Zoned Out in the City: New York City’s Tale of Race and ...

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Argument: Zoned Out in the City .................................. 1Tom Angotti. Rezoning, displacement, and the need forcommunity planning in New York City.Response: The Clear and Present Danger of SupplySkepticism.................................................................... 2Vicki Been. Rezoning in the service of a diverseand growing city.This Green and Pleasant Land ...................................... 3Bryan Greene. A neighborhood-eye view of racialcovenants and social networks in a history of Queens,New York.Dirt and Deeds in Mississippi ....................................... 5William Minter and Michael Honey. Documentary filmreview: songs and stories of rural civil rights organizing.Justice in Our Community ............................................ 7Jane Kelleher, Miriam Elisa Hasbún, and Randy Reyes.Law students build a model for clinical service.Resources ....................................................................18

CONTENTS:

January-March 2017 Volume 26: Number 1

Zoned Out in the City:New York City’s Tale of Race and Displacement

Tom Angotti

Tom Angotti ([email protected]), is Professor of Urban Policy& Planning at Hunter College, CityUniversity of New York and editor withSylvia Morse of Zoned Out! Race, Dis-placement and City Planning in NewYork City (UR Books, 2016). Thisarticle is based on Zoned Out! Directquotes are in italics.

(Please turn to page 12)

The arrival of vast amounts ofspeculative capital in big cities aroundthe nation and world during this cen-tury has fed a tremendous urban build-ing boom. Although many promisedthis would help solve the shortage ofaffordable housing and bring new op-portunities for the millions of peopleburdened by high rents and who areliving in overcrowded and inadequateconditions, it has instead resulted intheir displacement to new urban pe-ripheries. The new housing is almostentirely built for the luxury market,and has had the secondary effect ofraising rents and land values in theexisting housing stock, further displac-ing many long-time residents. Vacancyrates in the new housing are high, sig-naling a surplus of housing units in thissector of the market and calling intoquestion traditional supply-side argu-ments.

These trends are obvious in NewYork City, which claims it is “the realestate capital of the world.” The city’sboosters point to its iconic Manhattancore as a model for the presumed ben-

efits of high density—including energyefficiency, mass transit and walk-ability, all counterweights to wastefulsuburban sprawl. And inclusion. Thecity appears to be a model ofinclusionary land use policies in con-trast to the well-known exclusionaryzoning in the suburbs.

Behind this mirage, however, low-income people and minorities are be-ing forced out of the city—alreadyhighly segregated—by the new upscaledevelopment and moving to thesprawled, resegregated suburbs. Eco-nomic and racial inequalities persist as

before and in some ways intensify asthe high-density core becomes whiterand wealthier. Unfortunately, policy-makers in the city tout the inevitabil-ity of these market trends even as theyprovide substantial public subsidies tosupport them.

Zoned Out! reflects and is a prod-uct of the many struggles by residentsand small businesses, principally incommunities of color, that have beenfighting against those who claim thatdevelopment and displacement are in-evitable, that they have nothing to do

Poverty & Race (ISSN 1075-3591) is published four times a year by the Poverty andRace Research Action Council, 1200 18th Street NW, Suite 200, Washington, DC 20036,202/906-8052, fax: 202/842-2885, E-mail: info@ prrac.org. Megan Haberle, editor;Tyler Barbarin, editorial assistant. Subscriptions are $25/year, $45/two years. Foreignpostage extra. Articles, article suggestions, letters and general comments are welcome,as are notices of publications, conferences, job openings, etc. for our Resources Section-—email to [email protected]. Articles generally may be reprinted, providing PRRACgives advance permission.

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2 • Poverty & Race • Vol. 26, No. 1 • January-March 2017


Most New Yorkerstreasure, and champion,the diversity that makesthe City unique.

The Clear and Present Dangerof Supply Skepticism

Vicki Been

Vicki Been ([email protected]) isthe Boxer Family Professor of Law,New York University School of Law.Professor Been served as Commis-sioner of New York City’s HousingPreservation and Development from2014 through January, 2017.

There is no doubt that publicpolicy needs to grapple with the chal-lenges that our low-income householdsface in gentrifying neighborhoods, andthe ways in which racial discrimina-tion and inequality affect the causesand consequences of those challenges.Unfortunately, Angotti’s analysis ofthe problems gets many facts wrong,and his prescription for solving theproblems is seriously misguided. I’llfocus specifically here on perhaps themost dangerous claims of his polemic,the housing world’s equivalent of cli-mate change denial: the assertion thatbuilding more housing is not neces-sary to ensure the affordability ofhousing. He argues that land develop-ment is not subject to the standard lawsof supply and demand, and that zon-ing change to allow more housing in-creases the value of land and “producesgentrification and displacement.”

Land use regulation likely limitsproperty values below what an unregu-lated market would produce, espe-cially when—as is the case in someparts of New York City—that zoninghas gone largely unchanged for half a

century. Changing those regulationscan therefore increase the value of aplot of land, but lower the cost perunit of the housing built on that land.But the point of changing the regula-tions, at least in New York in recentyears, is not to increase the value ofthe land—it is to allow more housingto be built to meet the demands of apopulation that is growing faster thanit has in decades, and to assure that asignificant portion of that new hous-ing will be permanently affordable. Ifthe supply of housing is not increased

to accommodate growth, rents will goup. There are no other plausible out-comes (at best, increased rent burdencould be delayed somewhat, perhaps,if families crowd together, don’t formnew households, or otherwise spreadthe cost over more people.) Unless webuild new housing, people who canafford higher rents will outbid poorercurrent residents for existing housing.Stopping that result would require ex-plicit (and probably unconstitutional)growth controls, strict and strictly en-forced rent-regulation, and a bevy ofother tactics to make the City so unat-tractive to those who might otherwise

have wanted to move here, or growtheir families here, that the City stopsgrowing. So, at bottom, ProfessorAngotti is advocating a no-growthpolicy.

That is in line with the mood ofsome parts of the country, but hasnever been consistent with New YorkCity’s values. We have always been agateway city, with bolder plans thanour counterparts to provide qualityhousing and economic opportunity forcurrent residents and newcomers. In-deed, many of the programs to accom-modate growth spurts in the past, suchas the Mitchell-Lama housing built toprovide middle-income housing to ac-commodate a growing population af-ter the war, are now both a cherishedpart of the City’s low- and moderate-income housing and a proud part ofour history of openness. Most NewYorkers treasure, and champion, thediversity that makes the City unique;we believe that the essence of the Cityis the magic that results from the fu-sion of so many different races,ethnicities, religions, cultures, genera-tions, backgrounds, and talents. So ano-growth “solution” to our afford-ability crisis is startling, even in theupside-down world the country is cur-rently in.

But that’s what would follow fromProfessor Angotti’s logic. Even build-ing only affordable housing wouldn’tsolve the problem—unless we keepothers out, building more affordablehousing will not address the demandfor housing by those who want to moveto New York. And of course, there’sthe matter of who will pay for thataffordable housing (and the social ser-vices, good schools, open space andpublic realm and infrastructure im-provements required to support thathousing). New York City has commit-ted 10 percent of its entire ten-yearcapital budget for subsidized afford-

This Green and Pleasant LandBryan Greene

In 1942, whiteAddisleigh Parkresidents successfullysued a homeowner toenforce a racially-re-strictive covenant.


Poverty & Race • Vol. 26, No. 1 • January-March 2017 • 3

Bryan Greene ([email protected]) is a housing expert and civilrights practitioner in Washington, DC.

I was born in St Albans, Queens,in 1968, a few months after the pas-sage of the federal Fair Housing Act.The Fair Housing Act would haveopened up this neighborhood to myparents had they encountered resistancewhen they moved there the year be-fore. Indeed, when my parents had in-quired about houses for sale in otherQueens neighborhoods, real estateagents asked, “Greene? Is that a niceIrish name?” But they purchased ourhouse from a Black woman—MaeBarnes, a popular jazz singer anddancer, credited with introducing “TheCharleston” on Broadway in 1924.Barnes matched the profile of manyhomeowners in St. Albans: middle-class African Americans who had dis-tinguished themselves in politics, ac-tivism, music, sports, law, and letters.The most famous of these lived in theAddisleigh Park section of St. Albans,literally across the railroad tracks fromour modest house. A September 1952issue of Our World magazine ran a 12-page spread on this enclave, calling it,“Tiny Addisleigh, [the] swanky sub-urb [that] is home of the nation’s richestand most gifted Negroes.” So, howdid St. Albans become the address ofAmerica’s Black elite (and manyhardworking regular folk like my par-ents)?

First, New York is unique. In the1940s and 1950s, it was indisputablythe home of the world’s cultural andintellectual elite, of all backgrounds.Second, when it came to housing, af-fluent Black New Yorkers, like well-to-do Blacks elsewhere, had fewchoices of neighborhood if theywanted a yard, and a place to park abig car. Still, what made St. Albansthat middle-class neighborhood wherean African American could lay his orher hat and call it home?

It happened, in part, by chance; inpart, by will and activism; and, inpart, by dint of a close social networkamong the Black elite, but especiallyamong celebrated jazz musicians whomigrated there from Harlem. Thesemigrations, starting in the 1930s,transformed the borough.

As you might expect, St. Albanswas not founded as a Black commu-nity. Named after the city in Hert-fordshire, England, the neighborhoodhad fewer than 600 residents at the end

of the 19th century. Developmenttook off after the opening of the St.Albans Long Island Railroad (LIRR)station on July 1, 1898, the same yearthe five boroughs consolidated to formNew York City. Forty years later, St.Albans had a population of 30,000.The area saw its greatest growth in the1920s with mass transit linking the areato the larger city, and the rising popu-larity of the automobile.

The leafy Addisleigh Park enclave,planned and developed at the start ofthe 20th century, was central to thedevelopment of St. Albans. Edwin H.Brown, a retired lawyer, laid out theoriginal plans, modeling the commu-nity on the English garden suburbs,with wide streets, large landscapedlots, and English Tudor and Colonialhomes set back 20 to 30 feet. Brownalso built the LIRR station, and theSt. Albans Golf and Country Club,which drew the rich and famous to thearea. The New York Yankees sluggerBabe Ruth golfed there and rented anearby house in the summer months.The U.S. government later acquiredthe golf course for a naval hospital.

The golf and country club helped es-tablish the exclusivity of AddisleighPark. Other developers, like the Rod-man & English Company, built onBrown’s plans and marketed the homesin newspapers and brochures with re-strictions. A 1926 New York Times ar-ticle states, “Addisleigh, together withthe St. Albans Gold Club was laid outunder the personal direction of EdwinH. Brown, and the land carries a landand house restriction of the highesttype.” While this all appears to be codefor racially-restrictive covenants, his-torians say it was not until the late1930s, that the community establishedcovenants that expressly prohibited thesale or lease of property to Blackpeople.

Jazz pianist Fats Waller may havebeen the first African American to buya home in Addisleigh Park. Legendhas it that a white policeman, workinga Harlem beat, sold his home to Wallerin 1938 to get back at a neighbor withwhom he was feuding. Over the nextfew years, a couple dozen Black fami-lies bought homes in the area, amongthem, jazz legends Count Basie andLena Horne. Many whites feared thisinflux. In 1946, the Long Island StarJournal described Addisleigh Park as“a mixed Negro and white neighbor-hood, where Negro homes have beenpelted with rotten eggs and veg-etables.”

