Does Al Bartell have a shot at mayor? Re: Using land trusts as an alternative to gentrification (Atlanta: low income, apartments)

[bryantm3]

Has anyone else heard about Al Bartell? I got really interested the other week after hearing him talk about an idea he has that really piqued my interest.

Regardless of how you feel about gentrification, it's a fact that rising land prices are changing the demographic composition of our city and prioritizing the needs of out-of-towners and economic opportunists at the expense of people who have roots and culture here going back decades.

Bartell's idea is, with the permission of the owners, for the city of Atlanta to purchase entire neighborhoods and turn them over to be managed by those that live in the community. This would essentially mean that everyone living inside the land trust would have rights to do whatever they wish with their homes, but all the land would be a single plot, and its upkeep would be a community responsibility. Residents would have say over what is developed there, and would live rent free; they could keep their house as long as they wanted, but once they left the house it would return to the community. This kind of idea would work in the low income neighborhoods that are future targets of gentrification.

Other ideas could include community policing, where certain residents of the land trust would serve as the police officers for the community, maybe even elected by those in the community.

This seems like a really cool and innovative idea.

[fourthwarden]

I like the idea on face value.

I would like it even more if it were coupled with a kind of 'Neighborhood Credit Union' system. Where, a bank, basically, would own, and lease/rent the properties out. The revenue from those rentals / leases would not only be used to maintain and improve the properties themselves, but work to grow the finances of the neighborhood in general.

They could give out low-interest business loans to residents who've lived there for a certain amount of time, help support residents in rough times (again through low-interest loans), help finance infrastructure repairs, and a pile of other small-scale, hyper-local projects.

They could also finance community-based volunteer efforts.

They would need to be focused on growing the real wealth of / supporting the residents. They would also need to have limits as to how much land they can maintain. They would also need to not become tools of the neighborhoods to keep out any new residents, just retaining existing ones.

There could also be intra-city loans between neighborhoods, to help finance wealth growth.

Doesn't have to be anything fancy, just stuff like in here: FIVE LOW COST IDEAS TO MAKE YOUR CITY WEALTHIER

More good reading: POOR NEIGHBORHOODS MAKE THE BEST INVESTMENTS


Dunno, but I think it'd be a good way to grow the finances of the city from the literal ground up.


Sorry, that wasn't really about Al Bartell...

[arjay57]

Originally Posted by bryantm3

Has anyone else heard about Al Bartell? I got really interested the other week after hearing him talk about an idea he has that really piqued my interest.

See my post from a couple of weeks ago here:

Al Bartell has some good observations on the causes and effects of gentrification.

Al Bartell: The Independent Atlanta Mayoral Candidate Who Hopes to Stem the Flow of Black People Out of the City* - Atlanta Black Star

[bryantm3]

I think the community owning its own "bank" of sorts is an excellent idea, but having a private bank own and rent all the properties would eliminate any benefit such a land trust would have, by introducing an incentive for the private bank to try and squeeze profits out of the residents-- the goal would be to decommidify property ownership and put it in the hands of the community- not trade one system where the residents have no power or self-determination for another system that could potentially be even worse.

Re: keeping people out, suburban white communities do this all the time with zoning laws and no one bats an eye; why would it be a bad thing for lower income black communities to have that same power of self-determination? It's like we have a knee jerk problem with black people being able to own anything in this country, we force assimilation and everything has to be on our terms-- we want to be white saviors, not equals. And don't take this as an accusation, I'm unlearning this crap too.

[fourthwarden]

Originally Posted by bryantm3

I think the community owning its own "bank" of sorts is an excellent idea, but having a private bank own and rent all the properties would eliminate any benefit such a land trust would have, by introducing an incentive for the private bank to try and squeeze profits out of the residents-- the goal would be to decommidify property ownership and put it in the hands of the community- not trade one system where the residents have no power or self-determination for another system that could potentially be even worse.

In my mind, it wouldn't be a private entity so much as a city one, or a neighborhood one. All the residents who participated (loans and banking alike) could get a vote, and could hold local elections for the manager, like a board voting on a new CEO.

The land banking for the current residents and developing revenue-generating land would also be separate actions, likely with the later supporting the first. I could see it working like, inhabited properties could be brought into the land bank, while abandoned and blighted properties could be brought into the development collection.



The key would be that it would need to, above all else, by the community for the community. I don't know how to do that exactly, and if I were in some position of power to do this, I would be talking to relevant experts up oneside and down the other to get it all right.

Re: keeping people out, suburban white communities do this all the time with zoning laws and no one bats an eye; why would it be a bad thing for lower income black communities to have that same power of self-determination? It's like we have a knee jerk problem with black people being able to own anything in this country, we force assimilation and everything has to be on our terms-- we want to be white saviors, not equals.

I, personally, despise it no matter where it occurs, or who it occurs to. I absolutely want current residents, especially those of lower income groups, to remain where they are, and have real chances to build generational wealth. I also believe that a good mix of demographics are essential to a healthy population, exchanging ideas and sharing resources to meet challenges. I want to give lower income peoples the chance to be equal. I want to give them the tools to overcome the prejudiced and overbearing limitations unnecessarily enforced on them. I do not care about their race in doing so, though. In Atlanta, though, that likely means helping out the poorer black communities more often than not.


As I said above. I was thinking of new residents in terms of the development properties. So, say that the CCU takes in a bunch of land-bank properties to help support residents and keep them around despite increasing property values.

Well, then the CCU takes up a bunch of blighted and empty lots with the intent on developing them into revenue streams to finance the land bank, and community business loans and such. Those existing people would get to stay just where they are, while new, hopefully dense and mixed use developments are built on empty and blighted properties.

Residents get first shots at commercial and residential space, especially those with small-business loans from the city and/or the CCU.

The remaining apartments, and commercial space then gets offered to whoever feels they want to have a shot at the area. After a certain amount of time of living in the area, even those new people would then get a shot at some of the benefits of the CCU, with a tiered benefits scale based on years lived there, and modifiers for being involved in community & city volunteering groups.

This doesn't hurt the existing residents at all, and, in fact, supplies fresh blood for all the new locally-owned stores. New shops come in, new money for the city in general, new money for the CCU to reinvest in the community, etc.

[arjay57]

Originally Posted by bryantm3

Re: keeping people out, suburban white communities do this all the time with zoning laws and no one bats an eye; why would it be a bad thing for lower income black communities to have that same power of self-determination? It's like we have a knee jerk problem with black people being able to own anything in this country, we force assimilation and everything has to be on our terms-- we want to be white saviors, not equals.

I understand your point, although it not just whites. In places like the ATL there are hundreds of thousands of blacks who have beautiful homes in neighborhoods that are governed by the same zoning codes.

[bryantm3]

@fourthwarden oh ok, gotcha. when you said bank i thought you were talking Chase or BoA or some other for-profit entity

@arjay this is true, race is not the only factor here, but historically the system of zoning has primarily benefitted the elite and in this country it's hard to ignore the racial history that goes along with that.

[LTCM]

I can think of few proposals which are more racist. I thought one of the goals of the civil rights movement was to end segregation?

[Iconographer]

Shades of Aldous Huxley.

[Forhall]

Considering how blighted many of the lower income neighborhoods in Atlanta appear to be, I can't think of many people who would be happy about co-owning one large plot with all of their neighbors and being forced to share the upkeep.