SUNSET PARK, Brooklyn -- New York City is not doing enough to protect poor vulnerable communities from the effects of climate change. That's the message from a group of environmental watchdogs.
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The 30 Top Thinkers Under 30: Jonathan Ferrer
“When I was a kid, I didn’t think I’d be doing any of what I’m doing right now,” Jonathan Ferrer says.
Today, Ferrer is an accomplished environmental activist and one of New York City’s preeminent youth leaders. He helps organize the city’s annual Climate Justice Youth Summit, which educates and inspires hundreds of young people about local environmental and social issues. Ferrer also facilitates community meetings that address the environmental burdens of Sunset Park, his neighborhood in Brooklyn. He has helped his community establish a waterfront park, install an expanded median on a main thoroughfare, and recover from Hurricane Sandy.
But just six years ago, Ferrer was a “self-absorbed 14-year-old who had the attention span of a squirrel when it came to climate change and was crazy-obsessed with sneakers,” he says. His life changed when he became involved with the United Puerto Rican Organization of Sunset Park, which promotes social and environmental justice. Ferrer joined UPROSE because it offered a summer apprenticeship, and because the salary — via the New York City Summer Youth Employment Program — paid more than McDonald’s. (Ferrer was saving up for a new pair of Jordans.)
Before the apprenticeship, Ferrer simply thought of the Sunset Park neighborhood as home. “It was the farthest I ever traveled when I went somewhere special with my mom,” he says. At the time, Ferrer considered the nearby power plants to be “just these old, weird things.” Political consciousness, it turns out, was right around the corner.
It was the executive director of UPROSE, Elizabeth Yeampierre, who inspired Ferrer to think more critically about his neighborhood. One day, Yeampierre asked a room of 30 interns, “How many of you have asthma, or have a family member with asthma?” Sixteen people raised their hands, including Ferrer, who had been hospitalized twice for asthma attacks. Yeampierre explained the cause of the neighborhood’s abnormally high asthma rate by pointing to the many industrial sites in and around Sunset Park: the sludge-transfer facility, the highway that carries 200,000 vehicles per day, and the three large power plants that serve other, richer neighborhoods that don’t allow industry in their backyards.
We’ll be publishing profiles of this year’s list of the 30 top thinkers under 30throughout the month of March. Visit this page every day to read about another young person who is making an impact on the social, political, and economic issues we cover every day at Pacific Standard.
“When I found out that the little bit of smoke that I saw coming out of the power plant near my house has such an enormous effect on the health of my neighborhood, I was shocked,” Ferrer says. “I don’t want to say that it was like finding out that Santa Claus wasn’t real all over again, because that’s cliché, but that is how it felt.”
Later that year, Yeampierre challenged Ferrer to present a speech to city officials at a community forum. The speech proposed a policy that ensured that underserved communities like Sunset Park wouldn’t get stuck with yet another power plant or waste facility.
Ferrer wasn’t wild about the idea of giving a speech. “I’d never done public speaking before. I never even raised my hand in school,” he says. But Ferrer respected Yeampierre too much to refuse. For 30 torturous seconds, Ferrer “choked and stuttered” through the speech, he says.
And then something amazing happened: The audience stood and clapped.
“Here was this young Puerto Rican kid from Sunset Park with such a typical background for a person of color — daddy wasn’t around, mma was working her butt off all the time — and a bunch of important people were clapping for him,” Ferrer reflects. Ferrer was used to officials looking sleepy at community forums. But after his speech, everyone appeared wide-eyed and smiley, as if they were suddenly ready for change.
That was the moment Ferrer’s life’s trajectory changed, he says. Now Ferrer is one of UPROSE’s most dedicated volunteers, and a winner of the Brower Youth Award and the Gloria Barron Prize for Young Heroes. For Ferrer, it’s Yeampierre who changed everything, and he thanks her “very, very, very much.”
Clean Power — Our Power : A Perspective from NY/NJ Environmental Justice Groups
A Perspective from NY/NJ Environmental Justice Groups
By Ana Orozco and Molly Greenberg
In January 2016, members of community-based and environmental justice groups across the US held simultaneous actions in all ten EPA Regional headquarter cities. The protests call for the adoption of the Our Power Plan (OPP) a comprehensive justice-focused response to reducing greenhouse gasses that flags the dangers of false promises like carbon trading, natural gas, and nuclear energy.
This national demonstration of solidarity was coordinated by the Climate Justice Alliance (CJA), which unites frontline communities hit hardest by climate disruption, pollution, and economic crises.
In New York and New Jersey members from UPROSE in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, and Ironbound Community Corporation in Newark, NJ personally delivered the Our Power Plan report to EPA Region 2 administrator Judith Enck and staff at their Manhattan office. The aim of the actions is to challenge the EPA to bring an environmental justice lens to Obama administration policies—chief among them, the Clean Power Plan (CPP), released in August 2015, by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). This plan is an attempt by the US government to confront climate change and reduce the country’s carbon pollution.
The CPP demonstrates that the Obama administration and the EPA take seriously the issue of climate change and have finally developed a plan to reduce this country’s greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs). The plan addresses carbon emissions from coal-fired power plants, which is a start. But the plan does not go far enough. It still allows for hazardous energy facilities, completely neglects co-pollutants, accepts extractive energy sources and fails to address disparate siting of power plants in low income communities and communities of color.
The Our Power Plan highlights some of the shortcomings with the CPP and proposes justice and equity based solutions. One of the most glaring shortcomings of the CPP is accepting natural gas, nuclear energy, and incineration as satisfactory alternatives to coal-fired energy. Unfortunately the NJ Energy Master Plan shares these shortcomings. If we really want to reduce our GHG emissions by 80% by 2050, a goal of the De Blasio administration’s OneNYC plan and the CPP, we need to stop relying on false solutions such as natural gas. It is a non-renewable fossil fuel resource and releases co-pollutants like methane, nitrogen dioxide and sulfur dioxide. Exposure to these pollutants has severe respiratory effects, especially in those who already suffer from asthma, resulting in increased hospital visits.