In 1942, white Addisleigh Park resi-dents successfully sued a homeownerto enforce a racially-restrictive cov-enant. Residents sued again in 1946when Mrs. Sophie Rubin tried to sellher home to Samuel Richardson, a“Manhattan Negro merchant,” in vio-lation of the 1939 agreement she signedprohibiting the sale, lease, and gift ofproperty to “Negroes or persons of theNegro race or blood or descent” until1975. The case illustrates the nationalcivil rights battle now joined over re-strictive convenants. The NAACP sawKemp v. Rubin as a case it might take

(PLEASANT: Continued. from page 3)

So many jazz luminarieslived in St. Albans, thatthe Queens County gov-ernment in the 1990spublished a “Jazz TrailMap.”



to the U.S. Supreme Court to strikedown the practice nationwide. Nationalcivil-rights groups, religious organi-zations, and unions filed amicus cu-riae briefs challenging the covenants.Groups included the American JewishCongress, the American Civil Liber-ties Union, the National LawyersGuild, the American Veterans Com-mittee, and the Committee of Catho-lics for Human Rights.

The American Jewish Congress wasparticularly active in opposing racialcovenants. In 1946, its Commissionon Law and Social Action (CLSA)reported in its newsletter, “In NewYork, CLSA is preparing for a testcase in an effort to reverse the trendof lower court decisions upholdingsuch covenants...CLSA’s interest ina suit to enforce a race restrictive cov-enant in St. Albans, Queens, has at-tracted wide attention in New Yorkover recent weeks....” CLSA statedthat if the judge granted a temporaryinjunction against the sale, “CLSA willseize the opportunity for retesting NewYork law and will seek to interveneand file a brief similar to that submit-ted in Chicago.” CLSA’s brief in theChicago restrictive-covenant case laidbare the perversity of racial covenantsin communities like St. Albans, whereeven the best and brightest AfricanAmericans were barred:

“A bare recital of the immedi-ate effects of the covenant in thiscase is shocking in its brutality andfalsity; any white person, whetherhe is a criminal, sadist, wife-beater, or moral degenerate, canbuy this property and occupy it ifhe so desires; no Negro, whetherhe is a philanthropist, scientist, orphilosopher may do likewise.”

But the New York Supreme Courtsided with Mrs. Rubin’s neighbors in1947, plaintively concluding that,“Distinctions based on color and an-cestry are utterly inconsistent with ourtraditions and ideals, at the same time,however this court is constrained tofollow precedent and govern itself inaccordance with what it considers to

be the prevailing law.” It also observedthat Addisleigh Park, by 1947 had 48Black families out of a total of 325households.

In 1948, the U.S. Supreme Court,in Shelly v. Kraemer, invalidated ra-cial covenants nationwide. The roll callof talented African Americans mov-ing into Addisleigh Park and St. Albansover next decade is dizzying: EllaFitzgerald, Jackie Robinson, RoyCampanella, John Coltrane, PercySutton, Archie Spigner, IllinoisJacquet, Earl Bostic, Mercer Ellington,Milt Hinton, Lester Young, BillieHolliday.

So many jazz luminaries lived inSt. Albans that the Queens County gov-ernment in the 1990s published a “JazzTrail Map,” providing addresses for acouple dozen of the celebrity houses.Around that time, I offered an Aus-tralian friend, a novelist and jazz afi-cionado, a tour of these homes, whichmeant more to him than any tour ofmovie-star homes in Beverly Hills.Little did I know at that time that someof these jazz legends were still livingin the area. One was Illinois Jacquet,tenor saxophonist in Cab Calloway’sand Count Basie’s bands (and who, likehis neighbors Fats Waller and LenaHorne, appeared in the 1943 ensemblefilm, “Stormy Weather”). He lived inAddisleigh Park from 1949 until hisdeath in 2004. In a 1999 AssociatedPress interview, he recalled the hey-day of Addisleigh Park: “Count Basiewas living out here before me. He toldme it was a nice neighborhood and Ibetter get in while I can...I was de-lighted when Ella moved here. I couldgo up to her bar at the house and drinkup all of her whiskey, and then gothrough somebody’s yard and gohome. That’s what it was like backthen.”

Milt Hinton, bassist for CabCalloway and known as the Dean ofthe Bass, remained in St. Albans tillhis death in 2000. It’s said that Hintonhas played on more recordings than anyother musician in the world. In 1998,when he was 88, he and his wife Monasat for an interview with the New YorkTimes, in their two-story Tudor home.They bought the home in 1950 to raisea family. “I was raised in Sandusky,Ohio, a small town,” Mrs. Hintonsaid. “I just couldn’t imagine raisinga child in the city.” They socializedwith the Basies down the street. CountBasie, and his wife Catherine, wereknown for their garden parties. Theyhad a swimming pool and a yard thatfilled an entire city block. Mrs.Hinton, recalling her friend Catherine,said, “She always gave parties for hercharities and social events. They hada fence up, and they had roses cover-ing the whole fence.” A January 1959issue of the NAACP’s Crisis Maga-zine carries a photo from one such“gala garden party given by Mrs.Catherine Basie,” for the benefit ofthe local NAACP. In addition to rais-ing $500, she signed up 250 new mem-bers to the organization. One can findonline a small trove of pictures of theBasies relaxing at home in St. Albans.They lived in their home from 1940till 1982.

It wasn’t just jazz musicians inAddisleigh. No assemblage of thegifted Black elite would be completewithout the purveyor of the phrase,“The Talented Tenth,” to describe thisset. W.E.B. DuBois lived briefly inSt. Albans. In 1951, at 83, he mar-ried author and playwright ShirleyGraham at her Addisleigh Park home.They lived there until 1952, when theymoved to Brooklyn.

We also should not conclude thatthe invalidation of racial covenants in1948 meant that African Americanslived happily ever after in St. Albans.During this time, several activists(Charles Collier, executive secretaryof the City-Wide Citizens Comittee onHarlem; John Singleton, a member ofthe NAACP Board of Directors; anddentist William H. Pleasant) received


Dirt and Deeds in Mississippi: Film HighlightsLong Threads in Civil Rights History

William Minter & Michael Honey

The STFU powerfullyaffected a generationof organizers in theMississippi Delta of the1930s.


William Minter ([email protected]) is the publisher and editor ofAfricaFocus Bulletin and an indepen-dent scholar whose writing has focusedon Africa, global issues, and U.S. for-eign policy. His latest book, co-editedwith Gail Hovey and Charles Cobb,Jr., is No Easy Victories: AmericanActivists and African Liberation overa Half Century, 1950-2000.

Michael Honey ([email protected])is professor of Labor and Ethnic Stud-ies and American History and HaleyProfessor of Humanities at the Univer-sity of Washington, Tacoma. Honeyhas published five books of labor andcivil rights history; includingSharecropper’s Troubadour: John L.Handcox, the Southern Tenant Farm-ers’ Union, and the African AmericanSong Tradition. Honey’s most recentwork is a film, “Love and Solidarity:James Lawson and Nonviolence in theSearch for Workers’ Rights.”

Like the episode on Mississippi ofthe classic film series Eyes on the Prize,the Television Academy-Award-win-ning Dirt and Deeds in Mississippiskillfully weaves together interviewswith civil rights activists, archival filmfootage, and original historical re-search to portray the key period ofcivil rights history leading up to theVoting Rights Act of 1965. This his-tory is worth recalling in the wake ofthe presidential election of 2016, inlarge part the result of decades of votersuppression which threatens to usherin a new period of Jim Crow.

Even in the wake of the civil rightsvictories of the 1960s, including rep-resentation of Blacks in county andstate-level politics, the film’s settingof Holmes County remains one of thepoorest counties in the United States,with more than half of households hav-ing incomes under $21,000 a year (ap-proximately half the state median of

$41,000 a year, itself the lowest of all50 states). Holmes County, like mostof the Delta region, voted overwhelm-ingly against Donald Trump in the2016 election. But Mississippi remainsa reliably Red state, where Republi-cans dominate the state government andhold both U.S. Senate seats and three

of four of the state’s seats in the U.S.House of Representatives.

The themes raised in Dirt and Deedsin Mississippi, in our view, have rel-evance both for interpretation of thecenturies-long history of racial injus-tice and the resistance against it in theUnited States and for our country inthe critical next years of the 21st cen-tury. In particular, we are convincedthat both past and future need to beanalyzed paying attention not only tothe successes or failures of specificorganizations and institutions, but alsoto personal and family networks thatcross generational, geographic, racial,cultural, and other social boundaries.

This film, narrated by DannyGlover, is also distinctive in severalways that make it a particularly valu-able resource for researchers, students,and social justice activists alike:• While touching on the historic

events which received national at-tention (Freedom Summer, themurders of civil rights activistsChaney, Goodman, and Schwerner;the 1964 Democratic Convention,and President Lyndon Johnson’s leg-islative initiatives on civil rights),its focus is the small rural commu-nity of Mileston, in HolmesCounty, on the edge of the Missis-

sippi Delta just under 80 miles northof the state capital Jackson. And itgives priority to local activists whoseldom feature in the national nar-rative.

• In particular, it highlights the criti-cal roles of Black landowners, inHolmes County as around Missis-sippi, as the indispensable supportbase for the movement through pro-viding housing for activists on theirfarms and armed defense for the or-ganizers of non-violent demonstra-tions and voter registration drives.Unlike Blacks living on plantationsor otherwise dependent on whitesfor paychecks, landowners hadachieved some level of indepen-dence and were willing and able tostep up as leaders.

• It also reveals links to earlier his-tory, including a little-known ini-tiative of the New Deal, which es-tablished the Mileston farmers ongood Delta land from a white plan-tation foreclosed at the height of theGreat Depression. On the hill coun-try on the eastern side of HolmesCounty, other farmers traced theirland ownership back over a century.One of these was Robert Clark,whose great-grandfather purchasedthe land from his former master.In 1967, Clark became the firstBlack elected to the Mississippi leg-islature since Reconstruction, andserved 36 years, retiring a Speakerof the Mississippi House.

The authors of this review share acommon interest in these connectingthreads, through different personalconnections to the role of the interra-cial Southern Tenant Farmers Union(STFU) in the region in the decadespreceding the 1960s civil rights move-ment. Honey’s latest book, Share-cropper’s Troubadour, recounts thelife and legacy of John L. Hancock,


(MISSISSIPPI: Cont. from page 5)

the STFU, and the African-Americansong tradition. Minter’s parents metat the Delta Cooperative Farm inBolivar County, Mississippi, whichgrew out of the Southern Tenant Farm-ers’ Union in the 1930s (see Share-cropper’s Troubadour, pages 90-91),and Minter himself spent part of hischildhood in Holmes County, livingon the successor Providence Coopera-tive Farm just at the edge of the hillcountry.

