September 12, 2022 • 54 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.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
You're listening to Comedy Central. What Happens, Roy Wood Jr. Next,
you're about to hear a special presentation of the Daily
Show podcast that I host called Beyond the Scenes. Now.
All it is, it's very simple. If it's a topic
that's already been on the Daily Show, we talk about
it again and we go even deeper on the topic,
(00:22):
and you know, see where we are now on the issue,
get deeper into the origins of the problem. When we
do that with Daily Show producers, writers, correspondents and expert
guests who know a hell of a lot more about
it than us to help us break it down. Heaven listen, Hey,
(00:45):
welcome to Beyond the Scenes, the podcast that goes deeper
into segments and topics that originally aired on The Daily
Show with Trevor No. This is what you gotta think
of this podcast is all right, you've got apple pie.
Everybody love apple pie, right, It's warm, chrispy apple pie.
It's good by myself. This podcast is the Ala mode.
You get that extra scoopa ice cream on that apple
(01:05):
pie and take it to the next level. Baby. Listen.
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
(01:29):
white population in the United States has declined, but there's
one place their numbers are up almost nine Brooklyn. This
wealthy 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 Wes Anderson DVDs
deep into the den of gentrifying Brooklyn, where I sat
(01:49):
down with Tommy Hollie. The white population is going up
almost nine the black population has going down almost nine percent.
Would it be safe to say that that how they're
showing black lives matter by just moving them out to
somewhere else. What they're doing is they're just buying it
out and cleaning out a neighborhood. And it's not right.
Tommy has lived in Brooklyn his entire life. Everything's going
(02:12):
up sky high and it's harder to live. So the
way out is it still the house Tommy's mother bought,
the brownstone in 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 Knight, Geordanna, him and Way Jordanna, how
(02:35):
are you doing today? I'm great? Thank you, well, good
to see you. Good to see you, madam. Brooklyn Knight
and also joining us is a pioneer in urban planning
and a professor at Pratt Institute. Ron Schiffman. How you doing, Professor,
I'm doing really great, really happy to be with you today. Well,
we appreciate you for helping us break down this this
(02:56):
very very difficult topic. You know, Geordanna, let's start with
you did 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 into building with an issue year ago, Guys,
I'm noticing this, then it's something that could eventually work
its way onto the show, as it did with this.
(03:18):
So walk us through your inspiration and how this segment
came together. Well, it was very personal. So I just
bought my house but that home buying process was very difficult,
and I was I wanted to be in Brooklyn. I
did not want to go to Queens. I didn't want
to go to New Jersey. I was just like, no that,
I will not leave Brooklyn. This is where I grew up.
And I started noticing on the trains that like more
(03:43):
white people were like getting off later and later on
the train stops. And then I started and I was like,
wait a minute, you know what's going on here? And
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
(04:04):
at that point, and so this article where the white
population increased everywhere else in the United States except Brooklyn,
New York, and I said, ah, this is what's happening.
I'm not crazy. I'm not seeing things. I'm not being
you know, uh, going down the conspiracy rabbit hole. No,
this is what's happening. And black people are selling their
homes because it's very tempting when you have a developer
(04:26):
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. It
was frustrating. So I always trying 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 pitch things that are
very personal to me because that's why I could get
(04:47):
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 were
hired during COVID, during the social distancing era a couple
of years ago, and so you don't get to hang.
You lose the small talk that happens in an office space.
But once we got back in the office, you know,
you just know somebody like, oh, yeah, you're donna, good
(05:09):
to see you. But then when we went out, when
I went out to talk with Tommy Holley, who was
one of the subjects in the Peace, it 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
(05:30):
to be there and then see the camaraderie between you
and Tommy, between camera setups and all of that stuff.
Talk a little bit about how you became so close
to the people in Brooklyn. Well, it's a little background.
So even go further. So I am married and my
husband is African American slash proto recan, right, And I
saw this happen to him when his grandma, who came
(05:50):
from South Carolina. Uh, they saw that house in Crowd Heights.
And now sometimes in the neighborhood we drive by it
and it's you know, condos, million dollars, right, and like, damn,
that was where we used to live. That was like
his first college apartment. Um. 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.
(06:11):
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. We're basically considering
selling their homes, and then I started noticing changes. I'm like, okay,
well there's less cookouts now. Uh, people are not as friendly,
you know yeah, block parties, right, there was less of
(06:34):
those that'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 the band, right, so there's
five million homeowners that are looking for home that kid
not you know, by UM in New York. It's just
(06:56):
even if you see the videos on TikTok and snap
chat where people are on line 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.
But it shouldn't be like that in New York. You know,
New York used to be a community. You should be
able to go to your corner store and know your
neighbor's name and know you know someone so down the block.
And I just feel like even in UM College, I
(07:19):
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 to gentrify
our own blocks. Are blocks are beautiful? Right, it's it's
we could gentrify our own blocks. We could call three
on one, I mean on like, hey, listen, they need
(07:40):
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 already did it when white
people came in. And sometimes that's true because sometimes police
uh don't pay attention to the to the natives of
that block until more money is being uh invested into it. Yeah,
(08:03):
so it's kind of frustrating. And that's why I was
just like, listen, here is a seidway. This is kind
of funny that the white population is kind of decreasing
everywhere else. This has Daily Show britten all over it.
But let's talk about the meat and potatoes. So that's
why it came out run When we talk about gentrification
just as a phenomenon for our listeners, first and foremost,
(08:24):
can you define it can Let's let's 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 a Whole Foods,
stuff is happening. When the bodega selling almond milk, you
see one of them hacky sack boys. I can't trust
(08:45):
nobody with a hacky set. That's when it's But let's
define gentrification. 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
(09:07):
something that one has to fight against. The fact that
the area improves economically and UH provides opportunity for people
who live there, UH to make new connections and to
live a better life. To me is a goal in life,
and I Jordana, I think expressed it much better than
I could. What really scares me is that people want
(09:30):
to find out what are the indicators of gentrification before
they want to do anything 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 displacement
issues which I think are really the most important one.
(09:52):
And as Jordana alluded to, also a housing program. We
need to have build housing that people can afford. Uh
and that housing is who 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 areas gentrifying is to
talk to the people there. Is to see what's going
(10:13):
on on the streets, to go to the supermarkets and
the storefronts and the commercial strips, and to see how
it breathes. And when I go through neighborhoods, whether it's
Bushwick or Red Hook or others, it's palpable that change
is taking place. People are afraid. People are afraid. In Bushwick,
(10:33):
we were working with a team of people Make the
Road a number of years ago, a really great group
that organizes that engages new new immigrant populations in the
in the 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
(10:55):
had safer streets and better schools, that they wouldn't live
there in anymore, that it would be for somebody else,
and that is a condition that we can't accept. We
have to arrive 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,
(11:16):
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 give up their seat. And that's what gentrification
has been doing as a dynamic. And what we've got
to do is do what exactly what you guys did.
(11:38):
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 to them, what what it means
when neighbors come in and don't really are not neighborly.
That skit was dynamite, and I think it really Uh,
(12:00):
I'm being very serious and we shouldn't be so serious,
but this is a serious topic. We really have to
begin to talk about housing and housing as a human right.
