In this episode of Third Rail we focus on those in Central Brooklyn who are on the front line of gentrification: tenants and renters.
This past June, Governor Cuomo signed into law a sweeping new collection of rent regulations which re-set the bar for tenant protections and curtailed the power of landlords to dictate rates on rent stabilized units. This will no doubt have a profound impact on the ways in which landlords are able to set the pace of housing displacement.
Today, we’re joined by two members/allies of the Brooklyn Movement Center family who in their own ways have been enforcing the rights of tenants and fighting against harassment from landlords.
Rae Gomes is a pioneering member-leader of the Brooklyn Movement Center and the emerging Central Brooklyn Food Coop. She most recently co-founded a tenants association in her building and has since become a crusader for renter rights in Black Brooklyn.
Accompanying her is Addrana Montgomery, a staff attorney at TakeRoot Justice, formerly known as the Community Development Project at the Urban Justice Center. Addrana has been leading the effort to establish a monthly pop-up tenants’ rights legal clinic here at the Brooklyn Movement Center.
Host Mark Winston Griffith uses the top of the show to facilitate a discussion on the experiences of tenants, specifically those in small unit buildings in Central Brooklyn. Next, we get into the brave new housing regulatory world in New York and how it will effect Central Brooklynites.
And then of course, we close with that on-going call to anger, “Tell em why you’re mad.”
Intro and Outro theme Music: “City Survival” by MC K-Swift featuring TreZure Empire. Episode Music: “Fallout”, Yung Kartz Engineered by Siad “Gypsy” Reid