Category Archives: Social health

Practicing real change for development in Baltimore’s Oldtown?

The press release below from Change4Real, the grassroots organization working on rebuilding Oldtown for the past years, suggests there might be real change in how the next big development happens in Baltimore. We remain hopeful but realize that change does not happen without pushing the powerful to share their wealth. Are we ready to have a more equitable process and outcome in Oldtown, than the public exploitation that happened in Port Covington, Harbor Point, Johns Hopkins Biotech Park?

_____________________________________________________________________________

1432 May Court
Baltimore, MD 21231
[email protected]

Released: Friday, October 7, 2016
Contact: John Morris – (443) 838-7193

City Planning Commission Updates Oldtown Redevelopment Plan to Recognize Change4Real

On Thursday afternoon, October 6, 2016, the Baltimore City Planning Commission unanimously approved an update to the Oldtown Redevelopment Plan adopted in May 2010. The approved update addresses changes to the community proposed as part of the response by the developers engaged in negotiation with the Housing Authority of Baltimore City (“HABC”) and the Baltimore Development Corporation (“BDC”) to the Request for Proposals (“RFP”). The current RFP concerns redevelopment Oldtown Mall and Somerset Homes.

In addition, the Planning Commission reaffirmed the Human and Economic Development recommendations of the 2010 Redevelopment Plan by recognizing the emergence of Change4Real Development Corporation as a community-based organizing presence since 2010 and its commitment and specific plans to promote the development of Oldtown’s human capital.

In May 2010, the Planning Commission approved a redevelopment plan for the Oldtown community comprising an area of East Baltimore located south of Madison Street, West of Broadway, east of the Jones Falls Expressway, and north of Fayette Street. After more than 2 ½ years of working through a plan for the revitalization of a community that the plan itself acknowledged to be “still dominated by public housing,” the Planning Commission adopted a plan intended “to create a community in which the existing residents can thrive within the ‘mixed income’ environment.” Working to address the concerns and vision of local individual stakeholders, churches, and community-based institutions, like Sojourner-Douglass College, organized as the Chang4Real Coalition, the planners came to understand a critical reality for any redevelopment in Oldtown – “the development of human capital must be as much a priority as the development of vacant land.” As a result, the plan joined with the planning of new construction comprehensive recommendations for human and economic development.

Since the adoption of the 2010 Redevelopment Plan, a number of new circumstances necessitated an update of the 2010 document. The development rights for the area, places with one real estate developer ultimately lapsed before that developer could undertake any of the planned developments. To promote new development in the community, BDC and HABC combined the land each controlled respectively in the lower Oldtown Mall and the then vacant site of the former Somerset Homes, to expand opportunities for development. In April 2014, BDC and HABC issued a RFP to develop the combined site to spur revitalization of the community. The consideration of the submitted proposals resulted in exclusive negotiation with a group of developers that included the Beatty Development Group, the Henson Development Company, and Commercial Development, Inc., and Mission First Housing Development Group.

On March 30, 2016, the new developers submitted a clarification of its 2014 proposal, identifying, in general terms, proposed uses of the land not included in the 2010 Redevelopment Plan. In addition to the new construction proposed by the developers, changed circumstances since 2010 had also affected the comprehensive recommendations of the 2010 Redevelopment Plan for Human and Economic Development.

In September 2012, the local stakeholders and community-based planning group at the center of the Change4Real Coalition formally chartered the Change4Real Community Corporation as a not-for-profit membership entity under Maryland Law. Change4Real was designed to contain, organize, coordinate, and mobilize the multitude of local stakeholders so that together they can form a working partnership with any governmental, philanthropic, or corporate actor in the transformation of their own community. Since its formation, Change4Real has organized about 175 members, with plans to expand the membership significantly. Effective June 26, 2016, Change4Real secured its IRS Section 501(c) (3) status as a tax-exempt corporation.