How do we finance it, how do we make 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. And I think
(12:22):
that's that's the real struggle. 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 I and the deep dive into this, I think
is really extremely helpful. And I really want to raise
a glass and toast you guys for doing it. Thank you,
(12:45):
thank you so much for that. You hit at Trevor
Nola and he just said, to give us a race,
to give us, Yeah, give them a race. 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 There was a young white guy
(13:06):
in his early twenties who lost a job after moving
to New York and walking around the neighborhood and making
fun of the bodega's, not realizing that he was in
a food desert. He was making a video complaining that
there were no grocery stores and every time he google
Google to grocery store, Google sent him to a bodega,
and he didn't even he just was just completely unaware
(13:27):
that where you've chosen to live for so long has
marginalized the community. Okay, so I just moved to New
York and I'm trying to go grocery shopping until I
type in the grocery stores on my Apple maps, and
like everything when I go to, like I'm walking to,
like they're like this, like like that's like, brother, it's
(13:47):
not a grocery store. Like I'm trying to get like
egg yogurt, like cheese like like that, right, Like where
are the Krogers and like the Whole Foods at? Is
there a way to educate people so that they don't
come and to be disrespectful or is their presence in
a way inherently net negative for the neighborhood. I don't
say right now. I don't think that guy should deserve
(14:09):
to get fired, right I think he deserved to get educated.
I think that he didn't know. I think a lot
of people from you know, the Midwest, the South, everybody
comes to New York and it's just like which is
where he was from, you know, and they're like, wait
a minute, where's my publics? Where's my we don't got that.
We got Carlos Vondega, you know, and um. Another thing
(14:29):
we kind of touched on the piece, and I kind
of feel like it matters at this point is sometimes
gentrification is not necessarily a race thing either, Right. I
think sometimes it could be a class thing. I think
it could be sometimes maybe who has more money, because
you know, maybe I'm a gentrifier, right, Maybe I probably
tentrified somebody, and maybe I'm complaining about the lack of
almond milk. Right. There was one guy in the piece.
(14:51):
He was a Jewish guy in our piece. I don't
know if you remember him, and he lived in Crown
Heights and he got pushed out. So sometimes it's not
necessarily like the the little 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
(15:13):
everybody should have for access to housing. You know, the
black homeownership rate right now is less than what it
was like ten years ago. It's getting worse for black
homowners and we have to act ourself. 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 was like, oh, that was
(15:33):
so long ago. Real estate is the greatest transfer 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 I mean. And there's
no it is what it is. 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
(15:55):
when you look at just people like that guy on
that TikTok video, who's just like why has it no bodegas?
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 that my grocery store
only has like chips and snacks and stuff like that.
I'm not trying to get the bodega, bros. But we
(16:15):
should have that equal opportunity to And what Ron touched on,
like sometimes there is a fair 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. They're like, where are you going?
And I remember seeing it and I remember being scared, like, well, shoot,
there's a new tesla being built, the ikea coming down?
Are they going to raise my rent? And that fear
(16:37):
is something that 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, um, 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.
(17:00):
So it's just really messed up all around. You know.
The whole issue of housing as a means for building wealth,
obviously it occurs, and it's a 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
(17:21):
in some parts of of Cleveland, or even parts of
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 bed Stye in the sixties, we held
hearings on insurance redlining because somebody because of the color
(17:42):
of their skin could got could not get to the
kind of insurance they 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 is
a right that doesn't diminish over time, uh other people
(18:06):
of low income getting it. It's not that if we
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 as a financial vehicle,
as a commodity is really something I think we have
to address, and we have to find other ways of
(18:26):
really building wealth in communities as well as investing in
housing it in real estate ron What are some of
those other negative and positive impacts, if any, that gentrification
has on a 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. Well, one of
(18:49):
the benefits that occurs is when you have a mixed
income community and it doesn't have to be based only
on race. UH. As Jordana mentioned on economic adversity, is
that the younger kids who are impoverished and grow up
and mixed neighborhoods apparently are doing much better than kids
who grow up and are isolated from UH. The contacts,
(19:13):
just pure contacts are important to have within a society.
And I'm a great believer in social and economic integration.
It's it's in my roots, it's in my blood, and
it's something I've always fought for and really work towards
over my life. But the fact of the matter is,
I think we need to begin to look at investing
(19:34):
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. We have to
(19:58):
make sure that what we're doing is we're providing opportunities
for people to access all of the instant the mechanisms
that they need in order to get housing, the technical expertise,
the initial financing UH, the ability to stay within their
own homes if they have some economic difficulty. A home
(20:19):
is more than just the four walls. 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 it's the friendships. And how do
you how do we really begin to value that. I
think what we need to do is really develop a
(20:42):
universal housing program that everybody has the right to a house.
Everybody has a right to a house 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
(21:04):
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 not only comedians, but
we need weavers, people who will take these ideas and
weave them together to create more viable communities. And the
first one is to stop the speculation. I think we
(21:25):
really need to make sure that people can get the
invest in housing they can make, get their money back
so 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.
(21:45):
Uh And as a result, everybody loses. You 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 take
those taxes and direct them to low income families. Okay,
now I want to get into that after the break,
(22:07):
because I want to talk about who's to blame. Is
that the people that are buying, it's the people that
are selling. Is that 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
impacts communities on socioeconomic level and education and opportunities and
(22:31):
the stripping of culture. And we didn't forgot to talk
about Dredanna. They paint over murals in some of these spots.
They just what's that a nice picture that artist did
to add some character to the neighborhood. Let me just
put a nice for no reason. But Ron, I'd like
to start with you, and let's talk a little bit
(22:52):
about how crime and policing changes in the gentrification piece.
When I had spoken with some of the wonderful, wonderful
women at Brooklyn Nights, they talked about how, you know,
people will just call three one one for Ran the snitchers.
I wouldn't say it, but to say it, so let's
get it, do it? Run? Well you said it's and
(23:13):
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 moved 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 refer to the past. Right when I
(23:35):
moved first, you know, New Bedford Stuyveson, it had four
hundred or five hundred block associations. There was even a
group called the Association of Associations. It was a network
of people. They were friends, they were neighbors. And if
you want to move into a neighborhood, you move in
there and become part and adopt its culture. And over
(23:58):
time cultures will change, don't 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? Why should they
be harassed to sell their property? Obviously that skip with
(24:19):
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 an antagonism of that state or is he
going to lose all his friends on that block? This
(24:43):
guy rocketing, how's it going for three me? Before? Wait,
I'm sorry, what did you say? The houses in the
best tag of a three million? Now three million dollars?
How the twenty three seven dollars and you can sell
it right now for closer to me. Oh, you got
to go a minute. You don't want to say that
(25:04):
was just stay did that before you told me what
you was hidden? You know, the money is great, but
it's not everything. We've got to provide alternatives and we've
got to make sure that we are we slow down
the speed of change. And it took people to understand
the neighborhood they move in. It's not just a place
(25:25):
to buy a house. 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.
I think one of the issues, at least what I
gathered in Geordanna. 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
(25:47):
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 know,
your dollar is gonna go a lot further in Florida. Now, granted,
you're gonna probably get called inward a couple of times
that there's an inward tax you have to pay, depending
(26:09):
on the county. But you know, I think that that's
what a lot of residents, you know, we're dealing with.
It's just what I found so interesting though, GRADNNA was
despite of people calling in noise complaints and increases in
racial profiling or even the stealing of Amazon packages, it
seems that a lot of the black Brooklyn Nights still
have a resolve where even with the changes in their
(26:31):
relationship with law enforcement, as white residents become uncomfortable with
black people who were indigenous to that to that block,
somehow they're still okay with staying. Why do you think
that is? I think it's just the principle, right, It's
like I'm not leaving. I'm not leaving, you know. Uh.
And that's how I felt too. Uh. Previously we talked
(26:51):
about some of the signs and justifications, and for me,
the sign is like the three there's the white woman
running with her dog late at night. If I see
that happening, okay, something's going down. Um. There is the
white woman asking the Jamaican restaurant for a free stample.