The STFU powerfully affected ageneration of organizers in the Missis-sippi Delta of the 1930s. Ed King ofthe Student Nonviolent CoordinatingCommittee recalled that civil rights or-ganizers of the 1960s drew inspirationfrom the STFU’s ability to pull togetherformer KKK members and AfricanAmericans in both Mississippi and Ar-kansas who were among the poorestpeople in America at the time.

John Handcox, born in 1904 nearBrinkley, Arkansas, provides a vividillustration of the themes raised in thefilm. He not only organized the STFU,but wrote some of its most memorablesongs, including “Roll the Union On,”and helped to popularize “We Shall NotBe Moved” as a song that became ananthem in the civil rights movementand the Memphis sanitation strike of1968. The Library of Congressthrough the work of Charles Seegerand others recorded Handcox’s songsin 1937. His songs and his story are

now readily available to today’s lis-teners through Smithsonian Folkwaysand Honey’s oral history, Sharecrop-pers’ Troubadour. Although planterviolence suppressed the STFU strugglefor justice and dignity for rural work-ers, its songs and legacy of interracialworking-class organizing against im-possible odds live on even today.

At the local level in Arkansas,where the STFU was strongest, activ-ists like Carrie Dilworth spanned thegenerations, carrying her activism intowork with the NAACP in the 1950sand with SNCC in the 1960s. It islikely that similar stories could be toldabout the civil rights movement inmany more rural counties in the South.

What factors have con-tributed to the enduringpolitical backlash tocivil rights victories inMississippi over thepast five decades?

Among the questions we offer forreaders, researchers, and activists arethe following, each of which wouldtake far more than a short film reviewto explore:

About the history

• Did either the STFU or the DeltaCooperative Farm have any influ-ence on the New Deal policies that

led to the establishment of theMileston community or similarprojects elsewhere in the South? Didother such projects have specific in-fluence on the civil rights move-ment in the 1960s in their localcommunities and states?

More generally, were Blacklandowners as central to the localcivil rights movement in otherSouthern states and communities asthey were in Holmes County?

• Did the history of the 1960s South-ern civil rights movement differ inareas where the STFU worked, incomparison with other areas inother states?

• What was the international influ-ence on interracial cooperativeprojects in the U.S. South, such asProvidence Farm and parallels suchas Koinonia Farm in Georgia,which not only survived but gavebirth to the prominent Habitat forHumanity project?

• What factors have contributed tothe enduring political backlash tocivil rights victories in Mississippiover the past five decades, as wellas to continued impoverishment ofthe state of Mississippi, despite thepresence of African Americans incounty and city governments? Whycan’t we crack the white barriers tobi-racial voting and progressivepolitics?

About 2017 and beyond

• What inspiration and/or positive ornegative lessons can today’s socialand racial justice activists take fromearlier periods of Black liberationhistory and labor struggles?

• What are the 21st-century counter-parts to the assets of land that Blacklandowners in Mississippi drew onto be able to advance the 1960s civilrights movement?

• What is the relevance of history inanalyzing today’s “whitelash” andstrategies to ensure that the next fewyears build the foundation for a“Third Reconstruction” as proposedby Rev. Barber of North Carolina’s“Moral Mondays,” rather than con-


New on PRRAC’s Website“Protecting our gains and building a base of practice: PRRAC’s housingresearch and advocacy goals in 2017-18” (January 2017)

Fair housing comments on Treasury Department Notice 2016-77, regardingthe Low Income Housing Tax Credit “Concerted Community Revitaliza-tion Plan” requirement (February 2017)

Suggested changes to the draft Low Income Housing Tax Credit reform bill(letter to the United States Senate Committee on Finance) (February 2017)

“How Attacks on the Administrative State Can Be Attacks on the MostVulnerable” by Megan Haberle (March 2017)

“Preserving the Civil Rights Data Collection program” (March 2017)


Justice in Our Community: Helping PeopleAccess Legal Infomation and Services

Jane Kelleher, Miriam Elisa Hasbún, and Yandy Reyes

Jane Kelleher, Miriam ElisaHasbún ([email protected]),and Yandy Reyes were law students atthe University of Connecticut Schoolof Law during the fellowship’s inau-gural year.

A joint effort to assistand empower peopleliving in Connecticut’slowest-income neighbor-hood, Hartford’s NorthEnd.

How can law students, legal aid,and willing donors best serve impov-erished communities? UConn Law andConnecticut’s Greater Hartford LegalAid (GHLA) have been working to-gether to answer that question.

The result of their efforts? The new“Justice in Our Community” Fellow-ship program. Law student fellows—with external support from legal aidlawyers—worked on-site in the heavilytrafficked waiting room of a healthcenter located in a high-poverty area.The results were fantastic: Fellowsengaged with clients who otherwisewould not have had access to lawyers,triaged intervention as needed, andprovided direct assistance to peoplewho were struggling to communicatethrough language and other bureau-cratic barriers. The program provideddonors with a direct way to invest infuture legal aid attorneys and to assistan ailing community. Most impor-tantly, the program conveyed to thatcommunity a presence that both hon-ored them and afforded them the dig-nity of communication in a setting oftheir choosing.

In the hope that others will repli-cate the program, this article describesthe Justice in Our Community Fellow-ship—a joint effort to assist and em-power people living in Connecticut’slowest-income neighborhood, Hart-ford’s North End.

Vision

In early 2015, the Auerbach SchiroFoundation approached UConn Lawwith a goal in mind: they wanted toprovide economically disadvantaged

people in Hartford’s North End witheasy access to legal information andassistance. GHLA had an idea thatcould further this goal: with the do-nors’ contribution, GHLA would pro-vide stipends for three law-student fel-lows to run a legal information andoutreach table on the organization’sbehalf. GHLA would place the Fel-lows at Community Health Services(CHS), a federally-qualified healthcenter located in the heart of the com-munity the donors wanted to reach.For a client community with limitedaccess to reliable transportation, thislocation was key.

Structure

UConn Law helped develop theproject, and students, especially thoseinterested in public interest work,jumped at the chance to apply for paidlegal experience.

Each Fellow would spend six hoursper week conducting outreach at CHS,and six hours per week at the GHLAoffice, helping with research projectsand following up with people they metin the community. The students werefirst trained in substantive law, legalethics, confidentiality, and identifyingissues the Fellows might encounter. Asthe year progressed, Fellows receivedadditional substantive trainings in le-gal issues that commonly were men-tioned at CHS. Their knowledge grewas the term progressed, but they alsoworked in connection with a reliablesupport network: when they needed to,

they would send an email to GHLSstaff and get an almost-immediate re-sponse. The key was that the Fellowswere never left on their own: they wereserving as the face of GHLA in thecommunity, and they had GHLA’sentire staff behind them.

At first, “outreach” was ambigu-ous: having a regular arm in the com-munity was new to everyone involved,and it was hard to know if the goalswould match the reality at CHS. Overtime, however, “outreach” developedinto a well-established system forreaching potential clients and commu-nity members. Equipped with a GHLAposter and legal-information pam-phlets, the Fellows worked in pairs ata table in the highly-trafficked CHSlobby every Monday, Wednesday,and Friday afternoon. A GHLA attor-ney supervised and assisted once aweek. The consistency of this approachproved to be extremely valuable informing relationships with members ofthe community.

Interaction with ClientCommunity

Profile of Client Community andScope of Services

Clients ranged in age from earlytwenties to late sixties. The majorityof the community members wereLatino or African-American, and mostinteractions were in English or a com-bination of Spanish and English. Fel-lows spoke to more female identifiedcommunity members than male iden-tified members. Many members of thecommunity received government as-sistance such as Supplemental Nutri-tion Assistance Program (SNAP), So-cial Security Disability (SSD), Supple-mental Security Income (SSI), CashAssistance for Families, and HUSKY



Community membersmentioned difficultiesstemming from theircriminal records morethan any other legalissue.

(JUSTICE: Continued. from page 7)

Healthcare. A majority of the Fellows’interactions were with people whoneeded help with housing, applying forbenefits, navigating a domestic abusesituation or divorce, or obtaining apardon.

Pardons, for example, were an im-portant area because community mem-bers mentioned difficulties stemmingfrom their criminal records more thanany other legal issue. Minor offensesoften prevented them from obtainingwork or housing. Some had lost theirjobs after their employer found out thatthe worker did not disclose their recordon their job application. The Fellows’“Is Your Criminal Record KeepingYou From Finding Work?” pamphletprobably drew more people to the out-reach table than any other sign, poster,or pamphlet. It was easy to see howdifficulty finding work or a home couldlead to recidivism in people who genu-inely wanted to make a positivechange. Once referred by the fellows,GHLA was able to help several peoplenavigate the rigorous pardons processand to set applicants’ expectations asto whether they were likely to receivea pardon.

Fellows often alerted communitymembers to rights or legal issues thatthey were not aware they had. Forexample, when a woman told the Fel-lows that a neighbor’s fire had ren-dered her apartment uninhabitable, thefellows told her about relocation as-sistance and connected her with theagency that could help. When a home-less man pulled a pile of papers out ofhis backpack and laid them on the out-reach table, the fellows identified aSNAP cut-off notice and helped himre-apply. When a regular visitor men-tioned that he needed help obtaining adivorce, the fellows connected himwith a divorce clinic and helped himfill out the necessary paperwork.

Some of the fellows’ outreach workwas not necessarily “legal,” but gavethe fellows an opportunity to helppeople navigate difficult systems. Forexample, a Bengali family asked theFellows for help getting Medicaid fortheir young daughters. Calling Access

Health Connecticut (AHCT) was over-whelming for them—especially afteran AHCT representative made a com-ment about their accents. The fellowsspoke with AHCT on the family’s be-half, relaying the representative’s ques-tions and the family’s answers. It wasa long process, but it was worth it: thedaughters were insured, and the fam-ily was appreciative, kind, and gra-cious. Another day, a woman askedfor help changing information on hermarriage license. After some quickresearch online, the Fellows found outwhat she needed to do and wrote outinstructions. She had spent years at-tempting to change the license but wasunable to navigate the process on herown, so she was very appreciativewhen the Fellows gave her a step-by-step guide.

Fellows developed lasting relation-ships with community members, aswell. One man was applying to havehis SSI reinstated after a recent pe-riod of incarceration. He stopped byevery few weeks to update the fellowson his application and to ask quickquestions when he had trouble reach-ing GHLA. He faced several chal-lenges—he struggled to find housingbecause of his record, and he couldn’twork because of his disability—but healways had a huge smile on his face.He repeatedly expressed appreciationfor GHLA being out in the commu-nity, and on the fellows’ last day, heexpressed sincere regret that their termwas coming to an end. He told thefellows that there were days where hefelt like giving up, but when he vis-ited GHLA’s outreach table it gavehim the will to keep trying.

Typical Day

On a “typical” day at CHS, the fel-lows would interact with five to fif-teen people. It was never easy to pre-dict whether a given day would bebusy: the number of visitors variedbased on the weather, other events be-ing held at CHS, the day of the week,the table’s location, and the signsposted by fellows. The length of in-teractions ranged from a few minutesto an hour. Some people stopped bythe table just to say hello, and somestopped to take legal information pam-phlets. Sometimes, people picked uppamphlets and returned later to reportthat they had read through the infor-mation and wanted to discuss a legalissue. Others sat down immediately,sharing stories about current legaltroubles or about legal needs that hadgone unmet in the past—usually be-cause they lacked access to an attor-ney.

