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michelle lewis take one what does the word gentrification mean pain loss grief the people that are coming here now are completely oblivious to what was and they don't they don't care to know about what was i've not yet found any indication that there's something positive associated for black people with gentrification and they're just tearing apart like stuff that represented our childhood stuff that was represented home for us i think when we look at the black community in relationship to gentrification it's one of those things where there's that saying if they come for me at night they'll be coming for you in the morning we have families come in every day with a 30-day notice the house has been sold the landlord doubled the rent rent and unemployment are too high in the city of poland apparently cleaning up the neighborhood meant getting rid of all the brown folks everything sells there's a value for literally everything in portland we can't raise wages fast enough when our rent is allowed to go up by unlimited amounts i was paying 825 they're asking me to pay 1200 a month displacement that's happening to people of all races is unprecedented in 2015 amid soaring home prices and an unprecedented wave of rent spikes and evictions portland was ranked as the most gentrified city in america and residents young and old black white and brown were crying out for relief from the housing crisis [Applause] hi i'm cornelius sword and i'm a gentrifier in 2002 i made a documentary entitled northeast passage the inner city and the american dream it was about home ownership gentrification and this woman nikki williams nikki was a single mom who lived her whole life in northeast portland which at the time she called a ghetto the film ended this way so as far as identification i still say let it come call it what you want let it come please let it come by 2013 nikki felt very differently about gentrification and three years later she asked me to do a sequel so here i am covering gentrification once again as the issue goes mainstream and it's not just portal for the first time in 170 years the nation's middle class and wealthy are choosing to live at the center of the city instead of as far away from it as possible and as investors rush to cash in urban communities are being torn apart why did nikki first support gentrification and what's the difference between revitalization gentrification and a housing crisis and how will these forces shape the future of american cities to answer those questions we're going to shuffle back and forth through history and talk to people of all stripes to find out what really happens when people get priced out [Music] we start our story just before i arrived in the late 1990s in a cluster of north northeast portland neighborhoods often called the albina community [Music] to many outsiders albino may have looked depressed abandoned even dangerous but to many living there it was a community unlike any other in oregon everybody in my neighborhood was black the neighbor on this side neighbor on that side across the street like everybody looked like me [Music] you just didn't see white people in north northeast portland people would turn their music up and everyone would come out on their porches and almost like have a party and we knew each other when you walk outside your front door you speak this whole thing of people not knowing their neighbors and not speaking i'm just like what is this the neighborhood would eventually become my home too my friend spencer wolf and i were both from the suburbs outside new york city you could see that gentrification was creeping into albina and in 1997 we started work on northeast passage a few months later spencer and i met nikki she lived only four blocks away we're sitting in the kitchen of my brand new home it was built by habitat for humanity i'm the youngest of 21. so i've got my street degree and i've had that for many years i have one child and i wanted her to kind of really have the chance to totally have me this is my daughter adriana social worker by day i'm not interior designer by night this is my room my mom did all that she did all the handprints i made this and i made that and the pictures and my mom just got me those while we set out to make a film about gentrification nikki and many of the people we talked to had more immediate concerns there's three houses i could think of on this block that are known red house and i see it every day lots of game on this street i am involved in neighborhood watch i am involved in that association um i am trying to make a difference but unfortunately i have been targeted because i call the police something's wrong with me you know i think that is really what kind of scares me and angers me um how this has been so normalized are you going to clean up this neighborhood single hand if i have to by calling the police nikki had broken the code of silence and that had gotten her into a lot of trouble with other people on her block when i met her she'd been harassed and threatened to the point that she was scared to go out at night i fear for my daughter's sanity you know um it's really taken a toll on her my biggest fear is someone breaking in here which i doubt it's gonna happen but if it does probably save herself because although nothing really bad has happened yet there's always the possibility that it could so yeah i'm starting to kind of worry before we go any further we should take a few steps back to the very origins of the neighborhood oregon was the only state to enter the union with a constitutional ban on blacks living and owning property in its territory the black exclusion edict wasn't repealed by voters until 1926 and throughout the early 20th century portland had less than 2 000 black residents but then within the span of just four years the black population in the region would explode at the outset of world war ii