I'm like, Okay, what's going on? And then there's a
the white person that's just basically complaining about the Labor
(27:11):
Day parade or complaining about a block party. Right. I
think the issue that we have as Brooklyn Knights is
I love Brooklyn so much. I love it. I talk.
You ask any Brooklyn night where they're from. They don't
say I'm a New Yorker. They say I'm from Brooklyn.
That's how I introduced myself. So of course I want
to share my borrow with anybody and everybody. The issue
(27:31):
I have is that when you guys come here and
you call the cops instead of introducing yourself and you,
you know, you complain about a block party that has
been happening, like the West, like the Labor Day parade
for instance, that's been going on for over thirty years.
You complain about it. You complain about the jerk chicken
being sold on the corner, and and that's the issue
we have. Of Course, I would love people to talk
(27:53):
and talk about Brooklyn, visit Brooklyn, and live in Brooklyn.
But I think the sense of community has just gone.
And I feel like in Tommy going to do it.
He would stay if he didn't feel like an outsider.
Do you understand how hard it was? I remember when
he told that story. You know, he was moved to tears.
This white woman holding her purse and this is an
old man with his old magic stick member and it's
(28:14):
just like the how degrading was that? Right? And this
guy has been there for decades, and it's just like
that feeling of feel like an outsider in your own neighborhood,
where you were born, where you grew up. It just
it sucks. So there's two people. There's and people that says,
you know what, I'm gonna leave because the area around me,
the neighborhood, is not the neighborhood no more. I can't
afford the bodega, right because the bodega switching to hemp milk,
(28:37):
all the milk, all these different type of milks. Um,
I can't afford anything else going on, like the laundry mat,
the nel salon. Everything has gone up. So let me
just take my dollars to South Beach wherever, right like
Lebron and just move. 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 for black people
in Brooklyn if you have the mind, if you have
(29:00):
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 I get emotional when I hear
people selling their homes. I'm like, damn, come on, man,
what do we gotta do? You know? And it's really
hard when you have flying at your house when as
as Ron mentioned, you know, you could be house rich
(29:22):
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 with
a lot of responsibility. But we need the access. And
there's a lot of grant programs that people like to
throw around that word or you could get a grant,
could get a grant where tell me, I would love
(29:43):
to know. It's so hard to get some of these programs,
and it's it's unfortunate that the easy way out is leaving.
Who has the will to really just fight all the time.
It's really hard, but I implore people to 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
(30:04):
I a gentrified because I moved into a predominly Spanish
neighborhood and they play bad Bunny all times to night.
But I'm like, okay, well, I can't call you know,
I can't call the cops on these people. I don't
want to be the person that Tommy and Judith were
talking about. So it's like meeting my neighbors right, meeting people,
going to the community garden and introducing myself saying, hey,
(30:26):
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
and going to their you know, fancy coffee 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 one Brooklyn Knight that's like, you know,
we would love to share it. I just think it's
(30:48):
the way I think Tommy touched on it, or don't
Judah did about like, you know, integration right, people from Brooklyn.
From Brooklyn, when you didn't eat masks where it was from,
what would you like to eat for sure? Do you say? So?
I grew up in the Bronx and it took a
(31:09):
it was a psychic change to move to Brooklyn because
Bronx sites would never moved to Brooklyn in those days. Uh.
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.
And it was when people were leaving the city. The
(31:29):
city was losing population in the seventies. You know, New
York City was losing maybe thirty thou apartments a year.
It was shrinking. And what saved the city where the
community based organizations and the groups like that sty Restoration,
the groups of Fort Green, the groups in Red Hook
(31:50):
and all other places that stabilized the neighborhoods that fought
for a federal government to stop there what were basically
discriminatory lending policies, changing the f h A to begin
to lend money to stop what was really what we're
(32:10):
fast foreclosure schemes. You would go into a neighborhood East
New York for instance, you'd go into that neighborhood uh
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 have stage fights in the street.
(32:31):
They would then panic, they by the buildings low. They
would then get the federal government to ensure them they'd
sell to a black or a Lutino 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. They pitted white racist
(32:53):
fears against whites and blacks, and it really was and
we had to take them to we could document that
there were places that were basically using government programs and
manipulating them for fast for these fast for closure schemes.
To that point, run then this sounds like gentrification to
(33:14):
a degree is something of a bunch of different entities
all working in concerts. 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, you have real estate developers
that are predatory Airbnb is a big issue as well.
We got everybody wanting to flip a house because they
(33:36):
don't watch two shows in a row on on h
G TV 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 and redlining that also have helped as
well to contribute to this issue. So is there any
one specific smoking gun. There isn't one specifics how can gum.
(34:00):
But there's a whole network of systemic racist policies that
have come to play an ongoing role. Whether or not
people know doing are doing it willingly or unwillingly, the
systems still persist, and we you still have real estate
agents that are involved in racial steering. You'll be sent
(34:21):
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
(34:42):
healthy development of all our communities, looking 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.
(35:06):
We're building a hundred units of housing tent which will
be low income so that it will be in many
ways accommodate the ones we displaced, But seventy 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.
(35:28):
That kind of inclusionary housing works if you want to
build a racially in economically integrated community. It doesn't work
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
(35:49):
the needs of every quartile of our population, and we
have to start really promoting what really are our healthy communities. Yeah,
I mean, I'm gonna just say it right now. I
think real estate it's just racist right currently in twins
Wain two, if I wou was to get my house appraised.
(36:09):
And a white pers supposed to sit in this house
and get it a praise, they're going to get a
better appraisal value. That happened during COVID. There was a
black family that happened to in Seattle. It happens all
over the country. So now not only let's say you
can't buy a house, but then you do the right thing.
You save you a little money, you get your little
f H loan, you do all the right things. But
now when it simes to that for appraisal, automatically, I'm
(36:31):
getting less. So we just have to really take a
deeper look at real estate and figure out how can
we change it right, How do we get the 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
(36:52):
shows accountable. So maybe that means going to and now
it's on zoom Roy, you could go and speak up
on the on the meeting and knowing your council member
his 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 history and really
rolling up your sleeves and getting your hands dirty. And
(37:14):
when you talk about East 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 able to action. So that means looking up where
they're pulling permits. Where are some of these developers going.
If you don't want to be a problem, 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 making a
luxury building. No, I want to be I have ego,
(37:36):
I have pries. I'm know I'm gonna plant myself here.
I'm gonna buy a house in East New York Cypress
Whos 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 automaticew assume let's go to
South Carolina, let's go to you know a t L.
I love Wakonda, I love a t L. Don't be wrong,
but there's great stuff for black people in Brooklyn too.
(37:56):
And I just think that we have this automatic like
you know what, it's way to expect. I said, let
me just leave, whereas others are trying to they see
the value in Brooklyn, and it's just really hard and
race and racism is threaded throughout the whole real estate process.
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
(38:20):
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 is woven
into the fabric of communities that it's right next to
middle income, right next to home ownership areas. We have
(38:40):
to think about social housing UH public housing, housing that's
owned by the UH 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 seven, occupied primarily by white families. It was a
step up. New York City still has thousands upon thousands
(39:02):
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. 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 just got an asshole who's
(39:25):
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. Well, one of the things
that occurred, you know, during previous the COVID was putting
pressure on the Doblasio administration to stop the harassment that
was going on in Crown Heights and the harassment that
was going on in East New York in many other
(39:46):
places in the city, and so setting up these anti
harassment units where people really know they could go into
South Brooklyn Legal Services or they could go into Williamsburg
Legal Services and get support by some of the UH
Legal of UH lawyers there to go after the landlords.
