Last week, 596 Acres’s Paula Z. Segal and Maple Street Community Gardener Tom LaFarge connected the dots between community land, the tax lien sale and deed fraud at a New York City Council hearing about what the City is doing to protect vulnerable communities from property theft. You can watch the video of the whole hearing by clicking here. CUNY School of Law’s magazine also published a nice story on 596 Acres and the Maple Street struggle. Read it here. La lucha continua!

596 Acres is a member of the New York City Community Land Initiative, making community land trusts possible for New York City. What is that, you ask? Here is a fantastic new comic to tell you how we can work together to stabilize our neighborhoods.

COLLABORATORS WANTED: NYCOMMONS
596 Acres, Common Cause/NY, and the Community Development Project at the Urban Justice Center invite neighborhood groups to collaborate with us this spring on workshops about power over public real estate assets. We will help your members and neighbors learn to protect and expand publicly owned and controlled land and buildings in our neighborhoods. And we will pay you a little bit of money. All groups encouraged to apply and to form coalitions to invite NYCommons to your ‘hoods. No need to be formal or incorporated. Details here. Deadline extended to February 19, 2016. 

NEWS FROM THE ORGANIZING ACRES
Jamaica, Queens – Recall that city-owned Department of Health building in Jamaica we kept out of the surplus real estate auction in October? After that intervention, neighbors started to organize for community control of land assets in Jamaica. Join them on Wednesday, February 17 at 7pm for a community conversation: GENTRIFICATION, DISPLACEMENT & LAND, a roundtable discussion hosted by Pastor Doris Johnson at Holy Ghost Upper Room, 145­59 105th Ave, Jamaica NY 11435. Contact Pastor Doris Johnson at pastordoris1@aol.com or (718) 791­-1183.

Rockaway, Queens – Queens Community Board 14 used the process for issuing a letter of support for a new garden on Beach 84th Street, that they designed as a result of our presentation to them last summer. Live near Beach 84th and want to help make this garden dream real? Get in touch through the lot’s page to continue the momentum!

Harlem, Manhattan – The NYC Parks Department GreenThumb program is looking for stewards for this vacant lot at 128 West 127th St. who want to help get it transferred to the NYC Parks Department for permanent preservation as a community garden. Several neighbors have been in touch and have started organizing. Contact them by leaving a note here.

Concord, Staten Island – We have been working with local gardener Harry since May 2014 to transform this stretch of City-owned lots on Sands Street into a productive landscape. Here is the plan for the future garden here. This week, Harry got a letter of support from SI Community Board 2 and is now waiting for the City to release the land to Parks. GreenThumb is standing by to facilitate the transfer. It’s a big lot and going to need a lot of hands. Get involved here.

East New York, Brooklyn – We’re so thrilled to be facilitating the re-opening of the Warwick Street Greenery Glow Garden for residents new and old with the help of GrowNYC, East New York Farms!, the Nature Conservancy and NYC Parks GreenThumb. When resident-organizer Taylor reached out to us last spring to ask about the vacant lot on his block, we were able to tell him that the lot was actually a former garden and the land is the jurisdiction of NYC Parks. We are making sure that the necessary repairs are done and resources directed to re-open the space! What a great discovery! Jump into the fun here!

Brownsville, Brooklyn – At our urging Council Member Espinal is exploring the potential of havingthis vacant NYCHA-owned lot on Glenmore and Powell activated as a community space instead of being a repository for trash behind a fence. He wrote a letter to the NYCHA CEO about our collaboration with Guns Down, Life Up. Follow the progress and help galvanize support here.