industrialist henry j kaiser located a massive shipbuilding operation in portland he recruited workers both black and white from the south during the war years portland's african-american population grew tenfold to as many as 25 000 i moved from birmingham in 1944 when i was seven years of age we lived out in a place called vanport kaiser and the government rushed to build temporary worker housing the largest such complex was vanport city and by 1943 vanport had become the country's largest public housing development there was like four major neighborhoods and there was community centers for each neighborhood there were shopping centers there was bus service there was daycare just everything but after the war almost half of the residents at vanport remained city leaders publicly shunned the area saying that it was turning into a slum after the war the attitude of the political establishment specifically mayor riley and the council was that they wanted vanport gone as soon as possible they started removing apartments they wanted to destroy vanport the columbia river was just loaded with water there was a heavy winter snows and in the early spring rings dikes broke around about four o'clock on memorial day 1948. water came cascading in about 15 feet high they literally ran for their lives up to denver avenue and in some cases formed human chains to uh to pull people out and in a matter of 45 minutes the city was flooded they lost about 13 people and there was no vancouver the library was gone the great schools were gone the police station was gone the entire structure of the city disappeared in that one afternoon but the tragic destruction of vanport gave birth to a dynamic new community as thousands of vanport evacuees began to flow into albina just north and northeast of downtown the area was originally a scandinavian irish and german neighborhood portland was segregated by the turn of the century city leaders had already slated the south end of albina as the area where the black population would be confined and by 1950 there were almost 10 000 african americans in portland the vast majority of whom lived in albino [Music] there's all kinds of fantastic things on mlk in the 50s it was called union avenue i mean there was car dealerships dairies it was a thriving street we had men's stores along russell there georgia shoe repair was there on the corner was lou's man shop who sold the clothes that we like you know you see us every now and then some yellow pants or a purple face or the shoes that turn up on the end paul's paradise club gay perry tavern i think was right there even the cotton club was right over here there weren't many empty store fronts it was a vibrant place it was busy it was a hopping place it's a wonderful place to be because you saw yourself it was all america usa but for black folks it was a heyday that would pass all too quickly [Music] by the time i got to albina it was still the center of oregon's black population like most inner city communities albina had declined since the middle of the century but crime was beginning to subside [Music] and years of disinvestment and abandonment were turning around as new residents and businesses began to move in i really didn't feel a real change until about 1995 where people were now talking i know it's bad right now but i know it ain't going to be bad 10 years from now so i'm trying to hurry up and get in while the getting is good people who were buying over here a lot of them were younger and not from here in white a white person from detroit new york chicago they'd come over here and look at our prices for some of these gorgeous homes that we had over here and say this is a bad area i mean we didn't have anywhere near enough shootings to intimidate them four bedrooms three fireplaces three bathrooms so for like 45 000. from what year 1990. i sold this house in 97 for some friends of mine 90 grand they sold for 2500 bucks that was back in 1986 i think and this house right here sold for 10 000 bucks sold this house for a 60 grand in 1991. how much do you think that house is worth if it sold today over a million nikki eventually found allies among her new neighbors and the boise neighborhood association who helped her organize crime fighting efforts on her block the meeting we're at tonight is called hope and hard work the police come faithfully homeowners renters the mayor sometimes comes and different organizations involved in trying to clean up the streets but by the late 1990s some felt that revitalization was turning into gentrification identification yeah you know that that might be happening here it is happening here you all see it a lot of um minority families and poor families that can't afford to live in this area are going by by going back to vanport you bought the house seven years ago when you moved in right uh the asking price was 79 and what was the neighborhood like back then it's called the wild wild west you know gunfire every night see two guys on either side of a car shooting at each other and they can't hit each other you know either they're never gonna get you why did you move into the neighborhood if it was it was so dangerous been expensive how much are you going to sell this one for i'm hoping 195. do you ever mourn the old the old neighborhoods lost well not at all mourning the loss of the way something was is pointless it's gonna change whether you wanted to or not everything does the crack house next door she's out of here the bride across the street she's gone we have worked very hard with the police and the community to clean this street this street never had foot patrol until we started it here ever never that's something we got there still is a lot of drugs but my mom she's doing good at taking care of that but she's doing a really good job i'm proud of my mom i've been here for a little over a year is 600 but i'm on section 8 and they cover most of the cost i would like to stay in this area