Gentrification is displacing tenants from their affordable apartments to build brand new and expensive residences. It’s chasing lower-income communities that have been living there for decades by drastically increasing the cost of living. It’s destroying the nice and community friendly neighborhoods.
And yet, gentrification is happening and it’s been happening for decades now, not only in New York but in many major cities in the USA and elsewhere in the world. So how to deal with it? How do we ensure that tenants keep their affordable apartments? How to keep the multicultural richness of these neighborhoods alive? How to protect the area’s heritage and its very special sense of community developed through decades of history from bulldozers and soulless skyscrapers?
Hernan Pagan and Hector Rivera, founders of the People’s Garden in Bushwick, Brooklyn, have been living in the neighborhood for more than 30 years now and have seen this place go through many different periods and changes, some were dramatic, violent and hopeless and some were positive and encouraging. They are now witnessing another major transformation of the neighborhood; it is being gentrified and investors are changing the landscape by erecting big buildings everywhere. So they decided to do something about it and they thought that rather than fighting the “gentrifiers” they should engage with new residents and build something that the whole community could benefit from.
They decided to give a second life to an abandoned garden nearby and create a place where everyone could come and people from completely different backgrounds could meet and share their visions and stories. A place where “gentry” could meet with locals, understand their situation and make it sustainable. A place where tenants could be reminded of their rights against landlords trying to kick them out of their apartments and get advices on how to keep their places. An example of a community willing to make the best out of the ongoing gentrification and trying to make it sustainable and beneficial to all residents, old and new.

Watch the video below to learn more about this initiative.