It really is important because that was happening. They would
(40:09):
come in, they buy a building, right, they vacate one
or two apartments, and they 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 legal and
(40:31):
the technical and the organizational capacity to follow through. A
housing program involves organizing, It involves uh, you know, financing,
it involves regulation, and the role of government has to
be one that is not passive. And people can't have
to not be passive. We have to really stand up
(40:54):
for our neighbors and begin to organize on a community
by community basis. 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? What's going on?
You know, and just organizing. So I think, um, you know,
(41:14):
the power of like five is better than power in 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 entire Redismate law firms and just trying to say, hey, listen,
something weird is going on here. Um, I don't know
who the girl to can you help me? You know?
And it's unfair because you look at the rental prices,
(41:36):
the average amount of rent right now in New York
it's like three thou dollars depending where you're at. You know,
you look at certain place and it's unfortunate because people
are lining up that. I remember one comedian said, oh,
New York is dead, right, and now New York came
back tenfold right now? What Now there's no houses to
(41:58):
be bought, there's no apartment 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, obviously government, but
we have to take action to and 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?
(42:20):
You lived in Red Hook and so you know what happened,
you know, just ten years ago this fall right uh,
when all of a sudden the waters came in. And
what saved a lot of the neighborhood with the green
space around the public housing because it absorbed water and
you never got credit for that that. Meanwhile, the folks
in public housing didn't have electricity for months. What's going
(42:42):
to happen to that huge supply of public housing which
is in harm's way. Within fifteen to twenty years, we're
gonna lose those units and you're going 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
(43:06):
why the timing of your episode was really crucial. How
do we how do we engage government so that we
really are developing and using the new infrastructure money and
the new climate change money to make sure we're not
displacing people, but we're emplacing them, that we're beginning to
build communities that will live beyond the first mortgage cycle. No. Absolutely,
(43:30):
we're coming up after the break. We're going to talk solutions.
We've talked about what gentrification is. We're 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? Gredonna? At
the point that speaker out, thank gotta, that's once in that.
(43:54):
That's a free one. We'll get into the more technical
ones after the break. This is beyond the scenes. Let's
talk solutions here for a second, right, Andrew Donna, 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, proper rental properties and proper policies, and
(44:17):
to stop predatory real estate, you know, corporations and conglomerates
from coming in. How can the people who currently currently
who the people who are currently part of these Brooklyn
neighborhoods and not just Brooklyn, matter of fact, let's open
it up to the whole country gentrification just saying a
Brooklyn thing. How can people in these neighborhoods help to
(44:39):
honor the rich cultural history and the places that they're
now you know, have chosen to be a part of.
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 bed Stye, where there's an event on Fulton Street
your Restoration Laws, I think is a really important event. Uh.
(45:03):
There have been similar efforts over the last few years
in Red Hook to really bring people together, show them
the waterfront, make sure that the group's working on this show,
and 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
(45:27):
based 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. We talked about celebration.
I think that's the most important thing. As I mentioned before,
you know, going to the black parties, bragging about being
(45:47):
from Brooklyn, knowing your neighbors, and making sure that you
know you're active in your community. I know sometimes people think, O,
that's corny or I don't got time for it. You
have to make time because sooner or later you're gonna
look up and be like, what neighborhood in my and
what block am I on? 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
(46:09):
in your neighborhood, even if you're not a homeowner. Right.
Just like rental, you know, renters aren't equally as important,
right because you have to say, okay, well listen, I'm
paying you know, let's say, for instance, a to family apartment.
I'm paying some of your more mortgage. 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,
(46:32):
how can I make it better? Right? I think as
Black people, especially, we have to be the ones to
gentrify our own blocks. I think that we cannot sit
back and get mad when other people start seeing the
value in our neighborhoods. You can't cry over spilt milk,
right because like, even to the point of like, if
you can find the local businesses and support the local businesses,
(46:54):
what's wild is that you know, the bodega guy that
we were talking about at the top of the show,
he would 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 gonna go to all the
bodegas around me and by a little bit from all
the bodegas, and it would have been one big hey,
support local business kumbay yah. But instead you get fact
(47:17):
years ago, there was a group in Fort Green that
created worked on Myrtle Avenue in Fulton Street, UH and
called it Bogolon. It was based on African fabric UH
and the various different colors that went into that fabric.
We have to find those keys again. You know, the
(47:38):
Brooklyn Movement 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 in like Weeksville Historic Society and what it's doing
(47:59):
and what it really means to have these roots in
the community. It's it's something that we really have to
embrace and not run away from. 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 deep on correctly. You know, you
(48:21):
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 be there and
versus selling their bode versus selling their laundry mat they
know they have a loyal customer base versus kind of
taking the easy way out and getting your groceries delivered
or whatever. Try and save your spending dollar and put
(48:42):
it back in the community, because it all everything affects everything, right,
and people are people at the basics. We are all human.
We want fair housing, we want fair food, we want
fair access to the housings are right. And if we
start treating our dollar as it's powerful and start making
sure like we are active in our community, nobody, nobody
can stop us. I don't care what you say. Run.
(49:05):
You have seen innumerable iterations and evolutions of various boroughs
of New York. What does the future look like? Let's
let's end on that. You know what, what does the
future look like? Because you know, we have people like
Jordana and her husband who are gonna be there. They
at leaving neighbor Jordana might mess around, run for city council.
(49:29):
What's it called over there, Alderman, I don't know. I
don't know what they call it. What do you think
these neighborhoods are gonna be like in the next ten
to twenty years? Right? 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
(49:49):
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 Transfer tax that taxes
on the books. It's collected every day, but it's rebated.
That's a tax that if you spend invest a hundred
thousand dollars, the taxes thirty dollars. That's how the minimus
(50:13):
it is that would generate twelve to fifteen billion dollars
a year for New York State. That we should invest
in infrastructure, We should invest 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 be the needs of every income group. We
(50:36):
have to start telling the stories, the stories of how
neighbors function and work together, so that they are the
things that attract 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
(50:58):
of us. The number of people that were taken ill
because of the recent he 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 a hundred degrees is going
to increase dramatically over the next ten to fifteen years.
(51:20):
That's a challenge that we have 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
create and and really celebrate the diversity of this city.
(51:43):
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,
uh and really begin to think about how we build
a post racial society, how how we can really build
(52:06):
a multicultural democracy. I think that really is something we
have to work on and work towards an invest in
It's that's not going to happen unless we change those
policies 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 um, flooding, heat,
(52:26):
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 talk to each other and
mobilize and say, hey, what can we do to make
our living conditions better? Because as Ron touched on, as
you touched on, it's it's a right. I think housing
is a right that some people find it so unattainable,
(52:50):
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 bro you know, better steppings, the heightst
like from the inception of the time you guys come,
it's like, oh, I don't want to call it bed
style no more. We'll know what's best, respect the neighborhood
(53:12):
and stop all the acronyms. Well, I think That's a
good place to end. And she is a wonderful, wonderful,
proud Brooklyn Night. Geordanna, 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
(53:34):
people respect culture. Thank you all both for going beyond
the scenes with us. Well, thank you for what you're doing.
I just try to crack the jokes. You guys do
the real work. Listen to The Daily Show Beyond the
Scenes on Apple podcast, the I Heart Radio app, or
(53:54):
wherever you get your podcasts. What's the Daily Show weeknights
at eleven tenth Central on Comedy Central and stream full
episodes anytime on Paramount Plus. This has been a Comedy
Central podcast
You're listening to Comedy Central. What Happens, Roy Wood Jr. Next,
you're about to hear a special presentation of the Daily
Show podcast that I host called Beyond the Scenes. Now.
