Jenny Akchin

Lewis: [00:00:00] Alright, so—I’m Lynn Lewis with the Picture the Homeless Oral History Project with Jenny Akchin and it is June 5, 2019. Hi, Jenny.
 
Akchin: Hello. [Laughs]
 
Lewis: It’s wonderful to have you here.
 
Akchin: I feel like I’m on The View, [laughs] like at a talk show.
 
Lewis: Yeah, but we need different clothes if we’re going to be on The View. [Laughter] We’re just—we’re just… As we were just saying, Baltimore girls
 
Akchin: That’s right.
 
Lewis: sitting around in East Harlem, talking about Picture the Homeless. [Smiles]
 
Akchin: Yeah, or more like Oprah, right? Isn’t she from Baltimore? She was on the news there anyway.
 
Lewis: Is she from Baltimore? I don’t know if she’s from there.
 
Akchin: No, she’s not from Baltimore, but she was on the news in Baltimore.
 
Lewis: Balmer.
 
Akchin: That was her start. [Laughter] Well…
 
Lewis: [00:00:47] So, speaking of Baltimore, we’re going to get to know you a little bit before we start talking about Picture the Homeless. And so, tell us where you’re from and some things about your early life.
 
Akchin: [00:01:02] Okay. Well, I’m from Baltimore. I think we established that, [smiles] from the north side of Baltimore, and lived there my whole life up until 2005. I don’t know—I had a pretty like, straightforward childhood. I grew up with my family—brother, parents. We lived right on the city-county border, in a part of the city called Belvedere Square. Do you know Belvedere Square?
 
Lewis: Mm-mm. [No]
 
Akchin: [00:01:38] Yeah, it was a nice area. I mean like, at the time it was a nice place to be because you could kind of walk to the movie theater. There was the Senator Theater was there, and... Anyway, all that changed because the whole area just got turned into a yuppie market recently. But—but, the neighborhood I think, has stayed pretty consistent—a lot of old people, not that many kids. So, I spent a lot of time just, you know—in the neighborhood, reading, hanging out. Let’s see, what else? Jewish family: my parents were always really focused on the connections between our religion and social justice.
 
Akchin: [00:02:25] And… One thing that was a big part of my growing up was that they went to a synagogue in Reservoir Hill, which is a pretty well-known part of Baltimore. And like, I don’t know how familiar you are with Baltimore Jewish history, but it was like a pretty profound transition, like in the sixties, seventies, and eighties. There was like a lot of white flight, and most of the congregations left the city altogether and ours was one of only a handful that stayed. And so, when I was a kid there were really very few people that went to the synagogue because—because people were afraid. People were literally afraid of that neighborhood. And it’s—it’s the same… I mean it’s the same story, you know—people having perceptions about a neighborhood because of what they see visibly, as opposed to what they don’t see.
 
Akchin: [00:03:20] But I just remember, my parents made a really strong commitment to going to that space and so, yeah—it was a big part of my growing up. And… I have a lot of feelings about the transition of that neighborhood, but it sort of maps on a lot to gentrification as well and just watching their participation with the synagogue and with the neighborhood has been really interesting, over the last couple of years. That’s a whole other hour of conversation, but just to say that that had a big influence on the way that I grew up and just the way that I was thinking about the world that I probably wouldn’t have thought otherwise.
 
Lewis: [00:04:02] So, you were born when?
 
Akchin: Nineteen eighty-seven.
 
Lewis: In the eighties?
 
Akchin: Mm-hmm.
 
Lewis: When I lived in Baltimore, I was born in 1960, so… We lived in an apartment over the  bar that’s called Grand Central Station.
 
Akchin: Oh, yeah! That’s a cool bar, [smiles] or it was.
 
Lewis: It was a drugstore when I was a kid. And then we moved to Howard Park Avenue,
 
Akchin: Right.
 
Lewis: which is in Liberty Heights,
 
Akchin: Yeah.
 
Lewis: and we used to go to Gwynn Oak Park.
 
Akchin: It’s a beautiful place.
 
Lewis: [00:04:36] But there were still segregated water fountains when I was a kid, and the white flight was… My elementary school was almost all Black and they bused white kids in.
 
Akchin: Yeah.
 
Lewis: And it was—it was a crazy time.
 
Akchin: [00:04:56] I mean, I think twenty-seven years later, like, or thirty years later, at any point in my childhood or, actually adulthood, you could say almost the same thing. Baltimore stayed so segregated for so long. And so, I think that’s what was sort of so striking about the synagogue, because it—because Reservoir Hill was an entirely Black neighborhood and then, every Saturday morning, like thirty white people would just show up [smiles] in the neighborhood, and it was—I mean it was intense and it wasn’t… It just kind of felt… I don’t know, for the longest it felt like a very—like almost an intrusion because there was no relationship really, between the synagogue and its surrounding neighborhood. But I think that that relationship has progressed too, which is positive.
 
Akchin: [00:05:46] But yeah, throughout my childhood and really up until I left, I just remember it was—we would talk about it like a checkerboard. You know, every neighborhood just was—from block to block, neighborhood to neighborhood, you would see such a stark divide. About, I guess, ten minutes away from where I lived was some of like the wealthiest parts of the city, the sort of Guilford area, which are just full of mansions and millionaires, and their kids all go to prep schools, and they literally have private security to kick people out of their fancy gardens.
 
Akchin: [00:06:22] And then you cross the street, and you’re, you know—suddenly in this—well, when I was there it was a pretty divested area called Waverly, and you have like pawn shops and abandoned storefronts. And I would drive to school through both of those neighborhoods, and you just see that, and you can’t really not just wonder how human beings can divide themselves so much, and just how that happens—that sort of divide. It’s totally crazy.
 
Lewis: [00:07:00] When do you think you were first aware of that?
 
Akchin: I mean, was pretty aware of it from, I would say, from a pretty young age just because of the landscape of the city and you know, we have a bus system in Baltimore, but like—if you want to wait an hour and a half you can take the bus. So, we would drive everywhere. I mean, like it’s something that I really resent, actually about my childhood [laughs] was how much we had to drive. But you drive everywhere, and you just look out the window, and you can’t really not notice it.  
 
Akchin: [00:07:33] I think when it became more profound to me was in middle school. Partly through the synagogue I got involved with a youth group in Reservoir Hill. And it was sort of like a—I don’t even know what to call it, like an inter-cultural exchange. [Smiles] The group was called Kids on the Hill. It was an arts group and sort of youth group, run by an artist living in Reservoir Hill and they [smiles] had like, some kids from the synagogue, some kids from the neighborhood. And we would just hang out and make videos, I think, at the time—but then you just realize just how different your lives are and also how not that different your lives are.
 
Akchin: [00:08:15] And that really continued from aged twelve and onwards because I started going to public school in high school… Or I went back to public school, I guess. One of the things I remember most clearly was, through this Kids on the Hill group I was involved with tutoring someone who was maybe five years younger than me, who was super-great. Her name was Doretha and just one day I went home with her and just like—being inside of someone’s home and just realizing the disparity in the conditions of housing, just in relatively similar structures—same four walls, same general appearance from the outside, and then you just go inside and it’s just _so different. _
 
Lewis: [00:09:03] What was her house like? You look like you’re picturing it in your mind.
 
Akchin: I mean, just all of it… Like, peeling paint—they probably… I grew up in a house full of lead paint. I wouldn’t be surprised if her house was also full of lead paint. You know, nothing on the walls, just—and you just could tell that, you know—the landlord wasn’t taking care of anything, they were renting, I was pretty sure and I just… . Yeah! I mean, it just was a hard thing to recognize, you know—that people... She had a lot of brothers and sisters, and just all of them were living together in these kind of conditions, and…  
 
Akchin: [00:09:42] I mean, I was probably like twelve or thirteen, and it just was the first time I had been confronted with anything like that. And—I really just spent so much time observing.
 
Lewis: Mm-Hmmmm.
 
