renew

Image Credit: Michael McKee, one of Tenants & Neighbors’ founders, leading a discussion

RENEW, A conversation about gentrification, displacement, and rent regulation
Presented by Art for Change, Tenants & Neighbors, and Heather M. O’Brien

Saturday, March 26, 2011
Forum: 5:30pm to 7pm
Reception to follow

Art for Change Gallery
1699 Lexington Ave, New York, NY 10029

RENEW is a project that begins a dialogue around ideas of displacement, specifically with regard to the rent laws in New York State.  The work is a collaborative effort between the artist Heather M. O’Brien and Tenants & Neighbors, a non-profit organization that harnesses tenant power to preserve at-risk affordable housing and to prevent the displacement of low and moderate income people from their homes and communities.  

On March 26, 2011, from 5:30pm to 7pm, Art for Change, Tenants & Neighbors, and Heather M. O’Brien will host a forum at the Art for Change gallery in East Harlem.  The forum will be an opportunity to discuss and engage with issues surrounding the rent laws in New York State and the fight to preserve rent regulation.  The forum will feature several panelists from Harlem and other neighborhoods in NYC who will discuss current issues concerning the possible expiration of the rent laws on June 15, 2011 and what the change could mean for local communities and tenants; several short videos will also screened.  The RENEW installation will also be on view.  The piece consists of a highly nuanced, multi-media timeline that looks at the struggle for rent regulation from the 1970s to the present, including documents and photographs from the Tenants & Neighbors archive, and audio recordings of tenant leaders and organizers; the work concludes with a contemporary participation montage that highlights the need for solidarity and unity among many different kinds of tenants.

For generations, New York’s tenants have been fighting to preserve rent stabilization and tenant rights against efforts by the organized landlord lobby to weaken tenant protections. This coming year is one of the most important years in that fight because New York’s rent laws, which allow for the continued existence of rent stabilization and rent control in New York City and its suburban counties, are set to expire on June 15, 2011. If the rent laws are allowed to expire, over a million units of rent regulated housing could be converted to market rate or luxury housing, and the tenants who live in those apartments would lose protections from speculative rent increases and from baseless or retaliatory eviction. This could end up changing the face of our communities and eroding our rights.

The forum will be followed by a reception for Art for Change and the New York State Tenants & Neighbors Coalition and will feature light refreshments and music by DJ Sabine Blazin.