In the summer of 2014, Change4Real refined its human and economic vision informing the 2010 Redevelopment Plan to design The Promissorium™ as a platform for optimizing and monetizing the social capital embodied by the 16,000 to potentially more than 20,000 local stakeholders associated with the Oldtown footprint variously as residents, workers, students, alumni, worshipers, and others identifying themselves with this geographic area.

Key elements of The Promissorium™ consist of
(1) Change4Real Community Corporation – organizing the people to “organize the pennies” – the small sums of money these stakeholders may control that aggregated exceed more than $141 million in annual income (2012 Dollars)
(2) WiFi connection to create a seamless communication network where communication becomes a community asset
(3) Database of local stakeholder resources, an electronic archive of needs and skills to provide the basis for an economy of human exchange to be managed for and to benefit the local stakeholders
(4) New work systems based upon an entrepreneurial framework of micro-enterprises where people can own and market their own capacity for their own benefit, at their own articulated value and
(5) A financial system customized to serve a micro-enterprise economy, to facilitate the purposeful “organizing of pennies” to finance the enterprise aspirations of the poor.

Change4Real is now part of a Human Development Team, including Ingoma Foundation and REDDOVE Partners LLC, working with the new developers since 2014 to build an infrastructure enabling local resident and existing non-resident stakeholders in the Oldtown Community to participate in the development and in the prosperity to result from the development on terms satisfying to the existing stakeholders. The Human Development Team will work to connect local residents to employment opportunities associated with the construction, provide support for the development of housing affordable to a range of existing residents so as to allow as many residents as possible to remain within the greater Oldtown footprint to add their unique value to the development, and to create a range of entrepreneurial opportunities for local residents, including a small business incubator.

Change4Real is constituted to remain in the community long-term and to assure the stability of that community as a mixed income community where all stakeholders can remain and prosper long after the construction has been completed.

On October 6, 2016, by unanimous vote, the Planning Commission adopted an update to the 2010 Redevelopment Plan that included the above additions to the earlier human and economic recommendations set forth by the Plan.

For more Information:
Check out Change4Real on Facebook

__________________________________________________________________________

#Blackmindsmatter: Join Baltimore’s Black Mental Health Alliance

for another exciting and critical step on the path toward making our city whole!

September 24, 2015
6-830 pm

Public health and community rebuilding, healing

Examining the effect of public health through the lens of environmental factors, mental health, and healing in our community: today on the Marc Steiner Show WEAA 88.9 FM in Baltimore. The host Dr. Kaye Wise Whitehead and guests, Dr. Martha Wharton, Dr. Marisela Gomez, Dr. Rita Turner explore the interconnections of lead poisoning in our abandoned and low income communities of color, the reasons for these conditions and the other systematic causes of health, and the spiritual and body depletion. Solutions are presented.
Podcast here:

Courtesy Baltimore Neighborhood Indicator Alliance

Resources pertaining to these topics:

July 21st, 2pm Eastern time. First in a series of webinars on “The Impact of Racism on the Health and Wellbeing of the Nation” with Shiriki Kumanyika, PhD, MPH, and Camara P. Jones, MD, MPH, PhD APHA link

July 23rd, 6pm. Call to Action by Baltimore’s Black Mental Health Alliance “Baltimore Rising: Summoning the Village” Join Dr. Mindy Fullilove for causes, conditions, and solutions. Carter Memorial Church of God in Christ Church. 13 S. Poppleton. 21201 Email for information [email protected]

Office of Environmental Justice (of the Environmental Protection Agency) A site that provides information on what is happening in your community in regard environmental justice screening: Environmental Justice Screen; BLog reference

Resources on environmental pollution and health outcomes in neighborhoods:environment and health

Spiritual healing and social justice: Spirit and healing

Social, environmental, economic and health impact assessments are critical tools to determine the effect of rebuilding communities, on existing community.
Environmental impact assessment
Health Impact Assessments
Social Impact Assessment
Economic Impact Assessment

NAACP Environmental and Climate Justice Initiative NAACP

The role of hyperprofit-making on expulsion of people from land. Expulsion and hyperprofits

Role of public health institutions in public health justice

PDF of slides from talk at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health.
SPH2015march.2
__________________________________

…In these times of historical and current accounting of the effect of anchor institutions in community, at home and abroad, how do we speak truth to power and forge new alliances toward justice? As the field of public health grapples with the social, political, and economic determinants of health, how has a powerful institution like JHU been influential in determining neighborhood health in East Baltimore? Has the development of the institution (and others like it) contributed to the growing wealth and health gap in East Baltimore (and elsewhere)?