Longer conversations often turnedinto an intake or a Community In-quiry. Intakes, which are brief screen-ing interviews, were conducted whenan individual seemed to qualify for fullrepresentation by a GHLA attorney.Community Inquiries, by contrast,were structured conversations in whichFellows asked a set of open-endedquestions, such as “Tell me aboutsomething good going on in your liferight now?” The Community Inquirywas intended to help GHLA get a feelfor what was happening in the com-munity, and to find out whether therewere common problems that GHLAwasn’t yet addressing. Fellows ob-tained participants’ informed consentand emphasized that responses wereconfidential. Fellows also communi-cated to participants that their responseswere in no way connected to the assis-tance they would receive from GHLA.Conversations would last anywherefrom five minutes to an hour, and Fel-lows tried to record responses exactlyhow they were spoken. After an in-take or inquiry, the potential clientwould leave with a GHLA businesscard, the fellows’ contact information,and a thank you card if they had com-pleted the community inquiry.



The organization’s repu-tation, already wellestablished and positive,was arguably improved.. . . Many communitymembers saw GHLA asmore approachable,because they had a wayto interact with theorganization on theirown terms.

Interacting with theClient Community:Ground-rules

Ground-rules were established asthe year progressed and changed to fitthe Fellows’ and GHLA’s needs. Theyare as follows:

• Give legal information, not legaladvice. Law student Fellows werenot attorneys and therefore wereprohibited from advising clients.

• Listen. The client community hasa history of being ignored or dis-missed by those in positions ofpower. For many this was an op-portunity to have someone takethem seriously and listen to theirwhole story. Fellows provided helpwhen they could and an outlet forwhen they could not.

• Identify the legal issues. Figure outhow GHLA or other resourcescould best serve each person. Tobe both mindful of client’s timeand the Fellows’ own limited avail-ability, Fellows learned how to re-spectfully direct the conversationand focus on how to help the clientif a legal remedy was available. IfFellows could not refer back toGHLA, they would refer to othercommunity resources.

• Respect. Fellows were alwaysmindful to represent themselves,GHLA, and the Law School in aprofessional manner while at CHS.They were building an image notonly for GHLA but also for attor-neys. They were approachable,available, and excited to learn fromcommunity members. If someonementioned a problem, Fellowsplaced importance on his or herconcern no matter what it was.

• Take notes and track. Because itwas a pilot year, Fellows madethings up as they went. They cre-ated an excel sheet that continuedto grow as the year progressed.Originally, it included only infor-mation from those individuals who

had filled out an intake form.Eventually it included communitystories, patterns, and updates onclients.

• Be honest. If Fellows were unableto resolve the issue at the table orthe issue fell outside of GHLA’sscope, they told the client. Thisfrustrated some people, but mostwere grateful that the Fellows hadtried to help in the first place. Usu-ally, when the individual did ap-proach the table, Fellows were ableto find an outlet or resource thatcould help.

• Follow-up. The Fellows tried theirbest to follow up with clients, ei-ther by asking them to return on an-other day or by contacting them di-rectly by phone. Many clients didnot have emails or access to a com-puter, so follow-up occurred mainlyby phone. This also posed a prob-lem because many clients had phoneplans with limited minutes makingit hard to get ahold of a client whoseminutes had expired. When tele-phone calls failed Fellows turned tosending letters in the mail. This alsocould be a challenge because someclients were in between homes anddid not have permanent addresses.

• Tracking. Fellows maintained acomprehensive list of potential cli-ents so they could keep track ofwhen a secretary had made contactwith an individual, or that an attor-ney had communicated the advicesought. Fellows also noted when

they were unable to reach an indi-vidual.

Program Benefits

To be sure, everyone involvedhoped that the fellowship programwould benefit the North End commu-nity. By the end of the year, it seemedthat goal had been accomplished. Cli-ents knew they could come to the out-reach table if they couldn’t make it toGHLA’s office, or if they were hav-ing a hard time reaching the office byphone. For many clients, face-to-faceinteraction was significantly less over-whelming than other forms of com-munication—some clients told the fel-lows that they relied on the outreachtable as their primary method of com-munication with GHLA. Many peoplecommented that it was great to seeGHLA out in the community. Otherstold the fellows that they had beenmeaning to call GHLA about a legalissue for months, and seeing theGHLA table at CHS made it easier forthem to get help. Many people toldthe fellows that, regardless of whetherGHLA was able to help them with theirlegal problem, just having been lis-tened to made them feel better.

GHLA benefited from the program,as well. Because of the donors’ gen-erosity, GHLA was able to hire thesethree Fellows who could afford to de-vote substantial time to the commu-nity and start this program without tak-ing time away from an already-busystaff attorney. GHLA learned moreabout the community it serves, whichhelped it identify issues and trends thatwere not always making it through thefront door. The organization’s repu-tation, already well-established andpositive, was arguably improved—many people stated that it was nice tosee the organization reaching out to thecommunity. Many community mem-bers saw GHLA as more approachable,because they had a way to interact withthe organization on their own terms.

Community Health Services, theFellows’ gracious and accommodatinghost, benefited from the program as

(PLEASANT: Continued from page 4)


St. Albans was becom-ing a Black neighbor-hood, as whites fled toLong Island, and otherQueens enclaves.

well. CHS treats patients holistically;they primarily offer medical services,but also offer psychiatric help, pro-vide clothing, and give out food on aweekly basis. CHS is also a warm placeto spend the day for those with no-where else to go. CHS staff memberscommented that they were happy tohave somewhere to send patients whomentioned legal issues over the courseof their appointments.

Finally, the students received im-measurable benefits from serving asFellows. They participated in direct cli-ent interaction with a very diversepopulation, which helped them de-

notices from the “Klu Klux Klan, Dis-trict of St. Albans” [sic] stating,“Warning to Negroes entering St.Albans. Beware...” Jet magazine onOctober 3, 1952 reported a cross-burn-ing near Jackie Robinson’s home, “anarea of expensive homes owned mostlyby Negroes...The cross—six feet highwith three foot cross arms—was lightedon a vacant lot near the home of oneof the few remaining white residentswho recently had offered his $40,000house for sale. Said Mrs. Robinson:“there are five Negro and five whitefamilies on our block and we get alongvery well. As far as I know none ofthe white families on the street plansto move away.”

Mrs. Robinson’s sanguine predic-tion notwithstanding, St. Albans wasbecoming a Black neighborhood, aswhites fled to Long Island, and otherQueens enclaves.

Retired General Colin Powell, inhis autobiography, describes a chang-ing area when his family won the lot-tery and purchased a home at the edgeof St. Albans in 1959: “The house wasa three-bedroom bungalow in a neigh-borhood in transition, the whites weremoving out and the blacks moving in.My folks bought from a Jewish fam-ily named Weiner, one of the fewwhite families left...Our new homewas ivy-covered, well kept and com-

velop interview skills. They learnedhow to budget their time and attentionin a setting that was often fast-pacedand high-stress. Fellows had the chanceto discuss legal issues with attorneysat the office, and to learn about corelegal issues such as housing, benefits,and family law. The Fellows also hada chance to practice—or learn—Span-ish. Most importantly, the Fellows hadthe chance to meet and learn frompeople facing tremendous legal barri-ers, and to help people while theythemselves grew as students. The ex-perience will surely serve them wellas they move forward with their legalcareers. ❏

(JUSTICE: Continued. from page 9)

fortable, and had a family room and abar in a finished basement. Pop wasnow a property holder, eager to mowhis postage-stamp lawn and prune hisfruit trees. My father had joined thegentry.”

Lani Guinier, Harvard Law Profes-sor and briefly President Clinton’s pickto head up the Justice Department’sCivil Rights Division, said in a 2011New York Times op-ed that when herfamily moved to St. Albans in 1956,“[T]he neighborhood changed withour arrival. When we first moved in,Italians, Jews, Albanians, Armenians

and Portuguese lived in small, tidy,two-family attached houses on bothsides of the street. By 1964 there werealmost no whites still living on ourblock except my mother.”

Guinier also shared her experienceas a biracial student attending a largelywhite school. Prior to junior highschool, she described herself as “in-terracial.” “In junior high school, Ibecame Black. I attended Junior HighSchool 59, a magnet school that at-tracted Jewish students from Laurelton

and Italian kids from Cambria Heights.The white students were friendly dur-ing the school day, but it was in ridingthe bus home with the other Black stu-dents that I felt most welcome. Werode the bus together to an increasinglysegregated St. Albans neighborhood.And it was in St. Albans that I feltfully accepted.”

Writer, musician, and 2013 Na-tional Book Award-winner JamesMcBride provides a similar account,as a biracial child growing up in St.Albans. McBride, in his best-sellingmemoir, The Color of Water, describeshis family’s move from Red Hook,Brooklyn to “the relative bliss of St.Albans” in the early sixties. It’s dur-ing this period, as he is starting school,that he realizes his mother is white.The only other white faces he saw inhis community were the teachers atnearby PS 118 (which I also attendedfor a few years a decade later).

McBride paints a vivid picture ofthe Black militancy that took hold inSt. Albans as the sixties came into fullflower. He said, “In 1966, when I wasnine, Black power had permeated ev-ery element of my neighborhood in St.Albans, Queens. Malcolm X had beenkilled the year before... Afros werein style. The Black Panthers were aforce...” In another passage, he de-scribes how the alteration of a famil-iar landmark in St. Albans, which re-mains to this day, came to be. “A fewblocks from our house was an eight-foot-high stone with a plaque on it thatcommemorated some civil historicevent, and one morning on the way tothe store, Mommy noticed the rock hadbeen painted the black-liberation col-ors, red, black, and green. ‘I wonderwho did that,’ she remarked. I knewbut I couldn’t say.” McBride revealsto the reader that his brother was theculprit.

It was during this period that theGodfather of Soul, James Brown,moved into tony Addisleigh Park. Bythe 1960s, this Gold Coast neighbor-hood, like the rest of St. Albans, waslargely Black. In a 2016 NPR inter-view, McBride, who wrote a book onBrown said, “His house was across thetracks, on the good side of St. Albans.


I used to sneak over, across the LongIsland Railroad tracks, and me and myfriend Billy Smith, we would standoutside. A bunch of us! Because therumor was that he would come out ofthe house, and if you’d promise you’dstay in school, he’d give you money.”

I, too, grew up hearing storiesabout James Brown’s time in St.Albans. Brown was still a popular fig-ure in the 1970s and his music moreaccessible to me than jazz. He lived inSt. Albans from 1962 through the early1970s, during his peak as a recordingartist. The records he produced dur-ing this period were in heavy rotationin my house: “Papa’s Got a BrandNew Bag,” “I Got You (I Feel Good),”“It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World,”and “Get Up (I Feel Like Being a) SexMachine.” While living in St. Albans,Brown also recorded what would bethe unofficial anthem of the BlackPower movement, “Say it Loud - I’mBlack and I’m Proud.” What JamesBrown was saying and doing at thistime was in sync with what was hap-pening in the community around him.He enjoyed a reputation as a man ofthe people. While he lived in a housethat looked like a castle, Brown, myparents and others said, used to openup his pool to area children. So, therumor McBride heard that he’d givekids money is plausible.

