‘We Live Here’ Tackles Fair Housing in New Season
The new season of We Live Here, from PRX and St. Louis Public Radio, will pick apart how racial divisions affect the lives of everyday residents in one of nation’s most segregated places: St. Louis.
“In the past few years we’ve tackled everything from politics to policing to education in our show,” said Kameel Stanley, the podcast’s co-host and co-producer. “This year we wanted to challenge ourselves, go deep and wide on one topic — housing — and hopefully have a unifying narrative across the entire season.”
Though it has been 50 years since President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Fair Housing Act into law, America remains deeply segregated, and by almost every statistical measure, unequal. The long story of racism in housing continues.
From the fight to stop illegal evictions to the ways development and zoning impact communities of color, We Live Here’s producers will harness the power of personal narratives to dismantle why and how segregation is sewed so tightly into the fabric of their community.
“The history and forces that continue to shape the racial and economic landscape of St. Louis can be mapped onto just about every city and town in this country,” said Tim Lloyd, who also hosts and produces the show. “Regardless of whether or not you’ve spent any time in St. Louis, if you’re living in America, this season is about wherever you call home, too.”
The first two episodes to start the season — the first released today, April 26 — profile a woman who, after being abused by her boyfriend, was kicked out of Maplewood for calling the police for help one too many times. Attorneys for the American Civil Liberties Union and others say enough is enough and are taking the small town to court.
Episodes of the new season will be released biweekly for the rest of 2018.
New Season Highlights
The Giant Spy Moves Next Door
A year ago, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), announced it was moving operations from south St Louis to north St Louis. The move was hailed by regional officials and politicians alike as a godsend for the economically depressed area. But residents, many of whom are low income and people of color, have been on edge. And with good reason. St. Louis, like many metro areas in this country, has a long history of displacing black people and poor people in the name of progress. Yet this time was supposed to be different, officials said. This time community members would have a say in future development. But the residents who’ve been most-engaged say they have a lot of questions, and that from their standpoint, the people in power are steamrolling them once again.
One Block at a Time
Eltoreon Hawkins always thought he would be a cop. That’s how he wanted to give back to the his community. But he quickly became disillusioned with the criminal justice system he wanted to see reformed. So he’s turned his efforts closer to home. specifically, to real estate. What started out as a plan to secure a future for himself and his family has turned into a mission for this 20-something: taking back his neighborhood, one vacant house at a time.
