Speaker 1: You're listening to Comedy Central. What Happens, Roy Wood Jr. Next,
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Speaker 1: Show podcast that I host called Beyond the Scenes. Now.
Speaker 1: All it is, it's very simple. If it's a topic
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Speaker 1: Show with Trevor No. This is what you gotta think
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Speaker 1: Now we're gonna be talking about a recent segment on
Speaker 1: the show about gentrification, specifically in Brooklyn, and how the people, landscape,
Speaker 1: and culture of places like that have changed over the years.
Speaker 1: Give it a clip. According to the latest census, the
Speaker 1: white population is decreasing nationwide for the first time. The
Speaker 1: white population in the United States has declined, but there's
Speaker 1: one place their numbers are up almost nine Brooklyn. This
Speaker 1: wealthy white migration has led to increases in rent, cost
Speaker 1: of living, and request to speak to the manager. So
Speaker 1: I follow the trail of succulents in Wes Anderson DVDs
Speaker 1: deep into the den of gentrifying Brooklyn, where I sat
Speaker 1: down with Tommy Hollie. The white population is going up
Speaker 1: almost nine the black population has going down almost nine percent.
Speaker 1: Would it be safe to say that that how they're
Speaker 1: showing black lives matter by just moving them out to
Speaker 1: somewhere else. What they're doing is they're just buying it
Speaker 1: out and cleaning out a neighborhood. And it's not right.
Speaker 1: Tommy has lived in Brooklyn his entire life. Everything's going
Speaker 1: up sky high and it's harder to live. So the
Speaker 1: way out is it still the house Tommy's mother bought,
Speaker 1: the brownstone in when black home ownership in Brooklyn was booming,
Speaker 1: but lately black mortgages have been going the way of
Speaker 1: the Dodo bird. Today I'm joined by Daily Show segment
Speaker 1: producer and Brooklyn Knight, Geordanna, him and Way Jordanna, how
Speaker 1: are you doing today? I'm great? Thank you, well, good
Speaker 1: to see you. Good to see you, madam. Brooklyn Knight
Speaker 1: and also joining us is a pioneer in urban planning
Speaker 1: and a professor at Pratt Institute. Ron Schiffman. How you doing, Professor,
Speaker 1: I'm doing really great, really happy to be with you today. Well,
Speaker 1: we appreciate you for helping us break down this this
Speaker 1: very very difficult topic. You know, Geordanna, let's start with
Speaker 1: you did that I've always loved about the Daily Show
Speaker 1: is that everybody has the freedom to pitch. It's not
Speaker 1: set up in some structured system where you do not pitch,
Speaker 1: you only produce what this pitch. It's like, No, if
Speaker 1: you come into building with an issue year ago, Guys,
Speaker 1: I'm noticing this, then it's something that could eventually work
Speaker 1: its way onto the show, as it did with this.
Speaker 1: So walk us through your inspiration and how this segment
Speaker 1: came together. Well, it was very personal. So I just
Speaker 1: bought my house but that home buying process was very difficult,
Speaker 1: and I was I wanted to be in Brooklyn. I
Speaker 1: did not want to go to Queens. I didn't want
Speaker 1: to go to New Jersey. I was just like, no that,
Speaker 1: I will not leave Brooklyn. This is where I grew up.
Speaker 1: And I started noticing on the trains that like more
Speaker 1: white people were like getting off later and later on
Speaker 1: the train stops. And then I started and I was like,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, you know what's going on here? And
Speaker 1: I started realizing that there was all these developments, but
Speaker 1: I couldn't afford these houses. I couldn't get in, and
Speaker 1: I'm like, you know, I have a decent job, and
Speaker 1: I'm just like, why are we being pushed out? And
Speaker 1: at that point, and so this article where the white
Speaker 1: population increased everywhere else in the United States except Brooklyn,
Speaker 1: New York, and I said, ah, this is what's happening.
Speaker 1: I'm not crazy. I'm not seeing things. I'm not being
Speaker 1: you know, uh, going down the conspiracy rabbit hole. No,
Speaker 1: this is what's happening. And black people are selling their
Speaker 1: homes because it's very tempting when you have a developer
Speaker 1: flying your house saying they'll give you hundreds of thousands,
Speaker 1: if not millions to buy your land, and therefore it's
Speaker 1: just like a rabbit hole where you just kind of
Speaker 1: keep going down the same thing over and over. It
Speaker 1: was frustrating. So I always trying to pitch things, and
Speaker 1: as you mentioned the Daily Show, we are allowed to
Speaker 1: pitch whatever. And that's one thing that is great about
Speaker 1: working here. And I try to pitch things that are
Speaker 1: very personal to me because that's why I could get
Speaker 1: my teeth in it. And I'm like, okay, no, I'm
Speaker 1: trying to buy a house. Let me figure out what's
Speaker 1: going on. And that's how it came about. You were
Speaker 1: hired during COVID, during the social distancing era a couple
Speaker 1: of years ago, and so you don't get to hang.
Speaker 1: You lose the small talk that happens in an office space.
Speaker 1: But once we got back in the office, you know,
Speaker 1: you just know somebody like, oh, yeah, you're donna, good
Speaker 1: to see you. But then when we went out, when
Speaker 1: I went out to talk with Tommy Holley, who was
Speaker 1: one of the subjects in the Peace, it was evident
Speaker 1: to me at that moment I was like, oh, does
Speaker 1: she live on this street? Because for a segment producer
Speaker 1: to also come out on shoots. It's not uncommon, but
Speaker 1: it is not a regular occurrence. And so for you
Speaker 1: to be there and then see the camaraderie between you
Speaker 1: and Tommy, between camera setups and all of that stuff.
Speaker 1: Talk a little bit about how you became so close
Speaker 1: to the people in Brooklyn. Well, it's a little background.
Speaker 1: So even go further. So I am married and my
Speaker 1: husband is African American slash proto recan, right, And I
Speaker 1: saw this happen to him when his grandma, who came
Speaker 1: from South Carolina. Uh, they saw that house in Crowd Heights.
Speaker 1: And now sometimes in the neighborhood we drive by it
Speaker 1: and it's you know, condos, million dollars, right, and like, damn,
Speaker 1: that was where we used to live. That was like
Speaker 1: his first college apartment. Um. And then fast forward, you know,
Speaker 1: he has relatives and Tommy is one of those guys
Speaker 1: in the neighborhood that's always around, right, So we know him.
Speaker 1: He's always on the block with his stick and he's
Speaker 1: just a very cool dude. So we always used to
Speaker 1: talk to him, and it started getting around that, like,
Speaker 1: you know, people all over that block. We're basically considering
Speaker 1: selling their homes, and then I started noticing changes. I'm like, okay,
Speaker 1: well there's less cookouts now. Uh, people are not as friendly,
Speaker 1: you know yeah, block parties, right, there was less of
Speaker 1: those that's gone, And I was just frustrated. I was
Speaker 1: frustrated with the home buying journey. I was frustrated with
Speaker 1: not enough homes. Like right now, to this day, America's
Speaker 1: five million homes short of the band, right, so there's
Speaker 1: five million homeowners that are looking for home that kid
Speaker 1: not you know, by UM in New York. It's just
Speaker 1: even if you see the videos on TikTok and snap
Speaker 1: chat where people are on line trying to rent apartments,
Speaker 1: and there's always that joke of like, you know, if
Speaker 1: you can make it here, you can make it anywhere.
