Law Commons^™

The Politics Of Race, Class, And Gentrification In The Atl, Keith Jennings

Trotter Review

Methodologically, the essay uses a multidisciplinary approach to examine gentrification from a race, class, and gender perspective. Within the essay a number of the dynamics directly associated with Atlanta’s political economy and the impact those dynamics are having on issues such as affordable housing, poverty, and Black employment and underemployment are analyzed. While not a central focus of the essay, the changes taking place outside of Atlanta in several counties, as a result of the push and pull effect in the metropolitan region, are briefly discussed.

From Disinvestment To Displacement: Gentrification And Jamaica Plain’S Hyde-Jackson Squares, Jen Douglas

Trotter Review

In this essay, I offer a place-based history of socioeconomic and demographic change in Hyde Square and nearby Jackson Square (henceforth “Hyde-Jackson Squares”). I document the area’s ongoing gentrification and describe the distribution of gentrification pressures. I situate this contemporary process against the socio-spatial patterns carved out by the area’s historical rise as an industrial suburb, its struggle amid decades of disinvestment, and the community efforts that ultimately stabilized the neighborhood. In these sequential transformations is the story of how Latinos and Blacks entered, departed, and have strived to remain in the neighborhood.

“Separatist City”: The Mandela, Massachusetts (Roxbury) Movement And The Politics Of Incorporation, Self-Determination, And Community Control, 1986–1988, Zebulon V. Miletsky, Tomás González

Trotter Review

November 4, 2016, marks 30 years since the historic referendum in which close to 50,000 citizens of Boston living in or near the predominantly Black area of “Greater Roxbury” voted on whether the area should leave Boston and incorporate as a separate municipality to be named in honor of former South African president Nelson and Winnie Mandela, or remain a part of Boston. The new community, what planners called “Greater Roxbury,” would have included wards in much or all of the neighborhoods of Roxbury, Dorchester, Mattapan, Jamaica Plain, the Fenway, the South End, and what was then known as Columbia …

Community Land Trusts: A Powerful Vehicle For Development Without Displacement, May Louie

Trotter Review

In the Great Recession of 2007–2009, Boston’s communities of color were hit hard. A 2009 map of foreclosures looked like a map of the communities of color—Roxbury, Dorchester, and Mattapan. The one island of stability was a section of Roxbury called the Dudley Triangle—home to the community land trust of the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative (DSNI).

Originally established to respond to the community’s vision of “development without displacement,” the land trust model was adopted to help residents gain control of land and to use that control to prevent families from being priced out as they organized to improve their neighborhood. …

Introduction: The Gentrification Game, Barbara Lewis

Trotter Review

In real estate talk, there are only three things that matter, and they are location, location, location. The same is true in dispossession, which translates into the freeing up of location so that it can be possessed by others. Another term that has cropped up fairly recently, much in use in the crossover between the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, is gentrification, which has a benign face as well as one that is not so kindly, like the paired tragic and comic masks of classic drama.

In this issue of the Trotter Review, we explore gentrification and its alternate, dispossession, …

Communities Of Opportunity: Pursuing A Housing Policy Agenda To Achieve Equity And Opportunity In The Face Of Post-Recession Challenges, Kalima Rose, Teddy Kỳ-Nam Miller

Trotter Review

Where we live directly impacts our ability to achieve our full potential. Access to good schools, quality jobs, reliable transportation, and healthy food is fundamental to achieving communities of opportunity. Unfortunately, communities of color, and urban black communities in particular, are disproportionately residing in neighborhoods locked out of opportunity, or disproportionately burdened by housing costs —spending over half of their income on housing. In 2015, PolicyLink undertook a research project to understand the changing post-recession housing landscape, to characterize the forces that were undermining housing security for communities of color, and to characterize the policy opportunities that could address the …

Uncovering The Buried Truth In Richmond: Former Confederate Capital Tries To Memorialize Its Shameful History Of Slavery, Howard Manly

Trotter Review

Richmond Mayor Dwight C. Jones had the noblest of intentions.

With Virginia’s capital having a poverty rate of nearly 25 percent, no one blamed Jones, a child of the sixties and preacher by calling, for trying to develop prime riverfront property to generate revenue to create more jobs, better schools, and housing.