Another problematic proposal in the CPP, is relying on the carbon market (cap and trade) as an incentive for coal-fired power plants to reduce their GHGs. To think within the framework of our current economic system, is not sustainable and further exacerbates the climate crisis. Any form of pollution commodification like carbon trading is no solution, and must not be entertained as such. Impacts of our current fossil fuel based economy, built on overconsumption, are heavily felt in low-income communities and communities of color, where climate change has had catastrophic effects, cost us lives and our cities millions of dollars in reconstruction and infrastructure costs.
In Region 2, environmental and public health injustices from dirty fossil fuel industries continue to overburden our most vulnerable communities, low-income communities of color. Environmental/Climate Justice leaders in NY and NJ demand that we go beyond the CPP and address issues of co-pollutants, natural gas facilities such as the Newark Energy Center, and three peaker power plants in Sunset Park, garbage incinerators, and aging coal fired-plants. We need to begin addressing real emissions reductions at the source and stop looking to false promises, which only allow for business as usual. The three peaker plants in Sunset Park are natural gas power plants and expose nearby residents to co-pollutants such as NOx and SOx, GHGs which can cause or worsen respiratory diseases and increase asthma related hospital visits. Not only is our community affected by daily exposure to these co-pollutants, but communities impacted by fracking suffer the disastrous consequences of this natural gas extraction process.
What is truly shocking is that even with the weakness in the CPP to really go after the dirty fossil fuel industry, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) has halted any progress by issuing a stay. This move sheds light on the essence of the up-hill battle we are up against. The decision also deflects and takes away from the climate justice argument that the CPP does not go far enough in efforts to reduce GHGs. If we have to put our efforts into getting a weak proposal back on the table, our movement for a radical change away from a fossil fuel based, extractive economy is interrupted and further delayed.
So while we await the results from the recent Supreme Court decision as environmental justice advocates we continue our efforts to implement the Our Power Plan and support real solutions to the dirty energy industry. We look to EPA Region 2 to commit to a continued conversation and actions to address dirty energy affecting the health and well-being of our communities. The EPA has an opportunity to do things differently, to really challenge climate change, why then propose weak solutions?
With real solutions like weatherization, wind and solar, within our reach let’s stop entertaining false promises that rely on business as usual instead of community-based solutions that can actually help us reach these very real goals of GHG reductions by 80% over the next 34 years. It is time to put into action a “Just Transition” away from an extractive economy and towards local renewable economies where communities struggling to hold onto homes, jobs, businesses, and livable ecosystems benefit from all at once. This is the real potential of the Clean Power Plan.
In order to ensure survival, communities who are currently at the frontline of the climate crisis know that we need to move away from the fossil fuel driven economy. While the EPA is taking small steps in the right direction, this glacial pace towards progress is dangerous for our communities. We cannot afford to entertain climate deniers or fossil fuel based industry representatives. Instead we need to be working towards a Just Transition, developing a system that is based on equity, based in real renewable energy solutions and not driven by profit over human and environmental health.
Ana Orozco is the Climate Justice Policy and Programs coordinator at UPROSE
Molly Greenberg is the Environmental Justice Policy Manager at Ironbound Community Corporation
The Streetcar Hustle
We need bold new transit projects. But Bill de Blasio’s streetcar plan shows we won’t get them by catering to private developers.
NYC Wants to Build a State of the Art Transit Line — But Sea Level Rise Could Put It Under Water
Early this week in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Red Hook, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio championed what officials in his administration are calling a "modern, efficient, state-of-the-art" transit link along the waterfront of Brooklyn and Queens.
NYC Wants to Build a State of the Art Transit Line — But Sea Level Rise Could Put It Under Water
Early this week in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Red Hook, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio championed what officials in his administration are calling a "modern, efficient, state-of-the-art" transit link along the waterfront of Brooklyn and Queens.
Since de Blasio signaled his intention to support the Brooklyn-Queens Connector (BQX) project earlier this month, neighborhood activists and climate experts have raised questions about its feasibility, price tag (currently $2.5 billion), and necessity, with many critics arguing that express busses (into Manhattan) would better serve the low-income communities along the waterfront.
The question of whether the project — which would traverse several low-lying waterfront areas — makes sense from a climate change perspective has not yet been fully scrutinized.
Instead, most news accounts have presented the BQX as a restoration of one leg of the trolley lines that used to be common throughout the boroughs, giving rise to the name of the Brooklyn (trolley) Dodgers. But at the Red Hook press conference, Polly Trachtenberg, the city's transportation commissioner, explained that the project would actually combine both trolleys and light rail.
Promoted by a variety of transportation advocates, the BQX would extend from Sunset Park, Brooklyn to Astoria, Queens along a 16-mile route connecting what the city calls "innovation clusters. The New York Times' architecture critic Michael Kimmelman and the longtime traffic expert "Gridlock Sam" Schwartz, among others, have come out in support of the project.
At the Red Hook launch, Ydanis Rodriguez, chair of the city council's transportation committee, called the project "sustainable" and "the type of infrastructure investment the city needs in the 21st century."
But some leading climate change specialists are cautioning otherwise. Columbia University geologist Klaus Jacob says that while the proposed BQX project "solves desperate transportation needs, the problem is that it runs along current and future flood zones."
According to the latest report from the New York City Panel on Climate Change (NPCC), which consists of both de Blasio administration officials and leading scientists and urban planners, sea levels are projected to rise 11-21 inches by mid-century, 18-39 inches by the 2080s, and as high as 6 feet by 2100.
Jacob has been a member of the NPCC since it was created by the Bloomberg administration. He cautions against building up low-lying areas of the city until a variety of basic issues are resolved. "The resiliency of all transportation and infrastructure — electric and gas, sewage, etc.— in vulnerable areas needs to be established before large development projects should proceed," he said.