Akchin: You know, at that time I didn’t really have any way of putting language or any sort of political ideology or economic reality to what I was seeing. I was just seeing difference… And—and didn’t really reckon with that until much later, to be honest.
 
Lewis: [00:10:14] Did you—did you go back and visit her?
 
Akchin: So, yeah... At some point we lost touch. She had a mentor. There was like a mentorship program through this organization, too—who I think was much more involved. I think about her a lot though, and she was one of the early charter school students. And—I mean, education disparity in Baltimore is just also a whole can of worms because there is a huge amount of disinvestment in the public schools. And so, a lot of our relationship was around this sort of tutoring relationship. And that was also just like… You know, when you realize how different your educational experience has been because your parents had the resources to put you in private schools, or to put you in better public schools, or you know—whatever. But yeah, I haven’t been in touch with her since that time, which would be like 2000, right? So... I wonder sometimes where she ended up. Maybe she’ll listen to the [laughs] PTH Oral History Project.
 
Lewis: [00:11:16] [Smiles] Maybe. Did you—did you feel like you could talk to your mom or dad about these kinds of experiences?
 
Akchin: That’s a good question… You know, even if I did, I don’t know that I would have a lot of skills or vocabulary to do that. Like really, when I started to become more conscious was in, sort of—high school. And then I was really having conversations with friends, and I was really fortunate to have friends who were like, much smarter and better about thinking about things politically and culturally than I was, and so really were able to give me the words for what I was seeing that I didn’t have at that time. And so, yeah—I think that’s really when—in high school is really when I came into my own with that and started to piece it together. But, really I mean, just so much of my life I just spent watching and just listening to people.
 
Lewis: What was it like when you were in high school? Like, do you remember a time when there was a conversation, or you had an “a-ha” moment, or somebody said something that you said, “Well!”
 
Akchin: I mean, just like, little things. I went to a really amazing—I loved high school. Like, lots of people hate high school. I loved high school because I hated middle school so much.
 
Akchin: [00:12:47] My parents… This is—sorry, I should have said this earlier, but my school story is that I started in public elementary school. My parents really wanted me to have a Jewish education, and the Jewish school in our area was in the county, and they would bus kids in from the city. And there were like, ten of us. And basically, the Jewish community in Baltimore, not exclusively but predominantly, is very wealthy. We were not very wealthy, and so I just had a lot of struggles in middle school—like adapting to being with kids where I just really didn’t want to talk to them about the sort of superficial things that were going on at that time, and I just didn’t fit in.
 
Akchin: [00:13:31] So, when I went to high school, it was just like, “Oh, thank God, back in public school. Everything’s fine.” [Laughs] And I was really grateful and just like… Yeah, I was just like a fish to water because all of my classmates were like the nerds of the city. The other thing about Baltimore is that, you know—we have a magnet school system, so—I think we still do. And at the time there were really three high schools that you would test into. There was the City College, which is where I went. It was a liberal arts magnet. There was Polytechnic, which was the science magnet and then there was the Baltimore School for the Arts, which was like our version of LaGuardia or something.
 
[Motorcycles blaring in the background.]
 
Lewis: Loud background noise in East Harlem—summertime, summertime! [Laughter]
 
Akchin: [00:14:10] [Laughs] East Harlem is definitely one of the better neighborhoods for background noise, in my opinion. But… Yeah! Anyway, City College was great and from my first day there, I was just like—I just loved it. And I fell in with a really great group of people pretty quickly who, they were like—this was the early 2000s, so everyone was really into spoken-word poetry... So, I was like hanging out with spoken—I didn’t do any spoken-word poetry, [laughs] but all my friends did. So, I just feel like I got really lucky in that way. And people were just openly talking about, you know—racism and classism and sexism. And… Yeah—so, I just—I loved it. That’s all I can say, and I learned a lot there.
 
Lewis: [00:15:09] Was it racially and class diverse, had class diversity?
 
Akchin: [00:15:16] Class-diverse yes, I think, though we didn’t… I wouldn’t be able to say from a day-to-day basis like, which of my friends were middle class and which were not. But racially, no—I mean, the school was like, I want to say, like ninety-three percent black, which was both African-American and not… Like, immigrant populations. There were a lot of Nigerian students at that time. And then like, probably like, six percent white, and I think there was one Asian student and maybe one Filipina student, who was also Hispanic, I guess. I don’t know... There were—it was really not diverse, in that way. But, it was really diverse in terms of like, people’s experiences and like, what people wanted to talk about from day to day.
 
Akchin: [00:16:09] And [long pause] And there were—there was also, I should say—sorry to keep my critical lens on… There was also tracking within the school. So, I would guess that, you know—there was the college prep program. Everyone went to college, right? Supposedly… But there was the college prep track, and then there was an advanced track. And so, within the advanced track there was a smaller set of students, and I would guess a lot of the middle-class students were tracked into the advanced track—just from prior experiences and privileges. Certainly, most of the white students were in the advanced track—so just… Though not all.
 
Akchin: [00:16:57] Yeah, I mean it just… People were having conversations that were so much more complex than anything that I had ever encountered, and you had people who were fiercely religious talking to the people in the GSA. You had the Republicans and the Democrats and—you know, Nigerians versus Kenyans and just like, all of it. Everyone was always joke-fighting about something, but it was rich. I mean like, we actually had people who could speak to different experiences in that space and so yeah, I was like a sponge.
 
Lewis: I’m so happy you had a great high school experience. [Laughs]
 
Akchin: Oh my gosh, sorry. [Smiles] I could talk about this forever.
 
Lewis: [00:17:37] No because it’s—it’s true what you say. A lot of people, including myself, are just like—like high school was horrible
 
Akchin: Yep.
 
Lewis: in many ways. And so, what happened after high school?
 
Akchin: [00:17:52] Right after high school I went to—well actually, I—my last year of high school I studied abroad, which was a strange choice but, they had a scholarship program. So, they sent me and one other student abroad, to Germany. So, that was like a strange thing that happened. [Laughs] I don’t know. When we came back, you know—we all went to college in different places. And so, I went to school in Chicago where none of my friends were.
 
Akchin: [00:18:26] But… Yeah, and actually, that was another space of politicization—politi-ci-zation—how do you say that? [Laughter] Because I went to a private school on the South Side of Chicago. I went to University of Chicago, which is just like an ivory tower, in like all the worst ways. And I just remember landing and being like, “This is nuts.” You know, because it’s like the South Side of Chicago was extremely poor, predominantly African American. And then they have this little bubble with this giant private police force, and all these students... Literally, I met someone who had never left the campus in all four years. Like, they just don’t engage.
 
Akchin: [00:19:11] And so, that wasn’t really where I was coming from at that time. I was very much like, “Where are the people of this neighborhood?” [Laughs] You know? So, I got involved with a group that was doing tenant organizing. That was actually the first time that I’ve ever done tenant organizing—was in Chicago.
 
Lewis: What was the group?
 
Akchin: [00:19:31] It was called the South Side Solidarity Network, and it was during HOPE VI in Chicago. So, there was a record of the really horrible things that had happened at Cabrini Green. I remember like, doing film screenings [smiles] with JR actually, at that time—and then there were also proposed HOPE VI renovation—or, I mean—demolitions. And they were planned for this area right south of the campus called Grove Park. And so, the school itself had a huge interest in this happening, obviously—because Grove Park was a massive public housing complex. Like, I would guess probably like, seven hundred units of public housing and it was right adjacent to the campus. And so, I actually went back there not too long ago, it was like maybe three or four years ago, and it just—I mean, it’s gone. And it’s replaced with these like—just tiny Section 8 buildings.
 
Akchin: [00:20:38] But, it was—it was also the first place where I learned about community land trusts, and that was exciting—though they had a very different approach to community land trusts in Chicago. [Smiles]
 
Lewis: From JR? you learned from—from his group?
 
Akchin: No, I don’t think it was from JR at that time. I think that that was the Chicago CLT, which was actually something of a—well, I don’t want to cast aspersions, but I think it was less of a radical project than what JR ultimately—ultimately came up with.
 
