Liosuelo

On Prospect Heights, displacement, and losing the neighborhood that raised me.

Experiencing gentrification is a form of grief. It was around 2014 when I started writing about grief. By that point, I felt like I had lost many important things in my life: key family members, friends from childhood, and, especially, my neighborhood. 

I remember saying, “Grief can come in many forms.”

I realized that the pain and loss I felt after losing my grandmother following her heart transplant were the same pain and loss I felt physically and emotionally while watching my neighborhood rapidly change.

The Neighborhood That Raised Me

My family has been in Prospect Heights since the 1950s. My great-grandparents purchased our brownstone on Prospect Place in the 1960s. Growing up in Prospect Heights in the 1990s, the neighborhood was essentially all Black. It was magical. It was special. It was home.

I remember my mom and me talking about how special our little neighborhood was: close to so many trains, lined with trees and beautiful brownstones, and near Prospect Park, the library, and the museum. More than that, it was a safe haven for our culture. The neighborhood, being largely Black and specifically Caribbean, felt like we had our brownstone inside an even larger encasement of home: the neighborhood itself.

We knew all our neighbors by name. We were invested in the well-being of the people around us. Even when the city did not invest in us, or when it cut funding for important public spaces in Prospect Heights, we still thrived. We had frequent block parties and community events. The parks and streets were filled with kids playing sports from the surrounding brownstones and buildings. My boyfriend specifically remembers the wide street of St. John’s Place and Underhill being used for football all weekend. That’s how little street traffic there was.

I miss leaving the house and feeling loved. We greeted each other and knew one another’s names.

My core memories are of walking from our home on Prospect Place between Underhill and Vanderbilt to my elementary school in Park Slope at P.S. 282; getting pizza at Gino’s on Flatbush; walking to my grandmother’s other apartment at 770 Fulton; going to MET Supermarket on Vanderbilt for groceries; trekking down the street to Evelyn to wait for a cab that was always “5 minutes away.” 

Then there was walking to my middle school at PPCMS in Park Slope; going after school to get chicken wings covered in ketchup and hot sauce at the Chinese spot next to Jimmy, the Chinese man who owned the discount store on Seventh Avenue, and then getting the pizza-and-soda combo that cost just a few dollars; passing the Haitian men sitting in front of the barbershop on Park Place by the Q train; and getting curry chicken patties at Little Miss Muffin.

I have beautiful memories of going to my grandfather’s jewelry store on Utica Avenue. I remember the cases of shiny rings and necklaces. I remember Brooklyn Tabernacle when it was on Flatbush, and I always hated going to Sunday School. I preferred worshipping with the adults. Then, afterward, getting coco bread from the Jamaican spot next to the Christian Science Reading Room.

I miss the neighborhood energy of my childhood, my teens, and my 20s. I miss the Pavilion movie theater on Flatbush.

Then, Slowly, the Changes Came

I think when it first started happening, no one understood just how aggressive the gentrification would become. Around 2009, I remember the signs that said “Block eminent domain” lining the tracks and fences around what eventually became Barclays Center.

My mom and I went to see a documentary around 2010 about the development plans coming to Downtown Brooklyn. Still, I think gentrification felt like a second thought for many Brooklynites at the time. I mean, how bad could it really get?

For a while, the people most directly affected seemed to be in Williamsburg, with the influx of hipsters and then yuppies. Then they came for Prospect Heights because of Barclays. Then Park Slope, pushing out long-standing Puerto Rican residents. Then Bed-Stuy. Then Fort Greene. Clinton Hill. Now areas that were once all Black and Latino are not.

I left for boarding school in 2004. When I was in high school and told my boarding school friends where I was from, Brooklyn was not considered cool or fun. Every time I came home for the weekend, I was shocked by how many new changes there were.

At first, it was cute. My mother is a traveler; she loves food and culture. So we appreciated the new restaurants that popped up on Vanderbilt. I missed Gene at the candy store on Vanderbilt and the Caribbean ice cream store next door to Met, but at least we didn’t have to go all the way to Park Slope or Manhattan for Malaysian food.

After college, some of those same boarding school friends moved here. That was very strange to me. No one probably knew what Prospect Heights was until 2015. Normally, I would have to say I was from Park Slope or give a handful of landmarks for reference: Prospect Park, Grand Army Plaza, Brooklyn Museum, etc. Then it changed, and it felt weird for a stranger to say, “Yes, I know exactly where you’re from! Love it there.”

However, at some point, the restaurants gave way to new bars. Then new cafés. Then people who didn’t smile or greet you on the street.

Then came the policing of Black native Brooklynites. Neighbors had the cops called on them for sitting on the stoop, talking, and playing music. The Baptist church on Prospect Place & Vanderbilt received threatening letters from newcomers to the neighborhood to lower the noise of their worship services. But now, in 2026, stoop culture is praised as a way for transplants to connect with their neighbors. Block parties that were once discouraged and restricted are now being rebranded and rebilled as a way to recreate the Brooklyn aesthetic that so many people want to feel part of.