De Blasio, for his part, vows to connect the project to his administration's larger climate change initiatives. Amy Spitalnick, a de Blasio spokeswoman, said, "The BQX, like any new development along the waterfront, will be made climate resilient, and will be fully integrated into the $20 billion resiliency plan underway in Brooklyn, Queens, and across the city."
Councilman Carlos Menchaca, who represents Sunset Park and Red Hook, explained that those communities are engaged in "extensive flood protection, resilience, and environmental justice work that can serve as a model for the BQX plan." However, UPROSE, a leading environmental justice organization based in Sunset Park, cautioned that the project requires a "serious environmental impact analysis" led by the waterfront communities themselves.
Absent the creation of sea walls along the waterfront (which are not part of the administration's plans), areas like Red Hook will remain particularly vulnerable to flooding. And so one climate-ready solution would be to convert the BQX into a monorail.
Jacob points to many "elegant" examples of elevated rail in low-lying cities such as Kuala Lumpur and Tokyo. Though located on higher ground, the town of Wuppertal, Germany, which is nearby Dusseldorf, offers a particularly handsome monorail, one that's been running since 1901.
Closer to home, elevated tracks in New York City have yielded mixed results. The streets below tend to be dark, cramped, and noisy. And the great urban planner Jane Jacobs argued that areas under expressways and railroads became "border vacuums," walling off neighborhoods from one another.
But the successful renovation of the High Line on Manhattan's West Side recently showed that a repurposed overhead railway passage can help ignite a development boom. One trick for the BQX could be to merge some elements of the High Line's pedestrian-friendly benefits into a functioning railway project.
Spitalnick said there are plenty of design issues to be resolved, making it "incredibly premature to judge" the BQX project at this point.
Jacob offered two related suggestions. One is for the city to conduct a complete technical study, fully estimating the cost of the elevated option. The other is for it to show how the entire project corresponds with the comprehensive planning of the waterfront.
And should it proceed on the ground or in the air, Jacob said, if the BQX is detached from a full blueprint that maps out the waterfront's long-term sustainability, it risks becoming "one more example of short-sighted, short-term planning."
13 Women on the Front Line Against Climate Change
"To pretend that climate change is not here, and that we can go about our business and leave the climate change conversation to the climate change people, is not to be reading the signs." - Elizabeth Yeampierre
Prime real estate: Amazon expanding to Sunset Park
Sunset Park is about to get a big delivery.
Amazon will open a distribution center at Liberty View Industrial Plaza. The online sales giant inked a seven-year lease for an undisclosed chunk of the massive industrial building, according to real estate watchers the Real Deal. The center could bring a ton of new jobs to the area, but some Sunset Parkers question the potential quality, given Amazon’s less-than-stellar labor reputation, one workforce advocate said.
Anti-Gentrification Activists Protest Real Estate Summit at Brooklyn Museum
“Nadie aquí ha superado la catástrofe”
A tres años del huracán Sandy, residentes de Far Rockaway siguen lidiando con la reconstrucción y el miedo a la furia de la naturaleza
Nueva York — El paso del huracán Joaquín a comienzos de este mes por la costa Este reavivó la desesperación que la dominicana Teresa Surillo (70) sintió hace tres años cuando la Supertormenta Sandy devastó su casa en Far Rockaway, Queens. La mujer empacó lo que pudo de su sótano a medio reconstruir imaginando una inundación como la 2012.
“Nadie aquí ha superado la catástrofe del todo”, dijo mientras observaba fotografías de su hogar en ruinas luego del paso de Sandy. “Las alertas de huracán me provocan una angustia tremenda. No tendría fuerza para enfrentar otra desgracia”.
Pero la familia lleva a cuestas más que el temor y tristes recuerdos. Pedro Surillo (72), esposo de Teresa, fue diagnosticado con cáncer pulmonar a finales de 2014. El puertorriqueño depende de un inhalador de oxigeno portátil para respirar.
“Los químicos que usé para limpiar el moho del sótano acabaron conmigo”, contó con dificultad. “No podía esperar la ayuda para reconstruir y exponer a mi esposa enferma de asma”.
Los Surillo, quienes recibieron ayuda de la organización Faith in New York y de voluntarios de la comunidad, aseguraron que a tres años de Sandy los estragos aún son parte de su presente.
“Quién diga que Sandy es cosa del pasado se equivoca”, dijo Pedro. “Muchas seguimos a la deriva”.
De igual manera se siente la cubana Pura Gonzalo (95) y su hijo Jorge Gonzalo (68), quienes contaron que Sandy “consumió la mayor parte de sus ingresos del retiro”, pese a recibir fondos de ayuda de la Agencia Federal para el Manejo de Emergencias (FEMA) y de otras agencias.
“El huracán acabó con todo menos con nuestra esperanza”, expresó Pura, quien ha vivido en Far Rockaway por 35 años. “Qué más podemos hacer que pedir a Dios la voluntad para olvidar y mirar hacia adelante”.
Los Gonzalo se mudaron a su casa en agosto pasado, luego de tres años de trabajos de reconstrucción, pero el desnivel del edificio -que data de 1898- como consecuencia de la inundación, obligó a Jorge a hacer reparaciones por su cuenta.
“Quiero un descanso de esta pesadilla que no termina”, comentó Jorge, un veterano del Ejercito de Estados Unidos.
Además de Far Rockaway Sandy golpeó con todo su poder destructivo otras áreas de la Gran Manzana como Staten Island y el Bajo Manhattan. En toda la ciudad de Nueva York se registraron 43 muertos y al menos $ 19,000 millones en impacto económico.
Manuel Umaña, organizador comunitario de Faith in New York y residente de Far Rockaway por 20 años, comentó que la zona vive un lento proceso de recuperación luego de Sandy, lo que impacta más gravemente a los inmigrantes sin estatus legal y residentes sin acceso a vivienda accesible.
