How to Kill a Neighborhood and Make a Profit

i want you to pull up in your mind’s eye

your neighborhood

not just the buildings the streets the

trees but also the people

what do they look like

what race are they

have you ever wondered

why your neighborhood looks the way it

does

have you ever asked yourself why some

neighborhoods are ravaged by drugs and

violence and others are

not have you ever wondered why

neighborhoods that once had open air

drug markets now have upscale

restaurants and farmers markets

i have

because each time i visit the

neighborhood where i was raised

it has more and more upscale restaurants

and fewer and fewer black people

i grew up in a primarily black middle

class neighborhood in washington dc

called petworth

last time i was there i ate in a

restaurant whose specialty

was raw hamachi with pomegranate sauce

preserved lemon and satar

this was a far cry from the fried

chicken wings of mumbo sauce my best

friend matalaka and i used to get from

the chinese carryout

when i was growing up in pet worth

there was no rustic pizzeria no wine bar

no cider tasting room and apart from my

family there were a few white people

all this has changed

petworth is gentrifying

which is when the gentry middle class

people move into a neighborhood that has

low levels of public and private

investment

petworth has gentrified only

because it first experienced

disinvestment which refers to the fact

that petworth

lost public and private investment

you see real estate developers built pet

worth

as an all-white neighborhood in the

early 20th century

by the time my family moved to petworth

in 1976

nearly all the white people had left

petworth was still middle class

but now was primarily black

and experiencing disinvestment

when i enrolled in kindergarten in our

neighborhood school in 1978

i was one of two white children at that

school

the other white child my brother ian

when i was in second grade

i transferred to a new school

where there were only a handful of

students who were not white

my new school had carpeting

a library full of books and a beautiful

playground my old school had

linoleum floors

a sparse library

and we spent recess walking single file

around the block with our teacher

i spent the rest of my childhood taking

the bus from my primarily black

neighborhood east of rock creek park to

primarily white schools west of the park

i’d get on the bus across the street

from the corner store owned by mr coe

rice to buy big mama sausages

we’d ride past the liquor store where

monique and i used to buy cigarettes for

her grandmother

and later for ourselves

then we ride past the funeral home

where i attended erica’s funeral

after she was gunned down in a drive-by

shooting

on the other side of the park there

would be houses on tree-lined streets

and the occasional white person jogging

the bus didn’t turn onto connecticut

avenue

but if it did it would have passed by

the politics and pros bookstore

the bread and chocolate bakery and the

parthenon greek restaurant

one of my earliest memories

is of going to a mayday march with my

father and chanting

asian latin black and white workers of

the world unite with activist parents i

grew up well aware of the harms caused

by racism and capitalism

and you probably won’t find it

surprising to learn that i’m the founder

of the racism capitalism and the law lab

and a professor of sociology at the

university of california merced where i

teach classes on race and racism

despite my extensive anti-racist

education

i didn’t learn how racist policies had

affected the neighborhood where i grew

up

until i came across the work of the

historians at prologue dc i learned that

racial segregation in pet worth began

with the use of racial deed covenants

these covenants are lines in deeds that

read

this home shall not be sold or rented to

a negro

the real estate industry

and white homeowners use these covenants

to prevent african americans from moving

into pet worth until 1948

when the supreme court ruled those

covenants were not legally enforceable

with this court decision black people

could move into pet worth

one of the first black people to move

into petworth was a doctor

by the name of clarence d hinton

dr hinton knew his white neighbors might

try to prevent him from moving into this

all-white neighborhood

so he found a white person to negotiate

the sale on his behalf

once the neighbors realized

a black family was moving in

they put padlocks on the doors to try to

prevent the hindus from moving in

this did not stop dr hinton from moving

his family into his new home

within a generation

nearly all their white neighbors would

leave

when a black family moved into an

all-white neighborhood realtors

perceived an opportunity for profit

realtors used scare tactics to frighten

white families to sell their homes and

get out before the neighborhood turned

realtors would then buy the homes and

sell them to black people for a handsome

profit

this practice is called blockbusting it

happened across the city and created

white flight between 1950 and 1970 half

the white residents of dc left the city

as black families were moving to

petworth white families fled to the

suburbs the real estate industry and the