But when Jones unveiled a proposal in 2013 that included building a new baseball stadium near one of the city’s historic slave burial grounds in Shockoe Bottom, it was, by all accounts, troubling to historic preservationists and Black community activists. “Shameful” was one of the words most often …

Book Review: Desire And Disaster In New Orleans: Tourism, Race And Historical Memory By Lynnell L. Thomas, Casey Schreiber

Trotter Review

Desire and Disaster in New Orleans: Tourism, Race and Historical Memory, by Lynnell L. Thomas, challenges the racial messages embedded within dominant tourism narratives in New Orleans. From tour guides, to websites, to travel brochures, Thomas extracts and analyzes a variety of messages to document how competing representations of race—desire and disaster—are two frames through which New Orleans tourism narratives represent black culture. Thomas leads readers to question the extent to which alternative tourism narratives can be constructed to more justly address constructions of blackness.

Gentrification As Anti-Local Economic Development: The Case Of Boston, Massachusetts, James Jennings

Trotter Review

Activists and political leaders across the city of Boston are concerned that gentrification in the form of rapidly rising rents in low-income and the poorest areas are contributing to displacement of families and children. Rising home sale prices and an increasing number of development projects are feeding into this concern. There is also a growing wariness about the impact that this scenario can have on small and neighborhood-based businesses and microenterprises whose markets are represented by the kinds of households facing potential displacement. This potential side-effect suggests that gentrification could actually emerge as anti-local economic development in Boston. It can …

It’S About Time: Costs And Coverage Of Paid Family And Medical Leave In Massachusetts, Randy Albelda, Alan Clayton-Matthews

Publications from the Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy

In the United States, some, but far from all, employers offer certain forms of wage replacement when workers take a leave for medical or family reasons. In 2015, only 12% of all workers had access to paid family leave from their employers, 38% had access to short-term disability leave, and 65% had paid sick leave. Extending paid family and medical leave to all employees through a statewide program would share the costs and expand access, level the employment playing field, and reduce inequality among workers. One often-cited obstacle to providing paid family and medical leave in the United States is …

Internal Displacement In Iraq: Internally Displaced Persons And Disputed Territory, Nancy Riordan

New England Journal of Public Policy

The protracted conflict in Iraq has led to one of the highest internal displacements of people worldwide. With data from the International Organization for Migration’s Displacement Tracking Matrix and other sources, geographic information system methods were applied to investigate the quantitative and spatial characteristics of Iraq’s internally displaced persons (IDPs). Based on this analysis, significant numbers of IDPs were found to be displaced among the disputed territories of northern Iraq. The findings of this analysis, when paired with additional research, poses serious complications not only for the security of Iraq’s IDPs but also for the country. The proliferation of militias …

Statedata: The National Report On Employment Services And Outcomes, 2016, Jean Winsor, Jaimie Ciulla Timmons, John Butterworth, John Shepard, Cady Landa, Frank A. Smith, Daria Domin, Alberto Migliore, Jennifer Bose, Lydia Landim, Thinkwork! At The Institute For Community Inclusion At Umass Boston

All Institute for Community Inclusion Publications

This report provides statistics over 25 years from several national datasets that address the status of employment and economic self-sufficiency for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities. The authors use abbreviations for both intellectual disability (ID) and intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) in this report. This is because data sources vary in the specific target groups that can be described. Please refer to each chapter for the disability definition used in that chapter. We provide a comprehensive overview that describes national trends in employment for people with IDD, and the appendices provide individual state profiles with data from several sources. …

Data Note: Comparing Vr Outcomes For Individuals With And Without Intellectual Disabilities Who Receive Postsecondary Education Services, John Shepard, Frank A. Smith, Thinkwork! At The Institute For Community Inclusion At Umass Boston

Data Note Series, Institute for Community Inclusion

This Data Note explores the provision of postsecondary education services to vocational rehabilitation customers with and without intellectual disabilities who exited the VR system in FY2014.

Data Note: The Engagement Of Young Adults With Intellectual Disabilities In Vocational Rehabilitation: 2010–2014 State Trends, Alberto Migliore, Jean Winsor, Caro Narby, Thinkwork! At The Institute For Community Inclusion At Umass Boston

Data Note Series, Institute for Community Inclusion

In this Data Note, we look at the average number of young adults with intellectual disabilities (ID) who between 2010 and 2014 exited vocational rehabilitation (VR) programs in each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia.

Data Note: State Intellectual And Developmental Disability Agencies' Service Trends, Jean Winsor, Thinkwork! At The Institute For Community Inclusion At Umass Boston

Data Note Series, Institute for Community Inclusion

This Data Note summarizes findings from the FY 2014 National Survey of State Intellectual and Developmental Disability Agencies' (IDD Agencies) Day and Employment Services.