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The Urban Renewal to Gentrification Pipeline
263 Plays9 months ago
On this episode of Defying Gentrification, I spend my homeroom time clarifying that gentrification is not a remedy for urban renewal, it’s the continuation of urban renewal, land theft and seizure, forced assimilation, and redlining.
And on my street corner this week, I urge Black women to answer the call for liberation, especially when we are given positions of power, and to do our best to not let it kill us, and honor the memories of those that we have lost to the system despite being in its power structure.
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Here are some of the things I referenced on the episode:
The Assembly article on Yolanda Hill shuttering her organization helping childcare facilities to receive federal funds so her husband could look more Republican as he runs to be the first Black governor of North Carolina.
Dr. Ruha Benjamin’s full remarks at Spelman College
ABC News report on the legacy and the tragedy of Dr. Antoinette Bonnie Candia-Bailey
My tweet on the depression that comes from reading bad news for a living, even when you have supportive people helping you do so.
The full article from the Inclusive Historian’s Handbook on urban renewal
History of the Warnersville neighborhood
The Amendment Podcast episode on Representation for the Cherokee Nation in the US Congress
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Purchase from Kristen's Bookshop.org store and support the podcast! Also, the Rothstein’s book is called Just Action, not Just Law.
Never miss an episode, subscribe to our Substack or on LinkedIn
You can also find Kristen @blackurbanist or @kristpattern.
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Transcript
Introduction and Podcast Structure
00:00:01
Speaker
Welcome back to the Defined Gentrification Podcast. I'm your host, Kristen Jeffers. If you're new to the podcast, we have two sections. We have a homeroom section, which is where I kind of give you all a lesson about something that's related to how cities work. And then I usually start at our street corner, which is where we have our hot topic.
Black Women in Governance: Challenges and Strategies
00:00:22
Speaker
Our hot topic of the week is
00:00:25
Speaker
Well, it's really a lot of black women, women of color who are trying to govern themselves and, you know, be part of institutions that don't care about them. And I really want us to stop doing that.
Gentrification Pipeline: Early Renewals and Community Impact
00:00:38
Speaker
And then, yes, our lesson this week is on the early renewal of the gentrification pipeline. That is part of the reason I want us to stop
00:00:47
Speaker
going so hard on each other but I do want us to learn things don't get it don't get it twisted I want us to learn things and next episode we're going to have our very first study hall episode where we're talking to someone about how they're navigating cities but before we get started I'm going to take a short break and I'm going to talk to you about something wonderful that I have that helps you support this project so
00:01:12
Speaker
After I talk about that, we'll come back and we will be on our Hot Topics section.
Urban Literature Spotlight: Kristen's Bookstore
00:01:16
Speaker
Once again, this is the Defy Engine Education Podcast with Kristen Jeffers. We will be right back. Did you realize I have a bookshop? Yes, I have a bookshop store, a bookshop.org store that is. I don't have a brick and mortar yet, but that would be really cool if that.
00:01:48
Speaker
Go over there, and this week I, with the theme of the episode, I wanted to really highlight my black, queer, feminist, urbanist book list. I'm going to be highlighting a couple of books that are on that list. And prior to getting our conversation started today, I wanted to highlight one called The Viral Undercuts by Dr. Steven Grasher. If you really want to understand why, if you see me in person, I'm skilled,
00:02:45
Speaker
for our society to understand really what's going on in the world. They're working on a book that's gonna help us understand, yes, and again, what I'm about to talk about today in the podcast episode about not becoming an overseer in the pursuit of justice and liberation.
Community Service vs. Political Optics in Black Leadership
00:03:02
Speaker
And with that, it's a good time to head on back over and let's talk about that in our street corner section. So, on our street corner today,
00:03:12
Speaker
Our hot topic centers on, and you're probably going to be shocked because I could use a lot of examples of ways that
00:03:23
Speaker
We, as Black women, when we get in positions of power, specifically in these states, so-called states, we feel all this pressure to not serve our people. Now, many of us, we dreamed of becoming, before we, and in really ways, before we knew any better, we dreamed of being princesses and queens,
00:03:46
Speaker
and empresses and presidents and leaders, because at least in my case, I wanted to help people. And of course, that's probably why I ended up with a podcast that is basically a lesson in how to do things. I realized I also wanted to have what we've been talking about, the soft life, but
00:04:09
Speaker
when nobody has a soft life, if everybody isn't having a soft life. And that's what I really want us to think about. And my first example that I'm pulling from is from the assembly. The assembly is a paper or actually it's a digital publication that
00:04:28
Speaker
is based in North Carolina, focuses on investigative things in North Carolina and is because it's not beholden to any, even though they do take ad money from certain sources. Unlike many of our local news outlets that are definitely afraid of making the power structure angry, they do practice a measure of investigative journalism.
