The number of white Brooklyn residents has increased over the years while Black residents have been displaced. Host Roy Wood Jr. chats 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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Hey, Welcome to Beyond the Scenes, the podcast that goes deeper into segments and topics that originally aired on The Daily Show with Trevor Nolan. This is what you gotta think of this podcast is all right, you've got apple pie. Everybody love apple pie? Right, It is warm, crispy apple pie. It's good by itself. This podcast is the Ala mode. You get that extra scoopa ice cream on that apple pie and then take it to the next level. Baby. Listen now, who 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 white population in the United States has declined, but there's one place their numbers are up almost nine Brooklyn. This wealthy white gration has let increases in rent, cost of living and request to speak to the manager. So I followed the trail of succulents and Wes Anderson DVDs deep into the den of gentrifying Brooklyn, where I sat down with Tommy Holland the white population is going up almost the black population has going down almost nine percent. Would it be safe to say that that's how they're showing black lives matter by just moving them out to somewhere else. What they're doing is they're just buying out and cleaning out a neighborhood. And it's not right. Tommy has lived in Brooklyn his entire life. Everything is going up sky high, and it's harder to live. So the way out is to sell 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 Burg. Today I'm joined by Daily Show segment producer and Brooklyn Knight, Geordana him and way Geordanna, how are you doing today? I'm great, Thank you well, good to see you. Good to see you, Madam Brooklyn Night. And also joining us is a pioneer and 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 very very difficult topic. You know, Jordonna, let's start with you. The thing that I've always loved about The Daily Show is that everybody has the freedom to pitch. It's not set up in some structured system where you do not pitch, you only produce what this pitch. It's like, No, if you come into building with an issue needs to go, Guys, I'm noticing this, then it's something that could eventually work its way onto the show, as it did with this. So walk us through your inspiration and how this segment came together. 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 Queen's. I didn't want to go to New Jersey. I was just like, no, I will not leave Brooklyn. This is where I grew up. And I started noticing on the trains that like more white people were like getting off later and later on the train stops. And then I started realized and I was like, wait a minute, you know what's going on here? And then I started realizing that there was all these developments, but I couldn't afford these houses. I couldn't get in and I'm like, you know, I have a decent job, and I'm just like, why are we being pushed out? And at that point, it's on this article where the white population decreased everywhere else in the United States except Brooklyn, New York. And I said, ah ha, 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 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 only 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 getting 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 and 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 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 piece, 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 occurrent. And so for you to be there, and let's 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, so a little background to even go further. So I am married and my husband is African American slash Puerto Rican, right, and I saw this happen to him when his grandma, who came from South Carolina. Uh, they sold that house in crowd heights and now sometimes in the neighborhood we drive by it and it's you know, condos a million dollars, right, and we're like, damn, that was where we used to live. 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. He's always on the block with his stick and he's just a very cool dude. So we always used to talk to him. And it started getting around that, like, you know, people all over that block were basically considering selling their homes. And then I started noticing changes. I'm like, okay, well there's less cookouts now. Uh, people are not as friendly. You know you have block parties, right, there was less of those. It's gone. And I was just sustrated. 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 cannot you know, by um in New York. It's just even if you see the videos on TikTok and snap chat where people are online trying to rent apartments, and there's always that joke of like, you know, if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere. 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 so and so down the block. And I just feel like even in um College, I just felt like that was that was missing. And I think what we have to be careful of with the world gentification because it sounds so dirty, right, it sounds really bad, But as black people, we have to gentrify our own blocks. Our blocks are beautiful, right. It's if we could gentrify our own blocks. We could call three on one, I mean on like, hey, listen, they need to pick up this trash, not call three on one on your neighbor. Right, we could actually, you know, plant more trees. And I just think that there's always this resentment like, oh, well, they 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, so it's kind of frustrating. And that's why I was just like, listen, here is a segway. This is kind of funny that the white population is kind of decreasing everywhere else. This has Daily Show written 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, can you define it? 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 food stuff is happening. When the bodega sellin almond milk, you see one of them hacky sack boys. I can't trust nobody what a hacky sack. 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 something that one has to fight against. The fact that the area improves economically and UH provides opportunity for people who live there to make new connections and to live a better life. To me is a goal in life, and I Jordana, I think, expressed it much better than I could. What really scares me is that people want to find out what are the indicators of gentrification before they want to do anything about it. And if you do it, and you come up with the database to prove that gentrification is occurring, you've already lost the community and the way to deal with gentrification or with its placement issues, which I think are really the most important one. And as Jordana alluded to, also a housing program. We need to build housing that people can afford UH, and that housing is too often thought of as a commodity and not really as a right. How do you really build those communities? How do you really address that? Well, the way to know that your areas gentrifying is to talk to the people there, is to see what's going on on the streets, To go to the supermarkets and the storefronts and the commercial strips, 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, 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 had safer streets and better schools, that they wouldn't live there anymore, that it would be for somebody else. And that is a condition that we can't accept. We have to arrive at a point where people can improve the quality of their neighborhood and have the choice to stay, not be pushed out for economic reasons. In many ways, and a friend of mine by the name of Carl Anthony from the West Coast talks about it. It's almost like getting on a bus years ago. When a white person walks on the bus, the black person has to leave or 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 got iy sed it. 