On NPR, McBride continued,“That was the rumor. It never hap-pened. [Laughs.] And so kids wouldstand outside his house all the time,and then one day, my sister Dottie didsomething that no kid I ever thoughthad the guts do do: She just went upto the front door of this beautifulhouse, and just knocked. And she methim! And so she came running homeand said, “I met James Brown.” Andwe asked, “What did he say?” “Hesaid, ‘Stay in school, Dottie.’” Andthat became the clarion call of my sis-ter for a long time.”

I recall a St. Albans, in the 1970s,where the schools were still good, butincreasingly under-resourced, com-pared to schools in Queens’ white com-munities. My parents bused their threechildren to schools in white areas af-ter we reached the third grade. As time

marched on, economic disinvestment,official neglect, and the social ills dis-proportionately borne by Black com-munities, exacerbated the educationaldisparities. On a demographic dot-den-sity map, all of Southeastern Queensappears dramatically as 90+% Black,with the borough becoming progres-sively whiter as you travel north to theThrogs Neck Bridge. School profi-ciency inversely tracks Black popula-tion density.

Some years ago, New York Cityrenamed my childhood elementaryschool the Lorraine Hansberry Schoolfor Literary Excellence. Hansberry,the first Black woman to write a playperformed on Broadway, is a fittingrole model. But Hansberry’s magnumopus was “A Raisin in the Sun,” whichwas based on Hansberry’s family’sown experience fighting racial cov-enants in Chicago. In her book, ToBe Young, Gifted, and Black,Hansberry describes the litigation:

“Twenty-five years ago, [my fa-ther] spent a small personal fortune,his considerable talents, and manyyears of life fighting, in associa-tion with NAACP attorneys,Chicago’s ‘restrictive covenants’in one of this nation’s ugliest ghet-tos. The fight also required ourfamily to occupy disputed propertyin a hellishly hostile ‘white neigh-borhood’ in which literally howl-ing mobs surrounded our house.”

PRRAC Update

• We are pleased to welcome ournew Communications and Part-nerships Manager, KimberlyHall. Kim comes to us with a strongbackground in campaign communi-cations, and will be helping us do abetter job in getting our voice heardin traditional media, developing astronger strategic narrative, and rais-ing up stories from our work in lo-cal communities.

• Three new Board members joinedus at our December Board meetingin Chapel Hill: Kristen Clarke,Executive Director of the LawyersCommittee for Civil Rights UnderLaw, Justin Steil, an assistant pro-fessor in the MIT Department ofUrban Studies and Planning, andAnurima Bhargava, formerlyChief of the Educational Opportu-nities Section in the DOJ Civil RightsDivision, and currently a fellow atthe Open Society Foundations andthe Harvard Institute of Politics.

She also remembered “being spatat, cursed and pummeled in the dailytrek to and from school,” while herfather took the legal battle to the U.S.Supreme Court, where he won a Pyr-rhic victory in Hansberry v. Lee. Inthat 1940 case, which helped establishan important precedent for civil pro-cedure, the Court held that previouschallenges to a Chicago covenant didnot bar Hansberry, who was not partof that litigation, from contesting it.Today, that Chicago neighborhood,like St. Albans, is overwhelminglyBlack and segregated.

St. Albans and other areas of South-east Queens were among the hardesthit by the subprime foreclosure crisisa decade ago. Many affected werelongtime homeowners who had builtup decades of wealth in their homes.In fact, it’s precisely St. Albans’ his-tory of stable Black homeownershipthat made it a target.

Milt Hinton in his 1998 interviewwith The New York Times summed upwhat Blacks were seeking when theybegan moving to neighborhoods likeSt. Albans in the 1940s: “Coloredpeople like us were just looking for adecent place to live, a quiet place toraise children.”

It begs the question LangstonHughes asked in the 1951 poem thatinspired Hansberry: “What happens toa dream deferred?” ❏

New York is a latecomerto inclusionary zoning.Its Planning Commis-sion . . . has long op-posed calls forinclusionary zoning.

(NEW YORK: Continued from page 1)


with race (and may even promote ra-cial integration), and that the solutionis to build more “affordable housing.”Government-backed “affordable hous-ing” is unaffordable to people livingin affected central city neighborhoods,and most of the new development isprivate, market-rate and luxury hous-ing.

Race Matters

The city’s aggressive rezoning poli-cies over the last 15 years have helpedto drive this massive development anddisplacement. In Zoned Out! we chal-lenge the narrative that the city’s zon-ing is “color blind.” We show howareas targeted for new development aredisproportionately low-income com-munities of color, while areas protectedby zoning are disproportionately whiteand middle- and upper-income. Insum, exclusionary zoning is not lim-ited to white suburbs but works in thecentral city as well.

The bulk of new housing built af-ter upzonings is for the luxurymarket, is off-limits to most peopleliving in the neighborhood, anddrives up rents and housing costsinstead of lowering them. And thefew “affordable” housing unitsmade available are not affordableto most existing residents.

When we look beyond the surfacephenomena—the rich array of culturesand colors on display in the streets andsubways—New York City is in factone of the most segregated and unequalcities in the world. And it is becom-ing more segregated and unequal. Thisis consistent with the city’s historyfrom the time it was founded. Slaveswere bought and sold in Manhattan andproceeds from the Southern plantationeconomy went to Wall Street banks.After slavery, Blacks lived in segre-gated areas and as new developmentmoved uptown from lower Manhat-tan Blacks were displaced in stages untilthey landed in Harlem a century ago,

then migrated to segregated areas ofBrooklyn, Queens and the Bronx. Nowmany are being pushed out of Harlemas wealthy white neighborhoods—theUpper East Side and Upper West Side—stretch their boundaries further northinto Harlem.

When zoning was instituted in1916, wealthy property owners inManhattan insured protection of theirown properties from industries and theworking class immigrant populationsliving near them. This focus on pro-moting and regulating the densest ar-eas corresponded with a laissez-faireapproach to peripheral areas—untilrecent decades when those areas be-come targets for big real estate andupzoning. Since zoning is the maintool for land use policy in New YorkCity, aggressive rezonings to both

stimulate new growth and protectwealthier enclaves are now common.During the 12-year rule of MayorMichael Bloomberg (2002-2013), al-most 40% of the city’s land was re-zoned following this broad strategy.Current Mayor Bill de Blasio pickedup where Bloomberg left off and pro-posed to rezone what was left in se-lected neighborhoods. De Blasio pro-posed upzoning to promote new de-velopment in 15 communities, mostlylow-income communities of color sub-ject to gentrification pressures, but hehas faced a broad wave of oppositionfrom residents who consider the city’spromises of affordable housing to betoo little and too late.

The city’s housing policies haveoften reinforced its biased land usepolicies. New York City used the fed-eral urban renewal program to gutblack and Latino neighborhoods. Newpublic housing, particularly at theedges of the city, segregated many whowere pushed out of their neighbor-

hoods. Redlining, blockbusting andracial steering were commonplace.And in the wave of massive housingabandonment affecting communities ofcolor in the 1970s, the city wascomplicit with banks, landlords andinsurance companies when it withdrewservices from these neighborhoods, apractice that one city official dubbed“planned shrinkage.”

Zoning Can’t Solve theHousing Problem

Last year, New York City adopteda new inclusionary housing law—Man-datory Inclusionary Housing (MIH)—that would tie all new rezonings pro-moting development to requirementsthat at least 20% of new housing mustbe affordable, following HUD’s area-wide definition of affordability. NewYork is a latecomer to inclusionaryzoning. Its Planning Commission, his-torically beholden to the powerful realestate industry, had long opposed callsfor inclusionary zoning, claiming thatit would thwart new development. Fi-nally, the city sweetened the pot withtax subsidies and negotiated overallterms with the powerful Real EstateBoard of New York, and the measurepassed in 2016. In a bizarre politicalendgame, de Blasio faced significantopposition from the majority of thecity’s 59 community boards, boththose that saw MIH as a Trojan Horsefor gentrification and displacement andthe NIMBYite boards opposed to newdevelopment and affordable housing.

After MIH passed, the city pressedharder to move its rezoning agendaforward in the 15 mostly minoritycommunities, arguing that MIH wasnecessary to guarantee new affordablehousing development. This reasoningwas greeted with renewed skepticism,part of the reason that only one of the15 rezonings has actually passed in thethree years of this mayor’s adminis-tration. These are the limitations ofMIH often cited in communities ofcolor:

• At least 80% of new housing de-veloped under MIH is bound to be



The city advanced thisas an opportunity toimprove Harlem by at-tracting new housingand retail.

market-rate, built for higher in-come groups. This new develop-ment further drives up rents andland values in the rest of the com-munity.

• Since the area-wide AMI is usedto determine eligibility instead ofthe neighborhood median, most ofthe new “affordable” units are notaffordable to most existing resi-dents.

• Years before the rezoning, specu-lators and equity funds move intothe neighborhoods, buy up land andbuildings and use a variety of meth-ods, legal and illegal, to move ex-isting tenants out. Thus, residentsalready see the negative effects ofthis kind of development and ex-pect that the proposed rezoning willonly make it worse.

• The city’s planners try to sell therezonings by inferring that gentri-fication and displacement are inevi-table and MIH is the best way toget at least some affordable hous-ing. However, it is clear from thecity housing agency’s own publicstatements that the vast majority of“affordable” units in the mayor’s20-year affordable housing planwill come from renovation of ex-isting units and not new construc-tion, and only a small fraction ofthe new units will result from theapplication of MIH. This furtherdiscredits the argument for usingzoning as a means for both the pres-ervation and creation of affordablehousing.

It’s The Land Market!

At the heart of this obscurantism isthe real estate industry’s laissez-faireideology which dominates all discus-sion of the housing question. The prob-lem, they say, is that demand is muchgreater than the supply. The solution?Increase the supply. Housing is no dif-ferent than potatoes: the more thereare the lower the price. Right?

Wrong. Real estate investors makemoney by investing in land, watchingit gain in value and then selling it tomake a profit or using it to leveragenew wealth. In hot urban markets likeNew York City, land is treasured be-cause of its potential future value.Zoning is the principal instrument ofpublic policy that regulates land val-ues, and zoning changes can createenormous overnight windfalls. Thisproduces gentrification and displace-ment. While it often happens withoutany zoning change, when landownersdeem that a zoning change is neededto realize the potential value of theirland, they turn to the city planners todo the right thing.

Displacement in ThreeNeighborhoods

The stories of zoning and displace-ment in New York City neighborhoodsreveal how this close relationship be-

tween zoning and the land marketworks. Three recent stories are par-ticularly revealing: Williamsburg(Brooklyn), Harlem and Chinatown.