Speaker 1: But it shouldn't be like that in New York. You know,
Speaker 1: New York used to be a community. You should be
Speaker 1: able to go to your corner store and know your
Speaker 1: neighbor's name and know you know someone so down the block.
Speaker 1: And I just feel like even in UM College, I
Speaker 1: just felt like that was that was missing. And I
Speaker 1: think what we have to be careful of with the
Speaker 1: word gentrification because it sounds so dirty right, it sounds
Speaker 1: really bad, but as black people, we have to gentrify
Speaker 1: our own blocks. Are blocks are beautiful? Right, it's it's
Speaker 1: we could gentrify our own blocks. We could call three
Speaker 1: on one, I mean on like, hey, listen, they need
Speaker 1: to pick up this trash, not call three on one
Speaker 1: on your neighbor. Right. We could actually, you know, plant
Speaker 1: more trees. And I just think that there's always this
Speaker 1: resentment like, oh, well, they already did it when white
Speaker 1: people came in. And sometimes that's true because sometimes police
Speaker 1: uh don't pay attention to the to the natives of
Speaker 1: that block until more money is being uh invested into it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's kind of frustrating. And that's why I was
Speaker 1: just like, listen, here is a seidway. This is kind
Speaker 1: of funny that the white population is kind of decreasing
Speaker 1: everywhere else. This has Daily Show britten all over it.
Speaker 1: But let's talk about the meat and potatoes. So that's
Speaker 1: why it came out run When we talk about gentrification
Speaker 1: just as a phenomenon for our listeners, first and foremost,
Speaker 1: can you define it can Let's let's let's just start
Speaker 1: right there. Let's define gentrification for our listeners. And also
Speaker 1: what are some of the indicators that gentrification is starting
Speaker 1: to happen? Like I know, once you get a Whole Foods,
Speaker 1: stuff is happening. When the bodega selling almond milk, you
Speaker 1: see one of them hacky sack boys. I can't trust
Speaker 1: nobody with a hacky set. That's when it's But let's
Speaker 1: define gentrification. What gentrification means to me is when one
Speaker 1: group of people begin to move in, particularly white people,
Speaker 1: begin to move into a neighborhood and displace people, displace people,
Speaker 1: displace jobs, and displace culture. And to me, that is
Speaker 1: something that one has to fight against. The fact that
Speaker 1: the area improves economically and UH provides opportunity for people
Speaker 1: who live there, UH to make new connections and to
Speaker 1: live a better life. To me is a goal in life,
Speaker 1: and I Jordana, I think expressed it much better than
Speaker 1: I could. What really scares me is that people want
Speaker 1: to find out what are the indicators of gentrification before
Speaker 1: they want to do anything about it. And if you
Speaker 1: study it and you come up with the database to
Speaker 1: prove that gentrification is occurring, you've already lost the community
Speaker 1: and the way to deal with gentrification or with displacement
Speaker 1: issues which I think are really the most important one.
Speaker 1: And as Jordana alluded to, also a housing program. We
Speaker 1: need to have build housing that people can afford. Uh
Speaker 1: and that housing is who often thought of as a
Speaker 1: commodity and not really as a right. How do you
Speaker 1: really build those communities, how do you really address that? Well,
Speaker 1: the way to know that your areas gentrifying is to
Speaker 1: talk to the people there. Is to see what's going
Speaker 1: on on the streets, to go to the supermarkets and
Speaker 1: the storefronts and the commercial strips, and to see how
Speaker 1: it breathes. And when I go through neighborhoods, whether it's
Speaker 1: Bushwick or Red Hook or others, it's palpable that change
Speaker 1: is taking place. People are afraid. People are afraid. In Bushwick,
Speaker 1: we were working with a team of people Make the
Speaker 1: Road a number of years ago, a really great group
Speaker 1: that organizes that engages new new immigrant populations in the
Speaker 1: in the in the everyday life of the city, and
Speaker 1: people didn't want to see the parks improved. They were
Speaker 1: afraid that if they got a better park, if they
Speaker 1: had safer streets and better schools, that they wouldn't live
Speaker 1: there in anymore, that it would be for somebody else,
Speaker 1: and that is a condition that we can't accept. We
Speaker 1: have to arrive at a point where people can improve
Speaker 1: the quality of their neighborhood and have the choice to stay,
Speaker 1: not be pushed out for economic reasons. In many ways,
Speaker 1: and a friend of mine by the name of Carl
Speaker 1: Anthony from the West Coast talks about it. It's almost
Speaker 1: like getting on a bus years ago. When a white
Speaker 1: person walks on the bus, the black person has to
Speaker 1: leave or give up their seat. And that's what gentrification
Speaker 1: has been doing as a dynamic. And what we've got
Speaker 1: to do is do what exactly what you guys did.
Speaker 1: That skit has to be shown again and again because
Speaker 1: it is the database, but we should be looking at
Speaker 1: not the statistics, but the fact that people are talking
Speaker 1: about what it means to them, what what it means
Speaker 1: when neighbors come in and don't really are not neighborly.
Speaker 1: That skit was dynamite, and I think it really Uh,
Speaker 1: I'm being very serious and we shouldn't be so serious,
Speaker 1: but this is a serious topic. We really have to
Speaker 1: begin to talk about housing and housing as a human right.
Speaker 1: How do we finance it, how do we make sure
Speaker 1: it's available so that my kids don't have to compete
Speaker 1: with your kids or displace you or your neighbor, so
Speaker 1: that we can all live together somehow. And I think
Speaker 1: that's that's the real struggle. And if you use a
Speaker 1: humor as a basis for making this issue and making
Speaker 1: it an issue that people understand, I think it's really important.
Speaker 1: And I and the deep dive into this, I think
Speaker 1: is really extremely helpful. And I really want to raise
Speaker 1: a glass and toast you guys for doing it. Thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for that. You hit at Trevor
Speaker 1: Nola and he just said, to give us a race,
Speaker 1: to give us, Yeah, give them a race. Are there
Speaker 1: ways for those moving in to ingratiate themselves to the culture.
Speaker 1: There was a young man I can't remember his name, Jordana,
Speaker 1: but there was a There was a young white guy
Speaker 1: in his early twenties who lost a job after moving
Speaker 1: to New York and walking around the neighborhood and making
Speaker 1: fun of the bodega's, not realizing that he was in
Speaker 1: a food desert. He was making a video complaining that
Speaker 1: there were no grocery stores and every time he google
Speaker 1: Google to grocery store, Google sent him to a bodega,
Speaker 1: and he didn't even he just was just completely unaware
Speaker 1: that where you've chosen to live for so long has
Speaker 1: marginalized the community. Okay, so I just moved to New
Speaker 1: York and I'm trying to go grocery shopping until I
Speaker 1: type in the grocery stores on my Apple maps, and
Speaker 1: like everything when I go to, like I'm walking to,
Speaker 1: like they're like this, like like that's like, brother, it's
Speaker 1: not a grocery store. Like I'm trying to get like
Speaker 1: egg yogurt, like cheese like like that, right, Like where
Speaker 1: are the Krogers and like the Whole Foods at? Is
Speaker 1: there a way to educate people so that they don't
Speaker 1: come and to be disrespectful or is their presence in
Speaker 1: a way inherently net negative for the neighborhood. I don't
Speaker 1: say right now. I don't think that guy should deserve
Speaker 1: to get fired, right I think he deserved to get educated.
