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Comment

I have never seen anything like the current state of affairs with affordable and accessible housing, in the City of Grand Rapids where I was born and raised, and recently returned to after spending nearly five years living in other states. The Baxter neighborhood I was molded by, filled with both Black joy and pain; is now overrun with faces that are unrecognizable. The neighborhood has been gentrified with white residents that now seek to take advantage of a community that City Administrators have taken an interest in beautifying. There was beauty in our Black struggle before their empty investments for change. Gentrification is mentally, physically and financially abusive. Gentrification is violence. In true American fashion, there are no protections for BIPOC people to be able to withstand and fight back against such violence. We have been preyed upon by predatory lending, city and state property taxation and police surveillance. We need our federal government to enact legislation to protect the marginalized from rental rates. There is Michigan legislation that prohibits rent control at the local level. We need the Feds to step in and make it right. Not only would the people residing in all states benefit, but the nation’s economy would benefit from its people being able to spend more money on living, instead of places to lay our heads.