Come join us for a discussion with Dr. Marisela Gomez this Wednesday, April 1st at 12pm in Room E6159 for a challenging discussion critical to the past, present, and future of health equity in Baltimore and beyond.

The history of prestigious institutions and their power to exploit those most vulnerable to grow power is vast. To be truthful participants in changing this history we must account for this history and repair it. Transparency begins to hold accountable the past transgressions and find solutions beyond what our fragile human nature has succumbed to thus far. Inequitable health outcomes, arrest rates, educational achievement, income and housing value are symptoms of inequitable communities, of power and privilege. Bridging within and across all our systems-community and economic development, education, criminal, housing, recreation- of society is a large task. How do we forge a path towards equity, while assuring everyone is at the table, and contributing?

Establishing values of inclusivity, accountability, transparency,and reflection/reflexivity in all processes is important. These values must infuse and be embedded in the tools of planning/policy development, practice/praxis, evaluation, public relations/media. And most, most importantly, WE THE PEOPLE, must be involved in all steps of the process toward justice…

_______________

If interested in any slides of presentation, send a contact.

Contemplating peaceful and skillful means to justice,
Marisela

Connecting our struggles across identity politics: a powerful force for justice

Broad-based political organizing

While only 3 months into the Western year of 2015, we have experienced more discussion of the reality of anti-blackness in America than the entire year of 2014. For that matter, 2013 as well. The new media engagement and willingness to report on racism suggests a couple of things: they finally “get it” or there are enough folks standing up and testifying to racism openly. It is unlikely, though wishful, that the media has experienced an abrupt period of enlightenment. We are hearing more about anti-blackness because of the heightened attention of the epidemic of police brutality after the Trayvon Martin case and more recently Michael Brown and the #BlackLivesMatter movement.(1) The movement immediately offered a broad platform which galvanized support from different segregated identity politics: police brutality, criminalization and discrimination of women and children, poverty, community dis-investment, lesbian/gay/bi-sexual/transgendered rights, immigrant rights. The recent outcry from several colleges on black student isolation/segregation is the most recent witnessing of the individual and institutional anti-blackness legacy in the US. But the attention to a culture of anti-blackness is broader and deeper than we may realize: the conservative bastion of medicine in America, the New England Journal of Medicine, published a commentary on “Black lives matter”; faculty members at academic institutions are speaking out about their institutional evidence of anti-blackness; pro-black equity speakers are highlighting at various universities across the US; health departments are documenting the effects of racism and poverty as factors detrimental to health equities. This broad net of protest against the dehumanizing ways society has treated black people and other marginalized communities witnesses-state sanctioned violence, the chronic dis-investment and segregation, the anti-blackness of America. Through policy and practice anti-blackness has enforced segregation and inequity which continues today. The #BlackLivesMatter campaign, formed by three women, invite a coalition of historically oppressed populations to uplift the struggle of each other to build a stronger network of support for each struggle.

Another broad-based social movement has been growing in North Carolina since 2006, increasing public protests after the Republican take-over of the legislature in 2013: Forward Together Movement/Historic Thousands on Jones Street (HToJ). (2) Their platform includes: high-quality public education, living wages, healthcare for all, racial justice, voting rights, affordable higher education, fairness for state contracting, affordable housing, criminal justice reform, environmental justice, collective bargaining and worker safety, immigrants’ rights, a new civil rights act, and bringing the troops home. Their focus has been to challenge and change the state legislative and executive body and political machinery which recently passed legislation inhibiting voter rights and slashing of public funding for social, educational, and health programs. Their movement has spread to Georgia, South Carolina. Tennessee, and Missouri and has impacted the legislation and voting turnout. Consisting of more than 150 coalition partners they continue to stage protests called Moral Mondays at the state assembly in North Carolina.

