Anti-Gentrification Fliers Plastered Throughout Stuyvesant Heights in Bed Stuy
This morning one of our readers tipped us off to these fliers that were stuffed in car windows and stuck on front doors throughout Stuyvesant Heights in Bed Stuy. The fliers use racist imagery of watermelons and fried chicken, presumably to paint the investors who are buying up property in the neighborhood as racist. And…
This morning one of our readers tipped us off to these fliers that were stuffed in car windows and stuck on front doors throughout Stuyvesant Heights in Bed Stuy. The fliers use racist imagery of watermelons and fried chicken, presumably to paint the investors who are buying up property in the neighborhood as racist. And they urge homeowners “Shut it down Bed Stuy by any means necessary.” Presumably that means not selling their homes to investors.
Our reader thought the fliers might be a response to New York Magazine recent story that revealed the real estate business practices of a racist landlord-investor. He described replacing black renters with white ones and speculated black property owners in Bed Stuy would start “dumping” houses to buy in East New York.
The hashtag on the flier, #standupbedstuy, links back to Joshua Wiles. A little Googling reveals a schoolteacher of that name who lives in Bed Stuy who brought a lawsuit against some Hasidic businesses for allegedly discriminatory dress codes, and was active in Occupy Wall Street.
We’re not sure, but we think he might have been the same activist who was ejected from a Bed Stuy panel on gentrification last year for disrupting it. At the time, he vowed to start a campaign against “Brokeland Capital,” aka Brookland Capital, a prolific developer of condos in Brooklyn based in Bed Stuy.
We find the situation in Bed Stuy to be more complex than described in the fliers. Recent change in the area — remarked on by several speakers at Community Board 3’s last meeting, which we attended — is not only, or even primarily, due to longtime black owners of brownstones selling to developers. New-building development is limited, and mostly on empty lots and, to a lesser extent, wood frame houses and churches on oversize lots.
Elderly homeowners losing their homes to fraud, tax liens and all-cash flippers who don’t pay what the property is worth are some of the pressing concerns raised by community leaders and community groups such as the Brownstoners of Bed Stuy, who have educational programs to help homeowners. Also, now that their properties are worth something, black owners have the same right to benefit from a sale as anyone else, some might argue.
Click through to see more versions of the flier and a picture of them stuffed in car windows on Stuyvesant Avenue. What do you think of the fliers? Have you seen any? — Jim Rendon and Cate Corcoran
I don’t think the signs are race baiting, it’s a wake-up call. Hard money investors are an opportunistic bunch. They prey on the elderly and struggling homeowner. The American Dream has not come to African American communities, as it has with other groups. Bedford Stuyvesant is a community that was hard built and hard won for a reasonable quality of living. A place where we can collectively let our hair down. Let’s be clear, stable Black communities are under attack. The newbies (white folks) have no desire to be a part of our communities, when they show up they don’t want the incumbents (Black folks) to be there and they behave accordingly. Quite simply regentrification is a take over for the urban centers, because the incumbents know what, city-dwellers already knew, that the commute from the suburbs is expensive, it’s no fun and it doesn’t work. But we are not going pouf and be gone. Hold it down Bed-Stuy.
One rip-off tactic I heard about from a real estate agent occurs when an elderly owner dies, leaving the property to out of state relatives. (In this case, he was referring to cases in Clinton Hill.) A would-be flipper contacts the new owner, pointing out the estimated valuation as it appears for tax purposes, and offering to pay in cash. What non-New-Yorker ever understands what real estate goes for here, especially someone who remembers when grandma’s neighborhood was considered a ghetto — not very long ago. Pretty slick.
I agree that the inflammatory rhetoric doesn’t help matters, but I understand the sense of violation behind it. A community doesn’t get built in a day. No New York neighborhood “belongs” to any one group, but change hurts when money trumps every other human need. It’s a form of brutality.