The most dramatic of these isWilliamsburg, Brooklyn, once a livelyworking class neighborhood mixingindustry and housing. Williamsburg ison the East River facing Manhattanand when port facilities moved to NewJersey in the 1970s parts of its indus-trial waterfront were abandoned. Resi-dents and businesses came together inthe 1990s to prepare a community planthat would preserve the mixed use char-acter of the neighborhood while pre-venting high rise luxury developmenton the waterfront. The plan was ap-proved by the City Planning Commis-sion in 2002. Two years later the citycame forward with a rezoning proposal

that would produce high-rise luxuryhousing on the waterfront and open upindustrial areas to new residential de-velopment.

The new zoning, supported by pow-erful real estate interests, was a slap inthe face for advocates of the commu-nity plan. It was approved by the CityPlanning Commission in 2005. Withina mere decade, Williamsburg becamea haven for new wealth, a large por-tion of the Latino population was dis-placed, industry declined precipi-tously, and the limited amount of “af-fordable” housing built remainsunaffordable to most of Williams-burg’s remaining working class resi-dents.

The white population in the re-zoning area increased by 44 per-cent, compared to a 2 percent de-cline citywide. The Hispanic/Latino population declined by 27percent, compared to a 10 percentincrease citywide.

Another case is the rezoning ofFrederick Douglass Boulevard in Cen-tral Harlem.

The city advanced this as an oppor-tunity to improve Harlem by attract-ing new housing and retail. Some evensuggested that if it attracted whitesthen it would serve to integrate BlackHarlem and, in the end, reduce segre-gation. In fact, located at the southernedge of Central Harlem near the whiteUpper West Side, the rezoning ofFrederick Douglass Boulevard servedto expand the segregated Upper WestSide and displace Black Harlem resi-dents who would then move into newlyresegregated areas of the city or to seg-regated portions of the inner suburbs.The Upper West Side once had a largeLatino population, but much of it wasforced out by the urban renewal pro-gram and gentrification. Manhattan(Kings County) still has the greatestincome inequality of all counties in thenation.

From 2000 to 2013, in theFrederick Douglass Boulevard re-zoning area, the total populationincreased by 18 percent; the white


The problem is that theDepartment of CityPlanning doesn’t doplanning, either at thecity-wide level or theneighborhood level.

(NEW YORK: Continued from page 13)

population increased 455 percentwhile the black population de-clined by 5 percent, and the Latinopopulation declined by 13 percent.

The third case is Manhattan’sChinatown. In 2008, the city approveda rezoning of the East Village thatmostly protected that area, much ofwhich had gentrified and becomewhiter. The rezoning included, how-ever, the upzoning of several blocksin Chinatown to promote new high-rise development. Chinese and Latinogroups fought the rezoning and de-manded that their blocks, and the sub-stantial public housing blocks in thearea, be protected by zoning. Whenthe city refused to protect these areas,residents opposed, unsuccessfully, pas-sage of the city’s proposal.

The city then promised that theywould support a community planningprocess leading to a subsequent rezon-ing. The Asian and Latino communi-ties spent seven years working with abroad community coalition, the localcommunity boards and elected offi-cials, and developed a rezoning plan.However, the community proposalwas flatly rejected because it did notinclude enough opportunities for newmarket-rate development. What thecity did not acknowledge is that themarket-driven development they pro-moted would end up displacing morepeople of color and reduce the historicChinatown to nothing more than a chictourist destination.

A new luxury tower in Chinatownfeatures:

…such absurdist amenities as a

golf simulator room, a dog spa,

and a cigar room, and is designed

as a virtual gated community. The

developer, however, is financing

their project with public money….

and is building a separate,smaller, lower quality buildingwith below-market rents…for fami-lies making up to 60 percent ofNew York’s Area Median Income.A qualifying family of four couldearn up to $51,540 while the me-dian income for that particular

census block is just $20,450. Thissegregated development will ex-clude people of color and low-in-come families currently living inthe area, while also creating sec-ondary displacement pressures byfueling rising rents and landprices.

Alternatives

While the power of big real estateand weakness of public alternativesoften leave people resigned to the sta-tus quo, the long history of the ten-ant, civil rights and community move-ments in New York City suggests thatwhen people organize they can forcechange. These movements triggeredrent regulations and public investmentsin housing to benefit below-market ratetenants. They have stopped disinvest-ment in many public services and de-feated proposed mega-projects like theLower Manhattan Expressway andWestway (a huge highway project).

Let me focus on two main alterna-tives supported by many neighbor-hoods: community-based planning andhousing in the public domain.

Community-basedPlanning

The city’s summary dismissal ofWilliamsburg’s and Chinatown’sthoughtful community plans is a symp-tom of the larger problem plaguing allzoning and housing issues in the city.The problem is that the Departmentof City Planning doesn’t do planning,either at the city-wide level or theneighborhood level. Its zoning re-sponds to the immediate, short-terminterests of property owners and is not

related to notions of long-termsustainability of the city’s hundreds ofdiverse communities. It does notopenly consider questions of gentri-fication, displacement and race.

New York City is the only majorcity in the United States that has neverhad a comprehensive plan.

There must be a fundamental shiftin the culture and practice of theDepartment of City Planning, fromtop to bottom, towards real plan-ning at multiple scales—from theblock up to the neighborhood, cityand regional levels—and awayfrom the exclusive use of zoningin land use policy.

In part, the gap in planning has beenfilled by grassroots community-basedplans—over a hundred of them in thelast half-century. Even after a (weak)reform of the City Charter in 1989,only 17 community plans have beenapproved by the City Planning Com-mission. A major problem is that thecity’s 59 community boards, them-selves a product of community activ-ism and the civil rights movement,have practically no funding, voluntaryand appointed members, and no for-mal power in land use decisionmakingbeyond “advisory” votes.

In the absence of real community-based planning, the city’s plannershave unleashed a huge display of hastycommunity consultations as a preludeto rezoning proposals. However, theselead to endless wish lists of projectsthat have no official standing and maybe quickly forgotten after a rezoning.They fail to provide tools to addressgentrification and displacement in com-munities of color.

This situation cries out for anotherstructural change in the way the citydevelops land use policy.

It is time for another major revi-sion to the New York City Charterthat empowers community boardsand, most importantly, holds themaccountable to principles of socialjustice—the same principles towhich the higher levels of govern-ment must be held accountable.



Housing in the PublicDomain

Since Ronald Reagan’s withdrawalfrom funding for low-income housing,there has been a bipartisan consensusthat government should invest in pub-lic-private partnerships and move awayfrom public housing. “Affordablehousing” has become the acceptablealternative which, in practice, is usu-ally middle-income housing. Even asthe number of homeless people grows,there is increasing support for expen-sive solutions that enrich investors anddevelopers but leave those who needhousing the most out in the cold.

New York City still has the largesthousing authority in the nation but itsNext Generation NYCHA plan foreseesa transformation of the authority’shousing stock to public-private part-nerships serving a more mixed-incomepopulation. As the communities ofcolor around NYCHA’s projects be-come gentrified and whiter, the dis-mantling of the projects will simplyreinforce this process. Far from inte-grating segregated projects and neigh-borhoods, this will further stimulatethe displacement of communities ofcolor.

If the city, state and federal gov-ernments were to commit capitalfunds to both save public housingand create new housing for low-income people in neighborhoodsfacing gentrification and displace-ment they could save tax dollarsand neighborhoods, and move onestep closer to a more equitable andracially integrated city.

With Trump Towers scatteredaround Manhattan to remind us ofwhat a Trump administration in Wash-ington is likely to produce, it is par-ticularly important that we boost ourefforts to organize for the right tohousing and the right to the city for all—housing in the public domain. ❏

Selected References

Angotti, Tom. New York For Sale: Community Planning Confronts Global Real Estate. MIT

Press, 2008.

Next Generation NYCHA, 2015. Greenpoint-Williamsburg Inclusionary Housing Program.

City of New York, Department of City Planning, 2005.

State of the City’s Housing and Neighborhoods, 2015. Furman Center for Real Estate and

Urban Policy.

How Have the City’s Recent Rezonings Affected the City’s Ability to Grow? Policy Paper,

2010. Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy

Goldberg, Leo. Game of Zones: Neighborhood Rezonings and Uneven Urban Growth in

Bloomberg’s New York City. MIT, Department of Urban Studies and Planning, Master’s

Thesis, 2015.

Mollenkopf, John and Manuel Castells, eds. Dual City: Restructuring New York. NY: Russell

Sage Foundation, 1992.

Roberts, Sam.“Manhattan’s Income Gap is Widest in US, Census Finds, The New York Times,

September 8, 2014.

Rosenberg, Eli.“How NYC’s Decade of Rezoning Changed the City of Industry,” Curbed,

January 16, 2014.

Smith, Greg B. “EXCLUSIVE: NYCHA Quietly Selling Off Parking Lots, Green Space,

Playgrounds to Help East Budget Woes,” New York Daily News. June 11, 2013.

Smith, Neil and Peter Williams. Gentrification of the City. Boston: Allen & Unwin, 1986.

Tucker, Maria Luisa.“Lower East Side Rezoning Sparks Border War in Chinatown,” Village

Voice, May 20, 2008.

(SKEPTICISM: Cont. from page 2)

able housing, and that doesn’t includethe schools, parks, and infrastructureimprovements necessary to supportthat housing. In the absence of a mecha-nism (like the mandatory inclusionaryzoning Angotti decries) to have mar-ket rate housing help to create afford-able housing, how will the City sup-port the ”right” to “housing in thepublic domain” he demands— by rais-ing taxes on current residents? Thenthere’s the question of how the Citycould allow only affordable housingwhile still achieving the mixed-incomeneighborhoods that research consis-tently shows help to deconcentratepoverty, reduce segregation, and pro-vide better opportunities, especiallyfor children. That problem is especiallyacute given that Angotti describes theCity’s affordable housing as “usuallymiddle-income housing,” even thoughalmost 80% of the subsidized housingthe City has financed over the pastthree years is targeted to households

who qualify as extremely-low, very-low and low-income. Which of thosefamilies is he saying shouldn’t be thebeneficiary of the City’s affordablehousing programs?

Angotti seems to suggest that wehold off on development until the Citygoes through the kind of community-based planning process that he has ad-vocated for many years, along withstructural change to the City’s land useprocess to give the 59 communityboards more power. At the outset, heis just wrong in his description of theCity’s planning process, as shown bythe community-based planning mea-sures underway in neighborhoodsacross the City.Worse yet, his visionof the perfect process would take many,many years or decades—the Chinatowncommunity planning process tookseven years by his account. Even if theCity could reach agreement on whatAngotti would consider a comprehen-sive plan, and on a new land use sys-tem, implementing those “reforms”


(SKEPTICISM: Cont. from page 15)

would take many more years, and onlythen would actual building begin. Butas so much research shows, every yeara child lives in unstable housing, or inneighborhoods that don’t offer goodenvironments for education, employ-ment, health or safety, is a year inwhich we’ve lost a significant oppor-tunity to improve the rest of that child’slife. So, imperfect as it is, rezoningnow to build more market rate hous-ing, with the requirement that it in-clude between 20 to 30 percent of theapartments as permanently affordable

Resources

NYC Department of City Planning population projections, available at: https://www1.nyc.gov/site/planning/data-maps/nyc-population/current-future-populations.page.

