The Gentrification Crisis: Kelly Anderson’s “My Brooklyn”

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Brooklyn, NY has become the country’s second most expensive city, after the Big Apple itself, Manhattan. For the most part, gentrification (specifically, the movement of wealthy whites from Manhattan into Brooklyn) has been pinpointed as the main reason for Brooklyn’s financial boom and increase in market value, as well as its soaring popularity and “chic” status. 

In the documentary, My Brooklyn, filmmakers Kelly Anderson and Allison Lirish Dean take a look at the other side of prosperity. The film examines the effects of increasing development on the veteran Brooklynites- the mainly African-American and Caribbean communites who are being pushed out due to rising housing prices as well as larger corporations taking over small, privately owned businesses. Focusing on the redevelopment of downtown Brooklyn’s Fulton Mall, Anderson and Dean show the extent to which large corporations play a role in housing, gentrification, and displacement.

 

You can watch an interview with Kelly Anderson below, which includes clips from the documentary.

For more on housing and gentrification, watch GRITtv’s interview with Laura Gottesdiener, author of A Dream Foreclosed: Black America and the Fight for a Place to Call Home.

 

Additional Resources

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