May 28, 2014
Bay Area residents who are experiencing eviction or another form of displacement due to gentrification are encouraged to contribute their stories to a crowdsourcing map, the latest effort by the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project.
The Narratives of Displacement and Loss project, launched Tuesday, allows community members to post their audio, video or picture-based stories directly on the crowdsourcing website and pinpoint their locations on the map. They can also contribute through email or text message at (777) 200-4233.
“We wanted to create a platform in which not only eviction stories, but other stories related to loss, results of gentrification, could be documented,” said Erin McElroy, director of the volunteer-fueled project.
More than a dozen stories have already been added to the app, including a cook who was evicted from her home in Precita Park and moved to Oakland, and a San Francisco tech worker with AIDS who was displaced from his home in the Castro but found nearby housing in the neighborhood.
“We’re interested in memorializing and remembrance, and of course creating fuel for a direct action and political shift,” McElroy said of The City’s housing troubles.
Submissions are reviewed by project members before going live in case landlords or others against the anti-displacement movement make threatening comments, she said. Within a month, the project hopes to release a map with oral histories of loss and displacement.
Source: The Examiner
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