NYC Department of City Planning neighborhood studies, available at: http://www1.nyc.gov/site/planning/plans/proposals-studies.page.

NYC Department of City Planning information on New York’s MandatoryInclusionary Zoning amendment, available at: http://www1.nyc.gov/site/planning/plans/mih/mandatory-inclusionary-housing.page

housing, is preferable to losing anothergeneration to the no-growth, wall-the-

city policies that follow from supplyskepticism. ❏

Thanks for your contributions to PRRAC!

Laurence AdelmanLilian ArciniegasMichelle AdamsMichelle AronowitzLois AtheySandra BaronMary BasoloJon BauerBarbara R. BearmanMarry Ellen BeckerChristine BenemanSusan D. BennettMiriam BerkmanPaul R. BirnbergJohn BogerMarcia BokCourtney B. BournsJohn C. BrittainJames CampenSheryll D. CashinLinda ChirichignoSheila CrowleyJoe T. DardenSusan DavidoffCatherine Dorn SchrieberGirardeau SpannSusan Eaton

Kathy EbnerTheresa K. El-AminRonald EllisSteven Eppler-EpsteinChristina FribergElizabeth FriedmanDaniel FulmerHerbert J. GansDaniel GoldsteinJames GrowJoseph GuggenheimJill HamburgJeremy HartRichard HealeyHelen HerskoffLaura HirshfieldEmbry M. HowellAlbert IlgOlatunde JohnsonVera B. JohnsonSusanne JonasDavid A. KandelVictoria KaplanAlexander M. KayneHenry KhanDaniel KublockEileen Kugler

Wilfred R. La RoseSpencer LimbockerMickey MacIntyreNancy McArdleDemetria McCainGrace McClainJill S. MedvedowMichael MeltsnerS.M. MillerElena OngMichael ParisDennis ParkerLaurence D. PearlTheodore PearsonJames N. PerlsteinCarrie PleasantsDeborah B. RogowFlorence W. RoismanRichard RothsteinWilliam RubensteinBarbara SamuelsBarbara SardAnthony SarmientoElizabeth ScheinesHenry R. SchrieverAnthony W. SchumanJames Schulman

Karen SheldonDick SimpsonJustin P. SteilCaitlyn TaylorDean E. TegelerMichael B. TeitzKarolyn TysonBarbara VossMargaret WeirMildred Williamson

You can also donate online at www.prrac.org


tinue the march backward analyzedby Philip Klinkner in his 1999 bookon the Rise and Decline of RacialInequality?

Recovering the songs and stories ofrural civil rights history may help usunderstand why we are moving for-ward or backward politically and cul-turally in the United States today.Black land ownership remains a cru-cial question going back to the seizureof plantation lands by former slavesduring the Civil War, as do strugglesever since to maintain a rural economicbase through cooperatives and smallfarms. Other films have chronicled theBlack freedom movement in morewell-known struggles from Montgom-ery to Memphis. Dirt and Deeds pro-vides a distinctive and crucial windowinto a neglected theme of rural orga-nizing, through documentation andinterviews with movement veterans inMississippi’s Deep South.

Does this history have lessons for apredominantly urban United States inthe age of Trump, when the arrow ofhistory seems to be pointing back to“Jim Crow” acted out on a nationalstage? Mississippi activist KaliAkuno’s thoughts on the road aheadare worth pondering:

I do think in a moment like this,living in Mississippi is an advan-tage. Mississippi has been domi-nated by the Tea Party, even be-fore the party had its name. Ourgovernor, Phil Bryant, is a TeaParty member. We have a Repub-lican supermajority and it has beenthat way for most of the last sixyears and they can pass almost any-thing they want. ...

We were like, “Welcome to Mis-sissippi!” to the rest of the UnitedStates. We don’t wish this on ourworst enemies, but this is where wefind ourselves. Crying about it orwishing it was different is not go-ing to change the situation. We aregoing to have to get down, get dirtyand struggle and work our way out

of this.” ❏

(MISSISSIPPI: Cont. from page 6)

Resources

Web Links

Paragraph on authors

AfricaFocus Bulletin: http://www.africafocus.org

No Easy Victories: http://www.noeasyvictories.org

Michael Honey: http://faculty.washington.edu/mhoney/

Sharecropper’s Troubadour: http://www.palgrave.com/us/book/9780230111271

Love and Solidarity: http://www.bullfrogfilms.com/catalog/love.html

First paragraph in text

Eyes on the Prize episode on Mississippi: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aP2A6_2b6g8

Dirt and Deeds in Mississippi: http://newsreel.org/video/DIRT-AND-DEEDS

Voter suppression: http://www.noeasyvictories.org/usa/voter-suppression.php

Second paragraph in text

Holmes County: http://www.noeasyvictories.org/usa/holmes-county.phpandhttps://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/nov/15/poorest-town-in-poorest-state-segregation-is-gone-but-so-are-the-jobs

Fourth paragraph in text

Robert Clark: https://www.loc.gov/item/afc2010039_crhp0075/

Seventh paragraph in text

Sharecropper’s Troubadourhttp://www.folkways.si.edu/magazine-summer-fall-2014-sharecroppers-troubadour-songs-of-solidarity-in-hard-times/article/smithsonian

Eighth paragraph in text

Carrie Dilworth: https://snccdigital.org/people/carrie-dilworth/

About 2017 and beyond

Third Reconstruction: http://amzn.to/2gfr2Eq

Rise and Decline of Racial Inequality: http://amzn.to/2i5qS01

Kali Akuno: http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/39061-insights-from-mississippi-on-organizing-in-a-right-wing-context-a-conversation-with-kali-akuno


Resources

Race/Racism

• Daymont, Thomas N. “Racial Equity or RacialEquality.” Demography 17, no. 4 (1980): 379.doi:10.2307/2061152.

• Towards Racial Equity through Policy & Assessment:Healing Possible Quorum 100: Recommendations. Centerfor Health Equity. January 2015. https://louisvilleky.gov/.

• Traub, Amy, Laura Sullivan, Tatjana Meschede, andTom Shapiro. The Asset Value of Whiteness: Understand-ing the Racial Wealth Gap. Publication. 2017. http://iasp.brandeis.edu/pdfs/2017/AssetValue.pdf.

• “Voicing Race: Storytelling in Traditional Media.”Living Cities. January 04, 2017. https://www.livingcities.org/resources/327-voicing-race-storytelling-in-traditional-media.

• “Webinar: Racial Equity and Community Engagementin Collective Impact.” Living Cities. May 1, 2015. https://www.livingcities.org/resources/294-webinar-racial-equity-and-community-engagement-in-collective-impact.

Civil Rights History

• Massey, Douglas S., and Nancy A. Denton. AmericanApartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass.Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003.

Economic/CommunityDevelopment

• “2013 Report Card for America’s Infrastructure.”American Society of Civil Engineers. 2013. http://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/a/#p/home.

• “The Equality of Opportunity Project.” The Equalityof Opportunity Project. http://www.equality-of-opportunity.org/.

• “Illinois General Assembly - Bill Status for HB2808.”Illinois General Assembly. 2017. http://www.ilga.gov/legislation/BillStatus.asp?DocTypeID=HB&DocNum=2808&GAID=14&SessionID= 91&LegID=104197.

• Jones, Janelle, and David Cooper. “State MinimumWage Increases Helped 4.3 Million Workers, but FederalInaction Has Left Many More Behind.” Economic PolicyInstitute. January 9, 2017. http://www.epi.org/.

Education

• “The Agonizing Choice of Public Schools In Segre-gated Cities.” The Kathleen Dunn Show. February 28,2017. http://www.wpr.org/listen/1067991.

• Cabrera, N. L., J. F. Milem, O. Jaquette, and R. W.Marx. “Missing the (Student Achievement) Forest for Allthe (Political) Trees: Empiricism and the Mexican Ameri-can Studies Controversy in Tucson.” American Educa-tional Research Journal 51, no. 6 (2014): 1084-118.doi:10.3102/0002831214553705.

• Carnoy, Martin, and Emma García. “Five Key Trendsin U.S. Student Performance: Progress by Blacks andHispanics, the Takeoff of Asians, the Stall of Non-EnglishSpeakers, the Persistence of Socioeconomic Gaps, and theDamaging Effect of Highly Segregated Schools.” Eco-nomic Policy Institute. January 12, 2017. http://epi.org/113217.

• Charter Schools, Civil Rights, and School Discipline:A Comprehensive Review. Publication. March 2016.https://www.civilrightsproject.ucla.edu/.

• “Closing the Gaps: Full Compendium of Essays.”Living Cities. September 26, 2016. https://www.livingcities.org/resources/322-closing-the-gaps-full-compendium-of-essays.

• Dee, Thomas, and Emily Penner. NBER WorkingPaper Series. The National Bureau of Economic Research.January 2016. http://www.nber.org/papers/w21865.pdf.

• “How Diversity Empowers Science and Innovation.”Scientific American. September 15, 2014. https://www.scientificamerican.com/report/how-diversity-empowers-science-and-innovation/.

• Hoxby, Caroline, and Christopher Avery. The Missing“One-Offs”: The Hidden Supply of High-Achieving, LowIncome Students. Working paper no. 18586. December2012. http://www.nber.org/digest/may13/w18586.html.

• Johnson, C. Kirabo, Rucker C. Johnson, and ClaudiaPerisco. The National Bureau of Economic Research.Working paper no. 20847. January 2015. http://www.nber.org/papers/w20847.

• K-12 Education: Better Use of Information Could HelpAgencies Identify Disparities and Address Racial Discrimi-nation. Report. Washington, DC: United States Govern-ment Accountability Office, 2016.

To subscribe toPoverty & Race, go to

www.prrac.org/order.php


• Long-Run Impacts of School Desegregation & SchoolQuality on Adult Attainments. Working paper no. 16664.Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research,2015.

• Martin, Daisy, Saúl I. Maldonado, Jack Schneider,and Mark Smith. “A Report on the State of HistoryEducation State Policies and National Programs.”• TeachingHistory.org. Fall 2011. http://teachinghistory. org/system/files/teachinghistory_special_report_2011.pdf.

• Orfield, Gary, and Jongyeon Ee. Our SegregatedCapital: An Increasingly Diverse City with RaciallyPolarized Schools. Report. February 2017. https://www.civilrightsproject.ucla.edu/.

• “Qualifications of Humanities Teachers in U.S. PublicHigh Schools.” Humanities Indicators. September 2015.http://www.humanitiesindicators.org/content/indicatordoc.aspx?i=29.

• Schmitz Bechteler, Stephanie, and Kathleen Kane-Willis, comps. 100 Years and Counting: The EnduringLegacy of Racial Residential Segregation in Chicago inthe Post-Civil Rights Era, Part Two: The Impact ofSegregation on Education in a “No Excuses” Environ-ment. The Chicago Urban Leauge. Cultivate. February2017. http://www.thechicagourbanleague.org/cms/lib07/IL07000264/Centricity/Domain/1/CULtivate%20Part%202_Education_FINAL.pdf.

• “School Climate Resources.” Teaching Tolerance.2017. http://www.tolerance.org/school_climate_resources.