because this is where i grew up but it's getting more expensive and i don't know i know if i do stay in this neighborhood it's going to be hard finding a place it's going to be really hard despite the downsides nikki believed the rising tide of newcomers would help to lift all the boats in the neighborhood i've seen the rotten ugly bottom part of the apple i'd like to see the top part the shiny red edible part i guess you could say i'd like to see that happen and i've been told changes are coming let them come let them come [Music] we released northeast passage in 2002 it sparked a lot of local debate and nikki became somewhat of a minor celebrity [Music] after the film i wound up moving to st john's a community just to the west of albina where i continued to cover gentrification as the publisher of a community newspaper but when the recession hit businesses started closing left and right i lost 50 of my advertisers in 12 months and i closed the paper in march of 2010. at that time subprime foreclosures were rampant and rents were climbing i'd been evicted without cause from two places in north portland but i still owned my house off williams avenue and eventually i moved back in i was lucky in 2006 oregon african americans and latinos were twice as likely as whites to receive subprime mortgages [Music] when the crash hit this is one of the first areas people with money hit we were paying about maybe 900 overnight my mortgage shot at close to maybe eighteen hundred dollars was it a subprime yes it was you know the best time to invest is in the down cycle well people who are wealthy they know that i just accepted reality that we're gonna have to move and then one day a realtor showed up and was like we're gonna give you guys a thousand dollars to be out of this home by xyz date we got everything cleaned up she came over gave us a thousand dollar check and that was it my home was gone during the period of time where people don't have cash if you've got cash you can have make a lot of opportunities for yourself what can we do we couldn't um i was embarrassed about it because i didn't know what to tell my kids if i'm thinking about just my street black people are moving out white people in general are moving in that being said you know my world is bigger than just my street i do a black professionals group that gets together at the pub there's you know 70 to 80 black men judges lawyers business owners you find ways to make community since the the late 90s families of color actually have a choice in where they want to live and i think prior to the 90s i don't really think people had a choice by 2013 after i moved back to albina i really noticed how much the neighborhood had changed white people were everywhere and construction projects were breaking ground all around my house new shops bike lanes and a high-end grocery store were all on their way i was working at the state's largest newspaper the oregonian and decided to do a story on what nikki thought about all the changes i live in the historic and i have to say it that way the historic mississippi avenue area same place same place but not the same place i am a full-time plus student when i first moved here the only white folks on the block were the gay couple next door it went from one white occupied household to all white except three damn i don't go down mississippi avenue just because it's so damn white and it's not just that it's white it's like this i'm afraid to talk to you look at you speak at you kind of white so when i do what on mississippi avenue i've jokingly said i feel like moses with a staff in front of me because you know the waters seem to park oh yeah my skin is my sin as usual as usual yeah there's a lot of stores and boutiques and places to shop you have lots of eateries up and down mississippi avenue we even have an ice cream shop but who the hell can afford four dollars for an ice cream cone for their kid yeah i said it and it's interesting to me because it's like a lot of these folks wouldn't step foot over here back in the day you know wouldn't step step foot over here like where were all y'all when it was time to do the foot patrol where were all y'all when it was time to get out here and and you know go toe-to-toe and face-to-face with drug dealers and gang-bangers and all of that that's what's so weird i live in this community bought like hell to make it quote-unquote livable hatever the hell that was redefined to me and now i don't even deal with it are you serious i am very grateful that they don't have on this sign a bunch of brown skinned people smiling looking like they're having the time of their life because that's one thing at least they didn't pretend and do that [ __ ] they don't even pretend to include people like me i guess what i wanted to see happen is people give a damn about the community that was there not push everybody the hell out then come in build it up and say now they can't come back i wanted people to give a [ __ ] about those of us who were there already [Music] nikki could see a day when she might leave the neighborhood not because she would lose her house but because she would lose the community she'd always called home for years minorities and low-income residents had been moving out to the fringes of the city particularly east portland wages and federal housing subsidies called section 8 vouchers hadn't kept up with rising rents we have families come in every day with a 30-day notice the house has been sold the landlord doubled the rent or something like that that's one of the questions one of the amazing where where where are the black people at where are my folks at the southeast area where everyone has been pushed into i don't want to live out there at all oh we're out here in the numbers 181st 162nd we're in gresham we're in fairview we're in troutdale there's even less out there that's like oriented for people of color felony flats the new hood wild hundreds are terms that