(Photo Credits: Me)

Growing up in Bensonhurst in Brooklyn has always been filled with immense diversity and unique faces on the daily. However, gentrification impacted my neighborhood and thus, made rent and housing prices skyrocket. ‘For Sale’ signs posted all over my neighborhood and this one isn’t so different. Taken from the steps of my home, my neighbor who I was extremely close with had unfortunately fallen short with rent and mortgage prices and ultimately had to sell their house. Losing close friends whom I’ve considered family was difficult to deal with. As gentrification impacted my neighborhood, I felt a connection that was once there slowly start to disappear. Banks, Doctors Offices, Starbucks, Dunkin’, and other shops that signify changes within a neighborhood. Now, all I see are for rent signs on out of business stores. Seeing the vast amount of changes that have taken place in Bensonhurst have put me in disarray; I never expected to see all of these empty stores on Eighteenth Avenue. The change in my neighborhood most definitely relates to the class theme of displacement because people (including myself) in my neighborhood do not feel the connection that the lively neighborhood once had.