I found these flyers somewhat offensive and not because I don’t support the causes many people here have listed. As a new property owner in Bed-Stuy, I think the message was not let’s protect our historic homes, let’s educate the community against developers, etc but more along the lines of this neighborhood belongs to us (the black community) and let’s do everything we can to keep it that way, with underlying tones of violence if need be.
I’m Hispanic and my husband is white and our block, consisting of long time residents ,have been extremely welcoming but I do fear a backlash against new residents by others who just assume the worst; that we moved to Bed Stuy to push people out of their homes, “gentrify” the area as quickly as possible, disregard any local culture, etc all because of how much we paid for our home and nothing about us as individuals.
I do hope that whoever is behind this realizes they need to stress a community of education and helping one another. I’m sure many of us here have different skill sets and would be happy to get involved in any way we could.
Melissa Braun, you hit the nail right on the head. I support protecting uninformed long time homeowner, but find the rhetoric and motives of the fliers offensive. I might be considered “others” in ethnicity, not white, not black either, a true minority. I bought my place 3 years ago here, and was once told by a nasty neighbor to go back to where I came from. Racism is bad, period, whichever way it goes. I considered Bed Stuy to be New Yorker’s Bed Stuy, and not owned by a particular ethnic group. I’m respectful to long time residents, and most of them are very sweet and kind. But there are few who feel the neighbor belong to only a specific racial group, which is extremely racist. NYC is diverse and constantly changing. Bed Stuy was originally developed by the Dutch and Germans, it became predominantly African American for decades and now various groups are moving in. To feel entitled to an area based on one’s race is ludicrous.
i’m disgusted by the fair amount of commenters here that have been expressing skepticism at whether or not racist house flippers REALLY exist. Why on earth would you give business men dealing in the very lucrative currency of Brooklyn real estate, backed by Goldman Sachs and the like, the benefit of the doubt over individual homeowners who are more than likely beneath the poverty line? if you’ve heard of even just one black person get a pittance for their home, you better believe there are dozens of cases exactly like theirs.
Isn’t that where the minority community can come in and educate those elderly homeowners? These long time residents are the same people who probably remember when you couldn’t give away a brownstone in Bed-Stuy, so suddenly if someone is offering them $500K, all cash, they’re probably like, “It’s a miracle!” and they naturally want to take the money.
I knew nothing about buying or selling property the first time I did it. Luckily I knew enough to find some resources, but I would have been just as open to getting scammed if I didn’t.
perre de taille writes, “Really silly since the overwhelming major of sellers do so willingly and only sell to the very highest bidders regardless of race or ethnicity!” This is what I was asking Montrose Morris about above. Is this true? Does anyone actually know the numbers? If so, I’d love to see them. If not, why are people on both sides making claims about facts they don’t have?
I’ve never met you. From what others have written on your behalf, I have no doubt that you are smart, kind, and I’d probably like you if we met. I’m not seeking out problems in your writing: I struggle with your writing because of the way you imply facts to fit your opinions. I probably share most of your opinions, but I find it very frustrating to read your work because I never know if you are stating history or your opinion–fact or theory.
^ this was kind of really my first reaction, too. whoever wrote these fliers is on the right side of a very important issue we need to be paying attention to, but while they’re certainly attention-grabbing fliers, they come off as unnecessarily combative, especially when you doubt that the writer really has THAT much in common with the elderly who are preyed upon. They speak less of educating seniors and more of inciting protests. And as much as i support a good protest, i feel certain that a potest and loud activism would be futile in this situation, where so much money stands to be made.
i think the only way the disgusting tactics can be stopped is to give as much support to seniors as possible–because as someone else mentioned, there are far too few people in their lives looking out for them, and they need to at least know the insane, unbelievable reality of the RE market in NY before they decide to sell. they also, while we’re at it, need free education on how to address their homes in their wills, because that’s another scary beast altogether–it’s not something i know anything about and i wish i did.