Public Art Makes A Rallying Cry in Charlotte's Gentrifying Communities

Neighborhoods like Enderly Park are flooded with advertising in the form of yard signs from developers who offer cash to a cash strapped community.  

What is remarkable is that in Enderly Park the signs have disappeared for weeks and were replaced sometime yesterday by something entirely different than what I have seen anywhere else . . .

The "We Buy Houses" signs along Tuckaseegee Road from Camp Greene to Glenwood Drive have been transformed from mundane predatory messages to rallying slogans like "We shall not be moved" and "Development Without Displacement".  Each public art piece uses a developer sign as a canvas and carries messages of pride and persistence in the face redevelopment.  "NOPE" signs and stickers punctuate the art.

Evoking the ethos of this stage in social justice, the art pieces celebrate resistance, resilience and community. It's clear these messages aren't coming from real estate developers.

Homes in neighborhoods in close proximity to metropolitan areas are often targets for real estate prospectors and developers. These developers make cash deals with home owners to acquire property in areas populated by low income earners.

Redevelopment often means that the people losing their rentals or forfeiting their hold on real estate are those who were already squaring off against systemic obstacles to access to upward mobility including poverty wages, poor education, mass incarceration and the benefits cliff because real estate developer practices often displace low income residents by aggressively buying lower priced homes, sometimes through coercion, and reselling at prices no low income earner could afford while raising rents.

The entire social fabric of a place or its ethnic, wealth, education demographics are incontrovertibly changed such that the people who grew up in an area become the  "suspicious element" simply because their brown skin is suddenly out of place for new affluent and predominantly White neighbors who are quicker to call the police. Redevelopment and displacement complicates life for populations that are statistically at the greatest mortal risk on a good day. 

The public art in Enderly Park and other West Charlotte communities raises awareness around the problems with gentrification and redevelopment while promoting solutions accessible to communities that follow the signs.