00:04:50
Speaker
And they had highlighted about two weeks ago now that the Lieutenant Governor's wife, Yolanda Hill, has decided to shut down her nonprofit, which helps childcare centers get federal funding. Now,
00:05:11
Speaker
There are a lot of instances where organizations like this aren't run well and that people do start running organizations like this and they siphon off the top and they deliberately siphon off the top and they deliberately use these types of organizations as fronts of making money for themselves.
00:05:34
Speaker
This doesn't seem to be the case, but of course I didn't read, I read into it enough to bring this up as an example. And those of you who are at home in North Carolina and can tell me more about whether or not this organization actually did do what it said it does, helping childcare centers get federal funding. But from what I read in this article, it looked like it was working, but why are they closing? They are closing because it makes her husband look like he takes from the social welfare state.
00:06:03
Speaker
I'm not making this up. This could be in the onion, but it is not like a lot of news that is out here today. And so I, you might, it might be simple to write this off as a, okay, of course, whether black Republicans, of course they're not going to care about each other, but this woman did have this nonprofit for a good little while. I don't know if it was working, but still,
00:06:29
Speaker
This is the kinds of things we do need to be doing. If we're going to be system of adjacent, these are the kinds of things we need to be doing. We need to be teaching people how to access the monies that are there. We do need to redistribute our wealth. We do need to provide for each other. And many times, actually all the time, we all have a role in our community. There's things that we know that we're closer to in our communities that we are better served by telling people about.
00:06:59
Speaker
This is disturbing. This is disturbing in so many ways.
Nonprofit Challenges in Black Republican Circles
00:07:02
Speaker
It's disturbing that one, she felt like that she needed to stand by her man as it were and shut down this, this useful charity that seemed like it was working.
00:07:13
Speaker
if it was a great example of how to do this without hurting people, then it hurts people that an organization that's functional like this that could be a model is hurting people. But the article did say that not too long ago, both the lieutenant governor and his wife were in a lot of debt and they were cleaning up debts. And there's nothing wrong with that. A lot of us are in debt and a lot of us come up with things to do in order to get out of that debt. However,
00:07:40
Speaker
This is looking like it's this is turning into even more of a scheme than it already is. And of course, I won't even mention his name and all the things he has said, the misogynar that he has placed upon us. And in a lot of ways, this is a this is an internally misogynistic act to do something in the service of terrible things just for appearances.
00:08:06
Speaker
And that gets me to, I wanted to actually play the tape of Dr. Ruha Benjamin and her remarks when she was receiving her honorary degree from her alma mater Spelman College. But I'm going to include that in the show notes. They'll be right where you get your podcasts and where you can click on links and access this tape. This was circulating around a lot of Instagram almost immediately after it was shown, you know, in a time where we are seeing universities
00:08:36
Speaker
who are suspending students for speaking out, not just against Palestine, but against everything that's going on, the book bands, the bands of diversity and equity offices, the lack of funding, the over tuition going up, like everything that has been a battle on campuses, public and private, around the United States and really the world,
00:09:01
Speaker
For Dr. Benjamin to stand up and say these words at a very prestigious moment and to use this platform to do this was very courageous.
Academic Resistance: Dr. Ruha Benjamin's Speech
00:09:12
Speaker
And it's the kind of role modeling we need to take. If we get a lectern and a podium and a pulpit, we need to speak truth to power. Where they were, Spelman Sisters Chapel is a church.
00:09:28
Speaker
and to be willing to tell the truth in a church is more than commendable and it is necessary and it is needed and it is needed in these academy spaces as well as these governmental spaces.
00:09:39
Speaker
And yes, I do agree with her like just because I identify well actually because I have black African ancestry. Of course, I know as someone who has a lighter complexion that gives me entryway that gives me comforts that certain people don't have and that's think there's things that
00:09:59
Speaker
I'm automatically assumed to be able to do, even sometimes when people give me a hard time, usually people start giving me a hard time in positions of leadership when I start to tell the truth. And that is when, you know, I start magically being black again, but usually I'm that person and I know it and I own it. I'm that person that gets a lot of passes because of what I look like and what I sound like. But I know that is my responsibility and that's what I hope to do do this podcast and many other platforms
00:10:29
Speaker
to speak the truth to power. And yes, don't you have to, to my young people who may have been listening, I don't know if I have any of you all who are in Sister Shappell from Spelling Listening and any other
00:10:43
Speaker
college-age students and young professionals and even my peers and my elders, you know, we were brought here even within our soft life and even when within our resistance rest we we're resting and we're resting to make a statement we're resting for ourselves that makes a statement because we are expected at all times to make those kinds of sacrifices like Yolanda Hill and unfortunately
00:11:10
Speaker
I am also going to be including in the show notes, the full ABC news story about Dr. Antoinette Bonnie Candida Bailey. She was a student affairs professional, VP of student affairs at her alma mater, Lincoln University.
