About the Project
Black Family Displacement on the East Side was initiated in 2018 with the aim to transform anecdotes to the documented history of displacement, to make the history of the community visible and bring it out of obscurity and work to stop the gentrification. The overall project comprises various components, created as individual projects, that have been started and/or completed such as murals, online timelines and an oral history event.
The Mount Hope neighborhood has the historical significance as race riots in 1824, Hard Scramble, and 1832, Snow Town, were paramount in the establishment of the current structure of the City of Providence and its Wards. It also is the last vestige of Black homeownership and multicultural community on the East Side having survived the displacement of many Black and Cape Verdean families from Fox Point, College Hill, Benefit Street and Urban Renewal in the 1960s with the construction of University Heights. However, more pointedly, it has been dealing with pernicious practices of gentrification over the past 2 decades and more, which has significantly mounted in the past decade. The Mt Hope Housing Coalition was formed in the Winter of 2018 to devise methods to get control of gentrification and development in the neighborhood.
While community members in Mt Hope, and elsewhere in the City, know firsthand the legacy of displacement and the harsh realities of finding and keeping a safe home in a state where over 50% of renters are cost-burdened and/or the difficulties of keeping the home you own due to mounting property taxes, the research has not been done to provide systematic answers to these questions that policy-makers, community members and other stakeholder have. They often meet housing advocates with incredulity and often even open resistance and ask them to prove that proposed initiatives are necessary. They want to know, is this happening, to what extent, where and why. We look to give them the answers.
To change the resistance, we must understand the rhetorical housing discourse that resists change and do the research to document the facts in order to put forward the policies which are crucial to advance the conversation and educate stakeholders about why we need policies to control gentrification, market-rate housing and development in the City of Providence and beyond.