New Resource Helps Community Members Fight Displacement from Gentrification in Their Communities
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
New Resource Helps Community Members Fight Displacement from Gentrification in Their Communities
Study shows 75% of residents in Greater Boston communities are proud to live in their communities, but upwards of 40% expect to move out
-- BOSTON, October 7, 2019 --
As communities in the Boston metro area face mounting pressure from developers, a new tool is now available to help them fight back against the forced displacement of residents and small businesses.
The Anti-Displacement Toolkit is a dynamic collection of activities, how-to guides, facilitation plans, and resources, co-created by local organizations, a comprehensive and easy-to-use guide for community members to work together to protect and preserve their communities. The goal is for community members, regardless of their organizing experience, to be able to build power through collective analysis, create shared goals and actions, and develop guiding principles of equitable development.
"The Everett Community Health Partnership is deeply concerned about the effects of housing instability and displacement on the mental, physical and social health of our residents, especially children and families,” said Kathleen O’Brien of Cambridge Health Alliance. “We know that there is more that can be done to keep our residents here, and this toolkit will help us work together to create and advocate for policies to support equitable and healthy development without displacement."
The toolkit, available in both English and Spanish, can help residents, neighborhood councils, organizations, and anyone organizing against displacement engage with each other in meaningful ways. Whether a community is trying to further understand how displacement shows up, create awareness among allies, or push for specific policy and programmatic solutions, this toolkit can help. It can be used to build power within residents, as well as push for concrete changes within the community. Through the use of data and stories, it touches the minds and hearts of those who care deeply about their community and can implement change.
“We hope this toolkit will be a resource for communities organizing at the intersection of environmental justice, climate justice and displacement. We know that as communities become healthier and cleaner to live in they become less affordable, displacing the most vulnerable populations. Those who worked so hard to improve the quality of life in their community should be able to live in it and enjoy it. We hope this toolkit can support communities organize against displacement and defend their right to remain rooted in place,” said GreenRoots Associate Executive Director Maria Belen Power.
Toolkits are available in both English and Spanish and cover the following topics:
Mapping Power & Money
Finding Data About Your Community
Identifying & Evaluating Policies
Using Data & Storytelling to Make Arguments
Sharing our stories
The toolkit also includes an accompanying film, Desplazada. A film that depicts our history and current-day causes of displacement occurring in these communities (and beyond) along this same waterfront.
“We understand that one size doesn’t fit all and hope the toolkit will be used, tested, and adapted to lead the transformations you envision for your own communities,” said Research Action Design’s Caroline Rivas.
According to a recent Healthy Neighborhoods Study, which looked at residents in two Greater Boston communities, 72% of Chelsea and 75% of Everett respondents indicated that they are proud to live in their community, yet 40% of Chelsea and 31% of Everett survey respondents expect to move in the next five years. The toolkit was born to address this critical disparity as a new rash of development sweeps across the Boston metro area.
“What developers often miss, and what our toolkit aims to ignite, is the awareness that those who are excluded from social institutions -- those living at the margins -- have a lot of resources -- including ideas," said MIT Community Innovators Lab's (CoLab's) Executive Director Dayna Cunningham. "Our goal at CoLab is to undergrid the ideas and aspirations of residents in marginalized communities with planning tools so that they themselves are the ones deciding how their resources will be used."
The “Anti-Displacement Toolkit” was co-created in partnership with several partner organizations that have expertise in collective action and community organizing, including Everett Community Health Partnership (ECHP), GreenRoots, Research Action Design (RAD), and MIT Community Innovators Lab (CoLab).
More About the Project:
Chelsea and Everett, Massachusetts are facing pressure from developers, resulting in land being swallowed up by investors and increased housing prices, and the forced displacement (or pushing-out) of residents and small businesses.
The process to develop this toolkit took two years and included a diverse set of stakeholders as well as robust discourse about how to define the criteria for content.
The Anti-Displacement Toolkit can be accessed at: https://www.greaterbostontoolkit.org/en