Then whole apartment buildings were cleared of their Black tenants, who were priced out or whose leases were not renewed. Then property taxes went up in Prospect Heights. Then banks were purposefully giving predatory refinancing loans to elderly Black homeowners. Then there was deed theft.

This all came to a head for me shortly after I graduated from college. I was finally happy to be out of predominantly white institutions. I missed my neighborhoods. I missed my familiar places. But by the time I graduated in 2013, I already felt like a stranger in my own neighborhood.

By the Time Barclays Came Around, Brooklyn Was for the World

My dad died in 2018. When my boyfriend and I left the United States in 2019, it was because I was disillusioned and so triggered by being in Brooklyn. There were no more parties filled with Black, newly graduated millennials. No more parties in Fort Greene Park. I have such beautiful memories of when First Saturdays weren’t crowded, when Fort Greene was a refuge for middle-class, artistic, and bohemian Black families. The location of BAM DanceAfrica had moved, and its dedicated space had been greatly reduced (Whole Foods and Apple now occupy the site). Barclays brought even more tourists.

By the time Barclays came around, Brooklyn was for the world. In 2021, while walking the Camino, I saw a pizza place in a small city in Spain called “Brooklyn”. I laughed to myself.

Our little slice of Brooklyn was no longer heaven. It felt like hell.

I missed walking through the neighborhood on empty streets. I missed riding my bike with my sister at 1 a.m. on the empty roads of Park Slope because no one was around. I missed my neighborhood feeling like my backyard.

I miss the safety of home. There is this view that Brooklyn was not safe before, and that was not the case for me. Prospect Heights was always nice, tree-lined, and full of life. That safety of home will never be there again.

A Stranger in My Own Neighborhood

Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that Brooklyn could undergo even more changes. But the rapid development, aggressive displacement, and gentrification only ramped up after 2018. When we went back to the United States to spend a few months in 2024, I was traumatized by the changes.

The crowds were unbearable. The changed skyline felt like grief. I got lost near Downtown Brooklyn because I could no longer orient myself. I was shocked by the hordes of people spilling out of the train stations because Grand Army Plaza had become a destination. I was disturbed by the bike lanes, the lack of parking, and the rerouting of traffic. The noise from trucks and garbage pickup made it hard to sleep in a neighborhood that had once been completely silent, even in the height of summer.

I remember when white riders rarely stayed on the train past Clark Street. Then I remember when they started getting off at Bergen Street. Then Grand Army Plaza. My mom and I would look at each other in shock. Now, when I get off the train at Grand Army Plaza or Seventh Avenue, I am frequently the only Black person on the platform. This all happened in just the last decade.

Now you see white women everywhere: running through Flatbush, pushing strollers down Nostrand. For communities with a history of displacement, this is not just a demographic change. It is a warning. It means changes are coming, and they will not include you.

Anyone I ask says Brooklyn is amazing, and it probably is. A melting pot of transplants, many of them white. Monied. With access to bars, restaurants, and cafés. Vestiges of the soulful past. It must be wonderful, and I try to enjoy it through their eyes, but it is hard.

I get angry when transplants say things like, “We need more bike lanes!” or “Crossing Grand Army Plaza is scary. It should be a carless zone.”

A coworker of my boyfriend, a woman from out of state who recently moved to Prospect Heights, said something to him on his first day of work that has stuck with me. He was explaining how the traffic changes on Underhill had been inconvenient and made things harder for people who drive, and she responded, “Exactly. The changes aren’t for you!”

My question is: Who are the changes serving, then?

What people who are not native Brooklynites don’t understand is that, for many of us, this has been home for four generations. We have grandmothers who need to get to appointments and cannot rely on public transportation or easily access a ride. We have families with children who cannot get to school efficiently on public transportation. And many Brooklyn and Queens residents do not live near trains or reliable bus service, especially farther into the boroughs. The current system is not serving much of the city’s longtime residents, even as the city keeps being redesigned around the convenience of newer, wealthier ones.

We don’t have summer homes to escape to during the holidays or the summer months, while wealthier transplants get to keep their cars and their conveniences out of state.

Brooklyn Is Home

Since moving back to Brooklyn this summer, I have noticed an uptick in content about gentrification on social media: Black native New Yorkers talking about their neighborhoods, the experience of being from here, and the impact these changes have had on them. It is as if people have reached a saturation point. The discontent is catching up, and people are voicing it more and more.

Now that we are back in NYC and likely staying here for a bit, I am seeing that collective grief up close. We are angry. We feel like we don’t belong. We feel like the future plans are not for us.