i've heard the only place that i could find that i could afford on my section 8 voucher was out on 162nd the place that we lived in was very very nice but the neighbors weren't really um welcome they'll be the first to tell you i don't feel welcome in this neighborhood but i'm just going to bear with it it's not uncommon that you hear about the klan pieces of i want to say flyers of them recruiting and looking for members and how the neighborhood is being run over with immigrants and [ __ ] displacement wasn't new for albino and while the destruction of vanport might have been an act of god other periods of displacement were acts of men following the war it was almost impossible for african americans to live outside of albino the portland reality board required that agents only sell blacks homes inside the district while builders created rules for bidding black ownership in their developments [Music] my dad mom found the house we got approved through the bank and all the whole thing but the neighborhood association had this white only room my mom especially was just crying and crying and crying about the fact that she really wanted that house but they wouldn't sell it to us but even buying a home in albino wasn't easy in the 1930s the federal government and the banking industry had divided all communities in america into four color-coded sections outlining the areas they would not lend to in red the term redlining became a catchphrase for any time banks were unwilling to lend to people and in places viewed as undesirable and as the white population moved out and banks cut off the flow of money properties withered and turned into what city officials would later call blight cities across the country were losing population to the suburbs and portland was among them you go back to the early 60s beaverton had 7 000 people and you get to you know the 1970s 1980s it was several times that in 1958 voters created the portland development commission an entity designed to identify and remove urban blight through revitalization projects known as urban renewal no neighborhood was hit harder by urban renewal than albina in 1956 voters approved the construction of memorial coliseum a project that leveled 476 homes in 1964 another 400 residents were displaced by the construction of interstate 5. as portland moved deeper into the civil rights era riots erupted in albina in 1967 and again in 1969 following the death of reverend martin luther king jr after dr king was killed along with the riot whites stopped coming because the blacks were there had a black stop going because the whites were there and here i'm standing here with this business with no business just a few customers each night [Music] as businesses died off the pdc targeted williams avenue for yet another urban renewal project under the plan the core of the neighborhood would be demolished and replaced with facilities for a manual hospital and beginning in 1971 the city and emanuel condemned and demolished nearly 300 properties on 22 blocks through the powers of eminent domain the city would come in and place a condemned sticker on it within six months they would have it dimmed out and it ain't where can we negotiate this it's you take it or leave it because if if you don't take it we're just going to take it despite all this in 1973 federal money for the hospital's expansion fell through and emmanuel's plans were put on indefinite hold the pharmacy was gone dry cleaners everything in that block the whole block is still empty and that was in 1970 and they tore down in less than 20 years this handful of projects had demolished over 1100 homes in the core of black albino [Music] portland as a whole began to decline in the 1970s and by the 80s albina in particular had fallen into the depths of the drug war got crips and bloods rolling up i-5 you know all the way from compton and you know they see some easy pickings up here we dealt with the heroin and and all of those things for a number of years and then along comes crack 9th avenue from alberta to killingsworth was called crack alley right there in this street right here in this intersection which is jared and mallory i can think of at least six shootings since i bought this house in 1989 at least six people were sleeping in their bathtubs and in the basement because of the bullets and stuff flying around we tried to address it but it was one of those things that was pretty overwhelming at the time people just wanted to get out and just give me five thousand dollars the house is yours the property values were so diminished landlords simply walked away from them rather than pay the back taxes and be saddled with a property that wasn't worth it [Music] the city began new revitalization efforts designed to avoid the mass demolitions of past decades portland focused public dollars on small-scale redevelopments new transit systems and services that benefited single-family homeowners and small businesses [Music] and portland began to attract residents back from the suburbs that's when i showed up [Music] after interviewing gentrifiers for a year i thought maybe i should buy a house as well my daughter was two and we had already lived in three different places [Music] so i bought a house just off williams avenue [Music] with down payment help from my parents the truth is i didn't really want to live in albina but it was what i could afford i was 26 fixing up a house full of roommates kids and dogs and to be honest it was a bit of a dream come true for me the city continued revitalization efforts knowing gentrification was coming in 2000 the pdc drew up an urban renewal district for a new light rail system that would run along the western edge of albina that was the greatest concern regularly voiced by the community members is displacement the city forecasted displacement and so they said okay we forecast that this much displacement is going to occur to counter that we're going to create units