All it is, it's very simple. If it's a topic
that's already been on the Daily Show, we talk about
it again and we go even deeper on the topic,
(00:22):
and you know, see where we are now on the issue,
get deeper into the origins of the problem. When we
do that with Daily Show producers, writers, correspondents and expert
guests who know a hell of a lot more about
it than us to help us break it down. Heaven listen, Hey,
(00:45):
welcome to Beyond the Scenes, the podcast that goes deeper
into segments and topics that originally aired on The Daily
Show with Trevor No. This is what you gotta think
of this podcast is all right, you've got apple pie.
Everybody love apple pie, right, It's warm, chrispy apple pie.
It's good by myself. This podcast is the Ala mode.
You get that extra scoopa ice cream on that apple
(01:05):
pie and take it to the next level. Baby. Listen.
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
(01:29):
white population in the United States has declined, but there's
one place their numbers are up almost nine Brooklyn. This
wealthy 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 Wes Anderson DVDs
deep into the den of gentrifying Brooklyn, where I sat
(01:49):
down with Tommy Hollie. The white population is going up
almost nine the black population has going down almost nine percent.
Would it be safe to say that that how they're
showing black lives matter by just moving them out to
somewhere else. What they're doing is they're just buying it
out and cleaning out a neighborhood. And it's not right.
Tommy has lived in Brooklyn his entire life. Everything's going
(02:12):
up sky high and it's harder to live. So the
way out is it still the house Tommy's mother bought,
the brownstone in 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 Knight, Geordanna, him and Way Jordanna, how
(02:35):
are you doing today? I'm great? Thank you, well, good
to see you. Good to see you, madam. Brooklyn Knight
and also joining us is a pioneer in urban planning
and a professor at Pratt Institute. Ron Schiffman. How you doing, Professor,
I'm doing really great, really happy to be with you today. Well,
we appreciate you for helping us break down this this
(02:56):
very very difficult topic. You know, Geordanna, let's start with
you did 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 into building with an issue year ago, Guys,
I'm noticing this, then it's something that could eventually work
its way onto the show, as it did with this.
(03:18):
So walk us through your inspiration and how this segment
came together. Well, it was very personal. So I just
bought my house but that home buying process was very difficult,
and I was I wanted to be in Brooklyn. I
did not want to go to Queens. I didn't want
to go to New Jersey. I was just like, no that,
I will not leave Brooklyn. This is where I grew up.
And I started noticing on the trains that like more
(03:43):
white people were like getting off later and later on
the train stops. And then I started and I was like,
wait a minute, you know what's going on here? And
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
(04:04):
at that point, and so this article where the white
population increased everywhere else in the United States except Brooklyn,
New York, and I said, ah, this is what's happening.
I'm not crazy. I'm not seeing things. I'm not being
you know, uh, going down the conspiracy rabbit hole. No,
this is what's happening. And black people are selling their
homes because it's very tempting when you have a developer
(04:26):
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. It
was frustrating. So I always trying 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 pitch things that are
very personal to me because that's why I could get
(04:47):
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 were
hired during COVID, during the social distancing era a couple
of years ago, and so you don't get to hang.
You lose the small talk that happens in an office space.
But once we got back in the office, you know,
you just know somebody like, oh, yeah, you're donna, good
(05:09):
to see you. But then when we went out, when
I went out to talk with Tommy Holley, who was
one of the subjects in the Peace, it 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
(05:30):
to be there and then see the camaraderie between you
and Tommy, between camera setups and all of that stuff.
Talk a little bit about how you became so close
to the people in Brooklyn. Well, it's a little background.
So even go further. So I am married and my
husband is African American slash proto recan, right, And I
saw this happen to him when his grandma, who came
(05:50):
from South Carolina. Uh, they saw that house in Crowd Heights.
And now sometimes in the neighborhood we drive by it
and it's you know, condos, million dollars, right, and like, damn,
that was where we used to live. That was like
his first college apartment. Um. 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.
(06:11):
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. We're basically considering
selling their homes, and then I started noticing changes. I'm like, okay,
well there's less cookouts now. Uh, people are not as friendly,
you know yeah, block parties, right, there was less of
(06:34):
those that'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 the band, right, so there's
five million homeowners that are looking for home that kid
not you know, by UM in New York. It's just
(06:56):
even if you see the videos on TikTok and snap
chat where people are on line 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.
But it shouldn't be like that in New York. You know,
New York used to be a community. You should be
able to go to your corner store and know your
neighbor's name and know you know someone so down the block.
And I just feel like even in UM College, I
(07:19):
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 to gentrify
our own blocks. Are blocks are beautiful? Right, it's it's
we could gentrify our own blocks. We could call three
on one, I mean on like, hey, listen, they need
(07:40):
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 already did it when white
people came in. And sometimes that's true because sometimes police
uh don't pay attention to the to the natives of
that block until more money is being uh invested into it. Yeah,
(08:03):
so it's kind of frustrating. And that's why I was
just like, listen, here is a seidway. This is kind
of funny that the white population is kind of decreasing
everywhere else. This has Daily Show britten all over it.
But let's talk about the meat and potatoes. So that's
why it came out run When we talk about gentrification
just as a phenomenon for our listeners, first and foremost,
(08:24):
can you define it can Let's let's 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 a Whole Foods,
stuff is happening. When the bodega selling almond milk, you
see one of them hacky sack boys. I can't trust
(08:45):
nobody with a hacky set. That's when it's But let's
define gentrification. 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
(09:07):
something that one has to fight against. The fact that
the area improves economically and UH provides opportunity for people
who live there, UH to make new connections and to
live a better life. To me is a goal in life,
and I Jordana, I think expressed it much better than
I could. What really scares me is that people want
(09:30):
to find out what are the indicators of gentrification before
they want to do anything 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 displacement
issues which I think are really the most important one.
(09:52):
And as Jordana alluded to, also a housing program. We
need to have build housing that people can afford. Uh
and that housing is who 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 areas gentrifying is to
talk to the people there. Is to see what's going
(10:13):
on on the streets, to go to the supermarkets and
the storefronts and the commercial strips, and to see how
it breathes. And when I go through neighborhoods, whether it's
Bushwick or Red Hook or others, it's palpable that change
is taking place. People are afraid. People are afraid. In Bushwick,
(10:33):
we were working with a team of people Make the
Road a number of years ago, a really great group
that organizes that engages new new immigrant populations in the
in the 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
(10:55):
had safer streets and better schools, that they wouldn't live
there in anymore, that it would be for somebody else,
and that is a condition that we can't accept. We
have to arrive 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,
(11:16):
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 give up their seat. And that's what gentrification
has been doing as a dynamic. And what we've got
to do is do what exactly what you guys did.
(11:38):
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 to them, what what it means
when neighbors come in and don't really are not neighborly.
That skit was dynamite, and I think it really Uh,
(12:00):
I'm being very serious and we shouldn't be so serious,
but this is a serious topic. We really have to
begin to talk about housing and housing as a human right.