00:11:29
Speaker
And unfortunately this is where what Dr. Benjamin was talking about. And of course probably was also on her mind as well. Cause this is the news story about Dr. Candia Bailey came out. I believe it was, if I'm looking at the dates correctly, I believe that news story came out over the weekend. Dr. Benjamin's speech was on Sunday and here we are. I'm recording this literally
Systemic Racism and Sexism in Academia: Dr. Candida Bailey
00:11:49
Speaker
hours before it goes up. So this is, this is probably the tightest timeline I've ever had recording a podcast. I'm recording this particular episode on
00:11:57
Speaker
April 18th and it will go live on midnight on April 9th, roughly around midnight on April 19th. And yeah, so just, and I think I forgot to mention you. If you're not aware, Dr. Candida Bailey, and this is a, this is a content warning. You may want to skip ahead maybe about 60 seconds. Cause I do mention what she did to herself and why she's not no longer here with us. But yes, she, because of what was going on at that school, because of dealing with
00:12:26
Speaker
a white leader of a HBCU and not to say that he couldn't have been a good leader. He does have a black wife and black children. He could have been, it could have just been the system as it is because of course, even when we are in some of our precious sacred spaces,
00:12:46
Speaker
We are often asked to act in ways that are not a favor. She had reached out to her board, her alumni board, and they're like, you're an employee right now. We don't get into employee stuff. She gets fired by the leadership. Five days later, she is found dead.
00:13:04
Speaker
And yes, she wrote a letter in detail about what was going on with her. She had mentioned going through mental health issues. And sadly, her thesis was about being black women in academia and the pressures that we are under.
00:13:19
Speaker
Her death, the actual death, her actual taking of her life happened right around the end of last year, going into the beginning of this calendar year. It wasn't long after Dr. Claudine Gay and everything that happened to her at Harvard University.
00:13:38
Speaker
basically her trying to uphold the principles of Harvard University to the detriment of herself and Black students on that campus. And yet, once again, at the end of the day, when these systems are designed not to help us, they will eat us.
00:13:55
Speaker
And I commend Dr. Ruha Benjamin for being here and being willing to speak up to that. And I hope that Claudine Gay is getting the rest that she deserves. I hope that Dr. Bonnie, she was affectionately known as resting in peace. And I hope everybody that's listening to this hot topic, wrap yourself up, especially black women and women of color.
00:14:19
Speaker
continue to examine your environments and the places that you are in and make sure that they continue to serve you. Because you are serving nobody if you are not here and you are not whole and you are not full. And I will be very transparent. I, for the longest time, and I actually on, pretty soon I'm gonna be sharing a email, a email essay about losing my voice and how this podcast has brought my voice back.
00:14:45
Speaker
It helps me, even if this podcast doesn't make a dime or this is just a passion project for me. And even if none of y'all ever listen again, at least I get to sit down once a week and I pour out my
Podcasting as Expression and Healing
00:14:59
Speaker
heart to you. I pour out my concerns. I truly established.
00:15:04
Speaker
how I feel about the work and the world that I live in and what I care about in the ways that I've studied. Of course, at the end of the day, I have my art to go back to, and that's exactly what I'll go back to, but I figured, you know what, as I too, at the tail end of last year had just gotten burnt out, as I had tweeted earlier this week, and I'll include the link to the tweet in the show notes, I
00:15:30
Speaker
working and compiling news every morning while it's been a lucrative contract for me. It's been a lucrative gig and they've been a great team to work for.
00:15:42
Speaker
It is very depressing, not just even when we still have more news sources to grab local news from, but just thinking about everything that's going on and not just the traffic deaths, but the hearing about yet another housing development that's very prohibitively expensive, hearing about housing prices going up.
00:16:02
Speaker
Just all the things that I know that affect me and affect me when I'm having slow appointments in my business affect me when I don't feel well. They affect my partner when she feels like she's not doing a good enough job and they affect a lot of black people, specifically black gender marginalized folks who have an extra layer of feeling like they have to prove their belongingness.