A food co-op member from Germany told me she had never met anyone from Brooklyn. That was astounding to me. It shows the divide in the city.

Why Weren’t Our Neighborhoods Worth Investing In When They Were All Black?

Sometimes I feel bad writing pieces like this because it can sound as though I am reducing everything to Black and White. I wish people knew that Black people hate talking about race dynamics as much as everyone else. But we are forced to. Because our whole experience is determined by our skin, everywhere in the world. I promise you: Black people truly just want to be left alone.

The world is highly racialized. Race is one of the foundations of capitalism and the structure of the United States. So places where Black people can feel safe, where we are not targeted or treated as suspicious, are incredibly valuable. Our neighborhoods can be those places when we are allowed to build them up and are not over-policed and underfunded in every possible way.

That is why the loss of Brooklyn, and Prospect Heights specifically, as a safe haven for Black residents is so terrifying and traumatizing. It often feels like we have nowhere else to go. Safely, at least.

I recently found an old journal entry I wrote about gentrification, and so much of what I wrote then still feels true now. Gentrification does not “improve” neighborhoods. It tears them apart. It rips out the culture and displaces people. It is purposeful and enforced by government housing policies, zoning, policing, and investment choices.

I will say, though, that the city has now decided to invest more money in street cleaning, parks, schools, and museums because the area’s racial and economic makeup has changed and it is now deemed worthy.

Crime and violence go down, and “quality of life” goes up, not because the people moving in are better humans, but because when the color of their skin is the right one and/or the color in their pocket is green, money suddenly gets invested in the neighborhood.

The Same Culture That Attracts People Is Being Killed

It is disgusting. The same culture that attracts people to these neighborhoods is slowly being killed. A Haitian barbershop in my neighborhood that had been there for at least 60 years was pushed out because of ridiculous rent prices. To be replaced by what? Another café, bar, or restaurant.

Change is inevitable, yes. But this kind of forced displacement is aggressive. And it can be avoided.

Keeping a few thousand affordable housing units is not enough when hundreds of buildings have been demolished and replaced with condos most longtime residents cannot afford. So many New Yorkers have been pushed from their homes. The authenticity is gone. I miss the Brooklyn from my childhood. I walk down the street and feel like a stranger.

The people who fought for NYC and kept its economy alive after white flight, when so many people left the city to rot, need to be involved in the redesign of Brooklyn.

When people ask, “Why didn’t Black business owners buy the building?” the answer is that many of us could not. We literally could not get home loans. That has been proven. We were redlined against home loans, denied access to wealth-building, and still remained resilient. DESPITE those roadblocks, we still built rich lives, families, businesses, culture, and community anyway.

There is a belief that Black and Latino people are incapable of keeping their neighborhoods clean or taking care of them, which is false. If anything, the hubs of commerce, culture, and upkeep that we built for generations in order to live with dignity, despite all of the racist policies used against our communities, are the very backbone of the neighborhoods gentrification is now being built upon.

The resilience of our neighborhoods and the culture that carried Brooklyn through white flight to the suburbs are what I am most proud of.

Downtown Brooklyn was once the third-most profitable shopping district in NYC. The targeted rezoning laws in 2004 happened for a reason. Now Downtown Brooklyn is an upscale residential and commercial hub. None of the vendors, storefronts, or shoppers of my youth exist there anymore.

It is sad. It is painful. And it feels like there is nothing we can do about it.

I knew it was bad when I overheard gentrifiers discussing that they themselves couldn’t believe how much Brooklyn had changed in the last few years.

When the Knicks won the championship, my boyfriend, a lifelong, long-suffering Knicks fan who was made fun of for being a fan his whole life, could not believe how many people were suddenly claiming NYC pride. In one way, it was unifying. But in another way, when I saw the celebration in Fort Greene near FancyFree, which used to be Mullane’s when we were in our 20s, we were astounded by the demographics of the people out celebrating.

Native Brooklynites, I think, realized in that moment just how gentrified the neighborhoods had become. My boyfriend said he was witnessing a live-action replay of the Knicks championship being gentrified.

Where Does This Leave Us Now?

It hurts to feel purposefully priced out, preyed on, and left out. It hurts to get stares from newer residents who seem surprised that you are in a neighborhood they thought you didn’t belong in.

Gentrification is trauma. Gentrification is moving through grief. I hope someone studies this, or maybe interviews Brooklynites about these changes, because these feelings are hard to process.

We need to talk as a community. We need to grieve. We need to heal. We need to build new spaces. We need to occupy areas that were once ours. We need to recognize that it will never be the same.

My boyfriend said something that I keep repeating to myself: “The cost of being from NYC is that maybe you can never have a home in the traditional sense, because home should be a place that doesn’t change, that feels comfortable. NYC was never designed to be ours permanently. It isn’t anyone’s anymore.”