of affordable housing priority will go to existing residents i think more good has been achieved than than damage if we're successful in bringing an area back to life revitalizing it bringing more investment it also does create a downside and that an area becomes more desirable people who can't afford their current rents now face an even deeper hole in trying to meet their basic needs if the city had built the number of affordable units they promised that would have prevented the mass displacement it would have been enough in our film northeast passage we'd seen what happened when the boise neighborhood adopted a policy to oppose all subsidized rentals in its area we don't support anymore rental housing that is subsidized for people whose incomes are lower than 60 percent of median family income our perception was is that there was sufficient low income housing to handle our needs i want to go on record saying that the land use policy sounds quite racist and i think it should be revisited i established that it boils down to a racial issue the very same houses the flights can come into the community and get african african-americans are redlining can't get the loans from the banks one question you brought up earlier about being against affordable housing most neighborhood associations were flat out against it big mistake big mistake the policy was based on known facts at the time you can only make decisions based on your reality at a time there's a lot of things i would do different if i had a crystal ball back then it could see today the problem is you don't have a crystal [Music] ball [Music] in 2015 i was doing pretty well for myself i had left the oregonian and was in charge of a small online news startup my daughter was grown and off to school and i was single again and started going to brew pubs food carts and on naked bike rides i even found myself hanging out on williams avenue and shopping at new seasons that's when nikki got in touch with me she said the changes in the neighborhood had become unbearable she was leaving oregon forever and she wanted me to do a sequel i need to be someplace where there's enough brown folk that i can feel supported and empowered and i don't have that here when i used to look out my door i could at least see people who look like me even if they were cussing me out and calling me whatever they still looked like me and i could connect on that level i don't even have that anymore i don't even have that [Music] are you looking forward to selling the house [Music] i'm looking forward to getting the hell out of portland oregon so i guess yeah i'm looking forward to selling the house and why are you looking forward to getting out of portland it is so flooring now it's just and i feel like an alien visiting a strange place the black community has been obliterated you know i mean growing up being born and raised in portland oregon there was a certain kind of um yes there's always been a racist state but it was a different kind of white that was here was it in your face hey how you doing look you in the eye type of thing now it's this passive aggressive cowardly i can't even explain it [Music] nikki was moving in a few months and that man i had a lot to do i set up an office launched a kickstarter campaign and started interviewing people in my living room but nikki wasn't the only one i wanted to catch up with my name is abrianna williams i go by brenow and i just turned 27 on the 14th of april i have a lot of fun memories i do playing in the neighborhood the carefree of being a child the comfort of the community the closeness that we had even though there was chaos there that was home move yep why she off in the view they want to see her i graduated from britain high school 2006. i moved to california i had my son out there and so my mom became a grandma i was almost 20 years old i can't imagine this i'm going to cry i can't imagine life without my son i draw strength from him so much he's bright he's caring he's really sincere he he has a very close bond with my mother and he can talk more with her about things but it was like that with my grandma i just love his little life his name is samir jasmar williams he's a first grader at boise elementary brie lived in a subsidized apartment close to her mother and her black majority neighborhood school i want my son to be proud of who he is and knowing that he's going at school with other black kids and then he's not a unique case [Music] but many black parents made the long journey each day from east portland to the inner city in order to keep their kids at black majority schools our day probably started around 5 30 getting up getting everyone together making breakfast and then getting out the door and everybody dropped off to school [Music] i put my son in a school out in east portland and he was assaulted by a teacher and from then on i just said my my children won't go to these schools that were predominantly white and so i made sure that my my kids got into king's school there was a sense of community in that school for our children and history and my son thrived there [Music] [Music] watch out for the candle don't poke yourself in my eyes me [Music] am i profiting from what's going on you bet but i look at this the way i look at racism i didn't create it it is not my burden to cure it all by my damn self these mirrors are going to when you have to pick and choose where you're going to live or you're going to feed your family that's a stress on a person [ __ ] disappear [Music] and see this is the part when i hear the folks the new folks moving in and oh blah blah blah blah blah and it's like you're all here because you get beer every 10 feet and you know you can go to new seasons and buy a 15 organic apple but it's like this is real heartbreak [Music] the anger that i have for the changes that's come this community and i feel it every day is not good that's not good that's not something i want to feel