00:16:26
Speaker
and enduring queer antagonism, trans antagonism, and misogynar in their spaces. So I want to thank y'all, especially, for giving me the space to be here. I'm glad that y'all listened. But even if you weren't listening, this is one way. If you want to know one way to try to professionally heal, this is one way to do it. And so I'm going to
00:16:48
Speaker
Take a moment. We're going to take a pause and I will be right back. Once again, this is the Defining Gentrification podcast with Kristin Jeffress, and we'll be back to talk about the urban renewal of the gentrification pipeline.
00:17:02
Speaker
Yes, I, as I said before, I have a bookshop.org store that I'm an affiliate for bookshop.org. And then bookshop.org is a wonderful way to help me continue to do this work, as I said in the segment before. And I have a book list specifically called the Black Queer Feminist Urbanist Book List. And I think you should take a look at it, especially if you
00:17:26
Speaker
are looking for some books that will help you, as I've mentioned in the segment before, to get your life back. I have Wear Sister's Resistance in there by Tricia Hershey. I have The Body is Not an Apology. I have both parables, Sower and Talent by Octavia Butler. And I am adding to this book list.
00:17:46
Speaker
And when you buy from me on Bookshop, you're supporting me. I get a portion of anything that you buy there. And say you don't have one of the wonderful, wonderful black or queer owned bookshops in your area.
00:18:02
Speaker
you can buy from me and it'll ship directly to your home or you can buy gifts and have them shipped to other places and you'll be supporting me and you'll be supporting a site that is was created to go against that other big site now yes occasionally there are things i get there like my pandemic supplies but
00:18:22
Speaker
Books, I think you should try bookshop.org. And it's not just because I'm an affiliate there, but I think it's a great space to buy books. And yes, bookshop.org slash shops slash Kristin E. Jeffers. And you can support me and you can also support a site that actually is standing at least attempting to add more bookshops and break a monopoly on books and printed items on the internet. And so now let's get back to the episode.
00:18:53
Speaker
And we're back. So we're back. And it is, we're back on the Defined Gentrification podcast. Once again, I'm Kristen Jeffers. And before we were talking about our hot topic of not wearing yourself out and clearly not wearing yourself to death, as unfortunately you have seen with situations of having to navigate systemic racism and
00:19:15
Speaker
academic and governmental spaces.
Urban Renewal to Gentrification: Historical Context
00:19:17
Speaker
Now we're on to our homeroom lesson, which I have turned today to borrow from a common educational jargon thing, the school, well, no, it's not the school to prison pipeline. That's what I'm borrowing the statement from. I have fashioned our lesson today as the urban renewal to gentrification pipeline.
00:19:39
Speaker
And so to be honest, I have to take it back a little bit before urban renewal to something you may have heard of called redlining. And so redlining, and as I like to do, because I like to start at Wikipedia, because you can go to Wikipedia, and Wikipedia has other sources, and those other sources, you can really immerse yourself in what you need to learn about a subject. So yes, let's talk about redlining. And actually, before we talk about redlining, let's acknowledge
00:20:08
Speaker
As I like to do if I haven't done it on this episode, this is me doing it now. I like to acknowledge my ancestors, the ancestors that were brought here to this stolen land and those that the land was stolen from. And so, yes, you land may people may have there are treaties, there are tribes and there are tribes that call themselves tribes. Specifically, I'm also going to include the show in the show notes.
00:20:34
Speaker
the 19th Amendment podcast episode that speaks with Kim Trihi, who is asking Congress to give the Cherokee Nation their delegate slot in the US Congress, similar to how here in DC, because we're just a district, we should be a state, but while we're still just a district, we have a congressional delegate, same with Puerto Rico, and so all of these other colonies of the United States have a delegate,
00:21:04
Speaker
Well, guess what? The Cherokee Nation, as well as the Navajo Nation, any of the Native American tribes that are considered nations, and there are treaties and there are actual treaties that say that these peoples not only are, we have pushed them to this land, now we stole their original land, we pushed them away and we pushed them to many of the tribes that are in Oklahoma. And some tribes did not have to move, but they were assimilated and they were forced to assimilation into the United States.
