV or whatever. So you know,
is it the government, is it the developers or is
it the homeowners? You know, because you know Bloomberg and
you know, like there's there have been policies in redlining
that also have helped as well to contribute to this issue.
(33:17):
So is there any one specific smoking gun.
Speaker 5 (33:21):
There isn't one specific smoking gun, but there is a
whole network or systemic racist policies that have come to
play an ongoing role. Whether or not people know doing
or doing it willingly or unwillingly, the systems still persist,
and you still have real estate agents.
Speaker 2 (33:40):
That are involved in racial theorem.
Speaker 5 (33:43):
You'll be sent to one neighborhood, I'll be sent to
another neighborhood. Uh, we've got to begin to monitor those quickly.
A lot of this is because government turns a blind
eye to it. We need a City Planning Commission, We
need a development entity in New York City that is
aggressively fostering the healthy development of all our communities, looking
(34:09):
for a diverse goals of building a diverse, multicultural city,
and we haven't been doing that of late. What we're
doing in some cases is we're going into an area
like East New York, all right, and we're building new housing.
We're displacing twenty families. We're building one hundred units of housing,
(34:31):
twenty five percent which will be low income so that
it will in many ways accommodate the ones we displace,
But seventy five percent of the building is going to
be super wealthy because we in order to provide low
income housing, we're going to need the wealth and the
income flow from the upper income families. That kind of
(34:52):
inclusionary housing works if you want to build a racially
economically integrated community. It doesn't wor when you want to
build more housing. And what we need to do is
say we're no longer going to allow it only to
be the private sector. But government has to be committed
to a housing policy to meet the needs of every
(35:13):
quartile of our population, and we have to start really
promoting what really are our healthy communities.
Speaker 6 (35:23):
Yeah, I mean, I'm gonna just say it right now,
I think real estate is just racist right currently in
twenty twenty two, if I was to get my house appraised,
and a white person was to stay in this house
and get it appraised, they're going to get a better
appraisal value. That happened during COVID there was a black
family that happened to in Seattle.
Speaker 4 (35:41):
It happens all over the countries.
Speaker 6 (35:43):
So now not only let's say you can't buy a house,
but then you do the right thing, save your little money,
you get your little fah loan, you do all the
right things. But now when it times to that for appraisal, automatically,
I'm getting less. So we just have to really take
a deeper look at the state and figure out how
can we change it right, How do we get the
(36:04):
government involved, how do we speak out? And I really
think it's important as a homeowner, as a black woman,
not only just sitting back and just you know, saying
it is what it is. No, we need to hold
our local officials accountable. So maybe that means going to
Little every and now it's on Zoom Roy So you
could go and speak up on the on the meeting
(36:25):
and knowing your council member's name and say, okay, well,
what are we doing about the trash on this street?
What are we doing about the you know, abandoned building
on Thistree and really rolling up your sleeves and getting
your hands dirty. And when you talk about Eastern New York,
I remember when I was looking into the home buying process,
I said, you know what, I want to move where
there might be a little bit of action. So that
(36:46):
means looking up, where are they pulling permits? Where are
some of these developers going. If you don't want to
be a proper you don't want to be a part
of the problem, right, So I know, I didn't want
to be that person that's going to buy a piece
of land and make it a luxury building.
Speaker 4 (36:57):
No, I want to be I have ego I have
I'm like, no, I'm going to plant myself here.
Speaker 6 (37:02):
I'm going to buy a house in the East New
York Cypressols area and I'm not leaving, and I want
to be part of that change. And I think sometimes
a lot of like we just automatically assume, let's go
to South Carolina, let's go to you know, Atl, I
love Wakanda, I love atl. Don't be wrong, but there's
great still for black people in Brooklyn too. And I
just think that we have this automatic like, you know
what's way too expensive, let me just leave, whereas others
(37:25):
are trying to they see the value in Brooklyn. And
it's just really hard, and racism is threaded throughout the
whole real estate process.
Speaker 5 (37:34):
The other thing that I want to put on the
table is I think we really need to start talking
about housing that is rental housing. Not everybody wants to
be a homeowner, not everybody has the ability to be
a homeowner. And so we need to think about how
we increase the supply of rental housing in the City
of New York in such a way that it's woven
(37:55):
into the fabric of communities, that it's right next to
middle income, right next to the home ownership areas. We
have to think about social housing, public housing, housing that's
owned by the and meets the knees of some of
the very poor. You go into red Hook with Red
Hook houses, some of that was built originally in forty
(38:18):
seven occupied primarily by white families.
Speaker 2 (38:21):
It was a step up.
Speaker 5 (38:22):
New York City still has thousands upon thousands of people
on the waiting list to get into public housing. We
need to expand the supply of affordable rental housing in
the City of New York.
Speaker 1 (38:35):
How can residents stop the harassment that they get at
the hands of their landlords as well? Like we're talking
about big government systems and whatever, but sometimes you've just
got an asshole who's running your building and who's trying
to run you off as well. So talk a little
bit about that, both of you if you can.
Speaker 5 (38:56):
Well, one of the things that occurred, you know, during
previous to COVID, it was putting pressure on the Deblasio
administration to stop the harassment that was going on in
Crown Heights and the harassment that was going on in
East New York and many other places in the city.
And so setting up these anti harassment units where people
really know they could go into South Brooklyn Legal Services,
(39:19):
or they could go into Williamsburg Legal Services and get
support by some of the legal lawyers there to go
after the landlords.
Speaker 2 (39:29):
It really is important because that was happening.
Speaker 5 (39:32):
They would come in, they buy a building, right, they'd
vacate one or two apartments and they'd start making noise
and they would do all sorts of things to drive
the tenants out. And part of it is you have
to knock on the people. You have to start organizing people,
help them understand what their rights are, and provide the
(39:54):
legal and the technical and the organizational capacity to follow through.
Program involves organizing. It involves, you know, financing, and involves regulation.
And the role of government has to be one that
is not passive and people can have to not be passive.
(40:15):
We have to really stand up for our neighbors and
begin to organize on a community by community basis.
Speaker 6 (40:23):
It's all about the neighbors. I think that happened in
my old building in Red Hook, just basically talking to
each apartment like on the elevator like hey, have you
been getting these letters?
Speaker 4 (40:32):
What's going on? You know, and just organizing.
Speaker 6 (40:34):
So I think, you know, the power of like five
is better than power one. Right, I could write one
email all day, but now if we have five different
emails coming in, they have to pay attention. So I
definitely think organizing, like with like the anti harassment law
firms and just try to say, hey, listen, something weird
is going on here. I don't know who to go to.
(40:55):
Can you help me? You know, And it's unfair because
you look at the rental prices, the average amount of
rent right now in New York it's like three thousand
dollars depending where you're at, you know, you look at
in place, and it's unfortunate because people are lining up.
I remember one comedian said, oh, New York is dead, right,
(41:16):
and now New York came back tenfold right now? What
Now there's no houses to be bought, there's no apartments
for rent, and you're just stuck in this vicious cycle.
And I think it's bigger than just you know, it's
obviously politics, is obviously government, but we have to take
action too, and.
Speaker 5 (41:33):
We have to do it now, by the way, because
if one of the things we have been looking at
is what will the impact of climate change on New
York City be? You lived in Red Hook and so
you know what happened, you know, just ten years ago
this fall, right when all of a sudden the waters
came in, and what saved a lot of the neighborhood
(41:55):
with the green space around the public housing. It was
an absorbed water and got credit for that. Meanwhile, the
folks in public housing didn't have electricity for months. What's
going to happen to that huge supply of public housing
which is in harm's way? Within fifteen to twenty years,
we're going to lose those units and you are going
(42:18):
to have to relocate those families. We can't accommodate them today.
What are we going to do a few years from now?
How do we really begin to engage government today? And
that's why the timing of your episode was really crucial.
How do we engage government so that we really are
developing and using the new infrastructure money and the new
(42:41):
climate change money to make sure we're not displacing people,
but we're implacing them that we're beginning to build communities
that will live beyond the first mortgage cycle. No.