Environment

• Environmental Justice: Examining the EnvironmentalProtection Agency’s Compliance and Enforcement of TitleVI and Executive Order 12,898. Report. September 2017.http://www.usccr.gov/pubs/Statutory_Enforcement_Report2016.pdf.

• The Flint Water Crisis: Systemic Racism Through theLens of Flint. Report. February 17, 2017. http://www.michigan.gov/documents/mdcr/MDCR_Flint_Water_Crisis_Report_552190_7.pdf.

• Matthew, Dayna Bowen, Richard V. Reeves, andEdward Rodrigue. Economic Studies at Brookings.Publication. January 2017. https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/ccf_20170116_racial_segregation_and_health_matthew_reeves2.pdf.

• US EPA, Office Of Environmental Justice. EJ 2020Action Agenda: The U.S. EPA’s Environmental JusticeStrategic Plan for 2016-2020. Publication. 2016. https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2016-05/documents/052216_ej_2020_strategic_plan_final_0.pdf.

Families/Children

• Blueprint for Children: How the Next President CanBuild a Foundation for a Healthy Future. AmericanAcademy of Pediatrics. September 2016. https://www.aap.org/en-us/documents/blueprintforchildren.pdf.

• Gender Equity Through Human Rights: Local Efforts toAdvance the Status of Women and Girls in the UnitedStates. Report. January 2017. http://www.law.columbia.edu.

• Hermansen, Are Skeie. “Age at Arrival and LifeChances Among Childhood Immigrants.” Demography 54,no. 1 (2017): 201-29. doi:10.1007/s13524-016-0535-1.

• “Immigrant Children: How Age of Arrival ImpactsAcademic, Job Success.” Journalist’s Resource. February02, 2017. https://journalistsresource.org/studies/govern-ment/immigration/immigrant-children-esl-age-impact-success.

Housing

• Assembly Member. Miguel Santiago.“Assemblymember Miguel Santiago Introduces Legislationto Buck Trump Administration on Fair Housing.” Newsrelease, February 15, 2017. http://www.publicadvocates.org/wp-content/uploads/Press-Release_AB-686_Santiago-021517_Final.pdf.

• Brophy, Paul C., ed. On the Edge. New York: Ameri-can Assembly, 2016.

• Campen, Jim. “Changing Patterns III: MortgageLending to Traditionally Underserved Borrowers &Neighborhoods in Boston, Greater Boston and Massachu-setts, 2015.” Massachusetts Community & BankingCouncil. December 2016. http://mcbc.info.

• Cheryl Young. “There Doesn’t Go the Neighborhood:Low-Income Housing Has No Impact on Nearby HomeValues.” Trulia’s Blog. November 16, 2016. https://www.trulia.com/blog/trends/low-income-housing/.

• Cityscape: A Journal of Policy Development andResearch 18, no. 3 (2016). https://www.huduser.gov/portal/periodicals/cityscpe/vol18num3/index.html.

• The Community Reinvestment Act: How CRA CanPromote Integration and Prevent Displacement inGentrifying Neighborhoods. Publication. December 2016.www.ncrc.org.

• Dillman, Keri-Nicole, Keren Mertens Horn, and AnnVerrilli. “The What, Where, and When of Place-BasedHousing Policy’s Neighborhood Effects.” Housing PolicyDebate 27, no. 2 (2017): 282-305. http://tandfonline.com/.


• Elliott, Rebecca. “State Sued over Housing Discrimi-nation Law.” Houston Chronicle. February 17, 2017.http://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/politics/houston/article/State-sued-over-housing-discrimination-law-10941911.php?t=9751ea8dab438d9cbb&cmpid=twitter-premium.

• Finding Consensus: A Balanced Approach to Afford-able Housing and Fair Housing in the Chicago Metropoli-tan Region. Report. 2017. http://www.oprhc.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Opportunity-Based-Housing-Survey-Report.pdf.

• Gentrification Response: A Survey of Strategies toMaintain Neighborhood Economic Diversity. Report.October 2016. furmancenter.org.

• Henneberger, John. “Lincoln Property Company,Country’s Second Largest Apartment Manager, Hit withRacial Discrimination Lawsuit.” Texas Housers. January24, 2017. https://texashousers.net/2017/01/24/lincoln-properties-us-2nd-largest-apartment-manager-hit-with-racial-discrimination-lawsuit/.

• Hsieh, Chang-Tai, and Enrico Moretti. “Why DoCities Matter? Local Growth and Aggregate Growth.”Chicago Booth Magazine, April 2015. doi:10.3386/w21154.

• “The Local Economic Impact of Home Building.”National Association of Home Buyers. April 2015. http://www.nahb.org/en/research/housing-economics/housings-economic-impact/the-local-economic-impact-of-home-building.aspx.

• Miles, D.R. Bailey, Barbara Samuels, and Craig E.Pollack. “Leveraging Housing Vouchers to AddressHealth Disparities.” American Journal of Public Health107, no. 2 (2017): 238-40. doi:10.2105/ajph.2016.303565.

• “Segregation and Neighborhood Growth.” Institute onMetropolitan Opportunity. December 19, 2016. http://blog.opportunity.mn/2016/12/segregation-and-neighbor-hood-growth.html?m=1.

• Veale, Liza. “Housing Vouchers Fail the Bay Area.”KALW. February 28, 2017. http://kalw.org/post/housing-vouchers-fail-bay-area#stream/0.

• Zuk, Miriam, Ariel H. Bierbaum, Karen Chapple,Karolina Gorska, Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, Paul Ong,and Trevor Thomas. “Gentrification, Displacement andthe Role of Public Investment: A Literature Review.”Gentrification, Displacement and the Role of PublicInvestment: A Literature Review. http://iurd.berkeley.edu/uploads/Displacement_Lit_Review_Final.pdf.


Putting the Movement Backinto Civil Rights Teaching

A new edition for a new movement

The enormously popular civil rights teaching resourceand guide, published by Teaching for Change and PRRACin 2004 is still used by teachers all over the country tohelp students see themselves in the civil rights move-ment, and deepen students’ understanding of the CRM asa grassroots, multi-issue movement that continues today.Copies are even prominently displayed at the new Na-tional Museum of African American History and Culture(NMAAHC)

Responding to continuing demand for lesson plans andnew content, Teaching for Change has embarked on thefirst major revision of the book since 2004, updating thecontent to include new stories linking the current move-ment to the historical movement, adding a companionwebsite with additional lesson plans, background read-ings, handouts and video testimonies by teachers abouttheir experiences teaching about racism and resistance.Like the first edition, the new edition will cover the civilrights movement inclusively, linking traditional strugglesover racial discrimination with movements for genderequality, LGBTQ rights, immigrant rights, and labor his-tory.

PRRAC is joining Teaching for Change in supporting this updated second edition. If you have devel-oped your own civil rights teaching materials we’d be very interested in seeing them, and possiblysharing them (feel free to contact Deborah Menkart at [email protected]). If you areinterested in supporting this effort financially, please contact Deborah directly or send PRRAC your taxdeductible donation with a note to direct funds to the new edition.


PRRAC'S SOCIAL SCIENCE ADVISORY BOARD

Dolores Acevedo-GarciaBrandeis Univ.

Raphael BosticUniv. of Southern California

Sol Price School of Public Policy

Camille Zubrinsky CharlesDept. of Sociology, Univ. of Pennsylvania

Regina Deil-AmenUniv. of Arizona College of Education

Stefanie DeLucaJohns Hopkins Univ.

Ingrid Gould EllenNew York Univ.

Wagner School of Public Service

Lance FreemanColumbia Univ. School of Architecture,

Planning and Preservation

John GoeringBaruch College, City Univ. of New York

Heidi HartmannInst. for Women’s Policy Research (Wash., DC)

Rucker C. JohnsonUniv. of California-Berkeley

Goldman School of Public Policy

Jerry KangUCLA School of Law

William KornblumCUNY Center for Social Research

Maria KrysanUniv. of Illinois, Chicago

Fernando MendozaDept. of Pediatrics, Stanford Univ.

Roslyn Arlin MickelsonUniv. of No. Carolina-Charlotte

Pedro NogueraNew York Univ. School of Education

Paul OngUCLA School of Public Policy

& Social Research

Gary OrfieldUCLA Civil Rights Project

Ann OwensUniversity of Southern California

Patrick SharkeyNew York Univ. Dept. of Sociology

Gregory D. SquiresDept. of Sociology, George Washington Univ.

William TrentUniv. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Margery Austin TurnerThe Urban Institute

Margaret WeirDept. of Political Science

Univ. of California, Berkeley

David WilliamsHarvard School of Public Health

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POVERTY and RACE RESEARCH ACTION COUNCILBoard of Directors/Staff

CHAIROlatunde C.A. Johnson

Columbia Law SchoolNew York, NY

VICE-CHAIRJosé PadillaCalifornia Rural Legal

AssistanceSan Francisco, CA

SECRETARYjohn a. powellHaas Institute for aFair and Inclusive SocietyUniversity of California-Berkeley

Berkeley, CA

TREASURERSpence Limbocker

Neighborhood FundersGroup

Annandale, VA

Anurima BhargavaOpen Society FoundationsWashington, DC

John Charles BogerUniversity of North CarolinaSchool of Law

Chapel Hill, NC

Demetria McCainInclusive CommunitiesProject

Dallas, TXS.M. Miller

The Commonwealth InstituteCambridge, MA

Dennis ParkerAmerican Civil LibertiesUnion

New York, NYGabriela Sandoval

The Utility Reform NetworkSan Francisco, CA

Anthony SarmientoSenior Service AmericaSilver Spring, MD

Theodore M. ShawUniversity of North CarolinaSchool of Law

Chapel Hill, NCBrian Smedley

National Collaborativefor Health Equity

Washington, DCJustin Steil

Massachusetts Institute ofTechnology, Dept. of Cityand Regional PlanningCambridge, MA

Philip TegelerPresident/Executive Director

Megan HaberleDirector of Housing PolicyEditor, Poverty & Race

Gina ChirichignoDirector, Education Policy

LaKeeshia FoxPolicy Counsel, Housing

Michael HiltonPolicy Counsel, Education

Kimberly HallCommunications &

Partnerships Manager

Brian KnudsenResearch Associate

Tyler BarbarinAdministrative & Research

Assistant

Taahira ThompsonCommunications Intern

John BrittainUniversity of the District ofColumbia School of LawWashington, DC

Sheryll CashinGeorgetown University

Law CenterWashington, DC

Kristen ClarkeLawyers’ Committee forCivil Rights Under Law

Washington, DCCraig Flournoy

University of CincinnatiCincinnati, OH

Rachel GodsilSeton Hall Law SchoolNewark, NJ

Damon HewittOpen SocietyFoundations

New York, NYDavid Hinojosa

Intercultural DevelopmentResearch AssociationSan Antonio, TX

Camille HolmesNational Legal Aid &Defender Assn.

Washington, DCElizabeth Julian

Inclusive CommunitiesProject

Dallas, TX[Organizations listed for

identification purposes only]

Zoned Out in the City: New York City’s Tale of Race and ...

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Transcript of Zoned Out in the City: New York City’s Tale of Race and ...