00:21:34
Speaker
There was also forced relocation, not just to the reservations, but also into cities. So literally the Department of the Interior had all these programs. There was all this creation of parks. There was, of course, this schooling. In addition to, of course, what happened to those of us who are African-Americans and how, first, we were enslaved. And then enslavement was made illegal, but then new schemes
00:22:03
Speaker
and act constitutionally. If you are considered a criminal, if you've been deemed a criminal, you become a slave again by going to jail. You will become enslaved again when you're in jail. So all of that. And so of course I honor, I honor my ancestors. I honor my elders. I honor my peers that are trying to do this. And of course that's why I was so adamant about as we opened the program today,
00:22:28
Speaker
for us to be serving our people. And that's why I really created this show because I believe our wealth is beyond that. But anyway, other people do not believe that. And redlining is one way that people don't believe that. Literally, you could say that redlining is the root of gentrification, and this is why. From this definition, from Wikipedia, it says,
00:22:55
Speaker
that redlining is a discriminatory practice in which financial services are withheld from neighborhoods that have significant numbers of racial and ethnic minorities. Redlining has been most prominent in the United States and has mostly been directed against African Americans. The most common examples involve denial of credit and insurance, denial of health care, and the development of food deserts and minority neighborhoods. So
00:23:20
Speaker
Red and I say redlining is the root of gentrification because redlining Started in the United States to be honest because already we had European colonists who showed up here created communities and then of course their community won out which was what the United States is their community winning out and Native Americans and from all the different communities, but especially the
00:23:48
Speaker
all the communities that are here. And yes, there are, even though some tribes did not survive being assimilated, some tribes did not survive being put into boarding schools, put out their land, forcefully relocated, much like there were many people, African-Americans who did not make it to the shores and the bowels of the Atlantic. Many of them are also, and of course, not all Africans who were taken from Africa even went to
00:24:18
Speaker
these so-called United States, we are present.
00:24:22
Speaker
up and down Turtle Island. We are present and obviously we were brought to Canada. We were brought to the broader neighbor's Hill. We were brought to all these areas and the British weren't the only Collins that were calling us from all other places. And when you look at our lands, we were also, we ourselves as people have also tried to start governing and making difference of each other. And that created a fertile environment for us to be taken
00:24:50
Speaker
for us to be at odds with each other and for us to try to participate in schemes to hurt each other. So I just wanna make that clear, but we have to move on and we have to understand that at least legally, when you get ready to buy a house and if you're buying it in a black neighborhood, you may not get a mortgage and it may be undervalued.
00:25:11
Speaker
You yourself may be undervalued at your job, or it's harder, as I mentioned before, to get higher jobs. And you may be, yeah, your job environment may force you to do things like I talked about earlier in the episode. And so you may know of redlining, especially if you're listening to this and you're listening to us because this is a gentrification podcast.
00:25:36
Speaker
at least it's how it's advertised. You may be aware of the maps that were solidified in the 1930s. Now they existed prior. Baltimore, Kansas City and several other cities and their developers have piloted creating residential redlining as well as other tactics that are involved in reverse residential redlining like
00:25:58
Speaker
deciding that certain neighborhoods are going to be black only and like doing things to nudge white folks to leave the neighborhood. Of course many of us think that redlining started after World War II. What started after World War II was actually urban renewal.
00:26:15
Speaker
Redlining predates the World War II suburbanization. Urban renewal continued to build on these redlining practices. And so let's talk about what urban renewal is, because now we're at the pipeline. We've set the stage, we've set our dirt, we've set our seeds that redlining this systematic denial of resources, in this case, housing. And so we're going to dig a little deeper into residential redlining.
00:26:45
Speaker
for the rest of this episode as we talk about the pipeline from urban renewal to gentrification.
Community Involvement in Urban Renewal
00:26:52
Speaker
So let us talk about what was urban renewal.
00:26:56
Speaker
So urban renewal was the process of seizing and demolishing large swaths of private and public property for the purpose of modernizing and improving aging infrastructure, supposedly. Now I pulled this definition from the Inclusive Historians Handbook, which this is the first paragraph of that, their whole article that discusses urban renewal. I will include that in the show notes as well. Between 1949 and 1974, the U.S. government underwrote this process
00:27:26
Speaker
through a Department of Housing and Urban Development, HUD, or we pronounce it HUD, for those of you who aren't stateside and have never heard us pronounce this agency's name, grant and loan program. Although the money was federal, renewal plans originated with and were implemented at the local level. So to understand how this works, I'll use, of course, a modern, I'll get back to how we buy houses now. So if you are in the process of buying a house and you go to the bank,
00:27:55
Speaker
So generally, if you have enough cash to pay for the house, you might even be able to bypass going to a bank. You could just work directly with the seller's real estate agent and your real estate agent, or maybe you all just do a handshake deal. That's what commonly happens with investors when you hear about investing.
00:28:16
Speaker
You can, people have the cash or they get loans, they get loans that aren't necessarily mortgage loans. They might even get like personal loans and buy homes, homes that are like smaller or basically because they can walk up to a house and offer cash. They get to bypass all of this mortgage stuff. They get to bypass some of this stuff. But if you do need a mortgage to purchase a home, which is most people,
00:28:39
Speaker
Then you're going to the bank and you're submitting all of your financial documents and you're hoping that the bank will pre-approve you and then final approve you for a certain amount on a home. And so often that process, one of the loans that you could get approved for if you're not military affiliated is called an FHA loan. The Federal Housing, I think it's the Federal Housing Administration, which is a HUD program.
