June 25, 2020

The Africatown Community Land Trust in Seattle, Washington, is a leader in the city’s recent uprisings against white supremacy. In a new campaign launched amid growing awareness of police brutality and COVID-19’s disproportionate impact on people of color, the land trust is demanding the city transfer vacant lots, a nursing home, and other properties to Black community land trust ownership in addition to a $500 million antigentrification land acquisition fund. “We need a new normal rooted in equity. And equity means ownership,” said K. Wyking Garrett, president and CEO of the land trust.

New York City’s general eviction moratorium expired June 20, and housing rights groups anticipate 50,000 to 60,000 cases will be filed in housing courts in the coming week. Advocates say this estimate reflects a typical three-month caseload and does not account for the additional housing insecurities faced by the one million NYC residents who lost their jobs or were furloughed. Tenants directly affected by the pandemic are covered by a second moratorium order until late August. “It is clear that the economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic are nowhere near an end. There are thousands of tenants and building owners who need help now,” said Jay Martin, executive director of the Community Housing Improvement Program.

A report from the National Association of Realtors found that home resales, which make up the vast majority of sales, were down 26.6 percent in May from the same time last year. Existing home sales also dropped nearly 10 percent last month from the month before, more than three times the drop expected by analysts. Economists say this decline reflects the deep economic damage caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

A new analysis from the National Community Reinvestment Coalition says that nearly one-third of low-income neighborhoods in Oakland and San Francisco, California, experienced gentrification between 2013 and 2017, the highest rate in the country. The study shows that although gentrification is occurring in communities across the country, the Bay Area’s high-wage tech industry and rising housing costs uniquely displace lower-wage residents.