Homeowners in many westside Orlando are being bombarded – by real estate investors. People in communities such and Washington Shores, Richmond Heights and others, say nearly every day they receive unsolicited letters, postcards and phone calls from investors urging them to sell their homes. Until a few years ago those historically black communities were overlooked and considered undesirable by many real estate investors. That changed, however, when gentrification swept through the nearby Parramore community pushing out longtime black residents sending rent and house prices through the roof. Affluent young white people are moving into Parramore and seeking other urban neighborhoods to call home. These changes also are underway in many historically black neighborhoods across the nation, such as New York City’s Harlem. Now Orlando gentrification pressure has crossed the Orange Blossom Trail and is invading the Greater Washington Shores area – a sprawling blac...

Local leaders propose spending $50 million to bring a major disruption to West Orlando. That disruption is the 2026 World Cup soccer matches for men. One of the main venues for this event -- which would bring thousands of people from around the world -- is Camping World Stadium. This initiative was announced late last month. It is being pushed by Orlando, Orange County and the Greater Orlando Sports Commission. Local elected officials working on collaboration with the Greater Orlando Sports Commission are preparing a bid for Orlando to be selected as one of 16 cities in the United States hosting the matches. The officials say that the World Cup will bring an economic impact of $600 million to $1 billion to the Orlando area. In response to questions from us, Jason Siegel, CEO of the Greater Orlando Sports Commission responded: “We believe that bidding on the 2026 FIFA World Cup will have a positive impact on Westside residents and on the region as a w...

Many Parramore residents worry about the recent wave of building fires in their community. The fire fear is the most recent threat faced by longtime residents who are being forced out of the historically black community by city government, powerful developers and affluent white people eager to live close to downtown. Orlando Fire Department records show that between Jan. 1 and Feb. 15, 2020 – a six-week period – there were 33 structure fires in the city. Six of those structure fires were in Parramore. 536 W. Washington St. Parramore is only 1.25 square miles of the total 113 square miles in the city, yet that urban neighborhood was the scene of nearly 20 percent of the structure fires reported in Orlando during the first 6 weeks of this year. Building fires are relatively rare thanks to modern construction materials and practices. Parramore is a special case because many of its buildings are old and owned by absentee landlords – many of whom don’t properly m...

Orlando City Hall boasts that 350 units of affordable housing are being built in the Parramore community. Sounds great! But what does “affordable” mean? Amelia Court in Parramore Under Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) guidelines housing is considered affordable if it costs 30 percent of less of the household income. The City of Orlando defines affordable housing as rents or house payments, affordable to families making 80% of median income or less In the Orlando market, the median annual income is $45,436, which means affordable rent is $1,135.90 a month.   Average rent in Orlando is $1,300, which is considered market rate. As most people know, the Orlando area is facing an affordable housing crisis. In Parramore -- where the median income is much lower than the Orlando median -- the affordable housing crisis is even worse. As of 2014, the average median income in Parramore was $13,613. Under HUD’s definition of affordable, any rent higher t...

Stop me if you heard this one before. Artist rendering of the Cincinnati soccer stadium Major league soccer promoters have proposed building a 30,000-seat stadium in Cincinnati, Ohio’s West End neighborhood a multi-ethnic working-class community that’s already feeling the pressure of gentrification. The promoters want to build the stadium on the site of a high school athletic field.  The soccer folks insist that the stadium will bring new economic opportunities to West End and they promise that no one will be displaced. Sounds a lot like the promise the Orlando Lions and City Hall made to Orlando’s Parramore community. How are those new soccer stadium jobs in Parramore coming along? Many residents in Cincinnati’s West End are understandably skeptical of those promises and they have been pushing back.  About two weeks ago, the public was told that the proposal was dead.  Click here  to see a video showing the West End community’s strong resis...