i want to you're supposed to accept change and embrace it even if it is not necessarily wanted i just never thought my community would look like this and it's not even my community anymore i can't say that like i don't know what this is this is where i live but it's not home [Music] and my son feels it when i take him to parks like i took him to lower hurst and the little boys won't play with him and it's gross to me you know he's like they won't play with me he'll ask them nicely and i'll tell him don't beg anyone to play with you i could not say that i expected this i did not think it would become so bad that my mom would be leaving he said i really don't care if it was considered a ghetto i take that over this any day [Music] since the recession portland had become a fad its revitalized neighborhoods and quirky northwest lifestyle had caught on with the nation everything sells there's a value for literally everything in inner north and northeast portland if it doesn't sell to a homeowner then it sells to a developer who's going to tear it down and redevelop it i surveyed the living room agents last year and forty percent of all the first time home buyers receive gift funds home buyers that do not have access to gift funds from parents from an inheritance are at a huge disadvantage gentrification in albina had merged with a city-wide real estate bubble that was bringing in speculators from all over the country [Music] and as home prices climbed and vacancy rates stagnated rents went through the roof what we started hearing was significantly different than we heard in previous years entire buildings 150 increases in 30 days seniors who are not taking half of their medications people having to cut their food budgets in half and not eating as often in the state of oregon 40 of people are now renters 49 of people in portland and we also know that approximately half of those people are rent burdened meaning they spend more than 30 percent of their income on their rent so we're seeing out-of-state developers are homegrown developers investors buying up buildings and then flipping them and clearing out the building this widespread displacement that's happening to people of all races of all backgrounds is unprecedented but many portlanders decided they would not take the housing crisis lying down if you are working class poor lower middle class there are very few neighborhoods that you can afford to live in this city and if you do an overlay around people of color you can forget it give yourselves a cheer for being here and we'll head on up you're losing the heart of the city when you start displacing people like me ranked as fourth in the nation for the rate at which rents are rising people are losing their housing faster than we can keep up all sides agreed that home pric s were rising faster than wages a growing national issue [Music] rent and unemployment are too high in the city of poland when you compare particularly portland with other similar size and demographic type cities our incomes versus housing prices are way out of whack we demand that governor king brown declare a housing state of emergency [Applause] oregon right now is a very landlord-friendly state rent has got to go the people want rent control there's a statewide ban on rent control i was paying 825 dollars they're asking me to pay 1200 a month and there is no protection right now a clause in landlord-tenant law that allows landlords to kick people out for no reason you don't have to register a rental property so we don't even know how many rental properties exist in the city of portland this is we are standing in solidarity with these cabins you have casually treated these tenants like atms like piggy banks to be cracked with callous disregard to the impact it will have on their family [Music] they want to make a statement to anybody [Music] doesn't surprise me at all we know that we know that this is an uphill battle [Music] have you ever been to texas i've never been to texas but i've been to florida a few times so we'll see so why texas why did you choose texas why not texas why not and i did my research right now dallas is the number one place to find a husband if you're a single black woman so holla [Laughter] there's always a method to my madness honey always [Music] you listen to your teacher and you listen to mommy okay all right all right mom there love you love you too call me i'll call you i probably won't still be in oregon i definitely don't want my son especially the route that portland is going i definitely don't want him to grow up here this is not home anymore my carry-on just have a seat gate number nine all right i'm at a point in my life where i need to be around more brown folk i don't kid myself in the believing because they look like me i'm going to fall in love and we're going to have tea and kool-aid every tuesday but i have begun to feel so isolated and so alienated here in portland that i cannot call this living this is existing there has to be more to my life than this don't you start crying don't you dare or not don't you dare because you know it's for the better [Music] while nikki was getting ready to leave she granted me one more interview and came to my house off williams avenue at 4am she talked about a lot of things about the last matriarch of the block who'd recently died about the racist cops she'd worked with while studying the criminal justice system and a better sister who was strangled to death in front of her own children back in the 1980s what's remarkable is that for nikki no matter how bad the neighborhood had been at times there was always a safe place for her there between the dangers of the street and the hostility of a white majority culture and now that place was gone but not just for her as happy as i was when my grandson was born on top of that wonderful joy was a fear gripping my heart oh my god she had a black boy a dark-skinned little boy the fact that i was