Speaker 1: I think that he didn't know. I think a lot
Speaker 1: of people from you know, the Midwest, the South, everybody
Speaker 1: comes to New York and it's just like which is
Speaker 1: where he was from, you know, and they're like, wait
Speaker 1: a minute, where's my publics? Where's my we don't got that.
Speaker 1: We got Carlos Vondega, you know, and um. Another thing
Speaker 1: we kind of touched on the piece, and I kind
Speaker 1: of feel like it matters at this point is sometimes
Speaker 1: gentrification is not necessarily a race thing either, Right. I
Speaker 1: think sometimes it could be a class thing. I think
Speaker 1: it could be sometimes maybe who has more money, because
Speaker 1: you know, maybe I'm a gentrifier, right, Maybe I probably
Speaker 1: tentrified somebody, and maybe I'm complaining about the lack of
Speaker 1: almond milk. Right. There was one guy in the piece.
Speaker 1: He was a Jewish guy in our piece. I don't
Speaker 1: know if you remember him, and he lived in Crown
Speaker 1: Heights and he got pushed out. So sometimes it's not
Speaker 1: necessarily like the the little white girl, the little white
Speaker 1: guy who come to New York with these you know,
Speaker 1: big dreams. Sometimes it's these finance bros that are gentrifying.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's just you know, people with more money. And
Speaker 1: I think housing as a right is the bigger conversation
Speaker 1: everybody should have for access to housing. You know, the
Speaker 1: black homeownership rate right now is less than what it
Speaker 1: was like ten years ago. It's getting worse for black
Speaker 1: homowners and we have to act ourself. Why is that
Speaker 1: we don't necessarily have the access, we don't necessarily have
Speaker 1: the tools. I mean, I don't want to go down
Speaker 1: the whole rabbit hole, but you go from forty acres
Speaker 1: of the mule and it was like, oh, that was
Speaker 1: so long ago. Real estate is the greatest transfer of
Speaker 1: wealth there is to mankind, right, like every generation right,
Speaker 1: if you have real estate, your family is just set
Speaker 1: up for better, you know what I mean. And there's
Speaker 1: no it is what it is. If you have some land,
Speaker 1: you could leverage that, you could borrow against it. You
Speaker 1: could housing you need housing, and transportation you need. So
Speaker 1: when you look at just people like that guy on
Speaker 1: that TikTok video, who's just like why has it no bodegas?
Speaker 1: And it's sad that black people people of color have
Speaker 1: been living in these neighborhoods like where there isn't like
Speaker 1: a regular grocery store. Why is that my grocery store
Speaker 1: only has like chips and snacks and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: I'm not trying to get the bodega, bros. But we
Speaker 1: should have that equal opportunity to And what Ron touched on,
Speaker 1: like sometimes there is a fair I remember living in
Speaker 1: Red hook. This one neighborhood in Brooklyn, you know, back
Speaker 1: then when even my black friends didn't want to go
Speaker 1: there because it was hood. They're like, where are you going?
Speaker 1: And I remember seeing it and I remember being scared, like, well, shoot,
Speaker 1: there's a new tesla being built, the ikea coming down?
Speaker 1: Are they going to raise my rent? And that fear
Speaker 1: is something that you can't describe because it's just like, well,
Speaker 1: I'm working, I graduated college. How do I keep up right?
Speaker 1: And you see the influx of people. What do you
Speaker 1: do in that case as a black person, as a
Speaker 1: black woman, there's not enough programs, you know, um, And
Speaker 1: it's bad enough that like maybe our parents didn't have
Speaker 1: the home, or maybe our parents sold the home right
Speaker 1: not knowing, not realizing that maybe I should hold onto it.
Speaker 1: So it's just really messed up all around. You know.
Speaker 1: The whole issue of housing as a means for building wealth,
Speaker 1: obviously it occurs, and it's a it's a major benefit
Speaker 1: for many, but for others. You know, a lot of
Speaker 1: people bought homes and invested their life savings, and if
Speaker 1: they lived in some parts of Detroit, or they lived
Speaker 1: in some parts of of Cleveland, or even parts of
Speaker 1: New York City. They lost that wealth, they lost that housing.
Speaker 1: They lost the housing because they couldn't afford to improve it,
Speaker 1: they didn't have access to loans. And when I started
Speaker 1: working again in bed Stye in the sixties, we held
Speaker 1: hearings on insurance redlining because somebody because of the color
Speaker 1: of their skin could got could not get to the
Speaker 1: kind of insurance they needed for the building, They couldn't
Speaker 1: get the home improvement loans. And so how do we
Speaker 1: really deal with this systemic racism that permeates a lot
Speaker 1: of what we're talking about. At the same time, we
Speaker 1: also have to think about how we create housing is
Speaker 1: a right that doesn't diminish over time, uh other people
Speaker 1: of low income getting it. It's not that if we
Speaker 1: if everybody makes so much housing money on housing, it
Speaker 1: means the next generation is not going to be able
Speaker 1: to afford it. So housing as a as a financial vehicle,
Speaker 1: as a commodity is really something I think we have
Speaker 1: to address, and we have to find other ways of
Speaker 1: really building wealth in communities as well as investing in
Speaker 1: housing it in real estate ron What are some of
Speaker 1: those other negative and positive impacts, if any, that gentrification
Speaker 1: has on a on a particular community. We've talked about
Speaker 1: loss of culture, but what about also, you know, from
Speaker 1: educational aspect, are there any ripple effects. Well, one of
Speaker 1: the benefits that occurs is when you have a mixed
Speaker 1: income community and it doesn't have to be based only
Speaker 1: on race. UH. As Jordana mentioned on economic adversity, is
Speaker 1: that the younger kids who are impoverished and grow up
Speaker 1: and mixed neighborhoods apparently are doing much better than kids
Speaker 1: who grow up and are isolated from UH. The contacts,
Speaker 1: just pure contacts are important to have within a society.
Speaker 1: And I'm a great believer in social and economic integration.
Speaker 1: It's it's in my roots, it's in my blood, and
Speaker 1: it's something I've always fought for and really work towards
Speaker 1: over my life. But the fact of the matter is,
Speaker 1: I think we need to begin to look at investing
Speaker 1: in communities so the people who are in those communities
Speaker 1: can grow, so they can grow culturally, they can grow economically,
Speaker 1: and they can really benefit. And what we now have
Speaker 1: is this idea that you improve communities by replacing them.
