The Fight for Public Control of Land in the Bronx
InTheseTimes
By Raven Rakia
The community group South Bronx Unite (SBU) has battled for four years to stop the grocery store FreshDirect from building a trucking facility. The distribution center would be the latest highly polluting operation in a neighborhood with childhood asthma rates eight times the national average.
Time is running out: The facility is slated to open later this year. But in the process, SBU has shaken up New York politics and pioneered a model for public control of neighborhood land.
“Breathing is a real problem in our community,” says Mychal Johnson, a founding member of SBU. The South Bronx’s Mott Haven neighborhood, where Johnson lives, ranks first in New York City for child asthma hospitalizations. Johnson’s 15-month-old already uses a nebulizer.
“You go to any large gathering and you ask people in our community, ‘Does anyone here know anyone who has asthma?’ and … higher than 90 percent of the people raise their hand,” says Johnson. “It’s an epidemic.”
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