Next City is excited to welcome Eliana Perozo, a New York City-based journalist, as our Equitable Cities Reporting Fellow for Anti-Displacement Strategies. She joins Next City, a nonprofit news organization covering solutions for equitable cities, for a two-year reporting fellowship examining gentrification and displacement in American cities.
“I’m looking forward to harnessing the best of organizing, facilitating and community-building to shed light on some of our country’s oldest and toughest displacement tactics,” Perozo says. “I’m even more excited to bring into focus the work so many practitioners, organizers and urban planners are doing to combat those practices and provide solutions amid deep challenges.”
An engagement reporter and political educator, Perozo has covered social services, education, New York’s migrant crisis, criminal justice, public health and more. She has reported on how people across the Southeast are navigating barriers to out-of-state abortion care; investigated Black Lives Matter protestors’ police brutality lawsuit against the NYPD; and exposed the Manhattan Educational Opportunity Center’s failure to provide English classes for asylum seekers, prompting corrective action on behalf of the EOC and an episode of This American Life.
Before that, Perozo spent nearly a decade in movement spaces as an organizer and policy expert. She is an Ida B. Wells Scholar from the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism and holds an M.A. in engagement journalism.
“We’re thrilled to have Eliana deepening our coverage of displacement, its devastating effects and the evidence-based strategies our cities can take to alleviate them,” says Aysha Khan, Next City’s managing editor. “Her vision of engaged, community-driven journalism and her background in human rights policy and activism are exactly what this work requires.”
Displacement has its roots in a broad range of problems: climate change, the housing affordability crises, and cycles of disinvestment followed by rapid investment. These drivers create environments where marginalized communities are particularly vulnerable, deepening pervasive health and racial inequities.
But solutions exist. Nascent efforts are expanding community land trusts and land banks. Artists and institutions are protecting cultural landmarks and traditions. Mission-focused bankers and developers are wielding systems historically used for disempowering communities of color to instead help build wealth and sustain communities.
Through her reporting, Perozo will bring these solutions and underrepresented voices to the forefront of the conversation about cities and their future. In addition to articles, Perozo will contribute to Next City’s podcasts, webinars, social media and ebooks. She will also lead a special newsletter debuting later this year.
This fellowship is funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, a leading national philanthropy dedicated to transforming health by dismantling structural racism and other barriers. RWJF has invited Next City to participate in a cross-sector, cross-geography community of practice alongside other national organizations working to prevent displacement and promote neighborhood stabilization. The community of practice will gather with the goals of sharing lessons and best practices, and identifying opportunities for collective action.
Founded in 2003, Next City’s journalism centers marginalized voices while amplifying solutions to the problems that oppress people in cities. Next City’s readers are the city-builders who share our vision for the transformation of cities. Our core audience consists of individuals working in city planning, finance, architecture, media, academia, transportation, the arts — or within any sector that must collaborate to make cities run more equitably.
Established in 2014, Next City’s Equitable Cities Fellowship offers journalists from backgrounds underrepresented in media the opportunity to report on solutions in beats, like displacement, that news outlets have covered less in recent years.
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