Speaker 1: So we now have to start thinking about providing the
Speaker 1: best education for kids wherever they are. We have to
Speaker 1: make sure that what we're doing is we're providing opportunities
Speaker 1: for people to access all of the instant the mechanisms
Speaker 1: that they need in order to get housing, the technical expertise,
Speaker 1: the initial financing UH, the ability to stay within their
Speaker 1: own homes if they have some economic difficulty. A home
Speaker 1: is more than just the four walls. It's the people
Speaker 1: who are in the neighborhood, the person you can call
Speaker 1: who can take care of your kids if you have
Speaker 1: an emergency have to go off somewhere. It's the churches,
Speaker 1: that's the networks, it's it's the friendships. And how do
Speaker 1: you how do we really begin to value that. I
Speaker 1: think what we need to do is really develop a
Speaker 1: universal housing program that everybody has the right to a house.
Speaker 1: Everybody has a right to a house in a community
Speaker 1: that provides them with education and health. You know what
Speaker 1: we do often as professionals, is we go into a
Speaker 1: community and we ask them what's more important education or
Speaker 1: housing or health? Well, you know, if you're living in
Speaker 1: the community, you want all of those, and the community
Speaker 1: should work to doing all of those and weaving those together.
Speaker 1: So I would argue we need not only comedians, but
Speaker 1: we need weavers, people who will take these ideas and
Speaker 1: weave them together to create more viable communities. And the
Speaker 1: first one is to stop the speculation. I think we
Speaker 1: really need to make sure that people can get the
Speaker 1: invest in housing they can make, get their money back
Speaker 1: so that savings can grow. But you can't get this
Speaker 1: enormous speculation where somebody buys the building two years later
Speaker 1: flips it for two million dollars more than they had before.
Speaker 1: Uh And as a result, everybody loses. You lose the
Speaker 1: quality of the neighborhood, and you're losing the networks that
Speaker 1: you had established before. So I would argue that we
Speaker 1: need anti speculation taxes. I would argue that we take
Speaker 1: those taxes and direct them to low income families. Okay,
Speaker 1: now I want to get into that after the break,
Speaker 1: because I want to talk about who's to blame. Is
Speaker 1: that the people that are buying, it's the people that
Speaker 1: are selling. Is that the red lining is that the
Speaker 1: government will be back with more. This is beyond the scenes.
Speaker 1: Beyond the scenes. We are back. Now we have broken
Speaker 1: down what gentrification is and the ways that it negatively
Speaker 1: impacts communities on socioeconomic level and education and opportunities and
Speaker 1: the stripping of culture. And we didn't forgot to talk
Speaker 1: about Dredanna. They paint over murals in some of these spots.
Speaker 1: They just what's that a nice picture that artist did
Speaker 1: to add some character to the neighborhood. Let me just
Speaker 1: put a nice for no reason. But Ron, I'd like
Speaker 1: to start with you, and let's talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about how crime and policing changes in the gentrification piece.
Speaker 1: When I had spoken with some of the wonderful, wonderful
Speaker 1: women at Brooklyn Nights, they talked about how, you know,
Speaker 1: people will just call three one one for Ran the snitchers.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't say it, but to say it, so let's
Speaker 1: get it, do it? Run? Well you said it's and
Speaker 1: I'm copying you because you're absolutely right, and three one one.
Speaker 1: You know, people move into and should move into a
Speaker 1: neighborhood because they know it all right, and they should
Speaker 1: be moved into that neighborhood because they want to be
Speaker 1: part of that community. They want to be able to
Speaker 1: walk down the streets when I again, I'm an old man,
Speaker 1: so I always refer to the past. Right when I
Speaker 1: moved first, you know, New Bedford Stuyveson, it had four
Speaker 1: hundred or five hundred block associations. There was even a
Speaker 1: group called the Association of Associations. It was a network
Speaker 1: of people. They were friends, they were neighbors. And if
Speaker 1: you want to move into a neighborhood, you move in
Speaker 1: there and become part and adopt its culture. And over
Speaker 1: time cultures will change, don't adapt. But it's the abrupt
Speaker 1: speed that people want to change places. It's the speculative nature.
Speaker 1: Why should people get a call a week from a
Speaker 1: real estate agent to sell their property? Why should they
Speaker 1: be harassed to sell their property? Obviously that skip with
Speaker 1: you and Tommy Holly. You know he talks about how
Speaker 1: much he paid and how much he'll get if he
Speaker 1: sells the house. It's a very attractive thing to sell.
Speaker 1: But what is he going to do when he sells?
Speaker 1: Is he going to move to Florida and face the
Speaker 1: racism and an antagonism of that state or is he
Speaker 1: going to lose all his friends on that block? This
Speaker 1: guy rocketing, how's it going for three me? Before? Wait,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, what did you say? The houses in the
Speaker 1: best tag of a three million? Now three million dollars?
Speaker 1: How the twenty three seven dollars and you can sell
Speaker 1: it right now for closer to me. Oh, you got
Speaker 1: to go a minute. You don't want to say that
Speaker 1: was just stay did that before you told me what
Speaker 1: you was hidden? You know, the money is great, but
Speaker 1: it's not everything. We've got to provide alternatives and we've
Speaker 1: got to make sure that we are we slow down
Speaker 1: the speed of change. And it took people to understand
Speaker 1: the neighborhood they move in. It's not just a place
Speaker 1: to buy a house. It's a place to live in,
Speaker 1: and you have to live and you have to work
Speaker 1: with your neighbors. And if people don't do that, if
Speaker 1: they don't understand that, then they really shouldn't be welcomed.
Speaker 1: I think one of the issues, at least what I
Speaker 1: gathered in Geordanna. You can correct me if I'm wrong,
Speaker 1: but one of the issues that I think Tommy Holly
Speaker 1: was dealing with was that he could stay there and
Speaker 1: preserve the culture, or he could take the money and
Speaker 1: have an increased quality of living for the back half
Speaker 1: of his life. And I think that's ultimately what I
Speaker 1: felt like he was kind of struggling with, because know,
Speaker 1: your dollar is gonna go a lot further in Florida. Now, granted,
Speaker 1: you're gonna probably get called inward a couple of times
Speaker 1: that there's an inward tax you have to pay, depending
Speaker 1: on the county. But you know, I think that that's
Speaker 1: what a lot of residents, you know, we're dealing with.
Speaker 1: It's just what I found so interesting though, GRADNNA was
Speaker 1: despite of people calling in noise complaints and increases in
Speaker 1: racial profiling or even the stealing of Amazon packages, it
Speaker 1: seems that a lot of the black Brooklyn Nights still
Speaker 1: have a resolve where even with the changes in their
Speaker 1: relationship with law enforcement, as white residents become uncomfortable with
Speaker 1: black people who were indigenous to that to that block,
Speaker 1: somehow they're still okay with staying. Why do you think
Speaker 1: that is? I think it's just the principle, right, It's
Speaker 1: like I'm not leaving. I'm not leaving, you know. Uh.
Speaker 1: And that's how I felt too. Uh. Previously we talked
Speaker 1: about some of the signs and justifications, and for me,
Speaker 1: the sign is like the three there's the white woman
Speaker 1: running with her dog late at night. If I see
Speaker 1: that happening, okay, something's going down. Um. There is the
Speaker 1: white woman asking the Jamaican restaurant for a free stample.