Akchin: [00:21:08] But yeah, that was… And then, I did about two years there, and then I got really just kind of sick and tired [laughs] of this—the campus and the environment and the politics and the conservative people there and… I was also just really struggling with why I was in school at all. So, I ended up leaving and then not going back. And, I kind of regret that—in retrospect but it was a really formative experience for me, for sure. I’m grateful to the University of Chicago for teaching me something, I guess. [Smiles]
 
Lewis: Did you stay in Chicago after you left?
 
Akchin: [00:21:45] No, I went back to Baltimore at that point, and I lived there for about a year before I re-enrolled in college, so… I was like, pretty burnt out, and so I got to work for an electrician for a little while... I was working as a baker and just trying to figure out what I was doing with myself, basically.
 
Lewis: [00:22:06] Did you plug into organizing or any kind of political scene in Baltimore when you went back?
 
Akchin: Yeah, I did. I got a really… I feel like I had really good timing. Maybe this is like a theme of my interview [laughs] is having really good timing to be in the right space at the right time. Because, when I was in Baltimore was the same time that the stadium workers were organizing and that they had their hunger strike, and—so, I was involved a little bit with that. And I was living with some of those organizers from United Workers at the time. And that was amazing—to come back and just get to be part of that. I think I was part of it [smiles] for maybe like, four months before they won their campaign. And, I’m pretty sure the week that they went on strike, I went to another state [laughs] for a trip that I had planned. And then when I got back, I called and said, “What happened? How’s it going? And they had just won. So, I basically missed the hunger strike. [Smiles] But no, they’re incredible, and so it was really great to—to be able to come back and see that happening.
 
Akchin: [00:23:15] Because, I don’t remember… You know, I know that there is a history of radical organizing in Baltimore, but I don’t remember anything like that when I was coming up—of like, really, really well-organized labor movements like that.
 
Lewis: [00:23:29] What’s the backstory with the—the hunger strike and the stadium organizing,
 
Akchin: Oh!
 
Lewis: in case folks don’t know.
 
Akchin: So, I don’t want to get this wrong because this was like, I want to say—twelve years ago. But, from what I recall, the issue was that Camden Yards—which is the Orioles’ park, “trademark”, they—the workers there had… They were sort of like subcontracted. So, they had these subcontracting companies that would do the cleaning for the stadium, and then they would go and basically just like, pick fifteen or twenty people on a day-to-day basis and people would have to fight each other to get the per diem for that day. And they just got treated really poorly and just had horrible working conditions. They were getting paid minimum wage to clean up everyone’s food and whatever else they left behind at the park… They didn’t get any health insurance... They didn’t get any sort of benefits.
 
Akchin: [00:24:36] And so, the campaign was to get them a living wage, and they succeeded! But it took like, many years of organizing and then ultimately culminated in this—this hunger strike, which was ultimately successful. Because, no one wants to deal with a hunger strike, [smiles] like, absolutely not—especially not during baseball season. So… Ultimately the manager I think, did end up giving them the living wage at that time, which I believe was sixteen dollars an hour.
 
Lewis: [00:25:10] Did they… My recollection—we met with them at the—at Union Theological Seminary several times, and so… Many of them were hired in as day laborers.
 
Akchin: Mm-Hmmm.
 
Lewis: And so, whoever they were subcontracting with may have been—may have had their own workforce and/or been hiring day laborers.
 
Akchin: [00:25:32] That’s what I recall. They were sort of coming in and just like, picking people out of a crowd and then giving them a days’ work, and then... And so, if people tried to advocate or to organize with the group, then they would basically lose their—they wouldn’t get picked. I mean, it’s like—classic. This is the sort of thing you hear about from like union organizing in the twenties and thirties, and then, to hear about it happening, you know in 2000—and like I said, it was in 2007… Yeah… It was…
 
Lewis: The richest baseball owner, I think—or one of them?
 
Akchin: Probably. [Smiles] It was Peter Angelos I think, at that time. I’m a bad Baltimorean because I don’t know anything about the Orioles. [Long pause] So… [Laughs]
 
Lewis: [00:26:12] So, you went back to Baltimore... Was there anything you were homesick—when you were in Chicago, about Baltimore?
 
Akchin: Yeah, I mean, like Baltimore is a special, very special place. Chicago… I mean, Chicago is amazing. It’s very cold. [Laughs] But, it’s—it was… I think there’s something really nice about Baltimore insofar as you can be there, and you will run into someone. You know, it’s so small. And like, it gets even smaller the more that you engage with it. And so, I remember after I left Chicago a friend of mine from school came and visited me, and we were just walking around. And I think I ran into, like, five people and she’s like, “What is this? Are you like the mayor of Baltimore? Like, what’s going on?” But it’s just like—that was just—that’s just how it is, you know? So, I did miss that. And I still miss that! It’s like a nice thing about Baltimore. And sometimes it’s too small—but it was nice to… For at least for that year.
 
Lewis: [00:27:19] So, you went back to school. What were you studying?
 
Akchin: I started as a religion major, and then I was focused on South Asian religions. I was really into that at the time. And then I went back, and—there was some complication with the religious studies program at the place where I started up again. So, I ended up with a sociology degree with like, a sub-concentration—I don’t even know these sorts of things, but it was in education and sociology, because I think at the time I thought I wanted to teach and so, I really—I really, you know, focused on that more than anything.
 
Lewis: [00:28:05] And so, were you integrating these… You know, you have this tenant organizing experience in Chicago, and then came back to Baltimore and had the experience with United Workers and living in a house with some of the organizers… And did that affect your—your academic life?
 
Akchin: Oh, yeah! Definitely…
 
Lewis: In what kind of ways?
 
Akchin: Definitely.
 
Lewis: Like, how did those things come together?
 
Akchin: Yeah! I mean, by that point… I think even in high school, like—because when I was in high school was during the FTAA and the war in Iraq, and there were... Like I—I think by that point I was pretty solidly in the like, “Capitalism is going to kill us all” camp. And so, everything that I was doing was around stratification and, you know—a lot of my work in the education studies department at Swarthmore was literally looking at urban education and specifically like,  race in schools and how race is taught in school.
 
Akchin: [00:29:15] So, my thesis was on African American history being taught in Philadelphia public schools. That was like, a very, very new thing at that time. They hadn’t had a mandatory curriculum on African-American history, which is… Yeah. [Laughs]
 
Lewis: Kind of silly.
 
Akchin: It’s crazy and it’s something that people had been fighting for since the 1970s, if not earlier…
 
Akchin: [00:29:40] So, yeah—I mean, I don’t want to say that I had like a super-developed racial, political, economic analysis. But like, I knew enough by that point to say there had to be something different or better than the way that we were doing things. And maybe that’s just informed by seeing—you know, where I grew up and seeing how fucked up everything was there.
 
Akchin: [00:30:09] Am I allowed to curse? I’m sorry.
 
Lewis: You do you,
 
Akchin: [Laughs]
 
Lewis: Jenny. Do you Jenny, be yourself.
 
Akchin: Because I’ve been censoring myself, so I’m going to stop. [Laughs]
 
Lewis: Well, I can tell you that there’s a couple other narrators that curse quite a bit.
 
Akchin: Fair enough.
 
Lewis: And one of the Picture the Homeless oral history advisory board members heard that, because I made an audio clip, and it had some curse words in it and they were horrified that that was going to make us all look bad. And so, everybody doesn’t share a brain about anything,
 
Akchin: Yeah.
 
Lewis: including this. But I feel like everyone should be themselves.
 
Akchin: I’ll take that under advisement. I don’t want to offend anyone, so...
 
Lewis: There’s all kinds of things that could be offensive, not just curse words.
 
Akchin: That’s true. That’s very true.

Akchin: [00:31:01] But yeah—so, I guess just to answer your question… Yes, it was all-informing. I think a pretty... Yeah, and I was a little self-righteous at that time, too. I think I thought I knew a lot more about things than I actually did, so there was that. That happens to a lot of people in college, so—I’m not going to judge myself too harshly for it. [Laughs]
 
Lewis: Some people never get out of that.
 
