We spoke with an interviewee about her past experiences, trying to ask “why” questions and dig deeper into her explanation of her situation. Because we could not go to her hometown with her and it was retrospective, this was not a full contextual inquiry, but we tried to give it as many elements of one as possible, and ultimately used a directive storytelling approach.
Our meeting was with with a sophomore student, “Nancy,” at Williams. Nancy had lived in an area of Brooklyn, NY that was undergoing gentrification, but had moved out of this area with her family later in life. At first, our prompting was kept vague, as we did not want to skew her responses to any particular problem, and we told her beforehand only that we wanted to gain an understanding of her story as it pertains to gentrification. But then, as she spoke, we asked pointed questions during her story to understand it better. Nancy’s unique position of living in both an urban area undergoing gentrification and a suburban area that was primarily white allowed her to pinpoint many of the difficulties of living in her first home.
Nancy explained to us that her area and many others become increasingly expensive over time, whether due to the influx of new people or not. Even in her neighborhood, riddled with violence and poverty, isolated expensive stores pop up frequently. As a result, many local stores close because they are unable to keep up with the city’s prices while offering feasible rates to the customers of the community. Nancy described her local laundromat as having disappeared almost overnight, and shortly thereafter in its place was built “a cafe for white people.” Not only did Nancy lose the ability to conveniently wash her clothes at a laundromat near home, but she also didn’t feel welcome inside the new cafe, which she only entered once out of interest, but where she couldn’t buy anything because of its exorbitant prices. The gentrification of a city begins with the influx of new stores, but what’s worse, it is exacerbated by the new businesses’ inability to cater to the needs of the existing community, creating a feeling of isolation and driving it out even more rapidly.
From our conversation with Nancy, our group identified two concrete problems. The first is that a low-income community does not know what stores are on the brink of closing down until it no longer exists, and the second is that new businesses are not conducive to supporting the old crowd, creating isolation and driving the crowd out from the inside. Even in cities where there exist programs dedicated to supporting local businesses, this support is not sufficient for their survival. People need to be more informed of the state of their local businesses to be able to support them. If these businesses never leave, maybe the communities within could continuously support themselves.
Our group did not have difficulty establishing rapport with our guest, but the conversation resembled more of a semi-structured interview than a contextual inquiry. She was very generous to share her story because she understands firsthand the importance of the topic. Our conversation with Nancy solidified our desire to speak with a member of CLiA about ways to take action within communities, now that our problem is more narrowly-focused. However, our conversations with Nancy also left us wanting to know more about these programs dedicated to supporting local businesses and how they work. Perhaps we may want to speak with the owner of a local business in North Adams and learn more about the inner-workings of the program.