Elected leaders draw anti-gentrification ire
Protesters: Redevelopment prioritized over people
With the business that sparked community outrage closed for a fifth consecutive day, anti-gentrification demonstrators outside the Ink Coffee shop in Five Points on Monday turned their ire toward elected leaders who they say have prioritized redevelopment over people.
Denver City Council president Albus Brooks, who joined the ongoing protests in the morning outside Ink Coffee, 2851 Larimer St., met that criticism face to face. Mayor Michael Hancock, for his part, responded in an interview to complaints about his approach to affordable housing issues that have been sounded since the start of the controversy.
Ink hasn’t served a cup of coffee since a sandwich-board sign it placed on the sidewalk on Larimer Street reading “Happily gentrifying the neighborhood since 2014,” went viral on social media Wednesday afternoon. The sign — stolen Wednesday afternoon — angered Five Points residents who feel redevelopment is pricing many out of the historically black neighborhood and made national news in the process. A sign left in the front window claimed the shop would reopen Monday after the long holiday weekend, but with protesters gathered outside again, the shop remained closed. Brooks was among them.
“This is absolutely ridiculous. It’s been incredibly divisive,” Brooks said, adding that the sign the coffee shop’s corporate management has apologized for and called a bad joke has “exposed a deeper reality in our community.”
Brooks, whose District 9 includes the area, said that his priorities now are to hold Ink accountable, support locally owned businesses in Five Points — such as Coffee at the Point and Whittier Cafe — and focus on creating policies that address the problems of gentrification.
But many demonstrators said they didn’t feel Brooks is sincere. They pointed to Denver’s urban camping ban, legislation that Brooks sponsored, and the council’s endorsement of plans by the Colorado Department of Transportation to expand Interstate 70 through the nearby Elyria-Swansea neighborhood as examples of Denver’s leadership prioritizing business over people.
“Can you stand with the community and demand the closure of this establishment?” protest organizer Tay Anderson asked Brooks on Monday in an interaction broadcast over Facebook Live. “How have you and the mayor and the rest of the city council contributed to shops like this continuing to gentrify this neighborhood to push community members out?”
Brooks said he is standing with the community. He said that he has exchanged emails with Ink founder and CEO Keith Herbert and asked him to come speak to community members about the thought process behind the ad campaign.
Herbert and Ink have not commented on the controversy since issuing a statement around 12:30 p.m. on Thanksgiving. The shop, in the trendy River North Arts District portion of Denver’s historically black Five Points neighborhood, has been vandalized multiple times since Wednesday.
Brooks is hardly the only leader protesters have singled out in recent days.
On Saturday, when around 200 people gathered outside Ink, some protesters held signs that appropriated the design and message of the company’s sign to accuse Hancock of “hap-
pily gentrifying the neighborhood since 2011.”
“I think it’s misguided,” Hancock said in an interview Monday, “but I cannot allow myself or our administration to get bogged down into that. Because political messages are just as inappropriate as the insensitive branding message that (Ink) thought was a joke. Because it distracts from the real opportunity we have here.”
Hancock called gentrification “a very serious macroeconomic issue” and credited Ink for “haphazardly and, quite frankly, stupidly” creating an opportunity for broader discussion.
“(But) we also have to educate ourselves, because if we don’t understand the true cause of gentrification, we can’t address it effectively,” he said.
Hancock listed several initiatives that his administration has launched since he took office in 2011, as well as more recent plans that he says will help reduce the displacement of residents by new development. Those include a 10year, $150 million affordable housing fund fueled by property taxes and development impact fees, changes to the city’s workforce development programs and the roll-out of financial empowerment centers to help families stabilize their budgets.
Hancock has touted the housing plan as bold, but some critics contend that and other programs offer small fixes compared to the scope and reach of Denver’s skyrocketing housing costs.
A group of residents, developers and housing advocates called All In Denver has called on city leaders to put a housing bond on the ballot next year as a way to raise more money to address what they see as a housing crisis that can’t wait for the housing fund to raise money over a decade.
Hancock’s administration so far has questioned the viability of that request.
Hancock, who grew up in Whittier, just east of Five Points, said it has pained him to watch the displacement of residents and businesses — a problem that he said was rooted in a high rate of foreclosures during the Great Recession in 2008 and 2009.
That made real estate cheap — for a few years. It was long enough for outsiders to snap up small retail shops and houses, leaving many former homeowners no choice but to rent homes or apartments until their fortunes changed.
A few years later, during the economic recovery, Hancock said those same people were ready to buy homes again just as they were faced with competition from Denver’s unrelenting influx of newcomers, which has driven up prices.
Merriam-Webster dictionary said its website saw a 2,500 percent increase in searches for the term “gentrification” on Monday after the Ink story had made national news.
Ink’s Herbert, in his latest statement, said he didn’t see the word as having a negative connotation.
“When our advertising firm presented this campaign to us, I interpreted it as taking pride in being part of a dynamic, evolving community that is inclusive of people of all races, ethnicities, religions and gender identities,” he wrote. “I recognize now that we had a blind spot to other legitimate interpretations.”
Sondra Young, president of the Denver branch of the NAACP, also attended Monday’s protest. She said she wasn’t there to get into politics, just address the injustices of gentrification in the Mile High City. She agrees with Anderson and others that Ink should shutter its Five Points store, one of the company’s 15 locations in Denver.
“We find no humor in racism. We find no humor in privilege. What looks like a great opportunity for some is really displacement for many,” Young said. “Community doesn’t look like just the people that can afford $2,000 a month rent. People that are low-income have something to add to the community, too.”