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, 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 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 real, extremely helpful. And I really want to raise the glass and toast you guys for doing it. Thank you, thank you so much for that. You hit a Trevor Noy and he just said to give us a race to give us, Yeah, give him 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 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 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, and so I typed in my grocery stores on my Apple Maps, and like everything when I go to like I'm walking to, like they're like this or like like that. It's like, brother, it's 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 in and 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 to get fired, right, I think he deserves to get educated. I think that he didn't know. I think a lot of people from you know, the Middlewest, the South, everybody comes to New York and it's just like, which is where he was from? Keeping, you know, and they're like, wait a minute, where's my publics? Where's my We don't got that. We got Carlos Vodegg, you know, and um. Another thing 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 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 gentrified somebody. And maybe I'm complaining about the lack of almond milk. Right. There was one guy in the piece. 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 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 yourself. 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 so long ago. Real estate is the greatest transfer of wealth. It 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 when you look at just people like that guy on that TikTok video, Um, who's just like what has the 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 at the bodega, bros. But we 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 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. 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 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 style and the sixties, we held hearings on insurance redlining because somebody, because of the color of their skin, could got could not get the color 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 as a right that doesn't diminish over time. Uh, other people 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 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, the 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 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 diversity, is that the younger kids who are impoverished and grow up in mixed neighborhoods apparently are doing much better than kids who grow up and are isolated from UH. The contacts, 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 worked towards over my life. But the fact of the matter is, I think we need to begin to look at investing in communities so the people who are in those communities can grow, so they can grow culturally, they can grow economically, UH, 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 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 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 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 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 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. Uh. And as a result, everybody loses. You lose the quality of the neighborhood, and you're losing the networks that you has 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, 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 a socioeconomic level, and education and opportunities and 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 about how crime and policing changes in the gentrification piece. When I had spoken with some of the wonderful, wonderful women that are Brooklyn Knights, they talked about how you know, people will just call three one one for random the snitchers. I would go say it, but you said it, so let's get it. Do it run well you said it's and I'm copying you because you're absolutely right. And three one one. You know, people move into and should move into a neighborhood because they know it all right, and they should be moved into the 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 moved first New Bedford Stuyvesant, 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 time cultures will change, they'll adapt. But it's the abrupt speed that people want to change places. It's the speculative nature. Why should people get a call a week from a real estate agent to sell their property? Why should they be harassed to sell their property? Obviously that skip with you and Tommy Holly. You know, he talks about how much he paid and how much he'll get if he sells the house. It's a very attractive thing to sell. But what's he going to do when he sells? Is he going to move to Florida and face the racism and an antagonism of at state or is he going to lose all his friends on that block crisis as this 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 muld you pay for the song? Twenty three seven dollars? And you can sell it right now for closer to me? Oh, you got to go not a minute. You don't want to say that was his stake? What does 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 and get took people to understand the neighborhood they move in. It's not just a place 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, or at least what I gathered in Jordanna. You can correct me if I'm wrong, but one of the issues that I think Tommy Holly was dealing with was that he could stay there and preserve the culture, or he could take the money and have an increased quality of living for the back half of his life. And I think that's ultimately what I felt like he was kind of struggling with, because you know, your dollar is gonna go a lot further in Florida. Now. Granted, you're gonna probably get called to inward a couple of times that there's an in word tax you have to pay depending 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 Jordanna 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 Knights still have a resolve where even with the changes in their relationship with law enforcement. As white residents become uncomfortable with black people who were indigenous to that 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 about some of the signs and justifications, and for me, the sign is like, there's three there's the white woman running with her dog late at night. If I see that happening, Okay, something's going down. There is the white woman asking the Jamaican 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 Day parade or complaining about a block party. Right. I think the issue that we have as Brooklyn Nights is I love Brooklyn so much. I love it. I talk. You asked any Brooklyn Knight where they're from. They don't say I'm a New Yorker. They say I'm from Brooklyn. That's how I introduced myself. So of course I want to share my burrow with anybody and everybody. The issue I have is that when you guys come here and you call the cops instead of introducing yourself, and 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 and talk about Brooklyn, visit Brooklyn, and live in Brooklyn, but I think the sense of community has just gone. And I feel like, and Tommy pointed to 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 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 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 him, all the milk, all these different type of milks. Um, I can't afford anything else going on, like the laundry mat, the nail 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 might, if you have the will to stay into your homes, because we're losing that. And I don't think. I think it's just really sad. When I talk about it, I get emotional when I hear people selling their homes. 