New Bern BRT: Bait & Switch or Just Action?

New Bern BRT: Bait & Switch or Just Action?

by | Nov 5, 2023 |

In 2017, ‘The Color of Law’ landed like a bombshell in progressive housing policy circles. In Raleigh, powerful development interests saw the opportunity to adopt — some would say co-opt — Richard Rothstein’s anti-segregation message by promoting pro-density zoning rules that not only lifted exclusionary zoning rules, but went much further. By 2020, a new alliance of developer money, self-righteous Council aspirants and their white privileged adherents provided the lubrication to fast track pro-density zoning proposals. Novice Councilors were assured that pesky public input needn’t impede this sweet deal to meld profits and equity.

Don’t Break Raleigh’s Transit Promises

Don’t Break Raleigh’s Transit Promises

by | Oct 27, 2023 |

If their egregious zoning case, Z-92-22, gets a positive vote from City Council, it will usher in the worst kind of Urban Renewal. Affordable homes will be scraped off, to be replaced by luxury apartment buildings that only the affluent can afford to live in. Picture a stretched-out North Hills, replete with restaurants and bars – and parking decks – but with no room for the working-class.

City Council Meetings September 12, 2023

City Council Meetings September 12, 2023

by | Sep 12, 2023 |

Huge needs for public housing. 

Public Comments focused on public safety, Mine Creek Greenway relocation, GoRaleigh, TOD/BRT, Missing Middle, and housing and homelessness

BRT Transit that Benefits All? No it Won’t!

BRT Transit that Benefits All? No it Won’t!

by | Sep 6, 2023 |

New Bern Avenue is living proof of the bigoted depredations our country and city have imposed on Black Americans. It is also living proof of Black Americans’ determination to fashion lives and communities of faith and hope in the face of overpowering forces of greed and racism. Of all projects which have the potential of restorative justice and to make good on Raleigh’s pledge to dismantle the city’s policies and systems of racial inequity and oppression with equitable transit, this is it.

Forced out, priced out, shut out, taxed out

Forced out, priced out, shut out, taxed out

by | Jul 11, 2023 |

I have lived in College Park all my life. On the corner of New Bern Avenue and Raleigh Boulevard it has flooded for over a decade. So you mean to tell me that over a decade you’re only going to fix this for Bus Rapid Transit. You talk about environmental justice. You know this council just celebrated Juneteenth and that is the most racist thing I’ve ever heard.

Raleigh issues meaningless apology for past racism as gentrification continues

Raleigh issues meaningless apology for past racism as gentrification continues

by | Jul 10, 2023 |

The irony of this council putting forth this apology at this time was not lost on the public. Speaker Jeremy Gilchrest asked, now that you have apologized for the city’s racist past, including urban renewal, who is going to apologize for the current racism that we see systemically gutting out the black community?