The most recent installment of Senator Cordell Cleare’s Series of Panels and Discussions on Housing took place at Barnard College this past Tuesday, focusing on the intersectionality of housing and race through the history of segregation.

On November 29, State Senator Cordell Cleare hosted a tour of the We/”Undesign the Redline” exhibit followed by a panel discussion on housing. The panel was hosted by Theresa E. Hassler of Ratchet POLITICS and featured Marry Rocco, director of engaged scholarship, community engagement, and inclusion, Miriam Neptune, senior associate director of the Barnard Center for Research on Women, April De-Simone, cofounder of We/”Undesign the Redline,” David R. Jones, President of the Community Service Society, Barika x. Williams, Executive Director of the Association for Neighborhood and Housing Development, and Jumaane Williams, a New York City Public Advocate. 

The panel’s discussion began with an opening from Senator Codell Cleare herself, speaking out about the importance of direct access to quality affordable housing. She asserted that Black people in Harlem do not have access to housing in Harlem, stating that while part of the issue may stem from current housing decisions, the roots of the issue are hundreds of years in the making, dating back to redlining in the area. She introduced the keynote speaker, Dr. Kevin McGruder, associate professor of history at Antioch College, after issuing a strong final message that only a change that understands the systematic history of the housing issue can work toward fixing it. 

As soon as the recorded keynote address began to play on the screen, a man from the audience jumped up, yelling at the senator to allow him to ask a question. After being repeatedly told that this was not the time and that a Q&A would occur after the panel, the man became aggressive. He shouted out, asking, “Why isn’t there a member of the community that has been victimized by housing on the panel?” As security approached him, he refused to leave and a crowd formed. After roughly ten tense minutes, some crowd members were able to calm him down, and he returned to his seat and sat quietly for the remainder of the panel. 

Dr. Kevin McGruder spoke on the history of residential ration segregation, tracing it back to the significant movement of people of color into cities in the 1800s. Speaking to Harlem specifically, he cited the 1930s depression and housing collapse as a reason for closures and the federal mortgage loan program, which stabilized real estate but simultaneously spread the notion that Black people lowered property values and had high insurance risk. Looking to the future, McGruder proposed many potential solutions, ranging from preserving existing low-income housing to requiring substantial portions of housing to be reserved for low-income community members. 

Opening the panel, Hassler asked about how gentrification and redlining intersected into people being pushed out of their homes over time. Rocco jumped in to explain that redlining led to the devaluation of land in some areas, which allowed people to buy and revitalize these properties, in turn making them unaffordable and displacing previous residents of the area. Neptune continued, saying, “what strikes me especially is that we are not just talking about the devaluation of property but the devaluation of people.” Continuing on, she explained that the challenge with the issue is stopping it in its tracks, using the resources coming into the community to be for those who already lived there in order to allow people to put down roots. 

Directing her question to Williams, Hassler inquired about the racial impact study she had recently passed in June. “We have to talk about this in terms of race because it was designed by race, it was intentional,” she began. What followed was a call to action: “No one here is responsible for where we are, but everyone is responsible for the next generation.”

Moving on to the topic of historical racial divisions in New York, Hassler asked Jones to elaborate on the role of banks and financial institutions in the housing issue. Jones spoke from his own experience, explaining that growing up with his father, Tom Jones, a judge, activist, and civil rights lawyer in Brooklyn, he saw firsthand the impact of race in housing. In Crown Heights and other areas, he explains, white homeowners were scared of Black people moving into their neighborhoods and sold their property cheaply. Because of this, banks made a fortune kicking up prices and selling to Black people looking to own homes as they didn’t feel they were welcome in other parts of the city. Wrapping up his statements, he named several measures intended to push back against the system, including looking at the Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act and a report on social housing by the CSS. 

Directing the focus back to the We/”Undesign the Redline” exhibit, Williams spoke about how “undesign” is the correct title for the exhibit, as the way housing is divided now is following the design and intent. Speaking further, she highlighted that policy-wise, the struggle is to undesign something explicitly based in racism without talking about race. She said currently, measures such as community reinvestment acts stay vague about where the money is going and what it is going to do, flowing money to the targeted places even if it displaces people in the process as it does not target neighborhoods where Black people and businesses weren’t properly invested in. Wrapping up her comments, Williams emphasized the importance of reform, stating, “Black people are not going to have anywhere to go if they keep being taken out of their space in NYC.”

Furthering this sentiment, Neptune described that by creating the exhibit, they wanted to stimulate a public history discussion and ensure that the history of redlining in the local community was part of the foundation that students understood as they joined the community. 

Hassler, directing her question toward De Simone, asked about what needs to be done in order to actually enact these changes. “Any major infrastructure bill coming is going to exacerbate the issues if the spaces in which we do this work and the people sitting at the table are not different,” she asserted. “Housing inequality is a direct threat to our collective society. If we can’t see each other as humans where does democracy stand? We have to start by understanding that spatial inequity is killing us all, especially the Black and Brown communities. If you want to push ideas of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, what makes you think I don’t want that too?”

Wrapping up the panel, Senator Cordell Cleare took the stage once again to address the audience. “Why are we here today?” she asked, looking out to the audience as she paused for a moment. “We need to educate others. The more of us that know about this, the more empowered we become. We can’t dismantle this system if we aren’t willing to sit down and talk about it. Our job is to make sure people are housed, people can own, and people can rent, but even beyond housing this is about legacy, and none of this change can occur without including race in the conversation.”

As the only student in attendance, I looked around at the room filled with prominent community members, professors, activists, and politicians coming together to learn more about the history of redlining. The panel and exhibit were profoundly interesting, and I walked away with a much deeper understanding and curiosity about redlining, a topic of which I had previous knowledge. As Columbia and Barnard students, it is essential that we understand the community that surrounds our closed-off campus. We are part of a university that prides itself on its urban location, and a big part of that is understanding the part we play in the local community and history as gentrification and other changes in New York City progress over time. 

Panel on Housing via Maya’s Phone