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MAJORA CARTER: It's because of Hunt's Point that I am successful.
You can believe in the fact that you don't need to move out of your neighborhood to live
in a better one, that we can be a part of helping to make it better and I want to show
that there are things that we can all be doing together to make it a better place to be.
[Music]
You know the saying, think globally, act locally.
I actually think it should be if you think locally, and you act locally, the global will
be just fine.
Because we are simply a collection of little local areas, but I do think that there does
need to be y'know, an acknowledgment that being local isn't all about doing what's good
for just your little local area at—to the detriment of the word outside of you.
If we really worked hard to create the kind of beneficial policies that supported everyone
in the community we just assume that there's this beautiful virtuous cycle that happened
when you y'know have a beneficial way of doing everything, y'know, from public health to
waste handling to the economy all in this lovely little cycle, then you've got some
great things going on.
Y'know, I've been spending a lot of time on the road and when I was asked to speak and
do advisory services, they were mostly in communities just like my hometown, the South
Bronx.
Sort of an environmental and or economic sacrifice, so to speak.
And y'know I was really struck by a couple of things.
Y'know, one was just that no matter where I went around the country, there was only
two kinds of real estate development in poor communities.
And that was either the kind that just assumed there was going to be gentrification, y'know
and sooner or later the place gets better and poor people are pushed out, or it was
gonna stay a poor community and thus all the goods and services and economic developments
were basically the only kinds of things that catered to poor communities or they were expected
to stay in poor communities.
So highly subsidized housing, y'know, corner stores or bodegas as opposed to places where
you could buy like healthy and affordable produce, y'know instead of real banking institutions,
y'know pay day loans or check cashing stores or pawn shops.
And I was just like—that is quite possibly the most uncreative thing I've ever seen in
my entire life and like why are we putting these little band aids on our poor communities
and expecting things to get better and they're not and I just realized that real estate development,
if properly used, can be used as a tool for—as a platform even for the kind of social, environmental,
and economic transformation that we really needed to see in our own communities.
I was really interested in how do you harness the power of gentrification because the bottom
line is, y'know, poor people who live in poor communities like nicer things, too.
Like they would really like to have a decent place to get a cup of coffee.
I import all my food from Manhattan.
Most of it does not come from my own neighborhood because it's believe it or not, more expensive
and obviously the quality is not as good as you'd find in other places I'm like, y'know,
this doesn't make me or anybody else happy.
Y'know, to know that this is what's happening.
So why would we not want to see better things here and we also not want to see things like
economic diversity because we know that economic diversity, having people of different incomes
in a community actually provides a level of stability in that community that a poor community
will never ever, ever have.
I mean the only people that think that y'know there's some romantic notion of poverty of
people who have never lived in a poor community and those are not the kind of people building
stuff in my community.
Unfortunately they're often the people building projects in poor communities.
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The Spotford juvenile detention facility, it was possibly one of the most notorious
Ju-V facilities on the east coast.
I mean, it was known as a college for criminals actually, where kids that went in often came
out much worse when they went out.
Children's aide advocates and also prison reform advocates tried to close it for decades.
My father was actually a janitor there back in the 60s and the 70s and I distinctly remember
him telling my mom on several occasions that he wished our house was bigger so that he
could take some more of the kids in—because we actually did have a plenty of kids who
came to our house under some particularly sad circumstances that spent time at Spotford.
So when it was finally closed, it was a really wonderful thing for the community at large
and it meant that this huge boogie man was kind of put to rest, but I also saw this huge
5-acre site for all of its potential possibilities which could be used for mixed income housing
and mixed use commercial retail and manufacturing development and I just loved the idea that
this really awful part of our history could be transformed into something that could really
herald a new beginning for our community.
The city is going to be releasing a request for proposals sometime next year and which
means that us and every other major and minor real estate development concern in the city
and outside of it will probably vie for that.
It's one of the biggest assemblages of acreage in New York City for a single site.
So it's gonna be big and huge and everyone's gonna want to do it.
I really believe that I can bring something to real estate development that is new and
different and can create the kind of transformational change we need in particular for the people
who are in our communities and really create the kind of aspirational communities that
are—that allow people to be their best selves and that their communities—that they understand
that they don't have to move out of their neighborhood to live in a better one and they
are deserving of living in a great place.
I'm Majora Carter and you're watching THNKR.