There Goes the Neighborhood

Gentrification is something everyone is talking about -- and the conversation is often heated. It's a complicated idea with a range of factors: race, class, history, policy. And of course there is the personal experience that we each bring to the table.

Take a walk in Bedford-Stuyvesant with Monica Bailey, a resident of the neighborhood for more than 30 years. She'll show you the home she lost.

Monica Bailey was forced to leave her...

With his first rezoning plan, Mayor de Blasio has declared East New York the place where the city's future begins. But what does East New York's past look like?

This week we go back to the founding of East New York in order to understand how it became the place it is today. We meet the people who have been organizing since the 1960s when the neighborhood underwent radical changes.

And we'll revisit the blistering summer of 1966, wh...

Mayor de Blasio's plan to rezone East New York and 14 other neighborhoods is his administration's way of controlling the fierce gentrification machine that is steamrolling across the city. So what does the zoning plan for East New York actually look like?

This week we talk with WNYC's Jessica Gould and City Limits editor Jarrett Murphy to understand the nuts and bolts of the plan.

And we go deep into the gentrification machine to s...

While politicians and developers strategize how to control the changes in New York, we want find out what gentrification feels like on the ground. How does a tidal wave of money and fast-shifting demographics affect the people who share a neighborhood? What role does race play when it comes to deciding who is included in a community — and who is excluded?

We start on the west coast in San Francisco, where Alex Nieto was shot 14 tim...

In the fast moving world of Brooklyn real estate, for some it feels more like the Wild West – developers and investors looking to cash in on the gold rush don't always play by the rules.

Meet Tia Strother, she's a young mother whose family has been living in Bedford-Stuyvesant for five generations. Tia tells us how horrifying it was to learn that her 90-year-old great grandmother was convinced to sign away the family home to a spec...

Some Brooklynites are wrestling with their own role in gentrification. Changes may be welcomed, but they come with mixed emotions for many. This week we take a walk in Bed-Stuy with 14-year-old Corrine Bobb-Semple. She's grown up in the neighborhood and for the last few years she's been reconciling the changes in her neighborhood with her experiences at St. Ann's, the elite prep school in Brooklyn Heights where she is surrounded by...

Gentrification has many New Yorkers asking the same question: Is there still a place for me in this city? We meet Dr. Ron Dailey who's been practicing medicine in Brooklyn for two decades, all the while watching long time patients leave the city, one after another. We meet New Yorkers fighting to stay and others who have made the decision to go.

And we check in with East New York, the neighborhood where Mayor de Blasio's rezoning p...

Listen to a preview of what's to come in The United States of Anxiety podcast from WNYC Studios and The Nation Magazine. Listen to the first episode on September 22nd. Subscribe today. 

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The United States of Anxiety is an in-depth look at the human stories underlying this year's presidential election.

Too often, political reporting tells us how voters feel about the issues, but now why they feel that way. And in this election, j...

Season 2 will dig into how Los Angeles has gone from being the place to chase your dreams to the least affordable city in the country. Housing prices are soaring, developers and landlords see opportunity, and many longtime Angelenos are getting squeezed out. In this episode, meet some of the characters you'll hear about in the upcoming series.

Season 2 is produced by KCRW and WNYC Studios and is hosted by KCRW's Saul Gonzalez. Subs...

Once you know what to look for, they're everywhere. In mostly Latino and black neighborhoods, rows of aging houses with wrought-iron fences, their yards overgrown and concrete crumbling, are punctuated by homes with distinctive 2017 aesthetics. The fresh earth-toned paint job, burnished silver house numbers, horizontal fencing, drought-tolerant native grasses in the yard: it's a flipped house and it's probably selling for hundreds ...

Are artists victims of gentrification? Or the perpetrators of it? Artists move into empty post-industrial spaces and poor neighborhoods, save on rent, create their work, build up studios and communities — and then find they're priced out.  

Lisa Adams was evicted twice from L.A.'s downtown Arts District and is worried it's about to happen again. Thirty years ago the area was home to light manufacturing and warehouses. Now it's one ...

Gentrification isn’t just about who’s moving into the neighborhood. It’s about juice bars, yoga studios, fancy pizza and of course coffee shops. What’s it like to open a business that neighbors will clearly recognize as a symbol of change?

In Echo Park, Israel Palacios had to move his pizza restaurant after his rent got too high. His family had run the restaurant for more than 20 years. He reopened his business at a cheaper site ac...

In the last decade, Los Angeles lost 250,000 people at or near the poverty line, and saw a net gain of 20,000 people with college degrees. Will Los Angeles become just a playground for the wealthy?

Meet Lizzie Brumfield, who’s settling with her fiancé and baby in the desert ex-urb of Hemet after she was evicted from her gentrifying building in Highland Park. She’s now 90 miles away from the rest of her family. “It sucks because we’...