afraid for him at a time when all i should have felt was joy and love is a reality check that i have to deal with so i want my grandson to go and be in a community and be around people who look like him who embrace him who look him in the eye and acknowledge that he exists [Music] one of the things my grandson would always say she would always say grandma why are the people here so mean they're just so mean to me grandpa [Music] and i don't think i should be sitting here in tears in the year 2015 [Music] when all i want for him is something that we claim to be doing already it's ridiculous it's just [ __ ] [Music] ridiculous [Music] nikki had decided to flee gentrification but others had decided to fight in november of 2013 the pdc agreed to sell a publicly owned lot in the heart of albina to a california developer at a 2.4 million discount the site would become a major retail center anchored by a trader joe's grocery store activists railed against the project claiming it was nothing more than subsidized gentrification the community was saying that they're sick and tired of having the pdc and the city continue to treat us as if we're stupid they demand it city your policies has led to the mass displacement of african americans out of this community it's time that you do something about it it actually ended up going national so it was big and quite controversial trader joe's withdrew from the project and the city invested an additional 20 million dollars into affordable housing projects in albina while gentrification grew into the city's top priority lack of affordable housing is the greatest presence now facing our cities the fact that a number of folks had courage enough to stand up and to push back it made all of the difference in the world the question is can we continue the momentum people shouldn't accept the little bit as if since the ball is moving that that's somehow good enough no we need to keep the pressure on and i think that was a place where the pressure got started and uh it's been continuing on thus far but again i hope folks can keep up the energy in the fall of 2015 portland rolled out a right to return policy that gave former albino residents preference when applying for subsidized housing in north northeast portland rachel hall moved back to the boise neighborhood and into a rental house owned by the non-profit pcri they ended up calling me and telling me that they actually had a place for me i about fell off my chair we were in a home again my youngest kid walk to school which makes it really nice they can go to friend's house that is just you know around the corner and my kids have never had that opportunity to do that michelle lewis left east portland and moved into a market rate rental house just outside her old neighborhood [Music] [Applause] hi welcome welcome to texas feels heavenly actually staying in an apartment again um it's a one bedroom it's big enough for me now that i have left portland and got away from portland i tell people i feel like i'm breathing oxygen for the first time in my life and that says something that says something i feel like a totally different person out here i feel like me [Music] i see mesquite the way the californians must have felt when they first came to oregon in portland cause when i look at a lot of these acres where there's tons of just acreage you know i can see a developer looking at that or someone with the means and saying oh my goodness there's nothing but potential out here it really has made me see maybe the other side of the gentrification yes i think it has horrible and devastating consequences absolutely i've lived it okay but i can see where someone can look at something and see opportunity absolutely i can see that now i can't co-sign it but i can see it [Music] i mean i think that the opportunities are large but everyone says like texas is a great place to be there's a lot of opportunity especially for people of color it's more for him the people that look like him out there i might trick out there because i know samir will go crazy but and i'll miss her i think a lot of the discussion is around this idea that if you know you can just get people colored back into north northeast portland then everything will be fine where they live is not the issue how are they doing is the issue for those of us who choose to return what does that look like for us how do we prevent this from happening again just because you have gentrification doesn't mean you don't have to have to have some quality affordable housing that's kind of what we learned here it's not too late to make the next gentrification cycle better and if we don't it'll be a shame at the heart of it is how do we control costs that go up in an environment where people see portland as an investment opportunity i think that the possibilities that we have in front of us it could be great and i would rather look at it that way than wave the white flag and say it's over we're done they won and go home the american dream was once to live in the suburbs but tastes have changed gentrification is full of contradictions nikki showed how you could have a house and still lose a home and while so many can get displaced others can get a chance to chase a dream and we'll have to work together if we're going to build a world where everyone has some real choice over where they can live and it makes me think of something nikki said to brie way back in 1999 and living in the hood is an option and not a life sentence you'll thank me [Music] this feels like home i've talked to people who talked about when they went someplace the minute they got there they knew this is it i'm home the minute i got here it was like oh my goodness the life that i've always seen but didn't know how to get to didn't know how to get to that place i think i'm definitely headed there so i guess i am my american dream and i'm happy to realize it [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] you