“Todas las voces son necesarias para analizar el progreso en la recuperación, lo que sigue pendiente en la agenda comunitaria y el proyecto de los funcionarios electos para asegurar el desarrollo equitativo de Far Rockaway”, indicó Umaña. “Hay graves rezagos sin la atención necesaria. El huracán agudizó problemas sociales y aumentó la disparidad económica”.
Una lección para NYC
Elizabeth Yeampierre, directora de UPROSE (United Puerto Rican Organization of Sunset Park), una organización de Brooklyn con programas centrados en justicia ambiental, apuntó que la ciudad de Nueva York sí está mejor preparada para hacer frente a fenómenos climáticos de la magnitud de Sandy, pero no lo suficiente en cuanto a un plan de contingencia enfocado en las comunidades en riesgo.
“Cada sector de la población reacciona distinto a las catástrofes naturales. La respuesta depende del idioma, el estatus migratorio y la zona geográfica”, expresó la activista medioambiental. “Urge desarrollar un plan de acción cuadra por cuadra y asegurar los recursos para que cada grupo fortalezca sus habilidades de resistencia y recuperación”.
Según un panel de científicos convocados por la oficina del alcalde Bill de Blasio, la ciudad de Nueva York enfrentará la subida del nivel del mar de 11 a 24 pulgadas para de la década de 2050, lo que pondría en riesgo de inundación a una cuarta parte de la urbe.
Juan Camilo Osorio, director de investigación de The New York City Environmental Justice Alliance (NYC-EJA), dijo que la Ciudad y el Estado dieron un paso importante al incluir la discusión del cambio climático es sus planes de previsión de desastres luego de Sandy.
“Hace falta un estudio serio acerca del impacto de Sandy en la salud pública”, advirtió Osorio. “No tenemos la suficiente información de posibles enfermedades vinculadas a metales pesados y sustancias tóxicas derivadas de las plantas industriales en las zonas costeras”.
Marcha y foro comunitario
Los residentes de Far Rockaway conmemorarán el tercer aniversario de Sandy con una marcha solemne que se realizará este jueves a las 6:00 pm y que partirá de First Church of God, situada en el 1425 de Beach Chanel Drive y de St. Gertrude Churcha, ubicada en Beach 38th y Beach Chanel Drive. El contingente caminará hacia Peninsula Prep Charter School en 611 Beach en la calle 19 y la Avenida New Haven.
Después de la marcha, las preocupaciones de la comunidad y de los activistas medioambientales se discutirán a las 7:00 pm en un foro comunitario en Peninsula Prep Charter School, en el que participan funcionarios electos.
La actividad es organizada por Faith in New York, una organización que fue pilar en las labores de voluntariado y ayuda para las víctimas de Sandy en Far Rockaway.
As Industry City Promises a New Sunset Park, Some Residents Fight to Maintain the Old One
New mural adds new faces to diverse Sunset Park block
A once-blank façade of the nonprofit Turning Point Brooklyn is now a vibrant, living canvas in Sunset Park.
As its colors stand out among the brick and concrete row of three- to four-story buildings on Fourth Avenue, the mural — titled "We Come from the Future" — blends a sense of hope and possibility for 24-year-old Danielle Ruiz.
The Gentrifier’s Guide to Not Being an Asshole
BY NEIL DEMAUSE
If anyone needed a perfect Rorschach test for 21st-century gentrification angst, it showed up this summer on Slate. The website created an "Are You a Gentrifier?" calculator that promised a simple yes/no answer. The calculator itself was fairly ham-fisted — anyone with a higher-than-average income living in a poorer-than-average zip code got tagged with the G-word — but the comments section quickly exploded with tellingly defensive objections: "Why is it my fault rents went up?" "The only true gentrifiers are the people who flip houses. People like me who integrate into the neighborhood rather than trying to change it aren't hurting anything." "How can I be a gentrifier if I'm black?"
It's one of the realities of modern New York: Wherever you go, there somebody else just was. And with both an influx of young urban transplants and soaring housing costs wherever you look — an August real estate report found that rents in parts of Queens are rising even faster than those in Brooklyn — if you moved recently, regardless of your own paycheck and complexion, there's a good chance you replaced someone who was poorer and darker than you.
Ever since the 1950s-era flight of city dwellers to suburbia began to reverse course, it's been recognized that upscale immigrants bring more to a neighborhood than just increased demand for artisanal condiments. Residents with the ability to pay more for rent — even if it's just by quadrupling up in a two-bedroom apartment, dorm-style — drive up prices, pushing the existing population elsewhere. In Bushwick, the number of residents earning more than $100,000 a year nearly doubled between 2000 and 2012, according to data provided by City Councilmember Antonio Reynoso's office; in that same timespan, average rents after accounting for inflation rose by 50 percent, and the neighborhood's Hispanic population shrank by 9 percent, even as overall population increased.
And once newcomers arrive in a neighborhood, they tend to snowball. This is not just because they tell their friends about their new discovery, but, rather, due to the problematic racial calculus of neighborhood desirability — their very presence makes it seem safe for others of their ethnicity and/or artistic bent. The bit from the first Sex and the City movie where Miranda trailed a white dad with a stroller into Chinatown to find a desirable apartment was controversial not just because it was cringeworthy, but because it was a scene that, at the time of the film's 2008 release, was being repeated (if not in quite as bald-faced a fashion) across the city.
Brigette Blood, who moved to Bushwick after graduating from college in 2003, readily acknowledges that as much as she's thrown herself into fighting the runaway gentrification of her adoptive home through her work with the North West Bushwick Community Group, she can't entirely mitigate her own ripple effect on housing demand. "When the landlord next door comes to show his apartment and there's a white lady sitting out front, that's a kind of power that I can't deny," she says. "A white lady sitting out front drinking tea has a different cultural reading for a lot of people than the very wonderful Puerto Rican men who hang out on my street all day."
