Pittsburgh community members are coming together to recognize the impacts of mass racial displacements in the Hill District and East Liberty.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Pitt is hosting a two-day symposium called \u201cRace and Displacement in Pittsburgh<\/a>\u201d for the 75th anniversary of the Lower Hill demolition and 10th anniversary of the Penn Plaza eviction. Edward Goetz, director of the Center for Urban and Regional Affairs<\/a> and a professor of urban planning at the University of Minnesota, delivered the keynote address about the history of race and urban displacement in U.S. housing policy on Thursday in the William Pitt Union.\u00a0<\/p>\n In the 1950s, the city government demolished<\/a> the Lower Hill area in the Hill District, a historically Black Pittsburgh neighborhood, to build the former Civic Arena<\/a> \u2014 which is now a parking lot<\/a>. The demolition was part of the city\u2019s urban renewal plan<\/a>. As a result, over 8,000 residents and 400 businesses in the area were forcibly displaced<\/a>.<\/p>\n In July 2015, private developer LG Realty Advisors<\/a> served eviction notices<\/a> to over 200 residents at Penn Plaza Apartments<\/a> located in East Liberty. The developers planned to renovate the apartments<\/a> into a Whole Foods.<\/p>\n Goetz opened his speech by discussing the history of racial displacement, starting with settler-colonialism<\/a> in 1692 \u2014 during which settlers forced indigenous people off their territories.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are very few things that are so quintessentially American as moving people of color off their land and out of their homes,\u201d Goetz said.<\/p>\n Goetz remarked on concepts such as redlining<\/a>, gentrification<\/a> and predatory lending<\/a>, all policies he believes are part of a recurring tradition of racial displacement in the U.S.<\/p>\n \u201cThe forced movement [and] the manipulation of settlement patterns [are] a constant and recurring tradition in the United States,\u201d Goetz said. \u201cForced displacement \u2014 especially by government action \u2014 is among the most intrusive acts that governments can engage in.\u201d<\/p>\n To address this issue, Goetz believes affordable housing should be owned by the public sector and advocates for affordable housing and rent stabilization.<\/p>\n \u201cWe need very strong tenant protections, including rent stabilization<\/a>, just cause evictions<\/a> and anti\u2013<\/a>harassment ordinances<\/a>,\u201d Goetz said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Jackie Smith, a sociology professor at Pitt and an organizer with the Human Rights City Alliance<\/a>, helped plan the event. She said her organization created the event to encourage displaced Pittsburgh residents to return to the area by advocating for the construction of more affordable housing.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re working to bring some of those residents home by building more affordable housing,\u201d Smith said, \u201cencouraging the return of people who have been pushed out who wanted to be in Pittsburgh, who grew up in Pittsburgh and have histories and lives and families here.\u00a0<\/p>\n Attendees such as Amy Barlock, a retired UPMC<\/a> clinician, found the event informative. She said she believes she was able to gain a better understanding of what her neighbors experienced while she was living in Lower Hill.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI found it enlightening to my own experience of living there and what had taken place in the dislodging of the people in my apartment,\u201d Barlock said.<\/p>\n Redlining, according to Goetz, is a systematic practice of denying financial services to buyers who live in areas with predominantly racial minorities. After learning about it in Goetz\u2019s speech, Barlock believes she may have been a victim of redlining while looking for a home.<\/p>\n \u201cWe wanted to mortgage our house, and the bank wouldn\u2019t loan us the money because it was in the \u2018wrong neighborhood,\u201d Barlock said. \u201cAnother bank said they would loan us four times the amount of money if we moved to a suburban neighborhood.\u201d<\/p>\n Joshua Devine, an economic mobility officer for the Pittsburgh Foundation<\/a>, said he found the event helpful in understanding how to support grant funding<\/a> for Pittsburgh residents facing financial barriers in purchasing a home.<\/p>\n \u201cWe help fund housing across the region as part of our strategy to support the advancement of those who are facing significant barriers to housing,\u201d Devine said. \u201c[The event was] a great way to engage with partners and understand what\u2019s happening on the ground. That insight can inform how we fund in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n Bill William, a retired systems analyst, found the event \u201cinsightful\u201d and said he wanted to help educate those around him to inspire real change in housing policy.<\/p>\n \u201cI want to educate myself, so I can take this message back to people that look like me,\u201d William said. \u201cSince I\u2019m able to speak to [white people] in their terms, I can discuss how this [racial displacement] is unjust. I believe if people know how unjust things are it may change.\u201d<\/p>\n To provide a more local understanding of the impact of racial displacement in Pittsburgh, Smith and her team at Human Rights City Alliance will be hosting a panel with Pitt faculty and local Pittsburgh community advocates on Nov. 14.<\/p>\n Smith\u2019s inspiration for the panel was to honor the voices of those who were displaced.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re making sure people remember those stories and the people that have been pushed out of the city in the name of development,\u201d Smith said.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pittsburgh community members are coming together to recognize the impacts of mass racial displacements in the Hill District…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":34106,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[10400,21283,9731,73,75,74,21284],"class_list":["post-34105","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pittsburgh","tag-east-liberty","tag-gentrification","tag-hill-district","tag-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh-headlines","tag-pittsburgh-news","tag-social-justice-symposium"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34105"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34105\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}