The evolving face of Gentrification

Hello, my name is Christine and I am a gentrifier. The feeling behind those words feel very similar, I imagine, to a white male embracing his own privilege in society.

I stick out when I walk through Brownsville, NY, (or Ocean Hill as it is now being referred to) down Eastern Parkway to start my run towards the Brooklyn Museum. I head out early over the weekend, both to avoid the copious number of other runners who hit the path around 9am and to avoid the stares and snickering of men who sit on the bench and attempt to blow cigarette smoke towards me. People glance at me as I pass bus stops and jog over crosswalks. It’s not until I reach Franklin Ave that runners become a more common occurrence.

Over the summer, in addition to running around the neighborhood, I’ve sought out more small businesses and attended a local church’s block party. While still feeling disconnected from the people who have lived in this area for decades, it was refreshing to have “regular” shops where I buy groceries and people who recognize me on the street.

A little over a year ago, I moved here to teach at a charter school which seeks to close the achievement gap. Enough cringe-worthy acronyms and educational buzzwords float around our hallways in a day to make me almost forget that Brownsville is considered one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in NYC.

I hadn’t really considered what it would be like to live in this neighborhood before I accepted the position. I knew my school was in Brooklyn and that it was a part of the “urban education movement” pushing rigor and data. (The extreme end of this reform movement can be found in post-Katrina New Orleans’ education system.)

I sometimes like to imagine that our kids are insulated from everything outside of our walls once they put on their uniform shirts and sit in our classrooms. I like to think that every intention and hope we have for them will come to fruition in due time. That the product of our labor (and theirs) will pay off in the long run and we know that we are, actually, doing something right.

This inflated sense of hope shields me from reaching out to the community that I have infiltrated. It’s taken me a year to explore more parts of this neighborhood thanks to an irrational fear that I can’t quite place. The stigma of Brownsville presents itself in so many interactions that I have with people; transplants will cringe and offer a “that’s so admirable” when I give my profession and location.

The redevelopment of Brownsville is simmering. There have been very subtle, almost undetectable changes within the year I’ve lived here. 8 weeks of construction on the subway tunnel’s entrance, planted trees on the sidewalks and repaving the concrete around those plants, the opening of the Planet Fitness on Rockaway Ave. A major change that has taken place is the demolition of a large housing project and the construction of several “affordable housing” units in the Ocean Hill area.

As someone caught in the middle of this transitional phase, it’s difficult to gauge how much the neighborhood has already changed and to predict what it will look like in another 5 years. Redevelopment of any area always has it’s benefits: nicer facilities, updated store fronts, repaved and safer roads. But those are always balanced out by consequences: higher rent, less space, changing dynamics of a neighborhood.

We take the bad for good and, eventually, everyone’s memory of the original neighborhood fade to black. People forget, (are forced to) move away, and move on. As an educator in this evolving neighborhood, my new hope is for my students to understand the power they wield as young people. If they can use that power to reinvest in their own communities, gentrification can become less of a dirty word. We won’t need to “redevelop” neighborhoods because we’ll build a strong foundation from the start, beginning with the children who were raised in those neighborhoods.