Akchin: Fair enough. Some people never get out of college, so… [Laughs].
 
Lewis: [00:31:37] So, you were in your twenties,
 
Akchin: Yeah.
 
Lewis: and you finished college. What were your—what were your dreams? What were you—what were you thinking you would do? What did you want to do?
 
Akchin: I wanted to be a high school teacher. That was what I wanted to do—and, specifically a high school English teacher. That was—yeah, that’s all I wanted.
 
Lewis: [00:31:59] And, since you had been doing this movement work while you were in school, were there particular people that were inspiring you?
 
Akchin: Yeah! I mean, that’s a great question. To be honest, my classmates were the main people who were inspiring me… Because… I mean, people were doing… I still think about that. I’m like, “How did we do all those things?” Like, people were doing a lot! Like, really a lot. At Chicago and at Swarthmore, just an enormous amount of good—and just being really thoughtful about it. And I still think the people I look up to most are the people who I collaborate with, you know? Including at Picture the Homeless. Yeah—I didn’t have a specific hero or mentor or anyone at that time, to be honest.
 
Lewis: [00:33:05] And so, when you finished college, did you—did you end up teaching?
 
Akchin: Well so… [Laughs] So, I was enrolled in what would have been a yearlong certification program at my school, and it was under-enrolled, so they canceled it—and with very little notice but I’m not bitter about it, you know. But, I ended up [laughs] applying at the very last minute to do a residential teacher training program, which actually turned out to be an absolute disaster. It was at a charter school, a “no-excuses” charter school, which I don’t know if you’re familiar with this type of school, but it’s something along the lines of like, a KIPP charter.
 
Akchin: [00:33:50] And their philosophy is—you know, basically that the only way that kids who are dealing with adverse environments are going to succeed is if they just learn to get what people refer to as “grit”, and just learn to overcome. And so, the way that the school was run was like, I mean honestly—it had a demerit system. Children were penalized for all sorts of—just bullshit and they wouldn’t actually even teach you how to teach until you learned how to discipline. So, I flunked out [laughs] of their teacher training program after like, maybe—four months... They were just like, “You’re not very good at disciplining kids.” And I was like, “I know. I get it.” And so, it was really… I think about it a lot.
 
Akchin: [00:34:43] And at the time, I had thought about trying to study because I imagine it’s actually quite similar to the way that they train police. You know—it’s like, here’s how… How do you respond to shutting down people’s behaviors? That was literally what the training program was, and how do you maintain control over a group of people? So, that didn’t work out very well for me. [Smiles] And I… People still go through this program, and some of them become teachers, and I hope that they become teachers with a little bit more freedom and latitude than what that program was. But, it was a lot. And there are some really egregious things I can say about that school, but maybe for a different interview.
 
Lewis: You can say whatever you want in this interview.
 
Akchin: [00:35:29] I think after that though, I was like, let me—it was in Boston. I was like, “I’m going to get the hell out of Boston.” Because like—I thought Baltimore was bad. Boston is the most segregated place that I have ever been. And one of my best friends from Baltimore actually, was—one of my high school friends, was in Boston at the time getting her master’s degree and we would just meet up, and we would talk about it, because it was like, horrible. And we both hated it so much, and we both just wanted to get the heck out. And then we both moved to New York, actually.
 
Lewis: [00:36:06] What were some of the horrible things like, to illustrate that?
 
Akchin: Of the city or the school?
 
Lewis: Or both?
 
Akchin: I mean, well—the city is super-small. And so what… I mean the history of Boston is that when they instituted busing, literally the city just fractured because all of these tiny parts of greater Boston just didn’t want to deal with integration. So then they had to bus kids in from the suburbs… And there’s just a crazy history around education and racism in Boston. But, I mean to… I only lived there for ten months, but what I observed was just like, an enormous amount of concentrated wealth and then an enormous amount of concentrated poverty and just really stark geographic separation between the two.
 
Akchin: [00:36:57] And, where I was living was right by Boston University, and also not too far from Harvard. And those campuses were just overrunning the neighborhood. And so, you know—you could go… I mean, there were just… Oh God—the Boston University kids in their like, flip-flops, and their shorts in the middle of winter, just walking around, and then interacting with the rest of the city of like, totally normal people. And I would go and visit my friend. Her name was Charnelle, is Charnelle, and just be in a completely different environment, just completely different neighborhood. And… And—yeah, I mean, it felt more stark than any other place that I’ve ever lived, and just the way people were treated. And I was treated probably extremely well because I’m white and was a person of class privilege, and so… But, I felt alienated by it, so I know she did. And yeah… It’s a really wild place.
 
Lewis: [00:37:56] So, you were in the teacher training program in Boston, and what kind of students were in these schools?
 
Akchin: So, Boston public schools—this was a charter school, but Boston public schools are predominantly Black and Brown students. The main immigrant groups there are Haitian and Dominican students. And so, a lot of students were representing those—that island, I guess. And they… Yeah, I think there were like—almost all of the teachers were—well no actually, that school had better representation of non-white teachers, than others. But, most of the people in my cohort were white, and a lot of the part—like the mission of the school was one-on-one relationships between students and these teachers in training.
 
Akchin: [00:38:58] So, I had been paired up with a couple of students, and I thought my students were great. Like, I was a big fan. But it was really hard because we were put in these super-adversarial relationships to them. So like, even if I didn’t give a shit whether or not my student was—you know, chewing gum or wanted to listen to an audiobook instead of reading or whatever… Like, none of those things particularly felt that critical to me. But they were deeply important to the people who were supervising me, and so it just created this tension that… And we also lived—I should have said this earlier. We lived in the school—so it was like, we were just constantly there, and our students were not. So, they went home and had lives, and we, you know—we didn’t… Like, it was hard to fathom, right? Like, you have another life. [Laughs] Like, we just live here in the school. It was a very bizarre situation.
 
Akchin: [00:39:54] But yeah, one of my students… I think about her a lot. She was just like,  super-talented and was just so over the school… Just so over the way that it was disciplining students and just—and she was a junior, so she knew everything. She was like, seventeen years old and—and she did know everything. She was like, brilliant. She ended up going to Spellman, and I’m really excited for her. I don’t know where she ended up after that. But, she had a really—without going into too much detail, had a really traumatic event happen in the middle of the school year. And the school’s policy on this was, “Well, the best way to get through your trauma is just to keep doing what you’re doing and to not lose the structure of doing homework and school.” And it’s just like—I don’t know how a seventeen-year-old can be expected to show up every day in that environment. Like… Yeah… Anyway, enough about that. I just… I… Yeah… It was so crazy. I don’t even know what was going on with all the other students, you know? That was just one student, but [long pause] it was a lot.
 
Lewis: [00:41:07] So then, what made you decide to move to New York?
 
Akchin: Luck, and you know—I just applied to a bunch of jobs elsewhere, some education and some not, and the first place that got back to me was a high school in Brooklyn and I said yes immediately, because I could not wait to get out of Boston. And it was a very different kind of high school, so it was really nice to go there and to see what a normal high school was again. [Smiles]
 
Lewis: What was the school?
 
Akchin: [00:41:41] It’s called the Urban Assembly School for Law and Justice. It was a high school in downtown Brooklyn. Demographically, very similar—culturally, completely different. They were all about what’s going on with our kids outside of school. Like literally, my job was to figure out what kids were interested in and figure out whether or not we could create a program for what they were interested in at the school, so that they would come to school. It was just a totally different approach, and so I was a big fan [smiles] of that and very relaxed, very… Yeah! Just really whole person-focused. So, I was there for a couple of years.
 
Akchin: [00:42:22] I guess a year and a half—until Sandy, and then left the school after Sandy.
 
Lewis: Why?
 
Akchin: God, why? Around that time I had… This is such a crazy interview. I feel like I’m like, [laughs] when do we talk about Picture the Homeless?
 
Lewis: We’ll get there.
 