federal government worked together

to keep the suburbs white

the federal housing administration

advised banks not to grant loans in

areas where african americans lived as

these were not good investments

this practice is called redlining

because areas where black people live

were shaded red on color-coded maps

racial segregation was not an accident

it was a direct result of racially

restrictive covenants block busting

redlining and white flight

the fha’s notion that investing in black

communities was a poor investment choice

became a self-fulfilling prophecy

as the government divested from the city

so did the private sector

as white families moved to the suburbs

so did the jobs

by 1990

two-thirds of the jobs in the d.c

metropolitan area were in the suburbs

half of all black youth were unemployed

enter crack cocaine with high

unemployment and failing schools

young men began to sell crack in

open-air drug markets to make ends meet

crack was lucrative turf wars and gun

violence ensued

in 1991

washington dc had the highest homicide

rate in the country

the city’s response to this tragedy

was to double the police force

by the end of the 20th century

washington dc had the highest

incarceration rate in

the world

the capital of the nation became a world

leader

in incarceration

this devastation

touched the lives of my closest

girlfriends

monique

maralaka and tracy

as children

monique

her dog brutus and i spent our summer

splashing in rock creek’s

cool waters

monique’s first love was maurice

who lost his life

to a gunshot wound

every weekend in high school i’d walk

the two blocks from my house to

matalaka’s home to get dressed

to go out to the ibex the metro club or

the black hole to hear one of dc’s famed

go-go bands

her baby brother ollo always had

something to say about our outfits which

were invariably short tight and colorful

it was the 80s after all

i didn’t mind alo’s teasing as he always

teased us

as he did everything with a big old

smile

every memory i have of allo is of him

smiling

in my first year of graduate school

alo was brutally murdered

tracy was so proud of me when i went off

to college

two years after i moved into the dorms

her brother mark who was the smartest

and coolest dude i knew

was off to prison where he faced a life

sentence

monique sold her grandmother’s home

after she passed

maralaca’s family lost their six-bedroom

home to foreclosure

when tracy’s brother mark was arrested

the federal government used asset

forfeiture laws to seize the home

tracy’s grandfather had purchased in the

1950s

the dispossession of black middle class

residents made gentrification possible

it became profitable for investors to

purchase devalued houses foreclosed

homes and forfeited properties to create

new homes for new people

disinvestment

combined with low housing prices record

low interest rates and tax incentives

made pet worth attractive to investors

after decades of abandonment

disinvestment

made reinvestment

profitable in 2016 a real estate company

ranked pet worth first in the nation for

the profits investors could make from

flipping a home with an average profit

of over 300 grand per sale

reinvestment does not erase the violence

of disinvestment

are you ready for the six-point policy

plan that will

unfortunately there is no six-point

policy plan there are no policies

that can return the 4 000 lives lost to

homicide in washington d.c

there are no policies

that will return the human potential

stolen from our neighborhood when the

brightest minds were given life

sentences for drug offenses

today most people i grew up with cannot

afford to live in pet worth

they attended disinvested schools which

made graduated from high school

difficult

and finishing college even more

challenging

the loss of their loved ones to homicide

and the prison system

made thriving in young adulthood

difficult

there are exceptions of course

matalaka’s youngest sister ezewine is a

doctor

she was able to turn the tragic loss of

her brother into the motivation she

needed to finish her medical degree

it took an unfathomable amount of

strength for as a wine to earn enough to

be able to afford a home in petworth

when i was growing up

nearly all the residents of petworth

were black today

less than half are

when white people move in

and black people move out housing prices

go up

you know there’s one reason home values

increase when white people move in

racism

there is one reason homes are assigned

value at all

capitalism

replacing carryouts with upscale

restaurants does nothing

to dismantle racism or capitalism

racism and capitalism requires us to ask

a new and different set of questions

questions like

what if we invested in people instead of

prisons

what if housing were a human right

instead of a commodity

what if profits were no longer the

driving force of our society

i invite you to join me

and abolitionists like angela davis

ruthie wilson gilmore and miriam caba in

imagining

and building a movement for a world

where young women like ezewine can

flourish without needing deep wells of

resilience

or the potential

of young black men like marcus not

squandered

where lives

like aloes and maurice’s do not end in

violence

a world

where black

lives

matter

thank you