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 but cash poor. So now how do you maintain your house right, how do you you know, keep the furnace or the boiler and all that stuff. So it's it's bigger than just having a house. Having a house is a lot of responsibility. But we need the access. And there's a lot of grant programs that people to throw around that word or you could get a grant, could get a grant where tell me, I would love 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 I a gentrified because I moved into predominite Spanish neighborhood and they play bad Bunny all times to night. But I'm like, okay, well I can't call it. I can't call the cops on these people. I don't want to be the person that taught me 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, 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 when Brooklyn Knight that's like, you know, we would love to share it. I just think it's the way I think Tommy touched on it or don't Judith did about like, you know, integration, right, people from Brooklyn from Brooklyn when you didn't eat mass but it was from what would you like to you say? So? I grew up in the Bronx and it took a it was a psychic change to move to Brooklyn because Bronx sites would never move to Brooklyn in those days. We moved there because we were able to get a house at a very low price. And that was in the sixties, so we've been living there for a long time. And it was when people were leaving the city. The city was losing population, in the seventies, you know, New York City was losing maybe thirty thou apartments a year. It was shrinking. And what saved the city where the community based organizations and the groups like bed Sty Restoration, the groups and Fort Green, the groups in Red Hook and all other places that stabilize the neighborhoods that fought for federal government to stop there what we're basically discriminatory lending policies, changing the f h A to begin to lend money to stop what was really what we're fast foreclosure schemes. You would go into a neighborhood East New York, for instance. You'd go into that neighborhood predominantly working class white. Some people were beginning to integrate it. Then all of a sudden, people's racist fears came up. They would hire people to have stage fights in the street. 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 fears against whites and blacks, and it really was, and we had to take them to court. We could document that there were places that were basically using government programs and manipulating them for fast for these fast foreclosure schemes. To that point, run then this sounds like gentrification to 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, have real estate developers that are predatory? Airbnb is a big issue as well. We got everybody wanting to flip a house because they don't watch two shows in a row on on h G t V 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 rentlining that also have helped as well to contribute to these issue. So is there any one specific smoking gun. There isn't one specific smoking gun, but there's a whole network of systemic racist policies that have come to play an ongoing role. Whether or not people know doing or doing it willingly or unwillingly, the systems still persist, and we you still have real estate agents that are involved in racial steering. You'll be sent to one neighborhood, I'll be sent to another neighborhood. Uh. We've got to begin to monitor those quickly. A lot of this is because government turns a blind eye to it. We need a City Planning Commission, We need a development entity in New York City that is aggressively fostering the healthy development of all our communities, looking for a diverse goals of building a diverse, multicultural city, and we haven't been doing that of late. What we're doing in some cases is we're going into an area like East New York, all right, and we're building new housing. We're displacing twenty families. We're building a hundred units of housing, twenty five 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. That kind of inclusionary housing works if you want to build a racially in economically integrated community. It doesn't work when want to build more housing. And what we need to do is say we're no longer going to allow it only to be the private sector, but government has to be committed to a housing policy to meet the needs of every 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 is just racist right currently in Twins went two. If obviously get my house appraised and a white persons to stay 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, save you a little money, you get your little f h long, you do all the right things. But now when it starts to that for appraisal, automatically, I'm 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 effect shows accountable. So maybe that means going to the and now it's on zoom Roy, so 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 this story, and really rolling up your sleeves and getting your hands dirty. And 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 make it a luxury building. No, I want to be I have ego, I have pries. I'm like, I'm gonna plant myself here. I'm gonna buy a house in East New York Cypress Viols area, and I'm not leaving, and I want to be part of that change. And I think sometimes a lot of like we just automatically assume, let's go to South Carolina, Let's go to you know, a t L. I love Wakonda, I love a t L. Don't be wrong. But there's great still black people in Brooklyn too, And I just think that we have this automatic like, you know what, it's way too expensive, 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 it on the table is I think we really need to start talking about housing that is rental housing. Not everybody wants to be a homeowner, not everybody has the ability to be a homeowner, and so we need to think about how we increase the supply of rental housing in the City of New York in such a way that it's woven into the fabric of communities that it's right next to middle income right because the home ownership areas, we have to think about social housing UH public housing, housing that's owned by the UH and meets the kneeds 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. Is New York City still has thousands upon thousands of people on the waiting it was 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 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 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 and in many other places in the city, and so setting up these anti harassment units where people really know they could go into South Brooklyn Legal Services, 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 