WWW.QNS.COM RIDGEWOOD TIMES AUGUST 6, 2020 7
demonstrates potential of mass evictions
camp by the station’s triangle that’s
closed off to traffic. Organizers
gathered bedding and pizza, set up
a projector, and had music playing
throughout the night.
The sleep out was meant to demonstrate
what could happen if families
were to get evicted because of an
inability to pay rent due to a lack of
income as a result of job loss.
Maria Gil, a resident of Bushwick,
thought of this idea when commuting
to work in Brooklyn and watching
unhoused people make the streets
their home.
“This is just a refl ection of what
may happen if the governor doesn’t
do anything to cancel rent,” she said
in Spanish.
Gil talked about some friends who
were too afraid to join the demonstration,
but have been struggling to pay
rent since March. She said she’s friends
with one family with a disabled child
that had a parent temporarily out of
work from his restaurant that closed
in March. Once they reopened a few
months ago, he was not asked to return
and don’t qualify for government
benefi ts. Their rent is $2,500 and they
have only been able to pay for food
with their savings.
“I know many families like that,” Gil
said, adding that they wanted to ask
Cuomo how he’d feel being in their
shoes.
Ana Gil, one of Maria’s daughters
who helped organize the event, said
they were there marching for those
who feel they can’t speak up in fear of
retaliation.
“We planned this because a lot of
what’s happening right now, it’s affecting
everyone, not just the poor,”
she said.
Ana said that even before the pandemic,
families have experienced
landlords trying to price them out or
employ other measures to get them
to leave. She said their own family
experienced this aft er almost 22
years of living in the same home when
their landlord off ered them money to
leave.
“We used to fi ght our landlord, and
still to this day we do, to fi x our building
… but ever since people started
gentrifying Bushwick or Ridgewood,
they’re like, ‘Oh wait, these people
could pay more,'” she said.
But Maria added that in their building,
there have been vacant apartments
for some time now.
“We want to represent those who
have been evicted from communities
to bring in people who could pay
higher prices of luxury buildings
that weren’t built for people like my
family, low-income families, families
with a lot of kids,” Ana said. “It’s
been very devastating to see so many
people and so many of my neighbors
getting high amount of rent for such
a tiny space.”
/WWW.QNS.COM
