In January 2014, the Brooklyn Community Foundation initiated Brooklyn Insights, a six-month project to bring the people and neighborhoods of Brooklyn together to discuss Brooklyn's future - the pressing needs of our communities, opportunities for change and strategies for collective action. For more of that texture, detailed information about our conversations, and photo narratives of some of the outstanding community activists we met, visit the Process section.
from a cross-section of Brooklyn's
in conversations about
Daniel Hobson speaks about the role newcomers to the borough can play at a roundtable meeting hosted by The Brownstoners of Bedford Stuyvesant.
As New York City's most populous and fastest growing borough, Brooklyn is a center of vibrant culture, political power, economic growth and entrepreneurial innovation.
Nearly half of Brooklyn residents live in or on the brink of poverty.
But this image of Brooklyn is a thin veneer on a much more complex community story. Brooklyn is home to 2.6 million residents, the majority of whom are middle income and working class people. Some Brooklyn neighborhoods are enjoying robust prosperity, but many others are literally struggling for survival. These conditions frame the challenge for the Brooklyn Community Foundation - and for anyone who cares about the health, welfare and future of our borough as a whole.
In the different conversations we had across Brooklyn, five major themes arose repeatedly. We heard nearly universal concern about neighborhood cohesion and the consequences of gentrification; opportunities for young people; the criminal justice system; immigrant communities; and racial justice.
These five major themes are vast and multi-layered, with systemic dimensions as well as impacts at the level of lived experience. Each has different implications for every Brooklyn neighborhood and its residents. And of course, they are interrelated. The prominence of these themes in the Brooklyn Insights conversations puts them at the center of the Foundation’s future work.
Throughout the Brooklyn Insights process, we heard people express deep knowledge about and pride in their neighborhoods. People talked about:
But we also heard about people’s deep worries.
Linda Dejesus speaks about her hopes to include new neighbors in what’s happening in their community.
Gentrification is transforming neighborhoods at an unprecedented pace. These changes make people feel they have lost agency and voice in their own neighborhoods.
# of homeless people each night in the NYC shelter system
Incomes have not kept pace with housing costs and the number of people in New York City shelters has jumped 54% in the past decade, and 10% over the past year. The lack of affordable housing is a crisis in many neighborhoods.
"Greater access to information via community-based centers open on evenings and weekends"
Abdu Rodney, 20, shares his thoughts about the expectations others have of him as a young person.
Young people were a priority topic in all our conversations. We heard a great deal about their talents, their importance to the vitality, spirit and stability of neighborhoods, and their essential role in Brooklyn's future. We also learned about the serious obstacles that hundreds of thousands of them face with schools, social services, jobs, transportation, housing and social stigmas.
Children and young people, particularly young people of color, struggle in Brooklyn.
School achievement scores in poor neighborhoods significantly lag behind those in more affluent parts of the borough. Young people of color report that they feel schools have lower expectations of them than their white peers.
performed at or above grade level on statewide Math exams
performed at or above grade level on statewide Math exams
performed at or above grade level on statewide English Language Arts exams
performed at or above grade level on statewide English Language Arts exams
Homicide is the leading cause of death for 15-24 year olds in New York City.
Community activist Brigitte Purvis shares her thoughts on stemming youth violence at a community board meeting in Coney Island.
of Brownsville youth 16-24 are not currently in school or employed
Parents, especially low-income and immigrant parents, need adequate information about schools, after-school programs and other resources for their children.
Schools demonstrate different expectations of children of different backgrounds, and are often not culturally competent. These differences need to be navigated carefully and with cultural sensitivity.
Children need systems of wrap-around care that will address academic, psychological and other developmental issues.
Youth need safe places to hang out – not in school and not on the street – and they need to be involved in shaping programs that serve them.
Many young people are effective organizers and are eager to be a part of the transformation of their communities. However, young people in many neighborhoods bear responsibility to contribute to the family's income. Paying jobs as well as leadership opportunities for young people are needed.
"Opportunities for youth to achieve small wins, gain voice and agency, and build momentum for bigger change."
Divine Pryor talks about the impacts mass incarceration has had on neighborhoods.
The criminal justice system was a theme that arose again and again in both our sector-based Roundtables and Neighborhood Dialogues. We heard mostly negative reports, especially about the traumatizing and insidious effects of young people's early encounters with the police and the courts, and the shattering impacts that excessive incarceration has on individual lives, families and communities.
Black and Latino young people comprise 57% of Brooklyn's youth population, but represented 95% of the young people admitted to juvenile detention facilities.
