Many residents of new-eyed possible gentrifable neighborhoods have never been faced with developer dealings. They have lived their entire lives in their communities; gone to their grocers and watched their kids grow up and never thought twice about leaving or watching their neighborhood change.

In some New York City neighborhoods – the residents stepped into those streets from other countries and haven’t left; these neighborhoods represent a home away from home and their cultural identity lives on there.

In the corner of gentrification – you have tons of supporters. Those who want to invest, those who want the sense of community already ingrained and realistically those who want to make money out of the interest in a community. But how to you make sure the residents who made those neighborhoods desirable aren’t being taken advantage of?

 

You need to make sure they have a voice.

 

That’s what we do. We make sure their voice is heard.

 

The voice would need to come from the community – lawyers, real estate agents, accounts, neighborhood business owners and local dedicated residents would all need to come together to form a collaboration for a fair market. This would be a non-for-profit to make sure our neighborhoods stayed neighborhoods; and no residents who have made a life there had to leave or sell without understanding all their fiscal and legal rights.

We petition a variety of local & non-local lawyers, real estate agents and accounts to appraise housing on pro-bono basis; non-local so that we can have an accurate research and idea of the net worth.

We hold a series of fundraisers just to advertise and raise awareness and attract professionals to help our cause. We would first petition local Historical Organizations such as the Brooklyn Museum or the Brooklyn Historical Society to hold our events and then see if we could get sponsorships from new Brooklyn based companies to sponsor us.

It would probably take about two years to really get us moving. We would take to Social Media – Twitter, Facebook and Instagram; follow many of our local Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan counterparts. An easy fiscal approach.

Then is getting the first investor, we would look to patrons of other Brooklyn charities; then move on the NYC museum patrons. The first six-months would be exclusively net-working, generating attention to our cause in any way we see fit; and helping philanthropists understand the importance. Possibly asking local print shops to print and donate literature.

We would hopefully after two years generate enough of a backing to create a bank of professionals.

We want to help Brooklyn.