Redefining the “Gentry”

One of the hardest challenges I have faced in my professional career is to conduct systems change. It’s emotionally, spiritually, and physically taxing. Systems are built to sustain a process, and over time as they become more engrained into our collective consciousness, their inability to be moved becomes just as resistant to the forces that would cause them to be altered. Poverty is a system, lack of access to affordable housing is a system, and all the accompanying social ills that give way to negative outcomes all feed into a larger system. 

In creating Project Boots, our collective goal was to look at what aspect of the larger system we could disrupt through our collective work. We understood that by creating affordable housing we have disrupted the grip of systemic poverty, which ultimately gives way to family wealth creation. We also understood that by creating pathways to family wealth creation, we availed ourselves to better educational outcomes. Those educational outcomes ultimately allowed participants a more informed seat at the collective table.  

However, our greatest challenge remained in redefining the idea of who the gentry was and how we would intertwine them with the people that were indigenous to the neighborhood. Therefore, we started with people who were reared and developed in the community (the gentry) and saw their success as a result of – and not in spite of – the current conditions the larger community found itself in. Having them at the table helped us establish a metaphorical bar that we hope will become aspirational for those that are currently there. 

At the same time, we simultaneously crafted programmatic offerings for new residents that met their sociological, ontological, political, and fiscal needs. For example, incentivizing new residents through a matching savings program that will be the seed money for their down payment and closing costs. Program participants must commit to attending monthly workshops that address the aforementioned areas and agree to build their homes in the community.

The state of the indigenous residents was not lost upon us, and how they factored into our collective work was broad and required more of a systems approach because of the varying partnerships. Those partners included, but were not limited to LIFT JAX, United Way, the Community Foundation, the City of Jacksonville, and Goodwill just to name a few. Out of this partnership came a refurbished community market, the Melanin Market, and a home repair program, by which over 100 homes will have some work done to them by 2022. 

Therefore, as you can see, we collectively redefined what gentrification was by simply redefining who we identified as the gentrifier. We redistributed the wealth by starting with those who are indigenous to the community and giving them an equity stake in what was happening on the ground. The conclusion is not written yet as we are still writing chapters to our book. However, we do have a solid work plan that will allow us to build next steps that raise the bar for the future. 

That's My Truth and I AM Sticking to it...

I AM 

Dr. Irvin PeDro Cohen