Akchin: [00:42:58] So, that summer I think I had, you know—been taken for the first time out to the Rockaways by a friend who lived there with his mom. And I really just, I don’t know why... It just really affected me, and so I spent a lot of time there and would go pretty often. Like, if I was in a depression or for any reason I would just go out to the Rockaways and just… At any time of day or night. Actually, it was pretty absurd. I’d go there at like two in the morning and just sit, and I think I was a little lost at that time. Like, I was having some sort of mid-twenties crisis. [Smiles]
 
Akchin: [00:43:26] But… That year, when the storm happened, and I heard that the Rockaways had been affected in that way—like I mean, just destroyed and underwater, I was really upset. My brother and his wife had their first child, and so I was home in Baltimore when it all happened. And so, when I came back to the city I was like—I just wanted to get involved and I was living in Bed-Stuy at the time, so I was very close to where there was a distribution center for Occupy Sandy. And, I think it was just very addicting to feel like I could do something really… Really—on my own time, like I could spend four hours on a weekend, or something—just sorting supplies and would have some sort of impact. And so, I just kept going, and I kept going and I would go after school, and I would go on the weekends.
 
Akchin: [00:44:24] Then, eventually I just realized that I was enjoying it so much more than I  was enjoying my job, which is a terrible thing to say because I did kind of love my job. But it was, in that moment… I mean, between sitting in an office from nine to five and like, planning schedules and coordinating activities versus going and taking a bus down—or like a van out to the Rockaways and helping someone to get their home out from debris and… I mean, it just felt so important at the time. And maybe it wasn’t that important that I was there, whatever... I don’t know. But, long story short, I decided to scale back my time at the high school and to do like, two or three days a week just full-time volunteering with the Sandy people and then that turned into just more and more time. And eventually I was just like, “I should just quit my job.” [Smiles] So I quit my job—which I actually regret. I mean, I really do regret it in retrospect. But, we do things when we do them, I guess.
 
Akchin: [00:45:33] And I had the opportunity really—to get back involved in community, which was an amazing thing, too. Like, one of the things—I still don’t know how I was doing this, but at the time there was an after-school program that was set up in a church in the Rockaways and I would just like… After my school after-school program, I would get on an A train from downtown Brooklyn to the Rockaways and then do another after-school, after-school program… [Smiles] And I was just like… You know, because I was like, “Oh yeah, I do after-school programs. Like, I know how to do that.” And somehow that happened… And it was really great to be again in a community space with people who were self-organized and just trying to do better for their communities, you know?
 
Lewis: [00:46:20] What was the group that was doing the after-school program?
 
Akchin: So, it’s like… I wish I could say.
 
Lewis: Or was it a group?
 
Akchin: Well, so there was… There were like several things happening. So there was—there were many relief centers across the peninsula and one of them was in this tiny church. It was like an evangelical church and that was where I had plugged in. And there was a group that was getting self-organized out of there that was mostly people from Occupy who were doing political education in that space. And they had a name—which was Rockaway Wildfire, which has since become something called the Wildfire Project. But, I would actually say that that’s maybe a different thing. Like I—I definitely showed up to their meetings and was involved with that early stage. But I think what was happening was something slightly different. It was just out of this church—people who really wanted to create more youth programming and just have the space for kids to come… Because the kids—I don’t know if people realized this, but the kids in the Rockaways didn’t go to school for months. They just closed their schools. And then they had a huge amount of catch-up, because they had to take their state tests that year. And so a lot of kids were getting held back, or were worried about getting held back. There was just a lot of homework that needed to happen and so, just having like a little space for people to be doing that felt important at the time, and just to be in community, too.
 
Akchin: [00:47:49] They ended up organizing quite a lot out of that space. I wasn’t as involved, but there was like a worker cooperative that was happening out of there. And then the Wildfire Project just seems to have grown and grown. I get emails from them still. I don’t—I don’t keep up with it as much as I should, but they’re still active. And, yeah… I think a lot of the people that were part of that continue to be involved in community organizing in that area to this day. [Pause] So…
 
Akchin: [00:48:25] There was a—sorry, this is the last thing. There was also just a lot of bullshit happening, right? Because there were all of these planning processes. So, it was also a really crucial space for people who were watching city planners descend on the peninsula talking about resilience and recovery but like, there was a real implication that there would be a lot of erasure happening through that process and people were very concerned about how that was happening and what level of community participation was going to be involved in that.
 
Lewis: [00:48:57] Like Katrina…
 
Akchin: Oh yeah!
 
Lewis: Recovery for who?
 
Akchin: Yeah. And, thank God that—I mean, not thank God for Katrina, because that was horrible. But at least we had some knowledge of what was coming, you know? Like, no one was going in with this illusion that the recovery process would be anything but a huge capital influx, I mean like—disaster capitalism, definitely. I mean, people knew exactly what was coming. So… Yeah, I mean, and that—that is what happened down there, you know?
 
Akchin: [00:49:31] Like, I go back sometimes and it’s just a completely different place. Not completely—I mean, it still has a lot of the character that it had then. But then there’s also like this—Patti Smith bought a house down there, and all these millionaires are moving there, and there’s like fancy taco bars and people who will deliver food to you on the beach with an app and just like things that were never… That I recall, part of the—and not like I discovered there… You know, whatever... But like circa 2011, that was not what I recall [smiles] being the case.
 
Lewis: Have you read Patti Smith’s book?
 
Akchin: You know…
 
Lewis: She talks about… So she bought her little bungalow before Sandy,
 
Akchin: Yeah:
 
Lewis: and how it was underwater, the way she talks about it. It’s kind of interesting.
 
Akchin: [00:50:25] You know, the history of those bungalows is interesting. I found this out later writing a paper for Tom Angotti.
 
Lewis: You want to share?
 
Akchin: Well, the short version is just that no one was supposed to live in the bungalows. They were vacation homes obviously, for people that went to like, Rockaway Playland or whatever was out there. But then after—I think after the… When they razed Lincoln Center [the neighborhood that existed before Lincoln Center was built] a lot of those folks, there’s no official count, but that’s when people started moving to the Rockaways and putting up official residence there. So people were moving into the bungalows because they were getting evicted or displaced from the Upper East Side and Upper West Side. And then they were retrofitting them basically, insulating them to the extent that they could. But that’s really when that started, that people were moving in there, in that way.
 
Akchin: [00:51:17] And no one ever should live in there. Like, no one should have lived in the bungalows. They’re not—that’s not housing. I mean, it’s hardly weatherized. It’s literally tailor-made to be flooded. And it’s—yeah, it was really depressing and horrifying to see like, just what early wave of displacement had done to people and what—where that left people, you know… So…
 
Lewis: [00:51:47] And so, when you were volunteering out there after Sandy, you hadn’t taken Tom Angotti’s class yet.
 
Akchin: No.
 
Lewis: But were you aware of that history, or…
 
Akchin: No. So, I wrote a paper for Tom about it. He taught a class on climate change and planning. So, I used a lot of the documentation from that time to really talk about the planning process in the Rockaways and that’s when I learned that.
 
Lewis: And so, Tom was a chair of the community development… Is that the name of the program?
 
Akchin: Yeah, the Center for Community Planning and Development.
 
Lewis: Okay, thank you. At Hunter
 
Akchin: Uh-huh.
 
Lewis: [00:52:29] So you went there for your masters?
 
Akchin: Yeah.
 
Lewis: What moved you to study community planning and development?
 
Akchin: Well [laughs] sorry, this is a very crazy time in my life. I feel like this is taking a very outsized part of the interview. But after—so after a while, there’s phases of planning, right? Or, there’s phases of recovery. So, there’s like response—is like that crazy time when everyone’s just doing supply distribution and you feel like every minute matters. And then there is rebuilding, which is sort of the phase where you’re starting to demolish and to repair. And then there’s real recovering, and that’s when the planners swoop in and when things get really bureaucratic, and people lose a lot of the… Like, when you’re in response mode, people work together. They’re like really dedicated to what they’re doing, and every day feels like a mission. When you get to recovery mode, people start to hate each other and fight over money. That was my experience, anyways. [Laughs]
 
Akchin: [00:53:31] So, around the end of that year, I was just like, “What am I doing?” I took a short break from New York and came back actually, to work with a friend on an oral history project. [Smiles]
 
Lewis: About what?
 