Speaker 1 (42:52):
Absolutely, Well, coming up back to the break, we're going
to talk solutions. We've talked about what gentrification needs, were
trying to figure out who's to blame, but now let's
figure out how to fix it. First off, we need
more people playing music out there. Are you doing that yet?
Jordannah in your new Brooklyn point that speaker out you
(43:15):
gotta be that's one to live. That's a free When
we're getting to the more technical ones after the break,
this is beyond the scenes. Let's talk solutions here for
a second, Ron and Jordonna, until we get the policies
in place, until we get you know, everything that you
all are talking about in terms of establishing you know,
(43:37):
proper rental properties and proper policies, and to stop predatory
real estate, you know, corporations and conglomerates from coming in.
How can the people who currently currently the people who
are currently part of these Brooklyn neighborhoods and not just Brooklyn.
Matter of fact, let's open this up to the whole country.
Gentrification just ain't a Brooklyn thing. How can people in
(44:00):
these neighborhoods helped to honor the rich cultural history and
the places that they're now have chosen to be a
part of.
Speaker 5 (44:08):
I think the first thing is to celebrate the places
that we all live in. I think what has been
going on annually now for a great number of years
in Bedstye, where there's an event on Fulton Street near
Restoration Plaza, I think is a really important event. There
have been similar efforts over the last few years in
(44:29):
Red Hook to really bring people together, show them the waterfront,
make sure that the groups working on this show and
actually parade the diversity and the multiculturalism that exists. I
think that really is a major selling point. Let's attract
people based on the quality of a neighborhood, not based
(44:50):
on really just making money. That should be what we
talk about when we're dealing with housing. I think we
really have to start looking at how we take back
our neighborhoods and promote them.
Speaker 6 (45:03):
When we talked about celebration, I think that's the most
important thing. As I mentioned before, you know, going to
the block parties, bragging about being from Brooklyn, knowing your neighbors,
and making sure that you know you're active in your community.
I know sometimes people think, oh that's corny, an't got
time for it. You have to make time because sooner
or later you're going to look up and be like,
what neighborhood am I in? What block am I on?
(45:25):
So you have to be on your local officials neck.
You have to figure out what permits are being filed.
You have to take action in your neighborhood, even if
you're not a homeowner, right just like rental, you know,
renters are equally as important, right, because you have to say, okay,
well listen, I'm paying you know, let's say, for instance,
a two family apartment, I'm paying some of your mortgage,
(45:47):
so my rights matter too. And I think it's about
being active, not being complacent, and really saying, hey, listen,
I love it here, how can I make it better?
Speaker 4 (45:56):
Right?
Speaker 6 (45:57):
I think as black people, especially, we have to be
the ones to gentify our own blocks. I think that
we cannot sit back and get mad when other people
start seeing the value in our neighborhoods.
Speaker 4 (46:08):
You can't cry over spilt milk, right.
Speaker 1 (46:11):
Because even to the point of like, if you can
find the local businesses and support the local businesses, what's
wild is that you know, the bodega guy that we
were talking about at the top of the show, he
could have made that into a win for himself by
just going there's no grocery stores, so I love going
to bodegas, and I'm going to go to all the
bodegas around me and buy a little bit from all
(46:32):
the bodegas. And it would have been one big Hey,
support local business, kumbai ya, But instead you got fat.
Speaker 5 (46:41):
Years ago, there was a group in Fort Green that
created worked on Myrtle Avenue in Fulton Street and called
it Bogolon. It was based on African fabric and the
various different colors that went into that fabric. We have
to find those keys again. You know, the Brooklyn Movement
(47:02):
Center has been doing a lot of work organizing residents.
We have to begin to again build those foot soldiers
within the neighborhoods that really talk about the culture and
tell the stories about the history. Think about places like
Weeksville Historical Society and what it's doing and what it
(47:22):
really means to have these roots in the community. It's
something that we really have to embrace and not run
away from.
Speaker 6 (47:31):
And just taking the power of your dollar right, you know,
the black spending dollar, right, we have to invest into
our local businesses also, like I make an effort to
go to my local hardware store when I know I
could easily get it shipped or go to home depook correctly,
you know, you have to also start circulating that dollar
in that community. So businesses kind of want to stay,
you know, or those mom and pop operations want to
(47:53):
be there and versus selling their bodego, versus selling their
laundrymat they know they have a loyal customer base versus
kinds of taking the easy way out and getting your
groceries of livered or whatever. Try a save your spending
dollar and put it back in the community, because it
all everything affects everything, right, and people are people at
the basics.
Speaker 4 (48:10):
We are all human.
Speaker 6 (48:11):
We want fair housing, we want fair food, we want
fair access to housing.
Speaker 2 (48:16):
Is a right.
Speaker 4 (48:17):
And if we start treating.
Speaker 6 (48:18):
Our dollar as it's powerful and start making sure like
we are active in our community, nobody can stop us.
Speaker 4 (48:25):
I don't care what you say, Ron.
Speaker 1 (48:28):
You have seen innumerable iterations and evolutions of various boroughs
in New York. What does the future look like? Let's
end on that. You know, what does the future look like?
Because you know, we have people like Jordana and her
husband who are going to be there. They ain't leaving.
They Jordana might mess around, run for city councilor what's
(48:52):
it called over there all demen, I don't know, I
don't know what to call it. What do you think
these neighborhoods are going to be like in the next
ten to twenty years.
Speaker 5 (49:00):
Well, I think we have to change the path we're on,
and I think we have to change that path right away.
What I'd like to see us is to begin to
take some of the money that we have and have
access to and begin to reinvest it in our neighborhoods
by building up those neighborhoods and investing in them dramatically.
We in New York State have something called the stock
(49:22):
Transfer tax. That tax is on the books, it's collected
every day, but it's rebated. That's a tax that if
you spend invest one hundred thousand dollars, the tax is
thirty dollars. That's how the minimus it is that would
generate twelve to fifteen billion dollars a year for New
York State. That we should invest in infrastructure. We should
(49:45):
invest it in transportation and in low and moderate income
housing so that we can really begin to renovate our
neighborhoods and generate the kind of quality neighborhoods that meet
the needs of every income group. We have to start
telling the stories, the stories of how neighbors function and
work together, so that they are the things that attract
(50:08):
people to our neighborhoods. Rather than just thinking that we're
going to make money on housing. I think we have
to critically address the issue of climate change because it
is going to dramatically affect every one of us.
Speaker 2 (50:22):
The number of people.
Speaker 5 (50:23):
That were taken ill because of the recent heat wave
in New York we can't measure. We don't really know,
but I'm willing to bet it was significant. It's going
to get worse. The number of days of over one
hundred degrees is going to increase dramatically over the next
ten to fifteen years. That's a challenge that we have
(50:44):
to convert into an opportunity, an opportunity to build stable, viable, livable,
multi racial communities within the City of New York, ones
that allow people to build their own build on their
own culture, and really celebrate the diversity of this city.
(51:06):
And that, to my mind, is what we should be
working towards and using the challenges, the money that may
be coming from the federal government, the money that we
could generate New York State and use as a model
for the nation the way we did in the thirties,
and really begin to think about how we build a
post racial society, how we can really build a multicultural democracy.
(51:31):
I think that really is something we have to work
on and work towards and invest in that's not going
to happen unless we change those policies.
Speaker 6 (51:40):
To your point about climate change, I mean, there was
a couple of floods that happened last year and people
were dying in basement apartments right flooding, heat, It's getting
really bad. I think that housing across New York is
just such at a turning point right now. So we
definitely have to take action. We definitely have to make
sure that we to each other and mobilize and say, hey,
(52:03):
what can we do to make our living conditions better?