The arrival of newcomers can destabilize a neighborhood's economic ecosystem as well, pricing out bodegas and the like to make way for everything from indie coffee bars and gourmet groceries to the bane of the unintended gentrifiers' lot: chain stores. William Powhida, an artist who moved to Bushwick in 2008, recalls a conversation with a since-departed local artist who, as a Spanish speaker, kept close contact with the Hispanic neighbors who'd preceded her on her block. "Many of her neighbors were happy their kids could play in the street, that there was a reduction in crime, that some good things were happening for the neighborhood," he says. "But every time a U-Haul showed up, the neighbors would observe, 'Oh, los blanquitos, the price of chicken is going to go up.' "
If the ubiquitous gentrification wars have a silver lining, it's that longtime residents and newcomers alike have begun struggling to find ways to make the hostilities less hostile. And while these ideas may not assuage your guilt at your rent check being the instrument that evicted a family of five — in fact, as all involved make clear, assuaging your guilty conscience should be exactly not the point — the Voice has found a number of residents who can suggest some basic do's and don'ts:
✔ Don't assume a blank slate
Nine years ago, The Onion ran what remains the definitive account of how not to behave when moving to a new part of town. In a mock op-ed titled "Sometimes I Feel Like I'm the Only One Trying to Gentrify This Neighborhood," the fictitious author ran through all the clichés of the Ugly Gentrifier, such as: "I'm trying to convince the owners of that taqueria on the corner to change their decor to incorporate some more of that funky Day of the Dead motif I really like. But they insist on bland white walls. Ugh!"
Like most Onion articles, it was funny because it was largely true. The real estate press in particular loves to present outer-borough neighborhoods as terra incognita waiting to be "discovered" and civilized. In one such article this summer, the Wall Street Journal described the Weeksville section of Bedford-Stuyvesant, an area that has been continually occupied by African Americans since the early nineteenth century, as a "forgotten" neighborhood. "Historic section gets new attention as buyers push deeper into the borough," the subhead went, as if people with money were bushwhacking into the darkest jungle, machete and mortgage deposit in hand.
"People with privilege have always been able to take what they want," observes Elizabeth Yeampierre, the longtime director of the Sunset Park environmental justice community group UPROSE, which has begun working with local businesses to help them stave off displacement by more deep-pocketed merchants. " 'OK, let's go to Red Hook. Let's go to East New York. Let's go to Brownsville. It looks raw and funky, let's live there.' Without thinking of what the consequences of their decisions are for other people."
Elizabeth Yeampierre’s advice to newcomers: “Sit back and listen.”
Caleb Ferguson
It's simply the way that many people — particularly the young and the new to New York — approach their housing choices, especially when they're already struggling to find a rent they can afford. Powhida says that art schools in particular have long espoused a mantra of "go to New York, live as cheap as possible," without considering the impact of huge numbers of young graduates doing so all at once. He recalls overhearing a group of young friends on the subway discussing where they planned to move. "There wasn't any sense of awareness of any existing residents or what's going on there. It's just: Is this convenient, is it good for me, is it going to be fun?
"I don't want to judge these kids," the 39-year-old quickly adds. "I think I was probably about the same place when I moved here when I was in my early twenties."
None of which is to say that anyone has to do a master's thesis on the community they're joining before signing a lease. But it's important to keep your eyes open, and not to act like Columbus on the beach, with nothing on your mind but where to find the nearest coffee bar. (Or, in Columbus's case, gold mine.) "Realize that there's a history there before you," advises Tamara Zahaykevich, a sculptor who landed in Sunset Park in 2009 after several previous moves, and ended up deeply involved in community campaigns to fight the effects of unfettered gentrification. "A lot of people move into a neighborhood and say, 'Oh, there was nothing here before.' And that nothing may be nothing to you, but it is something to somebody. And I think that that nothing allowed for speculators and developers to spin that whole thing of 'We're creating something great!' "
✔ Think locally, shop locally
Rejin Leys has experienced the full range of Brooklyn's transformation, bouncing from Prospect Heights to Fort Greene to Bedford-Stuyvesant before ultimately landing in Jamaica, Queens, the neighborhood where she spent her childhood. When she first landed in northern Bed-Stuy, near the Kosciuszko Street J stop, in 2002, the Haitian-American mixed-media artist recalls, "We thought we'd found a place that would never get gentrified. And things did start to change slowly around us. It felt like no place was safe if you were trying to find something affordable."
In particular, she says she started noticing one of the sure signs of modern Brooklyn hipsterization: stores with no obvious function or hours. "There were starting to be these little storefronts that didn't have a sign, their hours were kind of mysterious, and it turned out to be kind of in-crowd places where you had to know," says Leys. "It wasn't really for local people. One of them was a gallery, and I'm an artist, and I thought, 'Oh, this would be great — if I only knew how to contact them or what their hours were.' "
At the same time, it can be helpful when new arrivals go out of their way to patronize existing stores, which can otherwise be some of the first victims of the changing clientele, as old customers are forced to move and new ones turn up their nose at the unfamiliar. Hunter College sociologist Mike Owen Benediktsson recently published a study of commercial spaces in Williamsburg following the 2005 city rezoning that paved the way for waterfront condo towers. His research found that 90 percent of the 52 bars and restaurants located in the surrounding twenty blocks were less than a decade old; at the same time, the number of Hispanic-owned groceries, dry cleaners, and other businesses dropped by half, outstripping even changes in the residential population.
"It's very easy to just say, 'Oh, I'm only going to go to this café because it has the trappings of a gentrified space — and I'm not going to go into any other place because I don't feel comfortable because I'm not the dominant person there,' " says Kelly Anderson, a Hunter College professor and filmmaker whose My Brooklyn documented the city-led conversion of Brooklyn's Fulton Mall from an African-American shopping mecca into today's playground of upscale chains and even more upscale condo towers. "People fall into self-segregating ways of being really easily, and I think those businesses really appreciate it when people come in and spend money there."