In communities with high populations of Black and Latino youth, police on the street are not making people feel safer. In fact, many young men of color feel actively and systematically targeted by cops, despite the elimination of city-sanctioned "stop and frisk" policies.
Our criminal justice system spends more on incarcerating people than on programs of prevention and treatment. Community members' experiences, and extensive research, underscore the importance of intervening before people are first arrested.
The lack of coordination between public agencies is particularly problematic for young people. The Departments of Education and Criminal Justice don't interact effectively, producing poor outcomes for schools, kids and communities.
Specific groups, such as LGBT youth and young women, are systematically disregarded or disrespected by the police and the courts.
Alternatives to incarceration, including restorative justice programs, are essential to changing the long-term negative consequences of imprisonment on individuals, families and communities.
The school-to-prison pipeline is a real phenomenon affecting too many communities, and it needs to be disrupted.
Education, employment opportunities and access to needed social services determine whether people will be involved with the justice system.
"Greater access to information via community-based centers open on evenings and weekends."
Misba Abdin, founder and funder of a resource center for immigrants in East New York.
As many as 200 languages are spoken in Brooklyn, and nearly 40% of residents are foreign-born. Not surprisingly, immigrant communities were a frequent topic in our discussions. Today, as in the past, immigrants contribute in essential ways to the borough’s economy and its multi-cultural identity. This is a source of energy and pride. But we also heard about the challenges that hundreds of thousands of immigrants face because of language barriers, bureaucratic public agencies and various forms of cultural prejudice.
of Brooklyn's households speak a language other than english at home
of Brooklyn residents are not proficient in English
In many immigrant families, children are mastering English more quickly than their parents. They are called upon to navigate various systems for the family. Immigrant parents lack access to ESL training, and their children lack advocates for adequate support.
In many immigrant communities, local business owners, religious leaders and heads of community-based organizations are the people providing critical lifelines for families. Their essential services and financial expenditures need to be recognized and compensated.
Many believe that the City’s preference for contracting with larger social service agencies is part of the problem. More than 85% of city funds go to the largest 100 agencies. Hundreds of other, more grassroots service providers have closer ties to communities and can reach immigrant populations in ways the larger organizations can’t.
Affordable housing and evictions are a critical situation for a substantial proportion of immigrants, and many are paying more than 60% of their income for rent. Hurricane Sandy exacerbated the housing crisis for thousands of immigrants, especially undocumented residents in Coney Island, Sheepshead Bay and other neighborhoods devastated by the storm.
"Immigrant voting rights for local elections."
Described as institutionalized oppression, classicism, “equity instead equality” and racial justice,Brooklyn Insights participants stressed the importance of calling out the underlying causes of the challenges residents are confronting day in and day out.
Structural racism has created insurmountable barriers to opportunity in many communities — among generations of African American and Latino residents as well as families more recently emigrating from the Middle East and Asia — resulting in widespread disparities in education,health, safety and employment.
Poverty is highly concentrated in Brooklyn, and it has been concentrated in certain neighborhoods for multiple generations. Residents of these communities feel they have been written off by the City, and their isolation reflects widespread patterns of racial discrimination.
Health outcomes correlate with race and wealth. Brooklyn's communities of color have much higher rates of asthma, diabetes, obesity and other diseases that result from environmental pollution, insufficient access to good food and fresh produce, and distance from good medical resources at the neighborhood level - all attributable to racial bias in these systems.
Patterns of structural racism are evident across public agencies, where teachers and administrators in the public school system expect less of children of color than their white peers, police are less responsive to requests for assistance in predominantly African American or Latino neighborhoods, and transportation options are far fewer in communities of color, among numerous other examples.
Institutional and structural barriers have long prevented equitable opportunities and outcomes for people of color in Brooklyn. By focusing on racial justice and equity, we can analyze and confront behaviors and systems that unfairly and disproportionally impact people of color and contribute to unfair policies and practices for a majority of residents.
The manifold symptoms of structural bias will never be altered if we don’t address injustice at the systemic level. This requires supporting both direct services to address immediate needs and effective advocacy for long-term structural change.
"No incarceration for people under 24 and funding diverted from detention to youth development."
We asked Brooklyn Insights participants about the functions that the Foundation might play in tackling priority issues. Throughout the conversations, we received consistent feedback:
to the 942 residents, experts, educators, students, artists, entrepreneurs, religious leaders, and community advocates who participated in Brooklyn Insights: