My community is long gone -- We must save the rest

I was born in Park Slope in the mid-1970s. Both my parents worked -- my father, an NYC native, in Legal Aid fighting for tenants' rights, my mother, from Wisconsin, doing a variety of jobs. We only ever had enough money to pay rent, and by the time we could buy something small, my mother was pregnant again, and due to a series of rapes in the park, insisted we move out to the suburbs. Although my father's family is Latin American, this probably qualifies as part of "white flight" something about which I have always been ashamed even though I was far too young to have made any decisions for myself. We came back every weekend to our building on 7th Street, an enormously diverse community.

When I moved back to the neighborhood after college, the community l knew had already started to disappear. Gone were the families sitting out on their stoops. Gone were the kids playing in the one-way streets until a car would come by. It wasn't just the racial composition of the neighborhood that was changing -- it was the entire culture. A Starbucks opened on 7th Avenue. Tiny boutiques that sold clothes no one I knew could ever hope to afford started to take over not only 7th, but 5th Avenues. While some businesses, like Tarzian Hardware, survive to this day, the neighborhood had been hit by a wave of gentrification that could not be turned back. Very soon, rental fees forced me to move out of the neighborhood, but at that point, I wasn't interested in staying.

Now I live in Flatbush, and already, I am starting to see signs that the same process has already started. Restaurants opening on Church Avenue are clearly not catering to the people who live here now but the people the neighborhood is preparing to welcome. This entire idea would have been unthinkable 10 years ago, but now people either shake their heads sadly or smile about how much "nicer" everything is becoming, not recognizing that "nicer" = higher rents none of the current residents could ever hope to pay.  Gentrification is not "cool" for those who live just south of the parade grounds... It's a death knoll for yet another community.

Now, through measures like the "affordable" housing initiative (affordable for whom?), the city has opened the floodgates to parasitical developers all over Brooklyn, upzoning areas like East New York and Bushwick which will be cannibalized by these real estate moguls.  

What this city needs is real social services and jobs programs for working people, not the demolition of the buildings where they live and new housing, none of which, even the "affordable" units (which are only affordable for those who make $50,000/year and up), are even within the tiniest bit of reach for those who live there now.  We need good jobs, free childcare, and decent food at reasonable cost.  

It's time to stop letting ourselves be pushed further and further outside the communities WE built.  It's time to turn around and fight.  Take it Back... Before Its Gone.