Identity politics, their connections, and why

These broad-based coalitions emphasize the interconnectedness of identity politics: injustice and oppression mediated through those with power against those without. Communities are segregated by race, income, education, housing, employability and access to recreational and transportation resources. The chicken and the egg argument can be used to describe the segregation of communities of color and its resultant economic segregation. Cities continue to gentrify and segregate by housing cost and education. (3) Here in Baltimore we rank 13th out of 50 large cities in gentrification and the resultant segregation between those with low and higher incomes; Washington, DC took a stunning 3rd place. Even though we see the direct negative outcome on funding for public education from recent public subsidies to wealthy developers who invite more racial and economic segregation, our local and state governments continue to directly and indirectly discriminate against the marginalized. These neoliberal practices of community development: policies and practices which grow the gap between the rich and the poor, drive development in the US and beyond leading to greater segregation. As reported by The Atlantic’s CityLab recently “It is not just that the economic divide in America has grown wider; it’s that the rich and poor effectively occupy different worlds, even when they live in the same cities and metros…Race is a significant factor. Economic segregation is positively associated with the share of population that is black, Latino, or Asian, and negatively associated with the shares of white residents.” (4,5)

The growth in income inequality and the resultant segregation over the last 10 years has raised awareness for some, but most are still asleep to the causes and effects. Scientific American recently commented on the reason for this “dream-like” state that Americans are in: “At the core of the American Dream is the belief that anyone who works hard can move up economically regardless of his or her social circumstances…Sure enough, people think that moving up is significantly more likely than it is in reality…..By overemphasizing individual mobility, we ignore important social determinants of success like family inheritance, social connections, and structural discrimination…We may not want to believe it, but the United States is now the most unequal of all Western nations. To make matters worse, America has considerably less social mobility than Canada and Europe.” (6)

In the 21st century, we continue to live the myth of meritocracy, that we are equally rewarded for our hard work, there is a level playing field that values each person and community similarly. One glaring example of this is the difference in housing value in black and white neighborhoods. The Brookings Institute published a comparison of wealth in white and black neighborhoods showing “wealthy minority neighborhoods had less home value per dollar of income than wealthy white neighborhoods”…“poor white neighborhoods had more home value per income than poor minority neighborhoods.” Of the 100 metropolitan areas studied, even when homeowners had similar incomes, black-owned homes were valued at 18% less than white-owned homes. In effect, the higher the percentage of blacks in a neighborhood, the less a home is worth. This correlation begins when there is greater than 10% of black residents in a neighborhood. (7) Another example of race-based development and housing value is evident by public and private investments targeted to communities which are not majority black (less than 40%) as documented in a recent study by Harvard researchers. (8) This study confirms previous studies on race-based discriminatory community development practices. Development of areas with majority residents of color do occur. However, the displacement of the existing residents and racial gentrification usually result in the neighborhood achieving a majority white status. These practices are well documented through urban renewal in the 1950’s and subsequent government housing programs like HOPE VI and Promise Zones. The 1950‘s and current Johns Hopkins Medical Campus expansion in Baltimore into almost 150 acres are examples of mass removal of more than 1500 black families using eminent domain and tax subsidies as public support. The re-population with a different race and class was the intention of both projects, further displacing low income and black residents for majority middle and market rate residents.