Speaker 1: I'm like, Okay, what's going on? And then there's a
Speaker 1: the white person that's just basically complaining about the Labor
Speaker 1: Day parade or complaining about a block party. Right. I
Speaker 1: think the issue that we have as Brooklyn Knights is
Speaker 1: I love Brooklyn so much. I love it. I talk.
Speaker 1: You ask any Brooklyn night where they're from. They don't
Speaker 1: say I'm a New Yorker. They say I'm from Brooklyn.
Speaker 1: That's how I introduced myself. So of course I want
Speaker 1: to share my borrow with anybody and everybody. The issue
Speaker 1: I have is that when you guys come here and
Speaker 1: you call the cops instead of introducing yourself and you,
Speaker 1: you know, you complain about a block party that has
Speaker 1: been happening, like the West, like the Labor Day parade
Speaker 1: for instance, that's been going on for over thirty years.
Speaker 1: You complain about it. You complain about the jerk chicken
Speaker 1: being sold on the corner, and and that's the issue
Speaker 1: we have. Of Course, I would love people to talk
Speaker 1: and talk about Brooklyn, visit Brooklyn, and live in Brooklyn.
Speaker 1: But I think the sense of community has just gone.
Speaker 1: And I feel like in Tommy going to do it.
Speaker 1: He would stay if he didn't feel like an outsider.
Speaker 1: Do you understand how hard it was? I remember when
Speaker 1: he told that story. You know, he was moved to tears.
Speaker 1: This white woman holding her purse and this is an
Speaker 1: old man with his old magic stick member and it's
Speaker 1: just like the how degrading was that? Right? And this
Speaker 1: guy has been there for decades, and it's just like
Speaker 1: that feeling of feel like an outsider in your own neighborhood,
Speaker 1: where you were born, where you grew up. It just
Speaker 1: it sucks. So there's two people. There's and people that says,
Speaker 1: you know what, I'm gonna leave because the area around me,
Speaker 1: the neighborhood, is not the neighborhood no more. I can't
Speaker 1: afford the bodega, right because the bodega switching to hemp milk,
Speaker 1: all the milk, all these different type of milks. Um,
Speaker 1: I can't afford anything else going on, like the laundry mat,
Speaker 1: the nel salon. Everything has gone up. So let me
Speaker 1: just take my dollars to South Beach wherever, right like
Speaker 1: Lebron and just move. And then there's the people that
Speaker 1: are like myself that are just really trying to hold
Speaker 1: on I think it's so important for for black people
Speaker 1: in Brooklyn if you have the mind, if you have
Speaker 1: the will to stay into your homes, because we're losing that.
Speaker 1: And I don't think I think it's just really sad
Speaker 1: when I talk about I get emotional when I hear
Speaker 1: people selling their homes. I'm like, damn, come on, man,
Speaker 1: what do we gotta do? You know? And it's really
Speaker 1: hard when you have flying at your house when as
Speaker 1: as Ron mentioned, you know, you could be house rich
Speaker 1: but cash poor. So now how do you maintain your
Speaker 1: house right? How do you you know, keep the furnace
Speaker 1: or the boiler and all that stuff. So it's it's
Speaker 1: bigger than just having a house, having a house with
Speaker 1: a lot of responsibility. But we need the access. And
Speaker 1: there's a lot of grant programs that people like to
Speaker 1: throw around that word or you could get a grant,
Speaker 1: could get a grant where tell me, I would love
Speaker 1: to know. It's so hard to get some of these programs,
Speaker 1: and it's it's unfortunate that the easy way out is leaving.
Speaker 1: Who has the will to really just fight all the time.
Speaker 1: It's really hard, but I implore people to to try
Speaker 1: to stay in Brooklyn and try to meet your neighbors
Speaker 1: I think white, Spanish or whatever, because even I had
Speaker 1: to have a moment of reflection where like, crap, am
Speaker 1: I a gentrified because I moved into a predominly Spanish
Speaker 1: neighborhood and they play bad Bunny all times to night.
Speaker 1: But I'm like, okay, well, I can't call you know,
Speaker 1: I can't call the cops on these people. I don't
Speaker 1: want to be the person that Tommy and Judith were
Speaker 1: talking about. So it's like meeting my neighbors right, meeting people,
Speaker 1: going to the community garden and introducing myself saying, hey,
Speaker 1: you know what, I'm really good at garden and how
Speaker 1: can I help out? And I think if people who
Speaker 1: moved into Brooklyn took that approach versus just moving here
Speaker 1: and going to their you know, fancy coffee shops and
Speaker 1: just treating us like outside, we have no problem. I
Speaker 1: promise you. Every Brooklyn Knight loves to boast about Brooklyn.
Speaker 1: I don't know one Brooklyn Knight that's like, you know,
Speaker 1: we would love to share it. I just think it's
Speaker 1: the way I think Tommy touched on it, or don't
Speaker 1: Judah did about like, you know, integration right, people from Brooklyn.
Speaker 1: From Brooklyn, when you didn't eat masks where it was from,
Speaker 1: what would you like to eat for sure? Do you say? So?
Speaker 1: I grew up in the Bronx and it took a
Speaker 1: it was a psychic change to move to Brooklyn because
Speaker 1: Bronx sites would never moved to Brooklyn in those days. Uh.
Speaker 1: We moved there because we were able to get a
Speaker 1: house at a very low price. And that was in
Speaker 1: the sixties. So we've been living there for a long time.
Speaker 1: And it was when people were leaving the city. The
Speaker 1: city was losing population in the seventies. You know, New
Speaker 1: York City was losing maybe thirty thou apartments a year.
Speaker 1: It was shrinking. And what saved the city where the
Speaker 1: community based organizations and the groups like that sty Restoration,
Speaker 1: the groups of Fort Green, the groups in Red Hook
Speaker 1: and all other places that stabilized the neighborhoods that fought
Speaker 1: for a federal government to stop there what were basically
Speaker 1: discriminatory lending policies, changing the f h A to begin
Speaker 1: to lend money to stop what was really what we're
Speaker 1: fast foreclosure schemes. You would go into a neighborhood East
Speaker 1: New York for instance, you'd go into that neighborhood uh
Speaker 1: predominantly working class white. Some people were beginning to integrate it.
Speaker 1: Then all of a sudden, people's racist fears came up.
Speaker 1: They would hire people to have stage fights in the street.
Speaker 1: They would then panic, they by the buildings low. They
Speaker 1: would then get the federal government to ensure them they'd
Speaker 1: sell to a black or a Lutino family. The next
Speaker 1: thing they did six months later, they would foreclose on
Speaker 1: that and turn the building over, and a couple of
Speaker 1: years later the neighborhood was abandoned. They pitted white racist
Speaker 1: fears against whites and blacks, and it really was and
Speaker 1: we had to take them to we could document that
Speaker 1: there were places that were basically using government programs and
Speaker 1: manipulating them for fast for these fast for closure schemes.
Speaker 1: To that point, run then this sounds like gentrification to
Speaker 1: a degree is something of a bunch of different entities
Speaker 1: all working in concerts. So if that is true, who
Speaker 1: is the real villain of gentrification, Like, what is the
Speaker 1: root of the problem contributing to it? Because we talk
Speaker 1: about the commodification of housing, you have real estate developers
Speaker 1: that are predatory Airbnb is a big issue as well.