00:29:06
Speaker
So much like HUD has a program for homeowners and many of those loans is what enabled post-World War II segregation to happen in suburban areas because locally. And it's key to talk about locally because urban renewal, redlining, suburbanization, urbanization has always looked different depending on what state you're in.
00:29:32
Speaker
The state, your state and locality pretty much determine the flavor in the United States of what your housing market looks like. Now yes, banks often operate nationally but there are also banks that operate locally and some banks and some credit unions.
00:29:47
Speaker
credit unions meaning like financial institutions that tend to be more friendly to first time buyers and friendly to people who are working class. Oftentimes you're pooling your funds and then you're granting money and you're loaning money to your peers. Now some of that has changed. A lot of credit unions are honestly operating very similar to banks and that's become a controversy in the banking community between community banks that operate like normal banks
00:30:15
Speaker
and credit unions that are supposed to operate differently, but credit unions are looking more like community banks than they are credit unions. That's a little bit of an aside, but it's good context for you to understand what's going on inside the pipe. So if you want to know what's going on inside of the pipe and why it's hard, like some neighborhoods
00:30:36
Speaker
It looks like urban renewal is still happening. And what was happening in many places was that black neighborhoods were torn down. And in black homes where people had owned them outright, they were declared slums. And they were torn down because they were declared slums, mainly in some cases for racist reasons, because they were just black homes. Because they were just black homes, they were declared slums. In other places, there was a little bit more
00:31:04
Speaker
justification where say if someone had fallen on hard times and say a bank evicts them from their home or they're evicted from the apartment and people will claim oh where there's mold and mildew or there's some other like environmental hazard but then again a lot of black neighborhoods were also built next to or
00:31:25
Speaker
Oftentimes, urban renewal was also marketed as factories being built next to black neighborhoods for the purpose of jobs or black homes. They would cite homes, black neighborhoods next to factories and then claim, oh, well, at least we're giving you a home. Or they would say, oh, your homes are historic.
00:31:46
Speaker
You should get a new upgraded home, but the new upgraded home is actually smaller The neighborhood that less grew up in is like this and in a neighborhood I knew in Greensboro is like this as well It's called Warner's field if you look up the history of Warner'sville Which I'll include a link to talk about the history of Warner'sville that is part of this. So basically
00:32:07
Speaker
And I'm talking, I also want to clarify part of the reason I wanted to talk about urban renewal and redlining and bring them into the gentrification conversation on the show before we really get into talking with other people and really doing our study halls with other people. And I wanted this to be our last four lessons.
00:32:27
Speaker
It's because for many of you, especially Black American folks, especially Black Americans from the South like myself, many of you are like, well, we're welcoming gentrification. I know for many of you, you're listening to these episodes to try to prove me wrong. I wanted to be proved wrong. I'm like, but well, that lot has been vacant for 20 years. We need gentrification because that lot's been vacant for 20 years. But why was the lot vacant for 20 years? Because it was supposed to be something else.
00:32:57
Speaker
Or it was something and somebody deemed that it wasn't something worthy and they got rid of it. And yes, the highways have everything to do with this. Oftentimes the thing that was replaced in the name of urban renewal was the highway. President Eisenhower signed the Interstate Highways Act into law.
00:33:17
Speaker
And so along with the Urban Renewal Act that President Harry Truman had signed in 1949, all of that came together and created this fertile environment for cities and states in the name of economic development and renewal schemes and many times racism to tear down black neighborhoods in the name of
00:33:42
Speaker
creating new
Case Study: Southwest Waterfront in D.C.
00:33:43
Speaker
ones. And of course, I live in one of the most famous examples of this, where literally, I live in probably the example of the urban renewal, the gentrification pipeline, and that is a Southwest waterfront in Washington DC, a neighborhood that has been renewed twice. So when urban renewal happened, this neighborhood was still mostly grow houses, it was mostly black American families and their churches.
00:34:12
Speaker
then the federal government decided to start growing these agencies, including HUD. The HUD headquarters is part of this urban renewal project that we're in and the original EPA headquarters. Now, the very interesting thing about the original EPA headquarters, EPA moved to a redevelop parking lot, which I assume at one point was also housing so much of our federal core other than
00:34:42
Speaker
The capital, now the capital in the White House directly came from being like original, like native lands. And then when the district was cited and claimed and cited, but then you have a lot of plots of land here where it's literally just homes that were taken for urban renewal. Some of these areas laid fallow or government agencies moved and then the buildings were vacant again, made vacant again.