Because as Ron touched on, as you touched on it,
it's a right. I think housing is a right that
some people find it so unattainable, but it's yours. And
I think the other thing too, is just like stop
changing the names of the neighborhoods. That's one thing that
really ticks me off. Like when you guys come here,
I don't want to even South Bronx. It's now so
(52:25):
bro you know, Bedford Staves the High. It's like from
the inception of the time you guys come, it's like, oh,
I don't want to call it Bedsty no more. Well, no,
it's Bedstyd. Respect the neighborhood and stop with all the acronyms.
Speaker 1 (52:37):
Well, I think that's as good a place to end.
And she is a wonderful, wonderful, proud Brooklyn Night. Jordannah,
thank you for going beyond the scenes. And Ron, thank
you for everything that you have contributed to preserving culture
and building culture and making sure that people respect culture.
(52:59):
Thank you all both were going beyond the scenes.
Speaker 2 (53:01):
With the scene. Well, thank you for what you're doing.
Speaker 1 (53:04):
I just try to crack the jokes. You guys do
the real work. Listen to The Daily Show Beyond the
Scenes on Apple Podcasts, the iHeartRadio app, or wherever you
get your podcasts.
Hey, Welcome to Beyond the Scenes, the podcast that goes
deeper into segments and topics that originally aired on The
Daily Show with Trevor Noa. This is what you gotta
think of this podcast is all right, you got apple pie.
Everybody love apple pie? Right, It's warm, crispy apple pie.
It's good by itself. This podcast is the Ala mode.
You get that extra scoop of ice cream on that
(00:28):
apple pie and they take it to the next level. Baby.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Listen.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
Now we're gonna be talking about a recent segment on
the show about gentrification, specifically in Brooklyn, and how the people, landscape,
and culture of places like that have changed over the years.
Give it a clip. According to the latest census, the
white population is decreasing nationwide for the first time, the
(00:52):
white population in the United States has declined, But there's
one place there numbers are up almost nine Brooklyn. Healthy
white migration has led to increases in rent, cost of
living and request to speak to the manager. So I
follow the trail of succulents in West Anderson DVDs deep
into the den of gentrifying Brooklyn, where I sat down
(01:13):
with Tommy Holland. The white population is going up almost
nine percent. The black population is going down almost nine percent.
Would it be safe to say that that's how they're
showing black lives matter by just moving them out to
somewhere else.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
What they're doing is they just buying it out and
cleaned out the neighborhood. And it's not right.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
Thomma's lived in Brooklyn his entire life.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
Everything's going up sky high and it's hard to live.
So the way out is to sell the house.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
Tommy's mother bought their brownstone in nineteen sixty three when
black home ownership in Brooklyn was booming, But lately black
mortgages have been going the way of the Dodo bird. Today,
I'm joined by Daily Show segment producer and Brooklyn Night
Geordana him in Waye. Jordana, how are you doing today?
Speaker 4 (01:59):
I'm great?
Speaker 1 (02:00):
Thank you, well, good to see you. Good to see you,
Madam Brooklyn Night. And also joining us is a pioneer
in urban planning and a professor at Pratt Institute, Ron Schiffman.
Speaker 5 (02:11):
How you doing, Professor, I'm doing really great. I'm really
happy to be with you today.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
Well, we appreciate you for helping us break down this
very very difficult topic. You know, Jordona, Let's start with you.
The thing that I've always loved about The Daily Show
is that everybody has the freedom to pitch. It's not
set up in some structured system where you do not pitch,
you only produce what this pitch. It's like, No, if
you come in the building with an issue and you
can go, guys, I'm noticing this, then it's something that
(02:38):
could eventually work its way onto the show, as it
did with this. So walk us through your inspiration and
how this segment came together.
Speaker 4 (02:46):
Well, it was very personal.
Speaker 6 (02:47):
So I just bought my house, but that home buying
process was very difficult, and I wanted to be in Brooklyn.
I did not want to go to Queen's. I didn't
want to go to New Jersey. I was just like, no,
I will not leave Brooklyn where I grew up. And
I started noticing on the trains that like more white
people were like getting off later.
Speaker 4 (03:09):
And later on the train stops. And then I started realizing.
Speaker 6 (03:13):
And I was like, wait a minute, you know what's
going on here? And then I started realizing that there
was all these developments, but I couldn't afford these houses.
I couldn't get in and I'm like, you know, I
have a decent job, and I'm just like, why are
we being pushed out? And at that point I saw
this article where the white population decreased everywhere else in
the United States except Brooklyn, New York, and I said, Aha,
(03:35):
this is what's happening. I'm not crazy, I'm not seeing things.
I'm not being you know, going down the conspiracy rabbit hole.
Speaker 4 (03:42):
No, this is what's happening.
Speaker 6 (03:43):
And black people are selling their homes because it's very
tempting when you have a developer flying your house saying
they'll give you hundreds of thousands, if not millions to
buy your land. And therefore it's just like a rabbit
hole where you just kind of keep going down the
same thing over and over.
Speaker 4 (03:58):
It was frustrating.
Speaker 6 (03:59):
So I always try to pitch things, and as you
mentioned the Daily Show, we are allowed to pitch whatever.
And that's one thing that is great about working here,
and I try to pitching that very personal to me
because that's why I could get my teeth in it.
And I'm like, okay, no, I'm trying to buy a house.
Let me figure out what's going on. And that's how
it came about you.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
Were hired during COVID, during the social distancing era a
couple of years ago, and so you don't get to
hang and you lose the small talk that happens in
an office space. But once we got back in the office,
you know how you just know somebody like, oh, yeah,
J're donnad good to see you. But then when we
went out, when I went out to talk with Tommy Holly,
who was one of the subjects in the piece, it
(04:38):
was evident to me at that moment I was like, oh,
does she live on this street? Because for a segment
producer to also come out on shoots, it's not uncommon,
but it is not a regular occurrence. And so for
you to be there and to see the camaraderie between
you and Tommy between camera setups and all of that stuff.
(05:00):
A little bit about how you became so close to
the people in Brooklyn.
Speaker 4 (05:05):
Well, it's a little background to even go further.
Speaker 6 (05:07):
So I am married and my husband is African American
slash Puerto Rican, right, and I saw this happen to
him when his grandma, who came from South Carolina, they
saw that house in Crown Heights.
Speaker 4 (05:17):
And now sometimes we're in the neighborhood.
Speaker 6 (05:19):
We drive by it and it's you know, condos a
million dollars, right, and we're like, damn, that was where
we used to live.
Speaker 4 (05:24):
That was like his first college apartment.
Speaker 6 (05:27):
And then fast forward, you know, he has relatives and
Tommy is one of those guys in the neighborhood that's
always around, right, so we know him. He's always on
the block with his stick and he's just a very
cool dude. So we always used to talk to him.
And it started getting around that, like, you know, people
all over that block were basically considering selling their homes.
Speaker 4 (05:46):
And then I started noticing changes.
Speaker 6 (05:48):
I'm like, okay, well there's less cookouts now, people are
not as friendly, you.
Speaker 4 (05:54):
Know, yeah, block parties, right, there was less of those.
Speaker 6 (05:58):
It's gone. And I was just frustrated. I was frustrated
with the home buying journey. I was frustrated with not
enough homes. Like right now, to this day, America's five
million homes short of demand, right, so there's five million
homeowners that are looking for home.
Speaker 4 (06:14):
That cannot you know, buy in New York.
Speaker 6 (06:18):
It's just even if you see the videos on TikTok
and Snapchat where people are online trying to rent apartments,
and there's always that joke of like, you know, if
you can make it here, you can make it anywhere.
Speaker 4 (06:28):
But it shouldn't be like that in New York. You know,
New York used to be a community.
Speaker 6 (06:32):
You should be able to go to your corner store
and know your neighbor's name and know you know so
and so down the block. And I just feel like,
even in college, I just felt like that was that
was missing. And I think what we have to be
careful of with the word gentrification because it sounds so dirty, right,
it sounds really bad. But as black people, we have
(06:55):
to gentrify our own blocks. Our blocks are beautiful, right.