Power of collective resistance

Indeed the marginalization of various political identity communities do not occur in a vacuum, separate from each other. The #BlackLivesMatter and Forward Together movements remind us that the legacy of state-sanctioned violence in all its forms continue to segregate and penalize the less powerful residents of our society. A higher percentage of black-descendant people are poor and live in communities disinvested of healthy foods, competent schools and health facilities with salaries to attract competent staff, healthy environments, safe and sanitary homes, and recreational centers. Low income people of all races/ethnicities are living in similarly disinvested communities. Low income people are employed in high-turnover jobs with little job security, career opportunity, living wages and paid sick leave or time off. The criminalization of people living in low income communities far surpass those living in moderate and higher income communities. The oppression of women, those with disabilities, and sexual minorities occur across all social and economic systems. The power of coalitions to connect across the commonality of discrimination and oppression is great. When each struggle is aware and directly and indirectly support the struggle of another, there is a stronger force moving forward against all oppressive norms and practices. From state-sanctioned segregated and disinvested communities, to disinvested schools, recreation centers, public and social services, health services, to mass incarceration, the thread is a systematic violence against people deemed inferior, of diminished worth. Broad-based movements can offer a platform for various local and national issue-specific or identity political movements to connect and coalesce. Then each small act of daily individual resistance becomes the foundation for building resistance and organizational power across multiple issues; individual organizations/movements collect together to build larger networks of resistance connecting all vulnerable and historically and currently oppressed groups. This type of network of resistance reinforces resilience – I am my sister’s keeper and she is mine. This network of resistance is necessary to resist and change the network of violence currently enforced against all our marginalized communities.

1. #BlackLivesMatter

2. Forward Together Movement, North Carolina

3. Governing. Gentrification

4. The Atlantic.City Lab. Economic segregation

5. New York Times. Income inequality is bad for your health

6. Brookings Institute. Segregation and housing value

7. Scientific American. The myth of the American Dream

8. Jackelyn Hwanga and Robert J. Sampsona. Divergent Pathways of Gentrification: Racial
Inequality and the Social Order of Renewal in Chicago Neighborhoods. American Sociological Review 2014, 79(4) 726–751

Invitation to submit an abstract on Community Rebuilding to the Socialist Caucus of the American Public Health Association

Please consider submitting an abstract for a special session(s) of the Socialist Caucus of the American Public Health Association’s annual meeting in October 2015.

Session Title:

Moving toward equitable community rebuilding:
Combatting neoliberal, racist, and classist ideals and practices

Although neighborhood-level factors are understood to affect public health, the field lacks a robust conversation on how the processes of community (re)building and community (re)development impacts health within the contexts of global capitalism and neoliberal policies. As community development initiatives continue to sweep across cities worldwide, with goals of improving safety, decreasing poverty, and increasing quality of life, careful attention must be given to ascertaining whether the benefits from such projects are distributed in an equitable manner, and how community residents, especially traditionally marginalized and vulnerable groups, are involved in the process. This section aims to foster dialogue on these topics and exchange ideas among an interdisciplinary group of professionals from diverse geographic regions in the US and internationally. We invite abstracts that focus on the practice and research of community rebuilding and community redevelopment within the frameworks of racism, classism and capitalism. Abstracts that showcase examples where healthy communities are established through community-driven strategies, including community organizing and activism are encouraged. Community based participatory research, and studies that are informed by, or include, community narratives are also preferred. Specific topics for consideration include, but are not limited to, uneven/territorial/economic development, gentrification, creative destruction, income/wealth inequality, environmental justice, residential segregation, land exploitation, capital accumulation. We encourage scholars and practitioners from the fields of sociology, urban planning, community development, public health, geography, political science, law, education, and environmental science to submit abstracts. Preference will be given for presentations which include a community presenter or co-presenter.

Deadline for submission: February 12, 2015

When submitting through the APHA website here are some guidelines to assure your abstract finds the session:

1. The Socialist Caucus link:
Socialist caucus link:

2. Choose the following topic:
The Impact of Global Capitalism on Health, Health Care and the Environment

3. In the title section write the title of the abstract you are submitting and in “Comments to organizers” box on the submission form (in ‘part 2- Title’) write the title of the session Moving toward equitable community rebuilding:
Combatting neoliberal, racist, and classist ideals and practices.

Link for meeting details on conference:
Meting details

Link for detailed instructions for submitting an abstract:
Detailed instructions for abstract submission

A minimal number of scholarships for registration for the conference will be available for low-income community-based presenters!