Akchin: About the recovery, because we thought—you know, we had all this information from Katrina that was super-helpful and important and we just—you know, there are going to be future floods. There already have been, right? And just felt the need to document some of those experiences and package them for other groups that were planning grassroots response. So, I came back to work on that and then… You know, ended up… That project—things were just a hot mess by that point. People… The funding had run out. People were not like—people’s drama was just getting really ugly.
 
Akchin: [00:54:27] And so, pretty quickly I realized the documentary project was extremely worthwhile, but it was going to take a lot of time and energy, and I needed to get a job. [Smiles] So I started working in a coffee shop and volunteering my free time with a housing organization. And it was this weird “a-ha” moment for me because I just realized that this whole time actually, like even when I was doing education and working in schools, and even when I was working after Sandy, I never stopped thinking about housing and neighborhoods, actually.
 
Akchin: [00:55:01] And all of a sudden it just kind of clicked for me that like—it had just been a theme in my life, watching gentrification, watching neighborhoods change, watching segregation... And, so I was just like; I want to be in housing. Like I just had this moment where I was like, “This is what I actually have wanted to do and should be doing and I have no skills or experience to do that, so I probably need to get a degree.” [Smiles]
 
Akchin: [00:55:32] And I think—you know, the other thing is I was working all these odd jobs at that time and I… One of them was being an employment counselor, which is ridiculous, right? Because I had never kept a job for more than eighteen months at that point, and I was like… But I was an employment counselor for some reason. Someone thought that was a good idea. And at the end they were giving me counseling because they were like—it was a contract job and it ended, so they were just like, “You should go to grad school because you need to do something with your life.” [Laughs]
 
Akchin: [00:56:04] Basically—and it was either social work or planning. But I decided to do planning because I knew Tom Angotti and I wanted to be in—wherever Tom Angotti was. So that’s what I did.
 
Lewis: How did you know Tom?
 
Akchin: That’s a good—you know, I knew Tom because I started dating Ziggy. [Laughs] This is a very small… Yeah. I—it was all 2013. So, I moved back to the city in August. I moved into a really great new living environment. I started volunteering with this Bushwick housing group and around the same time I met Ziggy, and Ziggy was working for Tom. And so, I started going to Planners Network events too—I think around the time that I went to an event on community land trusts with Scott and Ryan. And I was just like really just feeling this. I was like, “This is the thing that I want to be doing.” And I’m lit on this, like this is what I want to work on, and I can’t stop thinking about it.
 
Lewis: [00:57:06] You mentioned Scott and Ryan. So, they’re with Picture the Homeless.
 
Akchin: Mm-Hmmmm.
 
Lewis: And, you met them at an event?
 
Akchin: Yeah.
 
Lewis: And so, what was—what was the—is that your first encounter with Picture the Homeless?
 
Akchin: I think it was my first real one. I remember knowing about Picture the Homeless before that because they were known, right? Everyone was always talking about Picture the Homeless, talking about Banking on Vacancy. But, I don’t think that I really had at that point come into contact directly with people from Picture the Homeless or with the organization.
 
Akchin: [00:57:45] And then I went to this event, and I wish I could remember when it was. But it was about Banking on Vacancy and community land trusts, and I have my notes from it. It’s like, I was looking at it the other day, and I was like—mutual housing associations! Like wow. They were talking about that then, too! And I just remember just thinking it was so amazing. And then afterwards, I went up and introduced myself to Scott—and I think Kendall was there too, and Ryan. And I was just like, “If you ever need a volunteer, like let me know. I love this. This is so cool.” And then, I like emailed with Ryan for a little bit, and I think he invited me to some meetings in The Bronx.
 
Akchin: [00:58:24] And then I didn’t go, and I don’t know if it was because it was in The Bronx and it was far—it might have even been at City College—or if I just was busy all of a sudden and couldn’t. But I still have this little business card—because you guys had those little cardboard, bright blue business cards where you just put the sticker with the name on it on the back. So, I like saved that. [Laughs]
 
Lewis: Or hand-wrote them.
 
Akchin: Yeah! And it was… Yeah, I just really thought it was super-cool. And Ziggy had done a planning degree and I was just like, “This is the thing I’m going to do. I’m going to get a planning degree.” So… Yeah.
 
Lewis: [00:59:04] So you mentioned that people were always talking about Picture the Homeless, but what kinds of things were they saying?
 
Akchin: Oh! Just like the best things. I mean, Picture the Homeless was like—like they’re in their own category, or we’re in… Or, I don’t know. It was just like, “This is an organization that’s super-down, that does direct action, that is in all the movement spaces and engages in this radical way.” And maybe I’m just projecting my like current experience on like the thoughts—what I knew about Picture the Homeless at the time.
 
Akchin: [00:59:39] But I do remember like—just people would talk about Banking on Vacancy and how amazing it was. Like, just that people went and just counted, right? And just did it, because people talk all the time about data, right? And like, “Oh, we need to get this data. Oh, we need to get that data.” And like, yeah—just—you all just did that! You know? And I think that was really attractive to me at the time, because it was… Seeing groups that actually do and show up in that way was like really, really cool.
 
Lewis: [01:00:17] Were you making connections between vacant property in New York and Baltimore, which has also a lot of vacant housing?
 
Akchin: Yeah. It’s funny because I argue with my parents a lot about this and I think that when I came to New York I sort of shared their opinion, which was like, “Oh yeah, that vacant property’s just going to be there forever.” And now that I’m in New York, I’ve learned and have seen the writing on the wall. And I go home, and I’m like, “No, it’s not going to be there forever. Like that is going to be luxury housing really soon, and it’s going to displace everyone.” And they laugh, and they’re like that’s New York. That’s not Baltimore. That’s not going to happen here—although truthfully it is already happening there. But, it’s like a very… I think I didn’t—I never put Baltimore in that same category because I just… The gentrification in Baltimore was happening at a much slower place. Not anymore, but at the time it was, and they just seemed like night and day to me, you know?
 
Lewis: [01:01:28] What was the planning program like at Hunter? Were you getting the tools that you needed to impact the things you went to school for in the first place?
 
Akchin: I think so. And I should be really… I didn’t end up getting a planning degree. I should be honest about that. I was in classes with planners, but there were two degrees. One was shorter and I did the short one, which was urban affairs, but—just to be, you know, totally clear about my credentials. They—the first class I took there was intro to housing, and it was awesome. I mean, it was a super-rigorous, super-thorough survey of the history of the American housing movement from the—and through the lens of New York, from the time of settlement to the present—including an article about community land trusts, which was really cool. And, it just… Yeah. Everything was downhill after that. No, just kidding. Then I took a class with Tom… I mean it—everything was great, and I ended up in my last class with Lilliam Barrios-Paoli, writing about homeless policy, so…. I think they…
 
Lewis: She was a deputy mayor afterwards, right?
 
Akchin: Oh, yes. Sorry.
 
Lewis: Or no, before that.
 
Akchin: I think after… She was before and after because she was the deputy mayor for like, five administrations [laughs] or something. But I think at the time she had been the deputy mayor for de Blasio and then had left, and then taught.
 
Lewis: [01:02:57] So, I remember when Tom told me about you because at Picture the Homeless we… The community land trust work really evolved out of—in response to the vacant properties, right? Land and buildings and Picture the Homeless had a big study group for a couple of years, so that members could really understand what some solutions could look like, in order to fight for them.
 
Lewis: [01:03:31] And then, we wanted to have our own housing policy person because it—it was a lot for the organizer to also go so deep into policy and the legislative work also took so many resources and time away from organizing and one-on-ones… That we were like, this housing stuff is a lot!
 
Akchin: Mm-Hmmmm.
 