If we could jugify our own blocks, we could call
three one one, I mean all like, hey, listen, they
need to pick up this trash, not call three on
one on your neighbor. Right, we could actually, you know,
plant more trees. And I just think that there's always
this resentment like, oh, well, they only did it when
white people came in. And sometimes that's true because sometimes
(07:16):
police don't pay attention to the natives of that block
until more money is being invested into it. Yeah, So
it's kind of frustrating, and that's why I was just like, listen,
here is a said way, this is kind of funny
that the white population is kind of decreasing everywhere else.
This has Daily chow britten all over it. But let's
(07:37):
talk about the meat and potatoes. So that's why it
came out ron.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
When we talk about gentrification, j just as a phenomenon
for our listeners, first and foremost, can you define it?
Let's just start right there. Let's define gentrification for our listeners.
And also, what are some of the indicators that gentrification
is starting to happen, Like I know, once you get
Whole Foods, stuff is happening. When the bodega selling almond milk,
(08:05):
you see one of them hacky sack boys. You can't
trust nobody. What a hacky sack, that's what. But let's
define gentrification.
Speaker 5 (08:14):
What gentrification means to me is when one group of
people begin to move in, particularly white people, begin to
move into a neighborhood and displace people, displace people, displace jobs,
and displace culture. And to me, that is something that
one has to fight against. The fact that the area
(08:35):
improves economically and provides opportunity for people who live there
to make new connections and to live a better life.
To me is a goal in life, and Jordana, I think,
expressed it much better than I could. What really scares
me is that people want to find out what are
the indicators of gentrification before they want to do anything
(08:59):
about it. And if you study it and you come
up with the database to prove that gentrification is occurring,
you've already lost the community and the way to deal
with gentrification or with its placement issues, which I think
are really the most important one. And as Jordana alluded to,
also a housing program. We need to build housing that
(09:20):
people can afford, and that housing is too often thought
of as a commodity and not really as a right.
How do you really build those communities? How do you
really address that? Well, the way to know that your
area is gentrifying is to talk to the people there.
Is to see what's going on on the streets, To
go to the supermarkets and the storefronts and the commercial strips,
(09:42):
and to see how it breathes. And when I go
through neighborhoods, whether it's Bushwick or RedHook or others, it's
palpable that change is taking place. People are afraid. People
are afraid. In Bushwick, we were working with a team
of people Make the Road a number years ago, a
really great group that organizes and engages new immigrant populations
(10:08):
in the everyday life of the city, and people didn't
want to see the parks improved. They were afraid that
if they got a better park, if they had safer
streets and better schools, that they wouldn't live there anymore,
that it would be for somebody else. And that is
a condition that we can't accept. We have to arrive
(10:30):
at a point where people can improve the quality of
their neighborhood and have the choice to stay, not be
pushed out for economic reasons. In many ways, and a
friend of mine by the name of Carl Anthony from
the West Coast talks about it. It's almost like getting
on a bus years ago. When a white person walks
on the bus, the black person has to leave or
(10:51):
give up their seat. And that's what gentrification has been
doing as a dynamic. And what we've got to do
is do exactly what you guys did. That skit has
to be shown again and again because it is the database,
but we should be looking at not the statistics, but
the fact that people are talking about what it means
(11:14):
to them, what it means when neighbors come in and
don't really are not neighborly. That skit was dynamite, and
I think it really I'm being very serious and we
shouldn't be so serious, but it is a serious topic.
We really have to begin to talk about housing and
housing is a human right.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
How do we finance it? How do we make.
Speaker 5 (11:35):
Sure it's available so that my kids don't have to
compete with your kids or displace you or your neighbor,
so that we can all live together somehow?
Speaker 2 (11:45):
And I think that's the real struggle.
Speaker 5 (11:48):
And if you use a humor as a basis for
making this issue and making it an issue that people understand,
I think it's really important. And the deep dive into this,
I think is really extremely helpful. And I really want
to raise the glass and toast you guys.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
For doing it.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
Thank you, thank you so much for that. You hit
a Trevor Nola. He just said to give.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
Us a raise, to give us, Yeah, give him a raise.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
Are there ways for those moving in to ingratiate themselves
to the culture. There was a young man I can't
remember his name Jordana. But there was a young white
guy in his early twenties who lost a job after
moving to New York and walking around the neighborhood and
making fun of the bodegas, not realizing that he was
(12:38):
in a food desert. He was making a video complaining
that there were no grocery stores and every time he
googled a grocery store, Google sent him to a bodega.
And he didn't even He just was just completely unaware
that where you've chosen to live for so long has
marginalized the community.
Speaker 7 (12:56):
Okay, so I just moved to New York and I'm
trying to go grocery shopping. So I type him like
grocery stores on my Apple Maps, and like everything one
I go to, like I'm walking too, Like they're like
this or like like that.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
It's like, brother, that's not a grocery store.
Speaker 7 (13:11):
Like I'm trying to get like eggs, yogurt, like cheese
like that, right, Like where are the Krogers and like
the whole food's at.
Speaker 1 (13:19):
Is there a way to educate people so that they
don't come in and be disrespectful or is their presence
in a way inherently net negative for the neighborhood.
Speaker 6 (13:29):
I'll say right now, I don't think that guy should
deserve to get fired, right, I think he deserved to
get educated.
Speaker 4 (13:34):
I think that he didn't know. I think a lot of.
Speaker 6 (13:36):
People from you know, the Middlewest, the South, everybody comes
to New York and it's.
Speaker 1 (13:41):
It's like, which is where he was from?
Speaker 6 (13:44):
You know, and they're like, wait a minute, where's my publics?
Where's my We don't got that. We got Carlos bodega,
you know. And another thing we kind of touch on
the piece, and I kind of feel like it matters
in this point is sometimes gentrification is not necessarily a
race thing either, Right.
Speaker 4 (14:00):
I think sometimes it could be a class thing.
Speaker 6 (14:01):
I think it could be sometimes maybe who has more money,
because you know, maybe I'm a gentrifier, right, maybe I
probably gentrify somebody, and maybe I'm complaining about the lack.
Speaker 4 (14:11):
Of almond milk. Right. There was one guy in the piece.
He was a Jewish guy in our piece.
Speaker 6 (14:16):
I don't know if you remember him, and he lived
in Crown Heights and he got pushed out.
Speaker 4 (14:19):
So sometimes it's not necessarily like the little.
Speaker 6 (14:23):
White girl, the little white guy who come to New
York with these you know, big dreams. Sometimes it's these
finance bros that are gentrifying. Sometimes it's just you know,
people with more money. And I think housing as a
right is the bigger conversation everybody should have for access
to housing. You know, the black home ownership rate right
now is less than what it was like ten years ago.
It's getting worse for black home owners and we have
(14:45):
to ask ourselves why is that we don't necessarily have
the access, we don't necessarily have the tools. I mean,
I don't want to go down the whole rabbit hole,
but you go from forty acres of the mule and
it's just like, oh, that was so long ago. Real
estate is the greatest trans of wealth there is to mankind, right,
like every generation. Right, if you have real estate, your
family is just set up for better, you know what
(15:06):
I mean.
Speaker 4 (15:07):
And there's no it is what it is.
Speaker 6 (15:10):
If you have some land, you could leverage that, you
could borrow against it, you could housing. You need housing
and transportation you need. So when you look at just
people like that guy on that TikTok video, who's just like,
why is it Nobodega's And it's sad that black people
people of color have been living in these neighborhoods, like
where there isn't like a regular grocery store. Why is
(15:31):
that my grocery store only has like chips and snacks
and stuff like that. I'm not trying to get at
the bodega, bros. But we should have that equal opportunity too.
And what Ron touched on, like sometimes there is a fear.
I remember living in Red Hook, this one neighborhood in Brooklyn,
you know, back then when even my black friends didn't
want to go there because it was hood.
Speaker 4 (15:49):
They're like, where are you going?
