Vanderbilt Avenue Block Association

There doesn't seem to be much activity on this website, but there's so much growth and change going on in Red Hook lately, and I'd love to know more about it. How do long-term local residents feel about it? How are new residents and businesses fitting in and changing the face of the neighborhood? I live in Park Slope, but I've been visiting Red Hook for nearly a decade, and my son goes to school there...

Yes the neighborhood has change a great deal. As a resident of Red Hook, I think the change is great. Sad that it took so long. But happy that its happening. But I must say that because of this great change, horrible things are happening. I am born and raised in this community and I seen it all. I was a president of the PTA where my children attended. I coach little league team for the RHCJC and work within the legal system for 5 years. It break my heart to see what I see daily.

The local grocery Store, the clean Parks, the Fairway, the Ikea, the Waterfront, etc. But the 76PCT and PSA-1 are out of control and no one seem to care.

Our young teenagers are being targeted daily, search, frisked, and many of time beaten for no reason and NO ONE SEEM TO CARE. If its not cause I seen it first hand, I would have never believe that this was happening in this community.

Yes the change is long over due. But now we have a bigger problem. Its a matter of time before Red Hook is in the first pages of every newpaper and on every News channel.

Not everyone is a criminal. Not until this issue is addressed and taken care of, Red Hook will never be the beautiful place it should be. 

Thanks for your post. I haven't posted much at this site in a long time because so much has been going on in my life - but I am completely sympathetic to what you're talking about in your message.

 Last year, I started noticing that buildings were selling for a million dollars across the street from PS15. But you're right, that doesn't seem to be having a positive impact on quality of life for long time residents. Red Hook is going through the gentrification upheaval that I had dreaded when I originally moved to Brooklyn over 20 years ago when I fled the gentrification of my original neighborhood in Manhattan. I recently had to give up my old apartment in the South Slope (12th St. & 5th Ave.) because it became overwhelming to keep going to war in housing court with the landlord, who wanted to raise the rent (I was rent stabilized, lived there for 15 years, moved there at a time when people from the "high-rent" end of the Slope thought I was nuts for living on the "wrong side of the tracks", and I thought they were nuts for shunning a thriving, vital neighborhood with rents that were LOWER than $1000 a month). Unfortunately, I think it's just a matter of time before Red Hook goes through what the rest of the city is going through. I wish Jane Jacobs, who was the original urban-planner who opposed exactly this kind of "improvement" that puts the squeeze on ordinary people who are just trying to make a living

Meanwhile, what do you think about the Department of Education trying to put a Charter School in PS15's building? I've got a son in third grade over there, and I think it's horrible. I've been trying to gather as much info about protesting this as possible; you can see what I've pulled together at http://charter-free-ps15.blogspot.com

Emily