How do we finance it, how do we make 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. And I think
(12:22):
that's that's the real struggle. 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 I and the deep dive into this, I think
is really extremely helpful. And I really want to raise
a glass and toast you guys for doing it. Thank you,
(12:45):
thank you so much for that. You hit at Trevor
Nola and he just said, to give us a race,
to give us, Yeah, give them a race. 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 There was a young white guy
(13:06):
in his early twenties who lost a job after moving
to New York and walking around the neighborhood and making
fun of the bodega's, not realizing that he was in
a food desert. He was making a video complaining that
there were no grocery stores and every time he google
Google to grocery store, Google sent him to a bodega,
and he didn't even he just was just completely unaware
(13:27):
that where you've chosen to live for so long has
marginalized the community. Okay, so I just moved to New
York and I'm trying to go grocery shopping until I
type in the grocery stores on my Apple maps, and
like everything when I go to, like I'm walking to,
like they're like this, like like that's like, brother, it's
(13:47):
not a grocery store. Like I'm trying to get like
egg yogurt, like cheese like like that, right, Like where
are the Krogers and like the Whole Foods at? Is
there a way to educate people so that they don't
come and to be disrespectful or is their presence in
a way inherently net negative for the neighborhood. I don't
say right now. I don't think that guy should deserve
(14:09):
to get fired, right I think he deserved to get educated.
I think that he didn't know. I think a lot
of people from you know, the Midwest, the South, everybody
comes to New York and it's just like which is
where he was from, you know, and they're like, wait
a minute, where's my publics? Where's my we don't got that.
We got Carlos Vondega, you know, and um. Another thing
(14:29):
we kind of touched on the piece, and I kind
of feel like it matters at this point is sometimes
gentrification is not necessarily a race thing either, Right. I
think sometimes it could be a class thing. I think
it could be sometimes maybe who has more money, because
you know, maybe I'm a gentrifier, right, Maybe I probably
tentrified somebody, and maybe I'm complaining about the lack of
almond milk. Right. There was one guy in the piece.
(14:51):
He was a Jewish guy in our piece. I don't
know if you remember him, and he lived in Crown
Heights and he got pushed out. So sometimes it's not
necessarily like the the little 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
(15:13):
everybody should have for access to housing. You know, the
black homeownership rate right now is less than what it
was like ten years ago. It's getting worse for black
homowners and we have to act ourself. 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 was like, oh, that was
(15:33):
so long ago. Real estate is the greatest transfer 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 I mean. And there's
no it is what it is. 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
(15:55):
when you look at just people like that guy on
that TikTok video, who's just like why has it no bodegas?
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 that my grocery store
only has like chips and snacks and stuff like that.
I'm not trying to get the bodega, bros. But we
(16:15):
should have that equal opportunity to And what Ron touched on,
like sometimes there is a fair 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. They're like, where are you going?
And I remember seeing it and I remember being scared, like, well, shoot,
there's a new tesla being built, the ikea coming down?
Are they going to raise my rent? And that fear
(16:37):
is something that 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, um, 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.
(17:00):
So it's just really messed up all around. You know.
The whole issue of housing as a means for building wealth,
obviously it occurs, and it's a 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
(17:21):
in some parts of of Cleveland, or even parts of
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 bed Stye in the sixties, we held
hearings on insurance redlining because somebody because of the color
(17:42):
of their skin could got could not get to the
kind of insurance they 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 is
a right that doesn't diminish over time, uh other people
(18:06):
of low income getting it. It's not that if we
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 as a financial vehicle,
as a commodity is really something I think we have
to address, and we have to find other ways of
(18:26):
really building wealth in communities as well as investing in
housing it in real estate ron What are some of
those other negative and positive impacts, if any, that gentrification
has on a 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. Well, one of
(18:49):
the benefits that occurs is when you have a mixed
income community and it doesn't have to be based only
on race. UH. As Jordana mentioned on economic adversity, is
that the younger kids who are impoverished and grow up
and mixed neighborhoods apparently are doing much better than kids
who grow up and are isolated from UH. The contacts,
(19:13):
just pure contacts are important to have within a society.
And I'm a great believer in social and economic integration.
It's it's in my roots, it's in my blood, and
it's something I've always fought for and really work towards
over my life. But the fact of the matter is,
I think we need to begin to look at investing
(19:34):
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. We have to
(19:58):
make sure that what we're doing is we're providing opportunities
for people to access all of the instant the mechanisms
that they need in order to get housing, the technical expertise,
the initial financing UH, the ability to stay within their
own homes if they have some economic difficulty. A home
(20:19):
is more than just the four walls. 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 it's the friendships. And how do
you how do we really begin to value that. I
think what we need to do is really develop a
(20:42):
universal housing program that everybody has the right to a house.
Everybody has a right to a house 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
(21:04):
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 not only comedians, but
we need weavers, people who will take these ideas and
weave them together to create more viable communities. And the
first one is to stop the speculation. I think we
(21:25):
really need to make sure that people can get the
invest in housing they can make, get their money back
so 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.
(21:45):
Uh And as a result, everybody loses. You 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 take
those taxes and direct them to low income families. Okay,
now I want to get into that after the break,
(22:07):
because I want to talk about who's to blame. Is
that the people that are buying, it's the people that
are selling. Is that 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
impacts communities on socioeconomic level and education and opportunities and
(22:31):
the stripping of culture. And we didn't forgot to talk
about Dredanna. They paint over murals in some of these spots.
They just what's that a nice picture that artist did
to add some character to the neighborhood. Let me just
put a nice for no reason. But Ron, I'd like
to start with you, and let's talk a little bit
(22:52):
about how crime and policing changes in the gentrification piece.
When I had spoken with some of the wonderful, wonderful
women at Brooklyn Nights, they talked about how, you know,
people will just call three one one for Ran the snitchers.
I wouldn't say it, but to say it, so let's
get it, do it? Run? Well you said it's and
(23:13):
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 moved 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 refer to the past. Right when I
(23:35):
moved first, you know, New Bedford Stuyveson, it had four
hundred or five hundred block associations. There was even a
group called the Association of Associations. It was a network
of people. They were friends, they were neighbors. And if
you want to move into a neighborhood, you move in
there and become part and adopt its culture. And over
(23:58):
time cultures will change, don't 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? Why should they
be harassed to sell their property? Obviously that skip with
(24:19):
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 an antagonism of that state or is he
going to lose all his friends on that block? This
(24:43):
guy rocketing, how's it going for three me? Before? Wait,
I'm sorry, what did you say? The houses in the
best tag of a three million? Now three million dollars?
How the twenty three seven dollars and you can sell
it right now for closer to me. Oh, you got
to go a minute. You don't want to say that
(25:04):
was just stay did that before you told me what
you was hidden? You know, the money is great, but
it's not everything. We've got to provide alternatives and we've
got to make sure that we are we slow down
the speed of change. And it took people to understand
the neighborhood they move in. It's not just a place
(25:25):
to buy a house. 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.
I think one of the issues, at least what I
gathered in Geordanna. 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
(25:47):
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 know,
your dollar is gonna go a lot further in Florida. Now, granted,
you're gonna probably get called inward a couple of times
that there's an inward tax you have to pay, depending
(26:09):
on the county. But you know, I think that that's
what a lot of residents, you know, we're dealing with.
It's just what I found so interesting though, GRADNNA was
despite of people calling in noise complaints and increases in
racial profiling or even the stealing of Amazon packages, it
seems that a lot of the black Brooklyn Nights still
have a resolve where even with the changes in their
(26:31):
relationship with law enforcement, as white residents become uncomfortable with
black people who were indigenous to that to that block,
somehow they're still okay with staying. Why do you think
that is? I think it's just the principle, right, It's
like I'm not leaving. I'm not leaving, you know. Uh.
And that's how I felt too. Uh. Previously we talked
(26:51):
about some of the signs and justifications, and for me,
the sign is like the three there's the white woman
running with her dog late at night. If I see
that happening, okay, something's going down. Um. There is the
white woman asking the Jamaican restaurant for a free stample.
