Barry Farm

Generation after generation, communities of color have been systematically and institutionally oppressed in America. African-Americans, in particular, have faced enormous challenges even after the civil rights movement – the rise of police brutality, drug addiction, and mass incarceration to name a few. My aim is to focus on housing policies that have disproportionately affected African Americans. The goal of this thesis is twofold: (1) recognize government-sanctioned urban housing policies and practices that have “serially displaced” black families and (2) to celebrate black communities that have endured and thrived despite these challenges, with a specific lens on Washington, D.C.’s Barry Farm Public Houses.While there were many systemic abuses toward minorities in the area of housing such as the implementation of racial covenants, black codes, subprime lending, and redlining, for the purposes of this paper, I will focus on the phenomena of “urban renewal” and how this rhetoric was used and repeated to “serially displace” and deliberately zone African Americans into modern ghettos. I will provide personal accounts from residents living in D.C.’s Barry Farm Public Houses and conclude a fundamental paradigm shift in urban planning and a long-term investment in affordable housing is necessary to curtail the trend of displacement, homelessness, and wealth inequality in America. The multimedia component of this project celebrates the Barry Farm community. In 1961, journalist Jane Jacobs suggested ways a poor neighborhood could “unslum.” Mindy Fullilove clarified Jacobs’ most poignant remark in 2005: “A slum would endure if residents left as quickly as they could. A neighborhood would transform itself, if people wanted to stay. It was the investment of time, money, and love that would make the difference.” During the course of this project, I have spoken with many current and former Barry Farm residents who have generously shared their lives and love for the Barry Farm neighborhood with me. They have taught me how to preserve and love a neighborhood, even as its physical aesthetic deteriorates. I hope the multimedia components of this project will give a small glimpse into a loving, thriving neighborhood.

Author

• Yi, Joy Sharon

Language

• en

Keyword

• Serial forced displacement
• Urban renewal
• Race
• Washington DC
• Housing policy
• Gentrification

Date created

• 2017

Type of Work

• Master's Thesis

License

• All rights reserved

Rights statement

• In Copyright

GW Unit

• New Media Photojournalism

Degree

• M.A.

Advisor

• Bulisova, Gabriela
• Sterner, Susan

Persistent URL

•  https://scholarspace.library.gwu.edu/etd/0r9673780