Was there ever a time when some Portlanders thought gentrification was a good idea, when neighborhoods said there was too much affordable housing?
The film NorthEast Passage documented life in Albina in the late 1990s when crime and abandoned buildings were the neighborhood's number-one concern. Rising home prices and outside investors were welcomed by many. A lot has changed for the better and a lot of mistakes were made for the worse.
Come to a screening of NorthEast Passage and participate in a panel discussion about what the lessons learned in Albina can teach the rest of the city. Discuss the issues with people featured in the film and see clips from the upcoming sequel, Priced Out.
Doors open at 6:15pm, discussion at 8pm.
Seating capacity is limited;
advanced ticket purchase is encouraged.
Thursday, Nov. 3, Nov. 10 and Nov. 17.
Screenings are a fundraiser for Priced Out, a nonprofit project in association with Northwest Documentary Arts & Media. Discussion sponsored by Ignorant/Reflections' Gentrification Is Weird project. Tickets $10–$20 sliding scale. Screenings at Northwest Documentary, 6 NE Tillamook St., Portland. For more information, email pricedoutmovie@gmail.com.
A section of NorthEast Passage and a trailer for the upcoming sequel, Priced Out, will be on display at the ReBuilding Center starting in 2017 as part of the Commons interactive kiosk project.
More info about the project:
Priced Out is an investigative and personal look at how skyrocketing housing prices are displacing Portland's black community and reshaping the entire city. The feature-length documentary explores the complexities and contradictions of gentrification and what neighborhood life means after the era of "The Ghetto."
The film is a sequel to the 2002 documentary NorthEast Passage: The Inner City and the American Dream.
Priced Out is currently in production with an expected release in winter of 2016/17.
A nonprofit project in partnership with Northwest Documentary Arts & Media
Two local residents, Cornelius Swart and Spencer Wolf, took five years to produce the original film. The two are teaming up once again for the sequel.
Please consider giving to this important project by joining us on Kickstarter and Facebook.
In the late 1990s, Nikki Williams, a black single mother, embraced the gentrification that was making inroads into her community. But more than 15 years later Williams found herself one of the last black residents on her block. Priced Out follows Williams as she decides to sell her home—built by Habitat for Humanity—and move to Dallas, Texas, in search of a new black community.
Now, 15 years after the film was shot, Governing Magazine has ranked Portland as the most gentrified city in America. Nikki's neighborhood has become one of the trendiest places in the country to live. Crime is down, houses have been fixed up, and new bars and restaurants open up almost every day. But half the black population has left and average home prices have gone from $30,000 to $410,000.
The neighborhoods of North/Northeast Portland have gone from being majority black to majority white. Rents are climbing, homes are being replaced with apartment blocks, and the word “gentrification” is on everyone’s lips.
Why did such a dramatic change occur and what does this change mean for residents of other communities that face gentrification?
Priced Out will reconnect with the residents and activists featured in the first film to see what’s happened to the neighborhood and find out what will happen next as the community continues to struggle with its identity and its place in the American Dream.
Gentrification, once a phenomena that occurred only in big cities like New York, Chicago, and San Francisco, is now cropping up in cities from San Antonio to St. Louis to Portland, Maine. Why is this happening?
The film will reexamine public policy and economic forces surrounding gentrification to create a time-lapse portrait of North/Northeast Portland’s rapid transformation and what it does and does not have in common to other gentrifying communities in the nation.