✔ Do your homework
The last thing anyone needs when trying to find an apartment is any more work to do. Merely navigating the hell of New York real estate listings is a full-time job in itself. But tenant advocates warn that doing some research before you move in is the best way to ensure that you're not being used by landlords to jack up rents — and that you won't become the next victim.
One increasingly common tactic in gentrifying neighborhoods, tenant organizers say, is for owners of rent-stabilized buildings to offer "preferential rents," providing a lower monthly rate than the official legal rent filed with the state. This may sound like a gift to the tenant, but in fact it can provide a huge windfall for landlords: By claiming high legal rents even while offering apartments at a discount, building owners leave themselves plenty of headroom to jack up rents later with little notice.
Loraine Dellamore, an organizer with the Flatbush Tenant Coalition, recalls one white woman, a transplant from Manhattan, who spoke at a recent town hall on tenant harassment (an assembly sponsored by Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams). "When she moved in, she was paying I think $900 a month," says Dellamore. "And then they decided, after living there for four years, you're no longer going to have preferential rent — your rent is going to be $2,400, $2,500."
The woman ended up moving out rather than pay the increase, recalls Dellamore. But even then, her landlord still received a bonus: Whereas rent regulations limit increases on existing tenants to a few percent a year, apartments that are vacant are subject to an immediate 20 percent "vacancy increase." This year, for the first time in New York, one-year leases must be renewed with no increase at all, after a year in which falling fuel costs had led landlords' outlays to level off. But for building owners who can churn tenants in and out — say, by luring them in with cheap rents before turning around and hiking the price — it's a potentially huge payoff.
Combating all this requires knowing your legal rent history as recorded by the state Department of Housing and Community Renewal, which can reveal any questionable shenanigans such as unauthorized MCIs (major capital improvements, where a landlord performs upgrades on a property and demands rent hikes in exchange), vacancy increases, or even mystery increases in legal rents that are simply recorded by a building owner with no written justification. ("The burden is always on the tenants to make a complaint," says Flatbush Tenant Coalition organizer Aga Trojniak. "It's a ridiculous system.") You can't request an official rent history on your residence from DHCR until you've moved in, but a visit to the independent website amirentstabilized.comwill at least let you know whether you have legal standing to challenge your designated rent.
✔ Talk to your neighbors
"The first thing," advises Anderson, the Hunter professor, "is don't be an asshole. Treat the people in your neighborhood as your neighbors." It sounds simple, but all too many newcomers have a hard time with it, especially white residents in neighborhoods dominated by people of color. Anderson says she's heard from many African Americans in gentrifying neighborhoods "that they really feel that vibe that [new residents] look past them, or look at them like, 'What are you doing here?' "
Beyond seeing your neighbors as fellow humans, far too few neighborhood newbies take the next step of actually getting to know the people they've settled among. For Zahaykevich, the Sunset Park sculptor, the turning point in her relationship with her new community came when she went to a local testimonial on housing issues put on by the low-income housing education group Neighbors Helping Neighbors. "They were talking about all of these people in this community that were losing their homes," she recalls. "There were about eight women or so that got up and told their stories — like, 'I live with three kids, our landlord raised my rent from $900 to $1,400, and they're doing absolutely nothing to fix the space.' "
Curious to find out more, Zahaykevich started attending community board meetings, and began learning not just about neighborhood issues, but about her neighbors themselves. "It started making me feel less like a transplant being here and being invisible, to seeing people from these meetings on the street and in some cases saying hello to them, and forming relationships with them over time," she says. "That's been really, really helpful for me as a human."
Those on the other side of the gentrification divide express similar sentiments. "Don't be afraid to approach your neighbors," says Dellamore, the Flatbush organizer, who has lived in the neighborhood for 21 years. "Find out what sort of neighborhood is this, what sort of building it is, is it safe, do we have good heat? You don't want to be friendly-friendly if you don't have to, but at least interact to know what you are coming to face." That should go double, she says, if you receive warning from your new landlord about steering clear of people who don't look like you. In her own building, she says, "When they come to see the apartment, [the landlords are] already saying, 'Don't talk to her. She's a troublemaker.' "
In Crown Heights, which is facing a double whammy of gentrification at its western end as more affluent residents drift east from Prospect Heights and south from Bed-Stuy, residents both new and old banded together in late 2013 to form the Crown Heights Tenant Union, which now boasts several dozen members who do battle for their common interests. "If a building doesn't have heat, the building doesn't have heat," says CHTU organizer Cea Weaver. Besides, she says, "You'd be surprised at the amount of compassion and anger that some of the longer residents have — 'Oh, my god, you're paying that much?' "
✔ Shut your mouth when necessary
UPROSE, originally the United Puerto Rican Organization of Sunset Park, started life in 1966 as a neighborhood social service agency before shifting gears around the time Yeampierre arrived as director in 1996 to focus on environmental justice issues, battling plans for a waterfront power plant and working to create safer street crossings on major avenues. Soon enough, though, the group realized that gentrification might present it with its biggest battle, since there was little point in preserving the waterfront if no existing residents could afford to stick around to enjoy it.
"One of the hard things about displacement and gentrification is some of the people who move in, you really like them," says Yeampierre. UPROSE has worked closely with artists like Zahaykevich — whose studios are being evicted from the rapidly redeveloping Industry City warehouses on 31st Street between Second and Third avenues — and Yeampierre praises what the newcomers have brought to the community, including pitching in on air pollution projects and helping to create art for last year's climate march.