00:35:10
Speaker
and then they were rebuilt to be more people friendly. And so that's what you see sometimes in this process of what's been labeled gentrification. A lot of things that are labeled gentrification are just waves of urban renewal. Even though urban renewal is no longer active, a lot of areas need to be revitalized because they've been sitting vacant. And so this is a key place where if you're involved with your community and getting involved at the local level, going to neighborhood meetings, even when they are
00:35:40
Speaker
when people are there and their intent on not helping people. Or if you are a community development or cooperation or organization, I know for many of you, you're like, oh, well, people don't care. They're not engaged in the process. They don't really want to be there.
00:35:56
Speaker
This is where I want to challenge you all to continue to be patient and work with neighbors. Neighbors see that things have been vacant for a while. Many neighbors are doing their own research around things like red lion urban renewal. Many folks have that lived history. Many folks have that passed down family lore of we used to own this house.
00:36:17
Speaker
They knocked on our door one day and said, we need to tear it down because we want to build something better. Imminent domain happens. Imminent domain is when the government seizes your property and they're supposed to pay a fair market value. But then again, if your property is redlined and deemed as not worthy, and this is where in cities like Baltimore and DC, where a lot of property looks exactly the same, no matter who lives in it,
00:36:44
Speaker
A lot of our row houses are like duplicates of each other, that it's just depending on the address, depending on which, where, where you are read, if you are a red neighborhood or a blue neighborhood, white neighborhoods were blue. So if you are a blue neighborhood or white neighbor, it could be the same style of townhome or row house.
00:37:02
Speaker
But one set of row houses could be knocked down and other set of row houses could stay standing. Or one neighborhood could be block busted because they're trying to get white people to move somewhere else and then create or at least create the environment as a slum and then eventually get it knocked down or replace it. So that's where this is a pipeline. And in some cases where we are now with
00:37:31
Speaker
gentrification as it's showing up in the United States.
Gentrification vs. Revitalization: European Origins
00:37:34
Speaker
And one fun fact that I want to include here before I wrap up this section today, that when Ruth Glass was observing London and what was happening in London, she had studied in New York. And in New York, Robert Moses, who was the, I think he was the planning commissioner. Of course, obviously Jane Jacobs was speaking out against him and Ruth Glass was observing.
00:37:59
Speaker
and probably also speaking out against him, but she decided to return to London and impact the world. And then she gave us a name for the result, the more British version of what was happening, which is gentrification. Gentrification kind of looked the way it did in Europe because already that's their homeland. And so, yes.
00:38:21
Speaker
they when they decided housing was obsolete and they decided to abandon it and move to newer homes that hadn't built in other areas and when sprawl like sprawling homes and they were sold on that but then all of a sudden some others who are white as i've said in other episodes decided that they wanted to come back and they were justified in coming back and in their justification of coming back the black folks should leave so
00:38:49
Speaker
Really the whole purpose of these lessons that really has helped us understand how deeming certain people is unworthy of the same lives and the same access and everything really shapes our environments. And revitalization can happen in a community environment. Revitalization can rebuild wealth.
00:39:18
Speaker
Gentrification does not do that in the same way. Gentrification still assumes that somebody is wealthier than somebody else. To me, revitalization actually puts the, revitalization is making whole and an exceeding from that. It's acknowledging these land acknowledgements. It's acknowledging these needs of people and places to get their just due.
00:39:46
Speaker
It's acknowledging that harm was done. And yes, we're going to fill in the gaps of the harm as best as we can. Now, unfortunately, some lands need to be cleaned up. Some lands may never be clean again. Some things may never be right again, but at least for the next generations, we can pour into them. And so that's what I love about, you know, I've been involved and been researching arts districts. I think that
00:40:12
Speaker
business improvement districts have the potential to do that. Like I even said, that's what when I wrote years and years ago, that this is why I like homeowners associations. I don't like what they do when they are policing people. But when you are coming together as a group of homeowners, as a neighborhood, as a community, and you're putting money in a pot, and then if a neighbor is in need, you're granting that money, no strings attached with no need to give the money back.
00:40:39
Speaker
That is revitalization. That is neighborliness. That is what we should be doing as Earthlings, not just as any community members as Earthlings. And as we are doing this and as we are enacting this, we need to stop and let go of this idea of needing to police how it's done.
