Transcript:

Podcast Script-

 

Welcome back to the cur-events podcast. I am your host Hasani Wright and today we will be focusing on how gentrification is negatively affecting New York City and it’s residents along with the big question “Does gentrification do more harm than good?”. For those of you listening in at home that missed last week’s segment which covered what gentrification was, count yourself lucky because I’ll be informing you again today and be sure to text 1800-Curevents to leave any of your gentrification horror stories for us to read. Again text 1800-curevents for an opportunity to have your experience with gentrification featured on our podcast. That’s 1800-curevents (spelled).  So to start gentrification is the process in which wealthy upper class citizens (who are usually white) Move into poor communities (that usually inhabit citizens of color). Now this in and of itself isn’t inherently bad however there are plenty of negative effects that follow. One of them being an increase in rent. According to the NYU Furman Center “Percent Change in Average Rent Between 1990 and 2010-2014’ was “23.5%”. Now i don’t know about ya’ll but 23.5% is 23.5% more money that i don’t have (laugh). But now the average rent in Central Harlem has increased 53.2% from 2010 to 2014. Like wow. That’s a lot of money. Ooh it appears we have got our first gentrification horror story of the day but before we get to that let’s get to these ads.

 

*AD (Voiced by Krystle Webster). * Ever wondered what comfortable housing feels like, well I’m here to tell you. Hello my name is Elizabeth Mootchii of Mootchi apartment housing in central Harlem. Built right on top of where CH apartments used to stand. What’s the difference you may ask? Well we have brought out and demolished all small businesses that are placed around what is currently Mootchii apartment housing in order to maximize spacing and comfortability. With rent starting at $6,200 we hope to comfortably house an abundant number of people who will enjoy living in one of the most culturally diverse neighborhoods in New York city. Not to mention the amount of stores and corporations nearby meant to amplify that comfortable feeling. Did I even mention the New Starbucks being built on top of where Ronnie’s Bodega used to be? So many opportunities for so little money, with housing once again starting at $6,200. For more information text 444-MoochiHousing and remember we have so mootch to offer!

 

Okay back to the cur-events podcast. So our gentrification horror story for the day is a submission from a man named Ray Torodo. According to Mr.Torodo he lived in an apartment complex in East Harlem. He had planned on retiring and living out the rest of his days in his apartment. I mean it was his childhood home, where his mother grew and raised him. To continue essentially his landlord wanted him to move out, they had a whole plan about tearing down the complex and building a new more expensive one. I mean I get it, that’s more money in their pockets but at another person’s expense? I don’t know. Anyways Ray refused to move out, even though all the other tenants had. He was the last holdout, the last man living there. I mean this man’s apartment was falling apart all around him and his water didn’t even work but he still wanted to stay. Apparently his landlord didn’t want to pay for the water to get fixed because she just wanted him out, and I guess this was a way to try to make him do so. I don’t know. It seems kind of weird to me. Apparently “The feelings of frustration and marginalization among longtime residents who are displaced by gentrification are magnified as landlords often turn to aggressive and abusive tactics”. Ray even tells us he went to court apparently. To fight for his home. He ended up losing though. He lost the court battle and his home all in the same day for less money than he put into it. Sorry that happened to you Ray. But can you all see now how gentrification negatively affects people? This proves that gentrification does more harm than good. I mean yeah sure more money is made from a larger more expensive apartment being placed on an old one but whose pockets does it go back into? Oh yeah the rich and the white. I mean it leaves people of color homeless and without the comfortability of the neighborhood they’ve made an entire life around.

Oh that’s all for the show today guys. Be sure to tune in next week where we will be cooking with Gordon Ramsey. Until then be sure to keep up with your cur-events!

 

Artist statement:

Honestly if you had asked me about gentrification two years ago i would have said that word was too big and would have been uninterested. So when it did become an interesting topic for me I was kind of astonished. I became interested in gentrification and the effects of gentrification when I had initially heard about the term in my drama class. We were doing these 3 minute plays from a book and we focused so heavily on gentrification (as that was the theme). Initially I was confused because it was explained how important it was but it was weird to me that I was just now learning what it was. Not to mention no one told me how negative its effects were. I then focused on gentrification in New York as that is a big problem and whether gentrification did more harm than good for people. I want to present this as a podcast as it is a form of news and I believe that people take information more seriously when it is in a news format. Especially to the rich white people who need to hear this and be affected by this.

 

As aforementioned this needs to reach rich white individuals who will never be affected by gentrification. They need to see the effect it has on people, and give them an informational yet human outlook on how gentrification molds its surroundings. I believe that if they do hear the informational aspect of it they’ll understand how increased rent and increased homelessness go hand in hand with gentrification. However as landlords and people of power I’m sure they already know this. So I planned to incorporate a man’s story and the effect gentrification had on him and his livelihood into the paper. Hopefully this will humanize the text and cause them to think the next time they decide to close down a small business and build a Starbucks on top of it or move a family out of their home for the sole purpose of destroying it in order to get more money. Overall the goal is to show them that there are still people hurting under all that money.

 

There were many things that did not become the final product, and my work grew as I did. Initially I wanted to do a news video as that’s the genre. However I couldn’t find a way to professionally portray this. I also did not want to do a news article as I feel like the audience I am trying to reach wouldn’t have time to read it. I wanted it to be immersive and interesting, so after talking it through with Professor Hall I decided to do a podcast. This led to little to no problems as i was already in the process of writing a script, and tweaking it into podcast form wasn’t that difficult. I learned how to utilize tone and music to set a mood for specific talking points as that is important for a podcast. Your face and body can’t be shown so all you have is sound to kind of set a mood and tell a story which I found really interesting and different as I had never done anything like it before.