Speaker 6 (15:51):
And I remember seeing it and I remember being scared, like, well, shoot,
there's a new tesla being built, the Ikea coming down?
Speaker 4 (15:57):
Are they going to raise my rent? And that fear
something that.
Speaker 6 (16:01):
You can't describe because it's just like, well, I'm working,
I graduated college. How do I keep up right? And
you see the influx of people. What do you do
in that case as a black person, as a black woman.
There's not enough programs, you know, and it's bad enough
that like maybe our parents didn't have the home, or
maybe our parents sold the home right not knowing, not
realizing that maybe I should hold onto it.
Speaker 4 (16:23):
So it's just really messed up all around.
Speaker 5 (16:26):
You know, the whole issue of housing as a means
for building wealth. Obviously it occurs, and it's a major
benefit for many, but for others. You know, a lot
of people bought homes and invested their life savings, and
if they lived in some parts of Detroit, or they
lived in some parts of Cleveland, or even parts of
(16:48):
New York City, they lost that wealth, they lost that housing.
They lost the housing because they couldn't afford to improve it,
they didn't have access to loans. And when I started
working again in Bedstein in the sixties, we held hearings
on insurance redlining because somebody, because of the color of
their skin could not get the kind of insurance they
(17:09):
needed for the building. They couldn't get the home improvement loans.
And so how do we really deal with this systemic
racism that permeates a lot of what we're talking about.
At the same time, we also have to think about
how we create housing as a right that doesn't diminish
over time other people of low income getting it. It's
(17:31):
not if everybody makes so much housing money on housing,
it means the next generation is not going to be
able to afford it. So housing as a financial vehicle,
as a commodity is really something I think we have
to address, and we have to find other ways of
really building wealth in communities as well as investing in
(17:53):
housing and.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
In real estate.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
Ron what are some of those other negative and paths
of impacts if any of the gentrification has on a
particular community. We've talked about loss of culture, but what
about also, you know, from educational aspect, are there any
ripple effects?
Speaker 5 (18:12):
Well, one of the benefits that occurs is when you
have a mixed income community and it doesn't have to
be based only on race. As Jordana mentioned on economic diversity,
is that the younger kids who are impoverished and grow
up in mixed neighborhoods apparently are doing much better than
kids who grow up and are isolated from the contacts.
(18:36):
Just pure contacts are important to have within a society.
And I'm a great believer in social and economic integration.
It's in my roots, it's in my blood, and it's
something I've always fought for and have really worked towards
over my life. But the fact of the matter is,
I think we need to begin to look at investing
(18:57):
in communities so the people who are in those communities
can grow, So they can grow culturally, they can grow economically,
and they can really benefit. And what we now have
is this idea that you improve communities by replacing them.
So we now have to start thinking about providing the
best education for kids wherever they are.
Speaker 2 (19:20):
We have to make.
Speaker 5 (19:21):
Sure that what we're doing is we're providing opportunities for
people to access all of the mechanisms that they need
in order to get housing, the technical expertise, the initial financing,
the ability to stay within their own homes if they
have some economic difficulty.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
A home is more than just the four walls.
Speaker 5 (19:45):
It's the people who are in the neighborhood, the person
you can call who can take care of your kids
if you have an emergency have to go off somewhere.
It's the churches, that's the networks, it's the friendships. And
how do we really begin to value that. I think
what we need to do is really develop a universal
housing program that everybody has the right to a house.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
Everybody has a right to a house.
Speaker 5 (20:12):
In a community that provides them with education and health.
You know what we do often as professionals is we
go into a community and we ask them what's more
important education or housing or health. Well, you know, if
you're living in the community, you want all of those,
and the community should work to doing all of those
and weaving those together. So I would argue we need
(20:35):
not only comedians, but we need weavers, people who will
take these ideas and weave them together to create more
viable communities.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
And the first one is to stop the speculation.
Speaker 5 (20:48):
I think we really need to make sure that people
can get the invest in housing, they can make, get
their money back, that savings can grow, But you can't
get this enormous speculation where somebody buys the building two
years later flips it for two million dollars more than
they had before, and as a result, everybody loses, You
(21:12):
lose the quality of the neighborhood, and you're losing the
networks that you had established before. So I would argue
that we need anti speculation taxes. I would argue that
we'd take those taxes and direct them to low income families.
Speaker 1 (21:28):
Okay, now I want to get into that after the break,
because I want to talk about who's to blame. Is
it the people that are buying? Is the people that
are selling is it. The red lining is that the
government will be back with more. This is beyond the scenes.
Beyond the scenes. We are back now. We have broken
down what gentrification is and the ways that it negatively
(21:48):
impacts communities on a socioeconomic level, and education and opportunities
and the stripping of culture. And we didn't forget to
talk about your data. They paint over murals in some
of these spots. They just what's that a nice picture
that an artist did to add some character to the neighborhood.
Let me just put a nice code for no reason. Uh,
(22:12):
but Ron, I'd like to start with you, and let's
talk a little bit about how crime and policing changes
in the gentrification piece. When I had spoken with some
of the wonderful, wonderful women that are Brooklyn Knights, they
talked about how you know people will just call three
to one one for random the snitches. I wouldn't gonna
(22:32):
say it, but you said it, so let's get it
to it run.
Speaker 5 (22:35):
Well, you said it, and I'm copying you because you're
absolutely right. And three one one, you know people move
into and should move into a neighborhood because they know
it all right, and they should be move into that
neighborhood because they want to be part of that community.
They want to be able to walk down the streets.
When I again, I'm an old man, so I always
(22:56):
refer to the past. Right when I moved first New
Bedford Stuyvesant, it had four hundred or five hundred block associations.
There was even a group called the Association of Associations.
Speaker 2 (23:10):
It was a network of people. They were friends, they
were neighbors.
Speaker 5 (23:14):
And if you want to move into a neighborhood, do
you move in there and become part and adopt its culture.
And over time cultures will change, they'll adapt. But it's
the abrupt speed that people want to change places. It's
the speculative nature. Why should people get a call a
week from a real estate agent to sell their property.
(23:37):
Why should they be harassed to sell their property? Obviously
that's skit with you and Tommy Holly. You know, he
talks about how much he paid and how much he'll
get if he sells the house. It's a very attractive
thing to sell. But what is he going to do
when he sells? Is he going to move to Florida
and face the racism and aganism of that state, or
(24:02):
is he going to lose all his friends on that block?
Speaker 3 (24:05):
Prices this skyrocketing, the houses going for three.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
Million before wait, I'm sorry, what'd you say?
Speaker 3 (24:10):
The house is in the best tag of for three million?
Now three million dollars?
Speaker 1 (24:16):
How would you pray for the hull?
Speaker 3 (24:17):
Twenty three seven twenty three.
Speaker 1 (24:19):
Thousand dollars and you can sell it.
Speaker 3 (24:21):
Right now for closer to me?
Speaker 2 (24:24):
Oh, you got to go.
Speaker 3 (24:26):
Wait a minute, you don't want to say that was his.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
Stake, like of that's before you told me what you
was hidden.
Speaker 3 (24:31):
You know, the money is great, but it's not everything.
Speaker 5 (24:36):
We've got to provide alternatives, and we've got to make
sure that we are we slow down the speed of
change and get to people to understand the neighborhood they
move in.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
It's not just a place to buy a house.
Speaker 5 (24:50):
It's a place to live in, and you have to
live and you have to work with your neighbors. And
if people don't do that, if they don't understand that,
then they really shouldn't be welcomed.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
I think one of the issues, or at least what
I gathered in Jordana. You can correct me if I'm wrong,
but one of the issues that I think Tommy Holly
was dealing with was that he could stay there and
preserve the culture, or he could take the money and
have an increased quality of living for the back half
of his life. And I think that's ultimately what I
felt like he was kind of struggling with, because you know,
(25:23):
your dollar's going to go a lot further in Florida.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
Now.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
Granted, you're gonna probably get called an in word a
couple of times that there's an inward tax you have
to pay depending on the county. But you know, I
think that that's what a lot of residents, you know,
are dealing with. It's just what I found so interesting though,
Jordana was despite of people calling in noise complaints and
increases in racial profiling or even the stealing of Amazon packages,
(25:47):
it seems that a lot of the black Brooklyn Knights
still have a resolve where, even with the changes in
their relationship with law enforcement, as white residents become uncomfortable
with black people who were indigenous to that block, somehow
they're still okay with staying. Why do you think that is.