Speaker 1: We got everybody wanting to flip a house because they
Speaker 1: don't watch two shows in a row on on h
Speaker 1: G TV or whatever. So you know, is it the government,
Speaker 1: is it the developers or is it the homeowners? You know,
Speaker 1: because you know Bloomberg and you know, like there's there
Speaker 1: have been policies and redlining that also have helped as
Speaker 1: well to contribute to this issue. So is there any
Speaker 1: one specific smoking gun. There isn't one specifics how can gum.
Speaker 1: But there's a whole network of systemic racist policies that
Speaker 1: have come to play an ongoing role. Whether or not
Speaker 1: people know doing are doing it willingly or unwillingly, the
Speaker 1: systems still persist, and we you still have real estate
Speaker 1: agents that are involved in racial steering. You'll be sent
Speaker 1: to one neighborhood, I'll be sent to another neighborhood. Uh,
Speaker 1: We've got to begin to monitor those quickly. A lot
Speaker 1: of this is because government turns a blind eye to it.
Speaker 1: We need a city Planning Commission. We need a development
Speaker 1: entity in New York City that is aggressively fostering the
Speaker 1: healthy development of all our communities, looking for a diverse goals,
Speaker 1: of building a diverse, multicultural city, and we haven't been
Speaker 1: doing that of late. What we're doing in some cases
Speaker 1: is we're going into an area like East New York,
Speaker 1: all right, and we're building new housing. We're displacing twenty families.
Speaker 1: We're building a hundred units of housing tent which will
Speaker 1: be low income so that it will be in many
Speaker 1: ways accommodate the ones we displaced, But seventy of the
Speaker 1: building is going to be super wealthy because we in
Speaker 1: order to provide low income housing, we're going to need
Speaker 1: the wealth and the income flow from the upper income families.
Speaker 1: That kind of inclusionary housing works if you want to
Speaker 1: build a racially in economically integrated community. It doesn't work
Speaker 1: when you want to build more housing. And what we
Speaker 1: need to do is say we're no longer going to
Speaker 1: allow it only to be the private sector, but government
Speaker 1: has to be committed to a housing policy to meet
Speaker 1: the needs of every quartile of our population, and we
Speaker 1: have to start really promoting what really are our healthy communities. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm gonna just say it right now. I
Speaker 1: think real estate it's just racist right currently in twins
Speaker 1: Wain two, if I wou was to get my house appraised.
Speaker 1: And a white pers supposed to sit in this house
Speaker 1: and get it a praise, they're going to get a
Speaker 1: better appraisal value. That happened during COVID. There was a
Speaker 1: black family that happened to in Seattle. It happens all
Speaker 1: over the country. So now not only let's say you
Speaker 1: can't buy a house, but then you do the right thing.
Speaker 1: You save you a little money, you get your little
Speaker 1: f H loan, you do all the right things. But
Speaker 1: now when it simes to that for appraisal, automatically, I'm
Speaker 1: getting less. So we just have to really take a
Speaker 1: deeper look at real estate and figure out how can
Speaker 1: we change it right, How do we get the government involved,
Speaker 1: how do we speak out? And I really think it's
Speaker 1: important as a homeowner, as a black woman, not only
Speaker 1: just sitting back and just you know, saying it is
Speaker 1: what it is. No, we need to hold our local
Speaker 1: shows accountable. So maybe that means going to and now
Speaker 1: it's on zoom Roy, you could go and speak up
Speaker 1: on the on the meeting and knowing your council member
Speaker 1: his name, and say, okay, well what are we doing
Speaker 1: about the trash on this street? What are we doing
Speaker 1: about the you know, abandoned building on history and really
Speaker 1: rolling up your sleeves and getting your hands dirty. And
Speaker 1: when you talk about East New York, I remember when
Speaker 1: I was looking into the home buying process, I said,
Speaker 1: you know what, I want to move where there might
Speaker 1: be able to action. So that means looking up where
Speaker 1: they're pulling permits. Where are some of these developers going.
Speaker 1: If you don't want to be a problem, you don't
Speaker 1: want to be a part of the problem, right, So
Speaker 1: I know I didn't want to be that person that's
Speaker 1: going to buy a piece of land and making a
Speaker 1: luxury building. No, I want to be I have ego,
Speaker 1: I have pries. I'm know I'm gonna plant myself here.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna buy a house in East New York Cypress
Speaker 1: Whos area, and I'm not leaving. And I want to
Speaker 1: be part of that change. And I think sometimes a
Speaker 1: lot of like we just automaticew assume let's go to
Speaker 1: South Carolina, let's go to you know a t L.
Speaker 1: I love Wakonda, I love a t L. Don't be wrong,
Speaker 1: but there's great stuff for black people in Brooklyn too.
Speaker 1: And I just think that we have this automatic like
Speaker 1: you know what, it's way to expect. I said, let
Speaker 1: me just leave, whereas others are trying to they see
Speaker 1: the value in Brooklyn, and it's just really hard and
Speaker 1: race and racism is threaded throughout the whole real estate process.
Speaker 1: The other thing that I want to put on the
Speaker 1: table is I think we really need to start talking
Speaker 1: about housing that is rental housing. Not everybody wants to
Speaker 1: be a homeowner, not everybody has the ability to be
Speaker 1: a homeowner. And so we need to think about how
Speaker 1: we increase the supply of rental housing in the City
Speaker 1: of New York in such a way that is woven
Speaker 1: into the fabric of communities that it's right next to
Speaker 1: middle income, right next to home ownership areas. We have
Speaker 1: to think about social housing UH public housing, housing that's
Speaker 1: owned by the UH and meets the knees of some
Speaker 1: of the very poor. You go into Red Hook with
Speaker 1: Red Hook houses. Some of that was built originally in
Speaker 1: forty seven, occupied primarily by white families. It was a
Speaker 1: step up. New York City still has thousands upon thousands
Speaker 1: of people on the waiting list to get into public housing.
Speaker 1: We need to expand the supply of affordable rental housing
Speaker 1: in the City of New York. How can residents stop
Speaker 1: the harassment that they get at the hands of their
Speaker 1: landlords as well? Like we're talking about big government systems
Speaker 1: and whatever, but sometimes you just got an asshole who's
Speaker 1: running your building and who's trying to run you off
Speaker 1: as well. So talk a little bit about that, both
Speaker 1: of you if you can. Well, one of the things
Speaker 1: that occurred, you know, during previous the COVID was putting
Speaker 1: pressure on the Doblasio administration to stop the harassment that
Speaker 1: was going on in Crown Heights and the harassment that
Speaker 1: was going on in East New York in many other
Speaker 1: places in the city, and so setting up these anti
Speaker 1: harassment units where people really know they could go into
Speaker 1: South Brooklyn Legal Services or they could go into Williamsburg
Speaker 1: Legal Services and get support by some of the UH
Speaker 1: Legal of UH lawyers there to go after the landlords.
Speaker 1: It really is important because that was happening. They would
Speaker 1: come in, they buy a building, right, they vacate one
Speaker 1: or two apartments, and they start making noise and they
Speaker 1: would do all sorts of things to drive the tenants out.