Lewis: And we need somebody who understands all that. And so, Tom said, “I have this amazing student—Jenny. You’ll love Jenny.” And that’s how we found out about you.
 
Akchin: Got it.
 
Lewis: And so we—when we were able to hire someone, you came and interviewed.
 
Akchin: Yeah. I remember… So, it’s funny that Tom said that because—and I’m sure it’s not a verbatim quote but, I think Tom and I just would shoot the shit every once in a while when I first met him and just… We were both—we were just angry, [laughs] basically. We’d just go on rants about how terrible city planning is, which is a hobby I think, for both of us. But when he told me what my site placement was I was really excited because—you know, CCPD works with everyone. So, there was someone from my cohort who was working with CVH, and I think someone else who was working on a special rezoning project in Brooklyn. And so, yeah—I was just like… I mean, I was beside myself when he told me where I was going to be.  
 
Akchin: [01:05:17] And then yeah, I think I was not at all expecting [smiles] to be asked to apply for a job. I remember—I also remember at the time I was planning to go away for two months and so I was basically like, “I can’t take that job.” And it was really heartbreaking at the time, though you immediately were like, “Yes you can, just don’t get paid and come back when you’re done with vacation.”
 
Lewis: We’ll be here!
 
Akchin: [01:05:42] Yeah. Oh, I was totally sweating all of it because then—when I came in to interview, I met you know—a bunch of… I met Nikita, I met Sam. I met some of our members and I was just like, “This is it. I want to work here.” [Smiles] So….
 
Lewis: So, you never went to The Bronx, to the office in The Bronx?
 
Akchin: No.
 
Lewis: [01:06:02] So that was on 126th. And what was your initial sense of the office when you walked in the door?
 
Akchin: So, what I remember most clearly… Well, there were a couple of things. One, is just that you could hear everything. So, all—which I loved because… It’s hard to explain how this is. I’m sure someone has explained this already about the 126th Street office, but just that there were no walls that went to the ceiling. So everything was heard everywhere, which made a real party environment, as I recall. And I remember at one point like, there were just a bunch of people, I know for sure Marcus and Ernest, and I think at least one other person, were just sitting in the conference room listening to like Michael Jackson and talking about the rent guidelines board. And I was like, “This is where I want to be.” [Laughs] You know. “This is it.”
 
Akchin: [01:06:59] And then the coffee—I mean, that’s something I remember very clearly. I was like, “Wow, they just make coffee all day, all day and they serve it in like normal people cups and not in Styrofoam.” And like, that was the first thing that happened to me was someone offered me coffee, you know? And that I think, is a really important thing about the space. I mean just that that was part of the just welcoming ritual. It’s like, “Come in, and do you want water? Do you want coffee?” You know, and that meant a lot to people later, I recall. So yeah, those are my initial impressions.
 
Akchin: [01:07:40] Oh! And the walls! I mean, the walls are just covered in pictures of you all doing direct actions. [Laughs] So, that was pretty dope, too and I didn’t know like half of the stories behind any of those direct actions until much, much later. But yeah, it makes a difference.
 
Lewis: [01:07:58] And so, you interviewed for the internship?
 
Akchin: Yeah and I don’t have a great recollection of those interviews, actually.
 
Lewis: I think at the time, had we already started… I don’t remember either in terms of like a timeline. And we can… That’s why we have an archive, so I’m not worried. [Smiles]
 
Lewis: [01:08:21] But we were going through this process with Burlington Associates
 
Akchin: Oh, yeah. [Smiles] That I remember. Mike Brown, yeah.
 
Lewis: about the—and forming a land trust in East Harlem.
 
Akchin: Yeah.
 
Lewis: And also the New York City Community Land Initiative, NYCCLI, was emerging. And so, you were an intern, and do you remember the kinds of things you were working on?
 
Akchin: Oh, yeah. Well, so definitely the research process, so with Mike Brown, with these trainings.
 
Akchin: [01:09:01] I remember my first assignment was turning the building profiles into a report for HPD. And I just remember sitting with a laptop in the loft bed that I was living in at the time, and just like—just spending hours collating all of that [laughs] and trying to make it look nice and professional. And then…
 
Lewis: You did a great job.
 
Akchin: That was a funny first assignment because I was also like, I was learning a lot of that. I didn’t know what the AEP program was, like… I think I learned all of that just from you and talking to you and Joel and just reading what you put in front of me.
 
Lewis: [01:09:45] So the building—to give context, the building profiles were from folks with Picture the Homeless and in the neighborhood who were doing outreach to forty-one buildings that were either in the TIL program, the AEP program—they were failing HDFCs and maybe some in danger of foreclosure, and we were doing door knocking and writing down building conditions. And then you put all those together into a report for HPD because we had been doing a lot of organizing, agitation—to get them to meet with us.
 
Akchin: Thank God there were only twelve of them in the report, so it wasn’t all forty-one. [Smiles]
 
Lewis: But you pulled it together and made a report out of forty-one—
 
Akchin: Data things, yeah.
 
Lewis: data things. That were—that was really a participatory research endeavor. You turned it into a report.
 
Akchin: [01:10:52] Yeah, that’s right. I never thought about it that way, but that’s a good point. The thing that’s amazing to me at that time was how much information you and our members were able to transmit, and Joel too—because when I started that internship, I don’t think I—I did not know what an HDFC was. I did not know what the AEP program was, did not know what the TIL or the ANCP program was. But I guess by the time I finished the report I did, so... And that would have been like a three-week [laughs] crash course… So well done whoever—
 
Lewis: Well done, you too!
 
Akchin: —sat down with me and transmitted all of that.
 
Lewis: I kind of remember the look on your face when I was running all this stuff down, and there are so many acronyms. And then we had all this paper, and it was also on a Google Drive. You had this face like, “What?!” [Smiles]
 
Akchin: Yeah, that sounds right. I think it was a lot of information. [Smiles]
 
Lewis: And you did it!
 
Akchin: Yeah. I still don’t really understand how that happened. It’s like one of those kung fu movies with the training sequence or whatever, you know?
 
Akchin: [01:11:57] But yeah, so then there was the Mike Brown stuff and that was a whole crazy thing.
 
Lewis: Share what that was.
 
Akchin: Well so, there was a group of us. I mean, so I remember Althea was in it. Arvernetta was in it. Marcus was in it. I think Maria was in it. There might have been a handful of other people too, who made that time commitment. But it was like a weeklong training that we had won, is my understanding
 
Lewis: Mm-Hmmmm. We applied.
 
Akchin: from the National Community Land Trust Network as a grant for technical assistance from Mike Brown. And Mike was super-nice, he was from Minnesota, I think.
 
Lewis: Exactly.
 
Akchin: [01:12:37] And, I just remember there was a little bit of conflict because what we wanted to do is not the traditional land trust model. It was very much about, you know—getting city-owned property at no cost and no debt. And that was like not something that Mike Brown was like going to say, was realistic. And I think he actually did—he said that there has never been a community land trust [smiles] that has gotten the city to give them property and...
 
Lewis: That’s not true.
 
Akchin: Right.
 
Lewis: [01:13:12] The other guy, Jason Webb
 
Akchin: Yeah.
 
Lewis: was from Dudley Street and they had used eminent domain.
 
Akchin: Right, eminent domain... And then you were like, “What about Cooper Square?” And you know, I mean it just was like a crazy...
 
Lewis: We had to take him.
 
Akchin: There was a little bit of a showdown.
 
Lewis: Remember?
 
Akchin: Yeah, you did take him. I didn’t go.
 
Lewis: Oh, we took him.
 
Akchin: Because I don’t think I went to Cooper Square until—actually, I never went on any of those tours, which is still funny to me.
 
Lewis: [01:13:35] There was a lot of mansplaining in that technical assistance. [Laughs]
 
Akchin: Yeah, and a lot of being told about the Civil Rights Movement, as I recall—which is like, some people in this room _lived that! _So, like…
 
Lewis: What???
 
Akchin: Whatever, [laughs] you know? But yeah, that was… I mean all things considered; I think we managed that pretty well.
 