landlord's It really is important because that was happening. They would come in, they buy a building, right, they vacate one or two apartments, and they started 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 the technical and the organizational capacity to follow through a housing program and evolves organizing. It involves UH you know, financing, and involves regulation, and the role of government has to be one that is not passive and people can have to not be passive. We have to really stand up for our neighbors and begin to organize on the 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 when 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, the power of like five is better than power on 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 antire maimate law firms and just try to say, hey, listen, something weird is going on here. Um, I don't know who to go to. Can you help me? You know? And it's unfair because you look at the rental prices. That average amount of rent right now in New York it's like three thousand dollars depending where you're at, you know, you look answer and place, and it's unfortunate because people are lining up. 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 be bought, there's no apartments for rent, and you're just stuck in this vicious cycle. And I think it's bigger than just you know, it's obviously politics, 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? Big 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 we saved a lot of the neighborhood with the green space around the public housing because an absorbed water. And you never got credit of that that. Meanwhile, the folks in public housing didn't have electricity for months. What's going to happen to that huge supply of public housing which is in harm's way Within fifteen to twenty years, we're gonna lose those units and you are 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 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 implacing them. That we're beginning to build communities that will live beyond the first mortgage cycle. No, absolutely, we're coming up out that the break, we're going to talk solutions. We've talked about what gentrification needs. We're trying to figure out who's to aim. 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, the point that speaking out, okay, you gotta be that's once to live, that's afraid. When we're getting to the more technical ones after the break, this is beyond the scenes. Let's talk solutions here for a second, Ryan 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 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 helped to 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 Sty, where there's an event on Fulton Street near Restoration Plaza, I think is a really important event. Uh. 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 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 a 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 block parties, bragging about being from Brooklyn, knowing your neighbors, and making sure that you know you're active in your community. I know sometimes people think, oh that's corny 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 end? 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 in your neighborhood, even if you're not a homeowner. Right. Just like rental, you know, renters are equally as important, right because you have to say, okay, well listen, I'm paying you know, let's say, for instance, a too family apartment. I'm paying some of your your 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, how can I make it better? Right? I think as black people especially, we have to be the ones to autify 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, what's wild is that you know the bodega guy that we were talking about at the top of the show. He could have made that into a win for himself by just going there's no grocery stores, so I love going to bodega's, and I'm gonna go to all the bodegas around me and buy a little bit from all the bodegas and it would have been one big Hey, support local business kumbay yah, but instead you get fat. Years ago, there was a group in Fourth 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. You know. The 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 and like Weeksville Historical Society and what it's doing 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 depook correctly, you know, you have to also start circulating that dollar in that community. So businesses kind of want to stay, you know, or those mom and pop operations want to be there and versus selling their bodego, versus selling their laundry Matt, they know they have a loyal customer base, versus kind of taking the wheezy easy way out and getting your groceries are livered or whatever. Try and save your spending dollar and put it back in the community, because it all everything affects everything, right, and people are people at the basics. We are all human. We want fair housing, we want fair food, we want fair access to the house. Things are right. And if we start treating our dollar as it's powerful and start making sure like we are active in our community, but nobody can stop us. I don't care what you say. Run. 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 going to be there, they leaveing the Jordana might mess around, run for city councilor what's it called over there, Aldermen, 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, Ryan, I think we have to change the path we're on, and I think we have to change that path right away. What I'd like to see us is to begin to take some of the money that we have and have access to and begin to reinvest it in our neighborhoods by building up those neighborhoods and investing in them dramatically. We in New York State have something called the stock 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 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 it in transportation and in low and moderate income housing so that we can really begin to renovate our neighborhoods and generate the kind of quality neighborhoods that be the needs of every income group. We have to start telling the story or 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 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. 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 our own culture, and create and and really celebrate the diversity of this city, 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 a multicultural democracy. I think that really is something we have to work on and work towards and 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, it's getting really bad. I think that how is it 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 he touched on, it's it's a right. I think housing is a right that some people find it so unattainable, but it's yours. And I think the other thing too, is just like stop changing the names of the neighborhood. 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 staves the highest 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, sty respect the neighborhood and stop all the acronyms. Well, I think that's a good place to end. And she is a wonderful, wonderful, proud Brooklyn night. Georgana, thank you for going beyond the scenes, and Ron, thank you for everything that you have contributed to preserving culture and building culture and making sure that people respect culture. 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 wherever you get your podcasts.