I'm like, Okay, what's going on? And then there's a
the white person that's just basically complaining about the Labor
(27:11):
Day parade or complaining about a block party. Right. I
think the issue that we have as Brooklyn Knights is
I love Brooklyn so much. I love it. I talk.
You ask any Brooklyn night where they're from. They don't
say I'm a New Yorker. They say I'm from Brooklyn.
That's how I introduced myself. So of course I want
to share my borrow with anybody and everybody. The issue
(27:31):
I have is that when you guys come here and
you call the cops instead of introducing yourself and you,
you know, you complain about a block party that has
been happening, like the West, like the Labor Day parade
for instance, that's been going on for over thirty years.
You complain about it. You complain about the jerk chicken
being sold on the corner, and and that's the issue
we have. Of Course, I would love people to talk
(27:53):
and talk about Brooklyn, visit Brooklyn, and live in Brooklyn.
But I think the sense of community has just gone.
And I feel like in Tommy going to do it.
He would stay if he didn't feel like an outsider.
Do you understand how hard it was? I remember when
he told that story. You know, he was moved to tears.
This white woman holding her purse and this is an
old man with his old magic stick member and it's
(28:14):
just like the how degrading was that? Right? And this
guy has been there for decades, and it's just like
that feeling of feel like an outsider in your own neighborhood,
where you were born, where you grew up. It just
it sucks. So there's two people. There's and people that says,
you know what, I'm gonna leave because the area around me,
the neighborhood, is not the neighborhood no more. I can't
afford the bodega, right because the bodega switching to hemp milk,
(28:37):
all the milk, all these different type of milks. Um,
I can't afford anything else going on, like the laundry mat,
the nel salon. Everything has gone up. So let me
just take my dollars to South Beach wherever, right like
Lebron and just move. 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 for black people
in Brooklyn if you have the mind, if you have
(29:00):
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 I get emotional when I hear
people selling their homes. I'm like, damn, come on, man,
what do we gotta do? You know? And it's really
hard when you have flying at your house when as
as Ron mentioned, you know, you could be house rich
(29:22):
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 with
a lot of responsibility. But we need the access. And
there's a lot of grant programs that people like to
throw around that word or you could get a grant,
could get a grant where tell me, I would love
(29:43):
to know. It's so hard to get some of these programs,
and it's it's unfortunate that the easy way out is leaving.
Who has the will to really just fight all the time.
It's really hard, but I implore people to 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
(30:04):
I a gentrified because I moved into a predominly Spanish
neighborhood and they play bad Bunny all times to night.
But I'm like, okay, well, I can't call you know,
I can't call the cops on these people. I don't
want to be the person that Tommy and Judith were
talking about. So it's like meeting my neighbors right, meeting people,
going to the community garden and introducing myself saying, hey,
(30:26):
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
and going to their you know, fancy coffee 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 one Brooklyn Knight that's like, you know,
we would love to share it. I just think it's
(30:48):
the way I think Tommy touched on it, or don't
Judah did about like, you know, integration right, people from Brooklyn.
From Brooklyn, when you didn't eat masks where it was from,
what would you like to eat for sure? Do you say? So?
I grew up in the Bronx and it took a
(31:09):
it was a psychic change to move to Brooklyn because
Bronx sites would never moved to Brooklyn in those days. Uh.
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.
And it was when people were leaving the city. The
(31:29):
city was losing population in the seventies. You know, New
York City was losing maybe thirty thou apartments a year.
It was shrinking. And what saved the city where the
community based organizations and the groups like that sty Restoration,
the groups of Fort Green, the groups in Red Hook
(31:50):
and all other places that stabilized the neighborhoods that fought
for a federal government to stop there what were basically
discriminatory lending policies, changing the f h A to begin
to lend money to stop what was really what we're
(32:10):
fast foreclosure schemes. You would go into a neighborhood East
New York for instance, you'd go into that neighborhood uh
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 have stage fights in the street.
(32:31):
They would then panic, they by the buildings low. They
would then get the federal government to ensure them they'd
sell to a black or a Lutino 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. They pitted white racist
(32:53):
fears against whites and blacks, and it really was and
we had to take them to we could document that
there were places that were basically using government programs and
manipulating them for fast for these fast for closure schemes.
To that point, run then this sounds like gentrification to
(33:14):
a degree is something of a bunch of different entities
all working in concerts. 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, you have real estate developers
that are predatory Airbnb is a big issue as well.
We got everybody wanting to flip a house because they
(33:36):
don't watch two shows in a row on on h
G TV 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 and redlining that also have helped as
well to contribute to this issue. So is there any
one specific smoking gun. There isn't one specifics how can gum.
(34:00):
But there's a whole network of systemic racist policies that
have come to play an ongoing role. Whether or not
people know doing are doing it willingly or unwillingly, the
systems still persist, and we you still have real estate
agents that are involved in racial steering. You'll be sent
(34:21):
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
(34:42):
healthy development of all our communities, looking 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.
(35:06):
We're building a hundred units of housing tent which will
be low income so that it will be in many
ways accommodate the ones we displaced, But seventy 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.
(35:28):
That kind of inclusionary housing works if you want to
build a racially in economically integrated community. It doesn't work
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
(35:49):
the needs of every quartile of our population, and we
have to start really promoting what really are our healthy communities. Yeah,
I mean, I'm gonna just say it right now. I
think real estate it's just racist right currently in twins
Wain two, if I wou was to get my house appraised.
(36:09):
And a white pers supposed to sit in this house
and get it a praise, they're going to get a
better appraisal value. That happened during COVID. There was a
black family that happened to in Seattle. It happens all
over the country. So now not only let's say you
can't buy a house, but then you do the right thing.
You save you a little money, you get your little
f H loan, you do all the right things. But
now when it simes to that for appraisal, automatically, I'm
(36:31):
getting less. So we just have to really take a
deeper look at real estate and figure out how can
we change it right, How do we get the 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
(36:52):
shows accountable. So maybe that means going to and now
it's on zoom Roy, you could go and speak up
on the on the meeting and knowing your council member
his 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 history and really
rolling up your sleeves and getting your hands dirty. And
(37:14):
when you talk about East 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 able to action. So that means looking up where
they're pulling permits. Where are some of these developers going.
If you don't want to be a problem, 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 making a
luxury building. No, I want to be I have ego,
(37:36):
I have pries. I'm know I'm gonna plant myself here.
I'm gonna buy a house in East New York Cypress
Whos 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 automaticew assume let's go to
South Carolina, let's go to you know a t L.
I love Wakonda, I love a t L. Don't be wrong,
but there's great stuff for black people in Brooklyn too.
(37:56):
And I just think that we have this automatic like
you know what, it's way to expect. I said, let
me just leave, whereas others are trying to they see
the value in Brooklyn, and it's just really hard and
race and racism is threaded throughout the whole real estate process.
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
(38:20):
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 is woven
into the fabric of communities that it's right next to
middle income, right next to home ownership areas. We have
(38:40):
to think about social housing UH public housing, housing that's
owned by the UH 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 seven, occupied primarily by white families. It was a
step up. New York City still has thousands upon thousands
(39:02):
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. 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 just got an asshole who's
(39:25):
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. Well, one of the things
that occurred, you know, during previous the COVID was putting
pressure on the Doblasio administration to stop the harassment that
was going on in Crown Heights and the harassment that
was going on in East New York in many other
(39:46):
places in the city, and so setting up these anti
harassment units where people really know they could go into
South Brooklyn Legal Services or they could go into Williamsburg
Legal Services and get support by some of the UH
Legal of UH lawyers there to go after the landlords.