Deadline for submission: February 12, 2015

Contact Marisela Gomez at [email protected] for questions.

Social health, neoliberalism, and gentrification

What is meant by social health? And what does neoliberalism and gentrification have to do with health? In rebuilding communities through neoliberal practices that result in displacement, homelessness, and gentrification the health of the community is affected (1). The fact is that the social, political, and economic systems in a society such as the US affect the health of individuals and populations. These systems separate and place economic, social, and political values on populations according to categories of race/ethnicity, income level, education level, gender, immigrant status, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, place of birth, dominant language, physical and mental ability, and age. The socioeconomic and political economic systems use these hierarchies to determine our place in society which in turn determines our health.

Using race and class identity as examples, individuals who discriminate based on these two factors will negatively affect the psychological and physical health of low income people of color through the stress experienced daily by the effects of their implicit bias (2, Implicit Attitude Test, Experience of Discrimination). On an institutional level, the health outcomes of low income communities of color during redevelopment is partially determined by the discriminatory neoliberal policies and practices-a norm of the socioeconomic and political economic systems of the US. Such practices/policies include: policies which allowed disinvestment of low-income neighborhoods, mayoral-governments partnered with private developers, legislators passing and funding racist laws, lack of policies/laws which demand affordable housing and local hiring, city and state officials enacting education, housing, transportation policies and practices which benefit wealthy developers and displace community residents, developers building only market-rate housing in low and moderate-income communities, planning boards lacking community participation, corporate university and philanthropic boards who approve cleansing of low income and of color communities. Besides the collective stress experienced from being forced to move, the lack of affordable housing and products, the fear of eventual displacement, lack of ability to have decision-making in your community, displacement to other under-resourced communities (in school, livable employment, access to healthy and affordable food, infrastructure that allows physical activities, safety) are risk factors for poor health outcomes. Such neoliberal rebuilding practices which lead to displacement and gentrification can only occur in societies where the political economic and socioeconomic systems support them. This is the concept and action of social health, neoliberalism, and gentrification.

The mechanisms of neoliberal processes in community rebuilding such as tax subsidies and exemptions, rezoning, lack of transparency and accountability, ‘shadow governments’ of developers and corporate foundations navigated through public:private partnerships, state redistribution of land to private entities, propaganda media, greed, devaluing of non-productive members of society, non-participatory planning in community rebuilding and its social health impacts must be identified, reported, challenged, prevented-again and again. Such practices unleashed in communities of low and moderate income and color find little resistance due to the political economy of development capital and state politics. This process of community rebuilding is supported by strong ties between the developer and government which overwhelms the power of the local community to demand equitable development and community participation-there are minimal ties between the local community and government (3). Newly organized communities are displaced to different parts of the city, some county, loosing the growing power-base and social capital which could challenge the powerful developers and public partners. Because of the unfair advantage of such public:private partnerships social capital/economic and political benefit is accumulated disproportionately by the powerful developers.