Speaker 1: And part of it is you have to knock on
Speaker 1: the people. You have to start organizing people, help them
Speaker 1: understand what their rights are and provide the legal and
Speaker 1: the technical and the organizational capacity to follow through. A
Speaker 1: housing program involves organizing, It involves uh, you know, financing,
Speaker 1: it involves regulation, and the role of government has to
Speaker 1: be one that is not passive. And people can't have
Speaker 1: to not be passive. We have to really stand up
Speaker 1: for our neighbors and begin to organize on a community
Speaker 1: by community basis. It's all about the neighbors. I think
Speaker 1: that happened in my old building in Red Hook, just
Speaker 1: basically talking to each apartment, like on the elevator, like,
Speaker 1: hey have you been getting these letters? What's going on?
Speaker 1: You know, and just organizing. So I think, um, you know,
Speaker 1: the power of like five is better than power in one. Right,
Speaker 1: I could write one email all day, but now if
Speaker 1: we have five different emails coming in, they have to
Speaker 1: pay attention. So I definitely think organizing, like with like
Speaker 1: the entire Redismate law firms and just trying to say, hey, listen,
Speaker 1: something weird is going on here. Um, I don't know
Speaker 1: who the girl to can you help me? You know?
Speaker 1: And it's unfair because you look at the rental prices,
Speaker 1: the average amount of rent right now in New York
Speaker 1: it's like three thou dollars depending where you're at. You know,
Speaker 1: you look at certain place and it's unfortunate because people
Speaker 1: are lining up that. I remember one comedian said, oh,
Speaker 1: New York is dead, right, and now New York came
Speaker 1: back tenfold right now? What Now there's no houses to
Speaker 1: be bought, there's no apartment for rent, and you're just
Speaker 1: stuck in this vicious cycle. And I think it's bigger
Speaker 1: than just you know, it's obviously politics, obviously government, but
Speaker 1: we have to take action to and we have to
Speaker 1: do it now, by the way, because if one of
Speaker 1: the things we have been looking at is what will
Speaker 1: the impact of climate change on New York City be?
Speaker 1: You lived in Red Hook and so you know what happened,
Speaker 1: you know, just ten years ago this fall right uh,
Speaker 1: when all of a sudden the waters came in. And
Speaker 1: what saved a lot of the neighborhood with the green
Speaker 1: space around the public housing because it absorbed water and
Speaker 1: you never got credit for that that. Meanwhile, the folks
Speaker 1: in public housing didn't have electricity for months. What's going
Speaker 1: to happen to that huge supply of public housing which
Speaker 1: is in harm's way. Within fifteen to twenty years, we're
Speaker 1: gonna lose those units and you're going to have to
Speaker 1: relocate those families. We can't accommodate them today. What are
Speaker 1: we going to do a few years from now? How
Speaker 1: do we really begin to engage government today? And that's
Speaker 1: why the timing of your episode was really crucial. How
Speaker 1: do we how do we engage government so that we
Speaker 1: really are developing and using the new infrastructure money and
Speaker 1: the new climate change money to make sure we're not
Speaker 1: displacing people, but we're emplacing them, that we're beginning to
Speaker 1: build communities that will live beyond the first mortgage cycle. No. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: we're coming up after the break. We're going to talk solutions.
Speaker 1: We've talked about what gentrification is. We're trying to figure
Speaker 1: out who's to blame. But now let's figure out how
Speaker 1: to fix it. First off, we need more people playing
Speaker 1: music out there? Are you doing that yet? Gredonna? At
Speaker 1: the point that speaker out, thank gotta, that's once in that.
Speaker 1: That's a free one. We'll get into the more technical
Speaker 1: ones after the break. This is beyond the scenes. Let's
Speaker 1: talk solutions here for a second, right, Andrew Donna, until
Speaker 1: we get the policies in place, until we get you know,
Speaker 1: everything that you all are talking about in terms of
Speaker 1: establishing you know, proper rental properties and proper policies, and
Speaker 1: to stop predatory real estate, you know, corporations and conglomerates
Speaker 1: from coming in. How can the people who currently currently
Speaker 1: who the people who are currently part of these Brooklyn
Speaker 1: neighborhoods and not just Brooklyn, matter of fact, let's open
Speaker 1: it up to the whole country gentrification just saying a
Speaker 1: Brooklyn thing. How can people in these neighborhoods help to
Speaker 1: honor the rich cultural history and the places that they're
Speaker 1: now you know, have chosen to be a part of.
Speaker 1: I think the first thing is to celebrate the places
Speaker 1: that we all live in. I think what has been
Speaker 1: going on annually now for a great number of years
Speaker 1: in bed Stye, where there's an event on Fulton Street
Speaker 1: your Restoration Laws, I think is a really important event. Uh.
Speaker 1: There have been similar efforts over the last few years
Speaker 1: in Red Hook to really bring people together, show them
Speaker 1: the waterfront, make sure that the group's working on this show,
Speaker 1: and and actually parade the diversity and the multiculturalism that exists.
Speaker 1: I think that really is a major selling point. Let's
Speaker 1: attract people based on the quality of a neighborhood, not
Speaker 1: based on really just making money. That should be what
Speaker 1: we talk about when we're dealing with housing. I think
Speaker 1: we really have to start looking at how we take
Speaker 1: back our neighborhoods and promote them. We talked about celebration.
Speaker 1: I think that's the most important thing. As I mentioned before,
Speaker 1: you know, going to the black parties, bragging about being
Speaker 1: from Brooklyn, knowing your neighbors, and making sure that you
Speaker 1: know you're active in your community. I know sometimes people think, O,
Speaker 1: that's corny or I don't got time for it. You
Speaker 1: have to make time because sooner or later you're gonna
Speaker 1: look up and be like, what neighborhood in my and
Speaker 1: what block am I on? So you have to be
Speaker 1: on your local officials. Neck you have to figure out
Speaker 1: what permits are being filed. You have to take action
Speaker 1: in your neighborhood, even if you're not a homeowner. Right.
Speaker 1: Just like rental, you know, renters aren't equally as important,
Speaker 1: right because you have to say, okay, well listen, I'm
Speaker 1: paying you know, let's say, for instance, a to family apartment.
Speaker 1: I'm paying some of your more mortgage. So my rights
Speaker 1: matter too. And I think it's about being active, not
Speaker 1: being complacent, and really saying, hey, listen, I love it here,
Speaker 1: how can I make it better? Right? I think as
Speaker 1: Black people, especially, we have to be the ones to
Speaker 1: gentrify our own blocks. I think that we cannot sit
Speaker 1: back and get mad when other people start seeing the
Speaker 1: value in our neighborhoods. You can't cry over spilt milk,
Speaker 1: right because like, even to the point of like, if
Speaker 1: you can find the local businesses and support the local businesses,
Speaker 1: what's wild is that you know, the bodega guy that
Speaker 1: we were talking about at the top of the show,
Speaker 1: he would have made that into a win for himself
Speaker 1: by just going there's no grocery stores, so I love
Speaker 1: going to bodegas, and I'm gonna go to all the
Speaker 1: bodegas around me and by a little bit from all
Speaker 1: the bodegas, and it would have been one big hey,
Speaker 1: support local business kumbay yah. But instead you get fact
Speaker 1: years ago, there was a group in Fort Green that
Speaker 1: created worked on Myrtle Avenue in Fulton Street, UH and
Speaker 1: called it Bogolon. It was based on African fabric UH
Speaker 1: and the various different colors that went into that fabric.