Speaker 6 (26:06):
I think it's just the principle, right, It's like, I'm
not leaving I'm not leaving, you know, And that's how
I felt too. Previously we talked about some of the
signs of gentrifications, and for me, the sign is like,
there's three There's the white woman running with her dog
late at night. If I see that happening, Okay, something's
going down. There is the white woman asking the Jamaican
(26:26):
restaurant for a free stample, I'm like, okay, what's going on.
And then there's the white person that's just basically complaining
about the Labor Day parade or complaining about a block party.
Speaker 4 (26:36):
Right.
Speaker 6 (26:36):
I think the issue that we have as Brooklyn Knights
is I love Brooklyn so much.
Speaker 4 (26:42):
I love it. I talk.
Speaker 6 (26:43):
You ask any Brooklyn Knight where they're from. They don't
say I'm a New Yorker. They say I'm from Brooklyn.
That's how I introduce myself. So of course I want
to share my burrow with anybody and everybody. The issue
I have is that when you guys come here and
you call the cops instead of introducing yourself and you know,
you complain about a block party that has been happening,
(27:05):
like like the Labor Day parade for instance, that has
been going on for over thirty years. You complain about it,
You complain about the jerk chicken being sold on the corner,
and that's the issue we have. Of course, I would
love people to talk and talk about Brooklyn, visit Brooklyn,
and live in Brooklyn. But I think the sense of
community has just gone. And I feel like, and Tommy
points it to it, he would stay if he didn't
feel like an outsider. Do you understand how hard it was?
(27:28):
I remember when he told that story. You know, he
was moved to tears, this white woman holding her purse
and this is the old man with his old magic
stick member and it's just like the how degrading was that?
Speaker 4 (27:39):
Right?
Speaker 6 (27:40):
And this guy has been there for decades, and it's
just like that feeling of feeling like an outsider in
your own neighborhood, where you were born, where you grew up.
Speaker 4 (27:48):
It just it sucks. So there's two people.
Speaker 6 (27:51):
There's some people that says, you know what, I'm going
to leave because the area around me, the neighborhood's not
the neighborhood no more. I can't afford the bodega, right
because the bodegas would to hemp milk, all my milk,
all these different type of milks. I can't afford anything
else going on, like the laundrymat, the nel salon, everything
has gone up. So let me just take my dollars
to South Beach wherever right like Lebron and just move.
(28:13):
And then there's the people that are like myself that
are just really trying to hold on. I think it's
so important for black people in Brooklyn if you have
the might, if you have the will, to stay into
your homes, because we're losing that. And I don't think
I think it's just really sad when I talk about it.
I get emotional when I hear people selling their homes.
(28:35):
I'm like, damn, come on, man, what do we gotta do?
Speaker 4 (28:38):
You know?
Speaker 6 (28:39):
And it's really hard when you have flying at your house.
As Ron mentioned, you know, you could be house rich
but cash poor. So now how do you maintain your
house right? How do you, you know, keep the furnace
or the boiler and all that stuff. So it's it's
bigger than just having a house. Having a house is
a lot of responsibility. But we need the access. And
there's a lot of grant program that people like to
(29:00):
throw around that word, oh you can get a grant.
Speaker 4 (29:02):
You could get a grant where tell me I would
love to know.
Speaker 6 (29:06):
It's so hard to get some of these programs, and
it's unfortunate that the easy way out is leaving. Who
has the will to really just fight all the time.
Speaker 4 (29:16):
It's really hard.
Speaker 6 (29:18):
But I implore people to try to stay in Brooklyn
and try to meet your neighbors I think white, Spanish
or whatever, because even I had to have a moment
of reflection where like, crap, am I a gentrifier because
I moved into a predominantly Spanish neighborhood and they play
bad Bunny all times of night? But I'm like, okay,
well I can't call it.
Speaker 4 (29:36):
You know, I can't call the cops on these people.
Speaker 6 (29:38):
I don't want to be the person that Tammy and
Trudiful talking about. So it's like meeting my neighbors, right,
meeting people, going to the community garden and introduce it
myself saying hey, you know what, I'm really good at
garden and how can I help out? And I think
if people who moved into Brooklyn took that approach versus
just moving here, going to their you know, fancy coffee
(30:00):
shops and just treating us like outside, we have no problem.
I promise you every Brooklyn Knight loves to boast about Brooklyn.
I don't know when Brooklyn nighte that's like I know,
you know, we would love to share it. I just
think it's the way I think Tommy touched on it.
Or don't Judith did about like, you know, integration.
Speaker 1 (30:15):
Right, people from Brooklyn today? From Brooklyn when you didn't
need mass where he was from, what would you like
to eat? That's for sure, Brooklyn, you say so.
Speaker 5 (30:28):
I grew up in the Bronx and it took a
it was a psychic change to move to Brooklyn. Yeah,
because Bronx sites would never move to Brooklyn in those days.
We moved there because we were able to get a
house at a very low price. And that was in
the sixties, so we've been living there for a long time.
(30:49):
And it was when people were leaving the city. The
city was losing population in the seventies. You know, New
York City was losing maybe thirty thousand apartments a year.
It was shrinking. And what saved the city were the
community based organizations and the groups like Betsy Restoration. The
(31:10):
groups had fought green, the groups in Red Hook and
all other places that stabilize the neighborhoods, that fought for
federal government to stop what were basically discriminatory lending policies,
changing the FHA to begin to lend money to stop
(31:31):
what was really what were fast foreclosure schemes. You would
go into a neighborhood East New York, for instance. You'd
go into that neighborhood predominantly working class white, some people
were beginning to integrate it. Then all of a sudden,
people's racist fears came up. They would hire people to
(31:51):
have stage fights in the street. They would then panic
buy the buildings low. They would then get the federal
government to ensure them they'd sell to a black or
a Latino family. The next thing they did six months later,
they would foreclose on that and turn the building over,
and a couple of years later the neighborhood was abandoned.
(32:14):
They pitted whites racist fears against whites and blacks, and
it really was and we had to take them to court.
We could document that there were places that were basically
using government programs and manipulating them for fast for these
fast foreclosure schemes.
Speaker 1 (32:34):
To that point, rin then this sounds like gentrification to
a degree is something of a bunch of different entities
all working in concert. So if that is true, who
is the real villain of gentrification? Like, what is the
root of the problem contributing to it? Because we talk
about the commodification of housing, the real estate developers that
are predatory. Airbnb is a big issue as well, that
(32:57):
everybody wanting to flip a house because they don't watch
two sh a role on HGTV or whatever. So you know,
is it the government, is it the developers or is
it the homeowners? You know, because you know Bloomberg and
you know, like there's there have been policies in redlining
that also have helped as well to contribute to this issue.
(33:17):
So is there any one specific smoking gun.
Speaker 5 (33:21):
There isn't one specific smoking gun, but there is a
whole network or systemic racist policies that have come to
play an ongoing role. Whether or not people know doing
or doing it willingly or unwillingly, the systems still persist,
and you still have real estate agents.
Speaker 2 (33:40):
That are involved in racial theorem.
Speaker 5 (33:43):
You'll be sent to one neighborhood, I'll be sent to
another neighborhood. Uh, we've got to begin to monitor those quickly.
A lot of this is because government turns a blind
eye to it. We need a City Planning Commission, We
need a development entity in New York City that is
aggressively fostering the healthy development of all our communities, looking
(34:09):
for a diverse goals of building a diverse, multicultural city,
and we haven't been doing that of late. What we're
doing in some cases is we're going into an area
like East New York, all right, and we're building new housing.
