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According to The Eagle, there was a protest last week organized by Families United for Racial & Economic Equality (FUREE) to bring attention to the “the unmet needs of low-income residents” in Downtown Brooklyn. The group says the Downtown rezoning has resulted in plenty of high-end residential construction but not the affordable housing and supermarket that was supposed to come with it, thus resulting in “economic segregation.” Lillian Green, a member of FUREE, is quoted as follows: ‘Businesses along Willoughby Street have been closed for three years; public housing residents have been without a nearby affordable supermarket for four years; and the only affordable housing in Downtown Brooklyn [on Albee Square] is slated for demolition to make way for a parking lot and a park with possibly a dog run.” The protest was attended by around 75 people.
75 Protest Unmet Promises of Downtown Brooklyn Rezoning [Eagle]


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  1. I just want to say “hear, hear” to everyone in this thread who isn’t complaining about the entitled, lazy poor. Why should the poor get supermarkets? It’s not like they can afford food?

    Let them eat babies.

    No, seriously, I enjoy the revitalized Brooklyn as much as anyone, but there’s no reason why people protesting for goods and services they used to have — goods and services they used to pay for, mind you even — should be met with such scorn.

    And considering all of those sneaker shops on Fulton commanded higher retail rents than the hand-crafted stuff on Atlantic, I’d like to know who is really subsidizing who.

  2. I sublet on Myrtle and Ashland (Kingsview) in 1999 and while the nearby supermarket was pretty horrible, I can’t imagine how people at Ingersoll and Walt Whitman houses have managed without it for the past 4/5 years. They have a right to be pissed!

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