Thank You, Housing Advocates! July 2009 / ¡Gracias, Activistas de Vivienda! Julio 2009

On Wednesday, July 8th, the Queens Museum of Art hosted a celebration dedicated to housing advocates that have devoted their careers to improving housing in our city. The occasion, to which over 100 housing advocacy groups from around the five boroughs were invited, came about as part of the museum’s latest exhibition Red Lines Housing Crisis Learning Center. More than 130 visitors gathered around the Panorama of the City of New York, the museum’s immense scale model from which the evening’s guest speakers presented a memorable lecture about housing issues.  Guests included Chhaya CDC, the Center for Urban Pedagogy, the Department of Economic & Housing Development, Housing Works, and the NY State Division of Human Rights.

Along with Red Lines designer Damon Rich, the panelists included Sarah Ludwig, Co-Director of the Neighborhood Economic Development Advocacy Project (NEDAP); Michelle O’Brien, Executive Director of Housing Here and Now, a citywide coalition for affordable housing; and Kenneth T. Jackson, the distinguished professor and urban historian best known for his extensive literature on New York City. Meandering along the city’s waterways, the speakers answered audience questions and highlighted the grand yet tragic “landscape of displacement”—as described by QMA Executive Director Tom Finkelpearl—that was reflected on the Panorama.

View of the Panorama, with speakers on the left and audience on the right.

The event came about after artist Rich and QMA realized the opportunity of using the museum and its resources as a space to bring together advocates committed to various housing fields. As illustrated by the hundreds of tiny fluorescent markers throughout the Panorama, New York City has been strongly affected by the subprime mortgage and foreclosure crisis. These advocates and their organizations have been imperative in the efforts to reverse this crisis and its impact on thousands of families around the city. For this reason, it seemed fitting to have a “Thank You” party to honor the important and difficult work they have been doing and will continue to do as the housing crisis continues. In conjunction with the Red Lines Housing Crisis Learning Center exhibit, the Panorama was outfitted with markers highlighting blocks with 3 or more foreclosures of 1-4 family homes filed in 2008.

Markers indicating blocks with three or more foreclosures filed in 2008

The Red Lines project was initiated in 2007 at M.I.T. with the purpose of collecting the history and material culture behind the current economic crisis, as well as to explore the ways in which our society finances its living environments, and then use this information to create an experimental site for reflection, conversation and learning. For its display at QMA, several upgrades were made to the exhibition, including the new piece for the museum’s centerpiece, the Panorama. Data from NEDAP and the Regional Plan Association were collected to visually represent the impact of home foreclosures in the city, using the 9,335 square-foot Panorama. A bright pink triangle was placed on every block with 3 or more foreclosures filed in 2008, resulting in nearly 1,500 markers visible throughout the scale model.

It was on this same scale-model that the museum hosted its “Thank You” event for housing advocates. After a pleasant reception in the lobby that included champagne and Indian food where participants submitted questions for the discussants, visitors were welcomed into the Panorama, where Mr. Finkelpearl introduced the four guest speakers. The speakers —Damon Rich, Sarah Ludwig, Michelle O’Brien and Ken Jackson—were positioned over the Hudson River, between lower Manhattan and Staten Island, where chairs had been carefully placed. Surrounded by spectators throughout the Panorama, it wasn’t long before they stood up and got right into the action, tip-toeing around the model in their protective slippers.

Speakers along the East River

Pointing to places like and Jamaica in Queens and Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn, the speakers discussed the direct connection between past predatory lending practices and discriminatory redlining policies, and today’s housing issues that exist in several African-American and Latino neighborhoods. Squeezing by Roosevelt Island and hopping over the RFK Bridge, they landed near LaGuardia, where communities like East Elmhurst and Corona—which the museum calls home—were covered in pink triangles. As the audience watched and asked questions from above, the speakers explored all corners of the city, themselves at times amazed by the precision of the model. As the discussion came to an end, we spoke with some of the visitors about their thoughts on the night’s event. Hear what they had to say:

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