We're displacing twenty families. We're building one hundred units of housing,
(34:31):
twenty five percent which will be low income so that
it will in many ways accommodate the ones we displace,
But seventy five percent of the building is going to
be super wealthy because we in order to provide low
income housing, we're going to need the wealth and the
income flow from the upper income families. That kind of
(34:52):
inclusionary housing works if you want to build a racially
economically integrated community. It doesn't wor when you want to
build more housing. And what we need to do is
say we're no longer going to allow it only to
be the private sector. But government has to be committed
to a housing policy to meet the needs of every
(35:13):
quartile of our population, and we have to start really
promoting what really are our healthy communities.
Speaker 6 (35:23):
Yeah, I mean, I'm gonna just say it right now,
I think real estate is just racist right currently in
twenty twenty two, if I was to get my house appraised,
and a white person was to stay in this house
and get it appraised, they're going to get a better
appraisal value. That happened during COVID there was a black
family that happened to in Seattle.
Speaker 4 (35:41):
It happens all over the countries.
Speaker 6 (35:43):
So now not only let's say you can't buy a house,
but then you do the right thing, save your little money,
you get your little fah loan, you do all the
right things. But now when it times to that for appraisal, automatically,
I'm getting less. So we just have to really take
a deeper look at the state and figure out how
can we change it right, How do we get the
(36:04):
government involved, how do we speak out? And I really
think it's important as a homeowner, as a black woman,
not only just sitting back and just you know, saying
it is what it is. No, we need to hold
our local officials accountable. So maybe that means going to
Little every and now it's on Zoom Roy So you
could go and speak up on the on the meeting
(36:25):
and knowing your council member's name and say, okay, well,
what are we doing about the trash on this street?
What are we doing about the you know, abandoned building
on Thistree and really rolling up your sleeves and getting
your hands dirty. And when you talk about Eastern New York,
I remember when I was looking into the home buying process,
I said, you know what, I want to move where
there might be a little bit of action. So that
(36:46):
means looking up, where are they pulling permits? Where are
some of these developers going. If you don't want to
be a proper you don't want to be a part
of the problem, right, So I know, I didn't want
to be that person that's going to buy a piece
of land and make it a luxury building.
Speaker 4 (36:57):
No, I want to be I have ego I have
I'm like, no, I'm going to plant myself here.
Speaker 6 (37:02):
I'm going to buy a house in the East New
York Cypressols area and I'm not leaving, and I want
to be part of that change. And I think sometimes
a lot of like we just automatically assume, let's go
to South Carolina, let's go to you know, Atl, I
love Wakanda, I love atl. Don't be wrong, but there's
great still for black people in Brooklyn too. And I
just think that we have this automatic like, you know
what's way too expensive, let me just leave, whereas others
(37:25):
are trying to they see the value in Brooklyn. And
it's just really hard, and racism is threaded throughout the
whole real estate process.
Speaker 5 (37:34):
The other thing that I want to put on the
table is I think we really need to start talking
about housing that is rental housing. Not everybody wants to
be a homeowner, not everybody has the ability to be
a homeowner. And so we need to think about how
we increase the supply of rental housing in the City
of New York in such a way that it's woven
(37:55):
into the fabric of communities, that it's right next to
middle income, right next to the home ownership areas. We
have to think about social housing, public housing, housing that's
owned by the and meets the knees of some of
the very poor. You go into red Hook with Red
Hook houses, some of that was built originally in forty
(38:18):
seven occupied primarily by white families.
Speaker 2 (38:21):
It was a step up.
Speaker 5 (38:22):
New York City still has thousands upon thousands of people
on the waiting list to get into public housing. We
need to expand the supply of affordable rental housing in
the City of New York.
Speaker 1 (38:35):
How can residents stop the harassment that they get at
the hands of their landlords as well? Like we're talking
about big government systems and whatever, but sometimes you've just
got an asshole who's running your building and who's trying
to run you off as well. So talk a little
bit about that, both of you if you can.
Speaker 5 (38:56):
Well, one of the things that occurred, you know, during
previous to COVID, it was putting pressure on the Deblasio
administration to stop the harassment that was going on in
Crown Heights and the harassment that was going on in
East New York and many other places in the city.
And so setting up these anti harassment units where people
really know they could go into South Brooklyn Legal Services,
(39:19):
or they could go into Williamsburg Legal Services and get
support by some of the legal lawyers there to go
after the landlords.
Speaker 2 (39:29):
It really is important because that was happening.
Speaker 5 (39:32):
They would come in, they buy a building, right, they'd
vacate one or two apartments and they'd start making noise
and they would do all sorts of things to drive
the tenants out. And part of it is you have
to knock on the people. You have to start organizing people,
help them understand what their rights are, and provide the
(39:54):
legal and the technical and the organizational capacity to follow through.
Program involves organizing. It involves, you know, financing, and involves regulation.
And the role of government has to be one that
is not passive and people can have to not be passive.
(40:15):
We have to really stand up for our neighbors and
begin to organize on a community by community basis.
Speaker 6 (40:23):
It's all about the neighbors. I think that happened in
my old building in Red Hook, just basically talking to
each apartment like on the elevator like hey, have you
been getting these letters?
Speaker 4 (40:32):
What's going on? You know, and just organizing.
Speaker 6 (40:34):
So I think, you know, the power of like five
is better than power one. Right, I could write one
email all day, but now if we have five different
emails coming in, they have to pay attention. So I
definitely think organizing, like with like the anti harassment law
firms and just try to say, hey, listen, something weird
is going on here. I don't know who to go to.
(40:55):
Can you help me? You know, And it's unfair because
you look at the rental prices, the average amount of
rent right now in New York it's like three thousand
dollars depending where you're at, you know, you look at
in place, and it's unfortunate because people are lining up.
I remember one comedian said, oh, New York is dead, right,
(41:16):
and now New York came back tenfold right now? What
Now there's no houses to be bought, there's no apartments
for rent, and you're just stuck in this vicious cycle.
And I think it's bigger than just you know, it's
obviously politics, is obviously government, but we have to take
action too, and.
Speaker 5 (41:33):
We have to do it now, by the way, because
if one of the things we have been looking at
is what will the impact of climate change on New
York City be? You lived in Red Hook and so
you know what happened, you know, just ten years ago
this fall, right when all of a sudden the waters
came in, and what saved a lot of the neighborhood
(41:55):
with the green space around the public housing. It was
an absorbed water and got credit for that. Meanwhile, the
folks in public housing didn't have electricity for months. What's
going to happen to that huge supply of public housing
which is in harm's way? Within fifteen to twenty years,
we're going to lose those units and you are going
(42:18):
to have to relocate those families. We can't accommodate them today.
What are we going to do a few years from now?
How do we really begin to engage government today? And
that's why the timing of your episode was really crucial.
How do we engage government so that we really are
developing and using the new infrastructure money and the new
(42:41):
climate change money to make sure we're not displacing people,
but we're implacing them that we're beginning to build communities
that will live beyond the first mortgage cycle. No.
Speaker 1 (42:52):
Absolutely, Well, coming up back to the break, we're going
to talk solutions. We've talked about what gentrification needs, were
trying to figure out who's to blame, but now let's
figure out how to fix it. First off, we need
more people playing music out there. Are you doing that yet?
Jordannah in your new Brooklyn point that speaker out you
(43:15):
gotta be that's one to live. That's a free When
we're getting to the more technical ones after the break,
this is beyond the scenes. Let's talk solutions here for
a second, Ron and Jordonna, until we get the policies
in place, until we get you know, everything that you
all are talking about in terms of establishing you know,
(43:37):
proper rental properties and proper policies, and to stop predatory
real estate, you know, corporations and conglomerates from coming in.
How can the people who currently currently the people who
are currently part of these Brooklyn neighborhoods and not just Brooklyn.
Matter of fact, let's open this up to the whole country.
Gentrification just ain't a Brooklyn thing. How can people in
(44:00):
these neighborhoods helped to honor the rich cultural history and
the places that they're now have chosen to be a
part of.
Speaker 5 (44:08):
I think the first thing is to celebrate the places
that we all live in. I think what has been
going on annually now for a great number of years
in Bedstye, where there's an event on Fulton Street near
Restoration Plaza, I think is a really important event. There
have been similar efforts over the last few years in
(44:29):
Red Hook to really bring people together, show them the waterfront,
make sure that the groups working on this show and
actually parade the diversity and the multiculturalism that exists. I
think that really is a major selling point. Let's attract
people based on the quality of a neighborhood, not based
(44:50):
on really just making money. That should be what we
talk about when we're dealing with housing. I think we
really have to start looking at how we take back
our neighborhoods and promote them.
Speaker 6 (45:03):
When we talked about celebration, I think that's the most
important thing. As I mentioned before, you know, going to
the block parties, bragging about being from Brooklyn, knowing your neighbors,
and making sure that you know you're active in your community.
I know sometimes people think, oh that's corny, an't got
time for it. You have to make time because sooner
or later you're going to look up and be like,
what neighborhood am I in? What block am I on?
(45:25):
So you have to be on your local officials neck.
You have to figure out what permits are being filed.
You have to take action in your neighborhood, even if
you're not a homeowner, right just like rental, you know,
renters are equally as important, right, because you have to say, okay,
well listen, I'm paying you know, let's say, for instance,
a two family apartment, I'm paying some of your mortgage,
(45:47):
so my rights matter too. And I think it's about
being active, not being complacent, and really saying, hey, listen,
I love it here, how can I make it better?
Speaker 4 (45:56):
Right?
Speaker 6 (45:57):
I think as black people, especially, we have to be
the ones to gentify our own blocks. I think that
we cannot sit back and get mad when other people
start seeing the value in our neighborhoods.
Speaker 4 (46:08):
You can't cry over spilt milk, right.
Speaker 1 (46:11):
Because even to the point of like, if you can
find the local businesses and support the local businesses, what's
wild is that you know, the bodega guy that we
were talking about at the top of the show, he
could have made that into a win for himself by
just going there's no grocery stores, so I love going
to bodegas, and I'm going to go to all the
bodegas around me and buy a little bit from all
(46:32):
the bodegas. And it would have been one big Hey,
support local business, kumbai ya, But instead you got fat.
Speaker 5 (46:41):
Years ago, there was a group in Fort Green that
created worked on Myrtle Avenue in Fulton Street and called
it Bogolon. It was based on African fabric and the
various different colors that went into that fabric. We have
to find those keys again. You know, the Brooklyn Movement
(47:02):
Center has been doing a lot of work organizing residents.
We have to begin to again build those foot soldiers
within the neighborhoods that really talk about the culture and
tell the stories about the history. Think about places like
Weeksville Historical Society and what it's doing and what it
(47:22):
really means to have these roots in the community. It's
something that we really have to embrace and not run
away from.
Speaker 6 (47:31):
And just taking the power of your dollar right, you know,
the black spending dollar, right, we have to invest into
our local businesses also, like I make an effort to
go to my local hardware store when I know I
could easily get it shipped or go to home depook correctly,
you know, you have to also start circulating that dollar
in that community. So businesses kind of want to stay,
you know, or those mom and pop operations want to
(47:53):
be there and versus selling their bodego, versus selling their
laundrymat they know they have a loyal customer base versus
kinds of taking the easy way out and getting your
groceries of livered or whatever. Try a save your spending
dollar and put it back in the community, because it
all everything affects everything, right, and people are people at
the basics.
Speaker 4 (48:10):
We are all human.
Speaker 6 (48:11):
We want fair housing, we want fair food, we want
fair access to housing.
Speaker 2 (48:16):
Is a right.
Speaker 4 (48:17):
And if we start treating.
Speaker 6 (48:18):
Our dollar as it's powerful and start making sure like
we are active in our community, nobody can stop us.
Speaker 4 (48:25):
I don't care what you say, Ron.
Speaker 1 (48:28):
You have seen innumerable iterations and evolutions of various boroughs
in New York. What does the future look like? Let's
end on that. You know, what does the future look like?
Because you know, we have people like Jordana and her
husband who are going to be there. They ain't leaving.
They Jordana might mess around, run for city councilor what's
(48:52):
it called over there all demen, I don't know, I
don't know what to call it. What do you think
these neighborhoods are going to be like in the next
ten to twenty years.
Speaker 5 (49:00):
Well, I think we have to change the path we're on,
and I think we have to change that path right away.
What I'd like to see us is to begin to
take some of the money that we have and have
access to and begin to reinvest it in our neighborhoods
by building up those neighborhoods and investing in them dramatically.
We in New York State have something called the stock
(49:22):
Transfer tax. That tax is on the books, it's collected
every day, but it's rebated. That's a tax that if
you spend invest one hundred thousand dollars, the tax is
thirty dollars. That's how the minimus it is that would
generate twelve to fifteen billion dollars a year for New
York State. That we should invest in infrastructure. We should
(49:45):
invest it in transportation and in low and moderate income
housing so that we can really begin to renovate our
neighborhoods and generate the kind of quality neighborhoods that meet
the needs of every income group. We have to start
telling the stories, the stories of how neighbors function and
work together, so that they are the things that attract
(50:08):
people to our neighborhoods. Rather than just thinking that we're
going to make money on housing. I think we have
to critically address the issue of climate change because it
is going to dramatically affect every one of us.
Speaker 2 (50:22):
The number of people.
Speaker 5 (50:23):
That were taken ill because of the recent heat wave
in New York we can't measure. We don't really know,
but I'm willing to bet it was significant. It's going
to get worse. The number of days of over one
hundred degrees is going to increase dramatically over the next
ten to fifteen years. That's a challenge that we have
(50:44):
to convert into an opportunity, an opportunity to build stable, viable, livable,
multi racial communities within the City of New York, ones
that allow people to build their own build on their
own culture, and really celebrate the diversity of this city.
(51:06):
And that, to my mind, is what we should be
working towards and using the challenges, the money that may
be coming from the federal government, the money that we
could generate New York State and use as a model
for the nation the way we did in the thirties,
and really begin to think about how we build a
post racial society, how we can really build a multicultural democracy.
(51:31):
I think that really is something we have to work
on and work towards and invest in that's not going
to happen unless we change those policies.
Speaker 6 (51:40):
To your point about climate change, I mean, there was
a couple of floods that happened last year and people
were dying in basement apartments right flooding, heat, It's getting
really bad. I think that housing across New York is
just such at a turning point right now. So we
definitely have to take action. We definitely have to make
sure that we to each other and mobilize and say, hey,
(52:03):
what can we do to make our living conditions better?
Because as Ron touched on, as you touched on it,
it's a right. I think housing is a right that
some people find it so unattainable, but it's yours. And
I think the other thing too, is just like stop
changing the names of the neighborhoods. That's one thing that
really ticks me off. Like when you guys come here,
I don't want to even South Bronx. It's now so
(52:25):
bro you know, Bedford Staves the High. It's like from
the inception of the time you guys come, it's like, oh,
I don't want to call it Bedsty no more. Well, no,
it's Bedstyd. Respect the neighborhood and stop with all the acronyms.
Speaker 1 (52:37):
Well, I think that's as good a place to end.
And she is a wonderful, wonderful, proud Brooklyn Night. Jordannah,
thank you for going beyond the scenes. And Ron, thank
you for everything that you have contributed to preserving culture
and building culture and making sure that people respect culture.
(52:59):
Thank you all both were going beyond the scenes.
Speaker 2 (53:01):
With the scene. Well, thank you for what you're doing.
Speaker 1 (53:04):
I just try to crack the jokes. You guys do
the real work. Listen to The Daily Show Beyond the
Scenes on Apple Podcasts, the iHeartRadio app, or wherever you
get your podcasts.
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