It really is important because that was happening. They would
(40:09):
come in, they buy a building, right, they vacate one
or two apartments, and they 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 legal and
(40:31):
the technical and the organizational capacity to follow through. A
housing program involves organizing, It involves uh, you know, financing,
it involves regulation, and the role of government has to
be one that is not passive. And people can't have
to not be passive. We have to really stand up
(40:54):
for our neighbors and begin to organize on a community
by community basis. 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? What's going on?
You know, and just organizing. So I think, um, you know,
(41:14):
the power of like five is better than power in 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 entire Redismate law firms and just trying to say, hey, listen,
something weird is going on here. Um, I don't know
who the girl to can you help me? You know?
And it's unfair because you look at the rental prices,
(41:36):
the average amount of rent right now in New York
it's like three thou dollars depending where you're at. You know,
you look at certain place and it's unfortunate because people
are lining up that. I remember one comedian said, oh,
New York is dead, right, and now New York came
back tenfold right now? What Now there's no houses to
(41:58):
be bought, there's no apartment 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, obviously government, but
we have to take action to and 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?
(42:20):
You lived in Red Hook and so you know what happened,
you know, just ten years ago this fall right uh,
when all of a sudden the waters came in. And
what saved a lot of the neighborhood with the green
space around the public housing because it absorbed water and
you never got credit for that that. Meanwhile, the folks
in public housing didn't have electricity for months. What's going
(42:42):
to happen to that huge supply of public housing which
is in harm's way. Within fifteen to twenty years, we're
gonna lose those units and you're going 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
(43:06):
why the timing of your episode was really crucial. How
do we how do we engage government so that we
really are developing and using the new infrastructure money and
the new climate change money to make sure we're not
displacing people, but we're emplacing them, that we're beginning to
build communities that will live beyond the first mortgage cycle. No. Absolutely,
(43:30):
we're coming up after the break. We're going to talk solutions.
We've talked about what gentrification is. We're 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? Gredonna? At
the point that speaker out, thank gotta, that's once in that.
(43:54):
That's a free one. We'll get into the more technical
ones after the break. This is beyond the scenes. Let's
talk solutions here for a second, right, Andrew Donna, 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, proper rental properties and proper policies, and
(44:17):
to stop predatory real estate, you know, corporations and conglomerates
from coming in. How can the people who currently currently
who the people who are currently part of these Brooklyn
neighborhoods and not just Brooklyn, matter of fact, let's open
it up to the whole country gentrification just saying a
Brooklyn thing. How can people in these neighborhoods help to
(44:39):
honor the rich cultural history and the places that they're
now you know, have chosen to be a part of.
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 bed Stye, where there's an event on Fulton Street
your Restoration Laws, I think is a really important event. Uh.
(45:03):
There have been similar efforts over the last few years
in Red Hook to really bring people together, show them
the waterfront, make sure that the group's working on this show,
and 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
(45:27):
based 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. We talked about celebration.
I think that's the most important thing. As I mentioned before,
you know, going to the black parties, bragging about being
(45:47):
from Brooklyn, knowing your neighbors, and making sure that you
know you're active in your community. I know sometimes people think, O,
that's corny or I don't got time for it. You
have to make time because sooner or later you're gonna
look up and be like, what neighborhood in my and
what block am I on? 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
(46:09):
in your neighborhood, even if you're not a homeowner. Right.
Just like rental, you know, renters aren't equally as important,
right because you have to say, okay, well listen, I'm
paying you know, let's say, for instance, a to family apartment.
I'm paying some of your more mortgage. 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,
(46:32):
how can I make it better? Right? I think as
Black people, especially, we have to be the ones to
gentrify our own blocks. I think that we cannot sit
back and get mad when other people start seeing the
value in our neighborhoods. You can't cry over spilt milk,
right because like, even to the point of like, if
you can find the local businesses and support the local businesses,
(46:54):
what's wild is that you know, the bodega guy that
we were talking about at the top of the show,
he would 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 gonna go to all the
bodegas around me and by a little bit from all
the bodegas, and it would have been one big hey,
support local business kumbay yah. But instead you get fact
(47:17):
years ago, there was a group in Fort Green that
created worked on Myrtle Avenue in Fulton Street, UH and
called it Bogolon. It was based on African fabric UH
and the various different colors that went into that fabric.
We have to find those keys again. You know, the
(47:38):
Brooklyn Movement 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 in like Weeksville Historic Society and what it's doing
(47:59):
and what it really means to have these roots in
the community. It's it's something that we really have to
embrace and not run away from. 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 deep on correctly. You know, you
(48:21):
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 be there and
versus selling their bode versus selling their laundry mat they
know they have a loyal customer base versus kind of
taking the easy way out and getting your groceries delivered
or whatever. Try and save your spending dollar and put
(48:42):
it back in the community, because it all everything affects everything, right,
and people are people at the basics. We are all human.
We want fair housing, we want fair food, we want
fair access to the housings are right. And if we
start treating our dollar as it's powerful and start making
sure like we are active in our community, nobody, nobody
can stop us. I don't care what you say. Run.
(49:05):
You have seen innumerable iterations and evolutions of various boroughs
of New York. What does the future look like? Let's
let's end on that. You know what, what does the
future look like? Because you know, we have people like
Jordana and her husband who are gonna be there. They
at leaving neighbor Jordana might mess around, run for city council.
(49:29):
What's it called over there, Alderman, I don't know. I
don't know what they call it. What do you think
these neighborhoods are gonna be like in the next ten
to twenty years? Right? 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
(49:49):
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 Transfer tax that taxes
on the books. It's collected every day, but it's rebated.
That's a tax that if you spend invest a hundred
thousand dollars, the taxes thirty dollars. That's how the minimus
(50:13):
it is that would generate twelve to fifteen billion dollars
a year for New York State. That we should invest
in infrastructure, We should invest 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 be the needs of every income group. We
(50:36):
have to start telling the stories, the stories of how
neighbors function and work together, so that they are the
things that attract 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
(50:58):
of us. The number of people that were taken ill
because of the recent he 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 a hundred degrees is going
to increase dramatically over the next ten to fifteen years.
(51:20):
That's a challenge that we have 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
create and and really celebrate the diversity of this city.
(51:43):
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,
uh and really begin to think about how we build
a post racial society, how how we can really build
(52:06):
a multicultural democracy. I think that really is something we
have to work on and work towards an invest in
It's that's not going to happen unless we change those
policies 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 um, flooding, heat,
(52:26):
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 talk to each other and
mobilize and say, hey, what can we do to make
our living conditions better? Because as Ron touched on, as
you touched on, it's it's a right. I think housing
is a right that some people find it so unattainable,
(52:50):
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 bro you know, better steppings, the heightst
like from the inception of the time you guys come,
it's like, oh, I don't want to call it bed
style no more. We'll know what's best, respect the neighborhood
(53:12):
and stop all the acronyms. Well, I think That's a
good place to end. And she is a wonderful, wonderful,
proud Brooklyn Night. Geordanna, 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
(53:34):
people respect culture. Thank you all both for going beyond
the scenes with us. Well, thank you for what you're doing.
I just try to crack the jokes. You guys do
the real work. Listen to The Daily Show Beyond the
Scenes on Apple podcast, the I Heart Radio app, or
(53:54):
wherever you get your podcasts. What's the Daily Show weeknights
at eleven tenth Central on Comedy Central and stream full
episodes anytime on Paramount Plus. This has been a Comedy
Central podcast
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