Housing displacement points to Prospect/ Crown Heights

Anonymous wrote: The word is the affordable housing will never be built, or it will be built somewhere else. Ratner has the whole city government in his pocket, and it is common with big projects like this that the developer never comes through with the units. In the case of AY, they can drop the whole affordable housing part by paying a few hundred thousand dollars penalty. Not even the price of one apartment they could sell instead. The whole process is corrupt. Acorn lacks credibility because Ratner has given them hundreds of thousands of dollars. And don't think anyone in the city government give 2 hoots aobut what we think regarding this.

Anyone who says ACORN lacks credibility has never met their lead organizer, Bertha Lewis. I double dare you to tell Bertha she lacks credibilty to her face. And Bertha is mild compared to Rev. Daughtry, who is also on the "Ratner team". I was at a meeting a few months ago where some smart aleck questioned Daughtry's street creds. Boy, Daughtry did everything but punch the guy out.

I'd suggest you get to know a few of these individuals before you start questioning their credibility. Both Lewis and Daughtry have been in the Prospect Heights area doing organizing for at least 20 years and have well deserved reputations for ferocity. Ratner will go down in flames if he ever tries to reneg on a deal he cut with these two.

Where was Daniel Goldstein and DDB 20 years ago?

Greg,

You're striking me as terribly naive. Are you aware that "ferocity" and "street cred" are also rather stereotypical--dare I even say potentially racist--ways of describing people?

Ratner has paid off the "community" leaders who, in fact, are the leaders of no communities--rather like Al Sharpton, elected as a "black leader" by the white media.

now I double dare you to ask any of the black people I know what they think of any of these "leaders"--

I'll just answer for myself, and not make generalizations. They stink!

anniewilde wrote: Greg,

You're striking me as terribly naive. Are you aware that "ferocity" and "street cred" are also rather stereotypical--dare I even say potentially racist--ways of describing people?

Ratner has paid off the "community" leaders who, in fact, are the leaders of no communities--rather like Al Sharpton, elected as a "black leader" by the white media.

now I double dare you to ask any of the black people I know what they think of any of these "leaders"--

I'll just answer for myself, and not make generalizations. They stink!

Annie, your 39, I'm 57. I've been in Crown Heights working in real estate and community organizing since at least 1986 and I've observed a lot in those 30 years. I've met Bertha and Daughtry and know James Caldwell and Marie Louis fairly well, not to mention a lot of the other folks involved in the Atlantic Yards and Crown Heights scene, including Daniel Goldstein and Henry Weinstein.

If I can still be naive after seeing all of the stuff I've seen over the years, I'm either a hopeless romantic or perhaps just an optimist.

You can decide for yourself.

anniewilde wrote: I think that money trumps "psychology" any day of the week. I've seen plenty of folks, black and white, doing dirty deals around Brooklyn. Any connection to Ratner is an absurd farce. Ratner's development concepts are blatantly corrupt, and have been critiqued by architects and urban planners in very detailed ways. Ratner's previous Brooklyn experiments have all been negative. Friends of mine in Jersey City are real community activists, and have successfully fought a series of developers. Your arguments aren't very convincing.

The only thing I might be willing to believe is that EVERYBODY in Brooklyn is corrupt, except that the anti-Ratner people clearly aren't. No money in it for them, in fact, their property values will go up higher if RAT-Ass-Ner gets his way.

Your point?

Having worked for a non-profit for 15 years, I can tell you it take money to do real work in the community. You need a paid staff. ACORN, House of the Lord Church and BUILD all have paid staff's that have a track record of doing things. The leaders of these groups know that you need money to really have a lasting effect and really get work done in the community.

I've spoken specifically with James Caldwell about BUILD and I know that James, who was working with the 77 Pct. Community Council for a long time before he got involved with BUILD, was tired of seeing money and jobs wash over Crown Heights and never stick with anyone from the community. Ratner has made very specific and concrete commitments to BUILD in the Community Benefit Agreement about the set asides for minority hiring and is dedicating money to BUILD for the purpose of fulfiling those commitment.

Have minority hiring commitments failed to materialize in the past on other projects? Absolutely. BUt that doesn't mean they are bad ideas nor that the people who promote them are necessarily corrupt or misguided. It simply means there is a long history of institutional racism in our country that won't be overcome with one project or by one developer.

People like to forget that Bruce Ratner is the brother of Michael Ratner. The organization Michael leads, the Center for Constitutional Rights, has been a leading advocate in the US for protecting the constitutional rights of its citizens. Most recently CCR has been in the news for filing a lawsuit in Germany against Donald Rumsfeld for being responsible for the torture that occurred at Abu Graib.

Can this possibly be the brother of that hulking villain, Bruce Ratner? Is it also possible that Ratner sincerely cares about protecting the interests of women and minorities? Few in the Prospect Heights community care to even consider this possibility. Nor do they want to consider that the largest transit hub in Brooklyn might be the most logical site for a major new development, and that is why it was chosen by Ratner and others for that use.

IN a book entitled "The Regional City", two well-known planners present the planning efforts made by West Coast cities such as Portland, Seattle and Salt Lake City. They show how these communities held lengthy meetings to engage the communities in their planned growth and help inform city officials about where to grow and how to grow.

These meetings resulted in zoning that concentrated high density, mixed used development in the center city, and focused future development in concentric circles around planned mass transit locations. These cities all expect to have significant growth in the next 10 years and are taking the initiative to plan for it now, before it's too late.

Census officials are projecting that NYC will gain an additional 1 million population in the next 20 years. Has anyone thought about where those people will live? Will they be living scattered out in Coney Island and Sheepshead Bay and dependent upon private cars to get to work and to shop? OR will they be concentrated near existing subway and bus lines, so that when oil prices triple in the next 20 years and global warming becomes a real problem, they can use mass transit to get tp work and play?

Or doesn't Daniel Goldstein think about these things.