Still, while she welcomes the support, the energy, and the knowledge that new arrivals bring, Yeampierre says it can be a mixed blessing. "With gentrification, what's happening is people are coming to meetings with a lot of opinions and hijacking the meeting," she explains. "They know everything, and they basically put a chilling effect on everybody else." She recalls one artist who approached her group with a proposal for a mural, with very fixed ideas about what he wanted to paint. "Well, ask. Is that something that we need?" she says. "You came in with your idea and your vision, and now you feel good because people showed up and they splashed paint on the wall."
The favored term for addressing this bull-in-a-china-shop approach to working with existing communities is "checking your privilege." Yeampierre explains how it applies to her as well, as a lawyer working in a community where advanced degrees are uncommon. "If I walk in a room, and if anybody knows I'm a lawyer, what people will do is they will defer to me, and they'll say, 'Let me hear what you have to say.' So what do I have to do? I have to not speak. I have to sit back and listen. And I have to respect that their voice is supposed to be telling me how I'm going to use my skills. And if I can't control that — because I'm opinionated — I don't participate, I send someone else."
It's a skill, Yeampierre says, that is sadly undeveloped in many newcomers, even those with the best of intentions. "People who come from a long history of privilege don't know how to do that, even when they're trying," she says. One example: UPROSE tries to operate by what are known as the Jemez Principles for Democratic Organizing, a list of six rules for bringing together diverse groups in a way that everyone has a say. (Number three is "Let People Speak for Themselves.") When presenting these principles to people from more privileged backgrounds, Yeampierre says, "Five minutes after, I'll say, 'What does everybody think?' And their hands go up — they're the smartest kid in the room. They can't control it!"
She's smiling when she says it, though. And, she adds, "to the credit of some, they do it well. And they become models."
✔ Be aware of your own role
No one even pretends to believe that gentrification can be stopped — not, that is, without starting to reduce the gap in spending power between the gentrifiers and the gentrified, which is probably beyond the abilities of any neighborhood organizing effort. (Though several community activists do include pressing for an increased minimum wage across all industries — beyond just the recent ruling by a state panel to raise fast-food workers' wages to $15 an hour by 2021 — as one way to at least begin to level the playing field between the haves and have-nots.)
And so the first step, anti-gentrification organizers say, is admitting that you're part of the problem. "As an artist, once you're moved in to a neighborhood, to try to mitigate the effects of gentrification would almost be like bailing a leaky boat with a little cup from inside it," says Leys, the Jamaica resident. Yet she says that working to fight for reforms such as the Small Business Jobs Survival Act can at least stem the tide: "If landlords are allowed to add a few zeroes when your lease is up for your commercial rent, then no local longtime diner or cabbie hangout is going to be able to survive once the developers see that they can try to make more money on businesses that cater to newcomers."
New residents may also find that there are particular skills they can offer to their adopted communities, aside from their ability to write large rent checks and talk over their neighbors. Blood, of the North West Bushwick Community Group, says young residents with flexible schedules can serve a valuable role by attending policy meetings and reporting back to those whose work schedules keep them busy during the day; Anderson says she's been heartened when other recent arrivals in her Sunset Park neighborhood have called their fellow newcomers on tone-deaf actions like hurrying to phone the cops on local undocumented homeless.
The hardest step is the same as for anyone trying to influence city development policy: tracking zoning regulations, going to community board meetings, and trying to organize your neighbors, new and old alike. "There is a learning curve," says Blood, especially since "newcomers tend to be very social-media-savvy" while the city political apparatus tends to skimp on its Facebook status updates.
In the end, though, we know that gentrification can come for us all. (Unless we are deep-pocketed enough to be the beneficiaries of "aristocratization," as foretold in another Onion article on how "the recent influx of exceedingly affluent powder-wigged aristocrats into the nation's gentrified urban areas is pushing out young white professionals.") Leys recalls that at an artist event to organize for the SBJSA that she attended, "One person looked very interested — until we suggested that she should contact her local councilman." The woman, she recalls, replied, "Oh, I don't do politics."
"And I thought, be prepared to move back to Oshkosh when you get priced out."
Correction, August 25, 2015: An earlier version of this story misidentified Rejin Leys's neighborhood.
Hurricane Katrina proved that if black lives matter, so must climate justice
The environmental justice and Black Lives Matter movements are complementary. We can’t afford to choose between the two
Those of us from low-income communities of color are on the frontlines of the climate crisis. US cities and towns that are predominantly made up of people of color are also home to a disproportionate share of the environmental burdens that are fueling the climate crisis and shortening our lives. One has only to recall the gut-wrenching images of Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath to confirm this.
At a time when police abuse is more visible than ever thanks to technology, and our communities continue to get hit time and time again by climate catastrophe, we can’t afford to choose between a Black Lives Matter protest and a climate justice forum, because our survival depends on both of them.
As a young woman, I started organizing against racial violence and police misconduct. For the last 20 years, I have been struggling for environmental and climate justice. As descendants of slavery and colonization, our communities have lived and continue to live at the intersection of all these challenges. Both have a long history rooted in the extraction and abuse of our labor and later the extraction and abuse of our resources. Both involve people who are the descendants of historical trauma and are now faced with the catastrophe of a changing climate.
Over the years, as we were fighting for housing, jobs and better schools, decisions were being made to site some of the most toxic industries in communities with a large proportion of people of color: power plants, waste transfer stations, landfills, refineries and incinerators. As a result, communities of color have become cancer clusters and have the highest rates of asthma. In response, we in the environmental justice movement have said there is not anything more fundamental than the right to breathe – and that includes the right to clean air.
The environmental justice and Black Lives Matter movements are complementary. Black lives matter in the Gulf, where most of the fatalities resulting from Hurricane Katrina were black people, and which was home to the largest marine oil spill in history five years later. Black lives matter in Red Hook, Brooklyn, where hundreds of black families waited for weeks for electricity, heat and in some cases, running water, to be turned back on after Superstorm Sandy. Black lives matter in Richmond, California, home to the largest oil refinery on the West Coast. Black lives matter in Detroit, home to the largest solid waste incinerator in the US. The list goes on of cities and towns that are predominantly made up of people of color and are also home to a disproportionate share of this nation’s environmental burdens.