00:40:58
Speaker
We need to just be treating people well. And business people, billionaires, people with a bunch of money, you're still going to have some money. Spread it out. Get used to learning and being in a world where everybody has wealth and everybody has money because Tom's up. Because guess what? As I say before, we're not going to handle Earth. So with that, hopefully you understand how we got from land seizure to red lining, to urban renewal, to gentrification,
00:41:27
Speaker
And that, and of course I will, I'm going to take a break. I'm going to give you one more. I'm going to plug bookshop one more time. And then I'm going to wrap up. I'm going to talk about our next episode and how you can get more information about all of this. Once again, you've been listening to Defying Gentrification and I'm your host, Kristen Jeffers.
00:41:51
Speaker
And so yeah, Bookshop.org is a great place to go if you have been, your ears have been tickling, you wanna read more about this. You can shop in my store. My store has a lot of the books that you will wanna read. And one of those books that's gonna be there when you get there is The Color of Law and Just Law. Color of Law was written by Richard Rothstein and he lays it out.
00:42:15
Speaker
if you really want to understand the deepness of redlining and how it's affected our lives, it is here. And he wrote it and then he came back and wrote Just Law with his daughter and those books together or joined together and they will help you understand what you need to do, especially if you are white and you're listening to this and you're
00:42:37
Speaker
You benefit from being white and when you walk into a home and you walk into a job and people paying more and all those things, all those things that do happen. Whether you're well-meaning or not, they are happening. They are happening to you and that is the book for you. Now, if you are a Black person and you're sick of it,
00:42:55
Speaker
Try reading Root Shot by Dr. Mindy Tatsopouli. That's also in the bookshop, mybookshop.org. And she, the first book talks about what happened in Roanoke and other cities and how this act of urban renewal and leading our communities has hurt our psyches and it's hurt our bodies.
00:43:15
Speaker
by witnessing it and having to move around and the reason we've had to move around and then she's written a whole series of other books which i will be adding to this store as i can find those links but start with root shop and then go down her whole list of books and you can order those all from bookshop.org and if you order it from bookshop.org slash shop slash christen jeffers my christen jeffers media bookshop then i'll benefit from that and i'll be able to continue to produce episodes like this
00:43:40
Speaker
And I'll be able to continue to bring more guests like I'm going to be bringing on on the next episode for you to help. So now we're back. And we are going to wrap up the show for today. And so, yes, I want to reiterate before we end the show, I want to say that urban renewal and redlining are the fertile ground of gentrification. The roots are racism and classism, but it's especially racism. I can't
00:44:10
Speaker
I can't emphasize that enough. And if you actually do, like I said, in the ad and go read Just Log and read Rootshot, you will understand that as well as other things.
00:44:20
Speaker
take this time, next week we'll be back with a special guest and we'll be starting our interview series of guests. And so we'll be having, I'll call these conversations study halls, where you just listen to like a couple of people talk about like living in cities and navigating cities and moving around and various topics and techniques. And we're going to have a lot of different guests and I'm really excited about that, but
00:44:45
Speaker
Come back to these first few episodes if you really want to understand why I'm defying gentrification, why I'm saying we eradicate gentrification, and why urban renewal and redlining have to be considered and why I think, no, gentrification is not the fix for urban renewal and gentrification.
00:45:07
Speaker
Because once again, and I like to say this every episode, gentrification assumes that you can shape finances, not just culture. We know we shape the culture. We know the culture is valuable. Our culture is valuable, but are you shaping your finances? Are you shaping your finances? Because our finances are often thwarted and our culture is often stolen for profit. And so, you know,
00:45:32
Speaker
we need we can be part of gentrification we can even like everything because, yes, we can become realtors we can become bankers we often we are administrators and overseers, but is that justice and liberation no. So.
00:45:50
Speaker
I, as again, I have been, I love talking back with you directly and on Mondays at 12 noon Eastern time, I do ask me anything where you can come. The link to register for that so you can get your question up on the screen and answered and make sure that I see it is, it will be in the show notes. It'll also be in all emails that promote this podcast release.
00:46:13
Speaker
And you can see me live. I'll be streaming this Ask Me Anything on YouTube, LinkedIn, and the Black Urbanist Facebook group. And if you register on StreamYard, you can be right in the StreamYard environment. And you can ask your questions there, as well as the site probably on Twitter and Instagram. So.
00:47:14
Speaker
Yeah, the hot topic may not be as hot, but honestly, I try to pick topics that will be reiterated. And so, yes. Also, don't forget to rate and review, especially on Apple and Spotify. Apple and Spotify rating and reviewing me helps people discover me.
00:48:15
Speaker
Learn a lot and continue to do everything you can do to defy and eradicate gentrification.