For example, displacement of communities of low-income and color disinvested by government and neighboring institutions, for expansion of a prestigious institution like Johns Hopkins results in stress for residents and poor health outcomes: gentrification and health. The disruption of social networks, root shock, results in acute and chronic trauma to residents as they loose their familiar base and try to anchor themselves in new neighborhoods (4). Such continued serial displacement is a major social determinant of continued poor health outcomes. Children are particularly susceptible to these changes and have difficulty establishing new peer groups (5). In this example, neoliberal practices through public:private partnerships of the university, Annie E. Casey Foundation and others, and the city planned and carried out displacement, demolition, and construction of a new place/community unaffordable to previous residents and the peripheral communities. After more than 800 households were displaced less than 10% low income and minority families have been allowed back to inhabit the more than 700 units rehabbed or newly constructed to date. Construction of a new contract school, managed by JHU and supervised by a board of directors led by Hopkins assures that the neoliberal agenda of dispossession of education occurs-another risk factor for health (6, 7). This new school which selectively engineers a ratio of white and non-white, poor and non-poor for their neoliberal formula of experimental ‘urban’ education continues. The right of existing residents to attend the school is ignored, preference is offered to the powerful university and affiliates, while the department of education requires no meetings for transparency or accountability, and the wealthy developer and corporate philanthropists of Casey and other foundations continue on unimpeded. The school is a magnet for gentrification, attracting the race and class of people comfortable to the powerful Johns Hopkins University. Whether the children of the surrounding neighborhood have access to this new school is a determinant of health. Access to early childhood development resources and education is a determining factor for health of children as they grow to adulthood. Neoliberalism, gentrification, and the new urban education are factors determining the social health of East Baltimore and Baltimore because the neighborhoods displaced residents are forced to move into may be similarly disinvested, contributing to diminished health. Residents must be able to stay in the neighborhoods undergoing revitalization and participate in all the amenities (education, parks, housing, health, employment, transportation): this is a more participatory model of community rebuilding-one which emphasizes community participation before development to ensure that participation continues during and after, and does not result in gentrification, displacement, segregation and poor health. How do we do that?

Alameda County Public Health Department (ACPHD) along with Causa Justa:Just Cause’s (CJJC) recent report shows the negative health effects on communities in the Bay Area undergoing gentrification (8). Among others, they recommend Health Impact Assessments (HIA) before development occurs to determine potential negative health outcomes caused by gentrification and displacement; their recommendations emphasize the necessity of community participation in all processes of development. In 2009 similar recommendations were made by the Association of Bay Area Governments and Policy Link. However the current recommendations by ACPHD and CJJC is the first to directly show quantitative changes in population health during all stages of gentrification processes, clarifying the health consequences of displacement. HIAs can also be used to substantiate the need for community-driven rebuilding processes as done by the Los Angeles Community Action Network. They used a HIA to leverage a commitment for more than $20 million to limit displacement through affordable housing, local hiring, support for tenant rights and preventive health programs.

In 2003, Save Middle East Action Committee, Inc. requested that Hopkins/East Baltimore Development Inc. conduct a HIA before demolition and rebuilding began. This was particularly important because the majority of the housing stock was built during the period of lead-based paint and because previous studies of demolition by the university showed contamination of the surrounding air with lead. Even with this evidence, the timeline of the university’s first Biotech building was more important than the health of low income and African American residents. This type of public:private development project ignored the health of residents then just as a current development project in Los Angeles targeting public housing conversion into a mixed-income development is attempting to ignore the health of low income people of color (9). Such racism and classism driving neoliberal community rebuilding chooses to ignore existing communities where the majority of residents are people of color with little resources and the lowest life expectancy. These and previous examples confirm that the value placed on low income and racial/ethnic minority communities are minimal compared to that of higher income and white communities, and that the growth of inequitable power in majority white and higher income communities will continue to drive these unhealthy socioeconomic and political economic practices.

Gentrification and its neoliberal agenda has arrived in full force in the 21st century. New York’s Brooklyn and the Bronx, Sommerville, Portland, Chicago, Denver, and DC are facing the effects of gentrification and unaffordable housing, all risk factors and outcomes of displacement and negative health outcomes (10-16). Cities implementing new transportation systems face similar risk of gentrification and displacement as reported by a 2010 report: Maintaining Diversity in America’s Transit-rich neighborhoods: Tools for equitable neighborhood change (17). Neoliberalism’s new attire of greater public:private partnerships with the propaganda of equitable public benefit supported by the media drives gentrification through accumulation of land by the wealthy and dispossession of civil rights of the disenfranchised- in the US and abroad (18). Such inequitable societies lead to inequitable health of individuals and populations as seen with life expectancy differences between the rich and the poor of up to 19 years (19). Confronting and ending these violations of human rights through coalition building across struggles for equity of race, income, housing, food, education, environment and all other social factors is necessary and possible. It may be the only possible way to reclaim a collective right to occupy the city, making it balanced, healthy, and whole.