We as people of color people now face the effects of a changing climate neither our ancestors nor we are responsible for creating. Climate change demands another rhythm. The current dig, burn and dump economy is no longer acceptable. Similarly, a climate movement led by people of traditional power and privilege will not relieve the crises we face. Our communities know another way. As people of African and Indigenous ancestry, we come from societies and ways of life that protect and nurture Mother Earth. Now is the time to reconnect with our old ways. The knowledge is there – it is in our historical memory, and we are doing this work. Environmental and climate justice activists are working at the grassroots level to develop indigenous leadership around local climate solutions.
This redefines the face of the climate movement and provides a just and necessary alternative to the racial and ecological structures that have led us to where we are. It will be through this process of living and working and struggling with one another that we guarantee our children and grandchildren the right to breathe free.
Ramarley Graham’s Mother Tells DOJ To Stop Dragging Its Feet
NEW YORK — It’s been nearly two years since the U.S. Department of Justice announced that it was reviewing the evidence in the death of Ramarley Graham, an unarmed black teen gunned down at his home in the Bronx in 2012 by NYPD Officer Richard Haste.
NYS, Community Leaders Celebrate Major Initiative to Expand Solar Access
Today officials from Governor Andrew M. Cuomo’s administration and other state and local officials and community members gathered at an event celebrating a new Shared Renewables program that will empower millions of New Yorkers to plug into renewable energy for the first time.
At the event, two New York City-based organizations, UPROSE and Solar One, also announced plans for a Shared Renewables project in Brooklyn’s Sunset Park that will help local low-income families go solar and save on their utility bills.
“Since we are on the frontlines of the climate crisis, it is imperative that we are at the forefront of change, driving a just transition to a new energy system that benefits the most vulnerable first,” says Elizabeth Yeampierre, Director of UPROSE. “Our shared solar pilot project will specifically serve low-income renters with lower-cost, stable electricity. This project will provide necessary relief to Sunset Park families who are struggling to keep up with their electricity bills.”
“Many of the families who have the most to benefit from low-cost solar energy have historically faced barriers like not owning their home or being able to afford a loan; that's why shared solar is such a transformative concept. Our Here Comes Solar initiative is working with community partners across the five boroughs to develop shared solar projects that empower a more diverse spectrum of New Yorkers to participate in the solar revolution.” said Elana Laichena, Program Manager for Here Comes Solar, a project of Solar One.
Also announced at the event, the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) will dedicate $13 million in 2015 to improve access to affordable solar in low- and moderate-income communities. This support will be comprised of incentives and financing for both rooftop solar and shared renewables projects across New York State.
Speakers included: Richard Kauffman, Chairman of Energy and Finance for New York in the Cuomo Administration; Audrey Zibelman, New York State Public Service Commission Chair; John Rhodes, President and CEO of NYSERDA, NYS Senator Kevin Parker, and NYS Assemblywoman Amy Paulin.
“Record numbers of New Yorkers are harnessing sunshine to save on their energy bills, which is creating local jobs and reducing the need for traditional polluting power. This new program will empower even more communities, families and businesses to participate in that great solar success story,” said Sean Garren, Northeast Regional Manager for Vote Solar, a national solar advocacy organization. “We thank Governor Cuomo, his administration and the PSC for making equal access to solar a priority and for speeding our transition to a healthier, more resilient clean energy system.”
Under Governor Cuomo, New York State now ranks among the nation’s solar leaders, yet a majority of the state’s energy consumers – including renters, families and businesses in multi-unit buildings, and property owners with shaded roofs – have been unable to invest in their own rooftop solar energy systems. Low-income consumers who lack access to financing face additional barriers to solar participation. With leadership from the Cuomo Administration via Reforming the Energy Vision or REV, the New York PSC recently issued a final order establishing a new Shared Renewables program that will expand consumer access to local solar, wind and other clean energy resources, particularly among low- and moderate-income New Yorkers.
Shared Renewables builds on New York’s successful clean energy policies including the historic NY-Sun and Reforming the Energy Vision (REV) initiatives. Earlier this month, Governor Cuomo announced that the state’s solar capacity quadrupled between 2011 and 2014. Today there are more than 456 megawatts of solar installed in New York, enough to power over 77,000 homes. The state’s growing solar economy employs 7,300 New Yorkers according to The Solar Foundation’s National Solar Jobs Census.
Learn more about Shared Renewables policies nationwide at: http://www.sharedrenewables.org/
New York Shared Renewables has support from more than 70 organizations acting together to expand access to clean energy. For the full list visit: http://votesolar.org/about-us/press/ny-finalizes-major-initiative-to-expand-solar-access/
About UPROSE: Incorporated in 1966, UPROSE is Brooklyn’s oldest Latino community based organization. Today, UPROSE is an intergenerational, multi-racial, nationally-recognized community organization that promotes the sustainability and resiliency of the Sunset Park community in Brooklyn through community organizing, education, leadership development and cultural/artistic expression. Learn more at uprose.org.
About Here Comes Solar: A project of Solar One, Here Comes Solar works to overcome obstacles so that the benefits of solar technology can be enjoyed by a wider and more diverse spectrum of New Yorkers. The initiative works with communities who have been underserved by the solar market, with a focus on owner-occupied rowhouses, low-income affordable housing, coops and condos, as well as shared solar for renters. Learn more at herecomessolar.nyc.
About Vote Solar: Vote Solar is a non-profit grassroots organization working to foster economic opportunity, promote energy independence and address climate change by making solar a mainstream energy resource across the United States. Learn more at votesolar.org
Activists plead: Don’t turn Sunset Park into Williamsburg
In Sunset Park, Doubts About Development Plan