Speaker 1: We have to find those keys again. You know, the
Speaker 1: Brooklyn Movement Center has been doing a lot of work
Speaker 1: organizing residents. We have to begin to again build those
Speaker 1: foot soldiers within the neighborhoods that really talk about the
Speaker 1: culture and tell the stories about the history. Think about
Speaker 1: places in like Weeksville Historic Society and what it's doing
Speaker 1: and what it really means to have these roots in
Speaker 1: the community. It's it's something that we really have to
Speaker 1: embrace and not run away from. And just taking the
Speaker 1: power of your dollar right, you know, the black spending dollar, right,
Speaker 1: We have to invest into our local businesses also, like
Speaker 1: I make an effort to go to my local hardware
Speaker 1: store when I know I could easily get it shipped
Speaker 1: or go to home deep on correctly. You know, you
Speaker 1: have to also start circulating that dollar in that community.
Speaker 1: So businesses kind of want to stay, you know, or
Speaker 1: those mom and pop operations want to be there and
Speaker 1: versus selling their bode versus selling their laundry mat they
Speaker 1: know they have a loyal customer base versus kind of
Speaker 1: taking the easy way out and getting your groceries delivered
Speaker 1: or whatever. Try and save your spending dollar and put
Speaker 1: it back in the community, because it all everything affects everything, right,
Speaker 1: and people are people at the basics. We are all human.
Speaker 1: We want fair housing, we want fair food, we want
Speaker 1: fair access to the housings are right. And if we
Speaker 1: start treating our dollar as it's powerful and start making
Speaker 1: sure like we are active in our community, nobody, nobody
Speaker 1: can stop us. I don't care what you say. Run.
Speaker 1: You have seen innumerable iterations and evolutions of various boroughs
Speaker 1: of New York. What does the future look like? Let's
Speaker 1: let's end on that. You know what, what does the
Speaker 1: future look like? Because you know, we have people like
Speaker 1: Jordana and her husband who are gonna be there. They
Speaker 1: at leaving neighbor Jordana might mess around, run for city council.
Speaker 1: What's it called over there, Alderman, I don't know. I
Speaker 1: don't know what they call it. What do you think
Speaker 1: these neighborhoods are gonna be like in the next ten
Speaker 1: to twenty years? Right? Well, I think we have to
Speaker 1: change the path we're on, and I think we have
Speaker 1: to change that path right away. What I'd like to
Speaker 1: see us is to begin to take some of the
Speaker 1: money that we have and have access to and begin
Speaker 1: to reinvest it in our neighborhoods by building up those
Speaker 1: neighborhoods and investing in them dramatically. We in New York
Speaker 1: State have something called the stock Transfer tax that taxes
Speaker 1: on the books. It's collected every day, but it's rebated.
Speaker 1: That's a tax that if you spend invest a hundred
Speaker 1: thousand dollars, the taxes thirty dollars. That's how the minimus
Speaker 1: it is that would generate twelve to fifteen billion dollars
Speaker 1: a year for New York State. That we should invest
Speaker 1: in infrastructure, We should invest in transportation, and in low
Speaker 1: and moderate income housing so that we can really begin
Speaker 1: to renovate our neighborhoods and generate the kind of quality
Speaker 1: neighborhoods that be the needs of every income group. We
Speaker 1: have to start telling the stories, the stories of how
Speaker 1: neighbors function and work together, so that they are the
Speaker 1: things that attract people to our neighborhoods. Rather than just
Speaker 1: thinking that we're going to make money on housing. I
Speaker 1: think we have to critically address the issue of climate
Speaker 1: change because it is going to dramatically affect every one
Speaker 1: of us. The number of people that were taken ill
Speaker 1: because of the recent he wave in New York. We
Speaker 1: can't measure, We don't really know, but I'm willing to
Speaker 1: bet it was significant. It's going to get worse. The
Speaker 1: number of days of over a hundred degrees is going
Speaker 1: to increase dramatically over the next ten to fifteen years.
Speaker 1: That's a challenge that we have to convert into an opportunity,
Speaker 1: an opportunity to build stable, viable, livable, multi racial communities
Speaker 1: within the City of New York, ones that allow people
Speaker 1: to build their own build on their own culture, and
Speaker 1: create and and really celebrate the diversity of this city.
Speaker 1: And that, to my mind, is what we should be
Speaker 1: working towards and using the challenges, the money that may
Speaker 1: be coming from the federal government, the money that we
Speaker 1: could generate New York State and use as a model
Speaker 1: for the nation the way we did in the thirties,
Speaker 1: uh and really begin to think about how we build
Speaker 1: a post racial society, how how we can really build
Speaker 1: a multicultural democracy. I think that really is something we
Speaker 1: have to work on and work towards an invest in
Speaker 1: It's that's not going to happen unless we change those
Speaker 1: policies to your point about climate change. I mean, there
Speaker 1: was a couple of floods that happened last year and
Speaker 1: people were dying in basement apartments right um, flooding, heat,
Speaker 1: It's getting really bad. I think that housing across New
Speaker 1: York is just such at a turning point right now.
Speaker 1: So we definitely have to take action. We definitely have
Speaker 1: to make sure that we talk to each other and
Speaker 1: mobilize and say, hey, what can we do to make
Speaker 1: our living conditions better? Because as Ron touched on, as
Speaker 1: you touched on, it's it's a right. I think housing
Speaker 1: is a right that some people find it so unattainable,
Speaker 1: but it's yours. And I think the other thing too,
Speaker 1: is just like stop changing the names of the neighborhoods.
Speaker 1: That's one thing that really ticks me off. Like when
Speaker 1: you guys come here, I don't want to even South Bronx.
Speaker 1: It's now so bro you know, better steppings, the heightst
Speaker 1: like from the inception of the time you guys come,
Speaker 1: it's like, oh, I don't want to call it bed
Speaker 1: style no more. We'll know what's best, respect the neighborhood
Speaker 1: and stop all the acronyms. Well, I think That's a
Speaker 1: good place to end. And she is a wonderful, wonderful,
Speaker 1: proud Brooklyn Night. Geordanna, thank you for going beyond the scenes.
Speaker 1: And Ron, thank you for everything that you have contributed
Speaker 1: to preserving culture and building culture and making sure that
Speaker 1: people respect culture. Thank you all both for going beyond
Speaker 1: the scenes with us. Well, thank you for what you're doing.
Speaker 1: I just try to crack the jokes. You guys do
Speaker 1: the real work. Listen to The Daily Show Beyond the
Speaker 1: Scenes on Apple podcast, the I Heart Radio app, or
Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcasts. What's the Daily Show weeknights
Speaker 1: at eleven tenth Central on Comedy Central and stream full
Speaker 1: episodes anytime on Paramount Plus. This has been a Comedy
Speaker 1: Central podcast