Lewis: The other—the other kind of choke point with them was they wanted us to do a business plan.
 
Akchin: Oh, yeah.
 
Lewis: And Rosa and Flor—
 
Akchin: Oh, I forgot Rosa was in the room for that
 
Lewis: Yeah!
 
Akchin: too, yeah.
 
Lewis: And so people that lived in some of these city-owned buildings were very involved—because they were very angry that for decades, the city had allowed their buildings to deteriorate. And so, we had to do a business plan and they wanted us to have a CEO and a CFO, and we were like, “Nah.”
 
Lewis: [01:14:30] But Cooperation Jackson… So there were five emerging land trusts around the country
 
Akchin: Right.
 
Lewis: and, Picture the Homeless was one—or the East Harlem. CLT was one, and Cooperation Jackson was one and one in Detroit.
 
Akchin: Chinatown Tenants were one, I think.
 
Lewis: Yes, in Boston. And so, I don’t remember the fifth one. We can…
 
Akchin: Was it Janes Place? Was it that one?
 
Lewis: Yes!
 
Akchin: Yeah.
 
Lewis: And…
 
Akchin: In New Orleans.
 
Lewis: Yep.
 
Akchin: Yeah.
 
Lewis: And so, we were part of a cohort that—you know, all of the other groups have really gone on to build things and so has
 
Akchin: Yeah.
 
Lewis: the East Harlem/El Barrio one and NYCCLI is now an entity
 
Akchin: Yeah.
 
Lewis: doing amazing work.
 
Lewis: [01:15:15] And so you… I want to ask you a little bit to talk about NYCCLI and the—you being on the… Co-chairing the workgroup. [Laughter] Because, at one point Picture the Homeless
 
Akchin: Right.
 
Lewis: was on the steering committee and then on the board, and there was a policy workgroup that you co-chaired, there was the popular education that Ryan Hickey co-chaired—or chaired. I co-chaired the citywide CLT one for a while, but I also was deeply involved with the East Harlem/El Barrio CLT. So, Picture the Homeless was all over. [Smiles]
 
Akchin: [01:15:55] [Smiles] Can I just say that, for what it’s worth—my first meeting with NYCCLI was also my first meeting with Arvernetta and oof! We had a rocky start to our relationship.
 
Lewis: What was that like? Tell that story.
 
Akchin: Oh my gosh. She’s going to be so mad at me, but what I remember is that they would—they had this thing... John and Hillary had this thing where they were documenting NYCCLI and like the NYCCLI… I forget what it was called. There was a name for it. Like, it was like the research group or something, but it was like research on NYCCLI, I think. So I think I went because Joel was going and said it was about research, so I was like, “I think that’s my job. I think I’m supposed to do that.” And I went, and there were these two researchers from somewhere in Scandinavia, I think.
 
Lewis: Kukla or Rukla?
 
Akchin: Yes, Kukka and—
 
Lewis: A man.
 
Akchin: I don’t remember his name.
 
Lewis: Micah or Mikhael or something.
 
Akchin: [01:17:00] I think it’s Mikhael, yeah. [Smiles] And they were talking about, you know—doing some form of education about international housing movements and I had just seen this documentary that I thought was really cool about Barcelona [smiles] and like housing organizing there. And so, I was like doing screenings with my outside housing organization and so, I thought I would just open my mouth and talk about how great it was, and how we should have a screening. And Ms. Henry was just like, “What’s wrong with you? Why do we need to learn about what other people are doing?” Like, and got so mad, as I recall. And I was mortified because we’d never met before, and I... I was like, “God, I didn’t mean to offend anyone… I didn’t know, you know.”
 
Akchin: [01:17:50] But she had a good point, because she’s like, “Why do we need to study everybody else to know how to do direct action? Why don’t we just study what we’re doing, or what we’ve done?” You know—and I guess it is kind of insulting to have someone come in and be like, “Let’s go look at real examples of organizing.” When—anyway, that did not get us off to a great start. I’ll just say that. But I think we’ve mended fences since then. I think. 
 
Lewis: [01:18:17] Yeah, I—I know you did. And so, the policy workgroup—your role as representing Picture the Homeless on the policy workgroup… What were the kinds of—what are the kinds of things that you were fighting for? What were you pushing in terms… As Picture the Homeless’ kind of line?
 
Akchin: I mean… I think there were two main—two main categories of things that were priorities for our members that felt really important to bring into the space and one of them was, you know—how are we pushing the city to use its underutilized and vacant property for deeply affordable housing? And then the other was—how do we make sure that, once we get all this vacant and underutilized housing on a community land trust, that it actually will be affordable? And the second one I think, was like the much, much harder thing to talk about, because it’s—it’s really hard to do in the market that we’re in.
 
Akchin: [01:19:33] And so, that was always like the question that sort of lingered at the end of everything but having Picture the Homeless represented in that space was really important because it is really easy to get lost in—you know, policy stuff like tax exemptions and special legislation and definitions and you know—things that matter a lot, but like when it comes down to it don’t matter as much as how are we going to stay accountable to the people who have been pushing for these policies to come about and make sure that—at the end of the day, like this project supports those people and people who are in the same position. And that was always a—a big push, trying to think about who these buildings were going to serve and who these land trusts were going to serve and so... I guess that was Picture the Homeless’ role in that space.
 
Lewis: [01:20:28] And so you, as the housing policy staff person, how did you know what to push for? Like when you were on a conference call with NYCCLI people and there weren’t any Picture the Homeless members there, how did you—how did you know? Who were you—who did you feel accountable to and how did you know what you better say?
 
Akchin: Oh, I mean like… Our housing campaign was very, very explicit about priorities and if anything didn’t sound right, people would be up, and you know—just be coming at me from left and right. [Smiles] So, yeah… I don’t think it was hard to know what the priorities were because in every housing meeting it would just be, “How affordable is this going to be?” And people had like really nuanced thoughts about affordability actually, and so…
 
Lewis: Like what?
 
Akchin: [01:21:23] So like one of the things that happened as part of our business planning process, was planning what the rent distribution would be like in an ideal building. And you know—what is going to be… Like, you would imagine as a homeless-led group that it would just be like, “Well, all of that should be for us, period.” You know? And, in fact our members, a lot of whom had lived in mixed-income public housing or mixed-income housing in different times of their lives—private housing, that is—knew that that wasn’t ideal because they had seen communities where there was flight by people of higher incomes and just what happens to neighborhoods and so… And just—from a business perspective, knew that it wasn’t ideal.
 
Akchin: [01:22:14] And I think bringing in experts like, from the affordable housing world who could just talk about the realities of making business operations work was meaningful in that way. But yeah, our members are just super-smart and nuanced about it, and so when we had that conversation they were really—like people had strong opinions about what the percentages should be. Should it be fifty percent, extremely low-income, and then the rest should be very low-income or low-income? Should it be some high-income? Like, how does it work? You know, and what’s the math? And so—at the end of the day, when we had that business plan we—I think our breakdown was like majority extremely low-income. But we reserved like ten percent of the units to be on no cap, because we knew that there were going to need to be wealthy people too, who could help to subsidize the—the cost of the housing.
 
Lewis: [01:23:09] And I—I also remember, as you’ve kind of referenced, that people were very generous like, “Well they need to live somewhere too, those rich people.” [Smiles] You know? The rich people would never say that about—
 
Akchin: Yeah, no—that would never come up.
 
Lewis: [01:23:23] So, you mentioned housing campaign meetings. Did you attend housing campaign meetings? Is this how you knew this? Also, your office was adjacent and there was no complete wall. [Smiles]
 
Akchin: [Laughs] I think more so that. What I recall is that—so, I generally didn’t attend housing campaign meetings just because I wanted to not have over-influence anything in that space—that it’s a homeless-led space, and Ryan was facilitating.
 
Akchin: [01:23:53] So, the meetings that I would be in would be—first the CLT spaces and then eventually we had our own research project that I was involved with. But, for the most part I just eavesdropped [smiles] and it was great and every once in a while I would hear someone talking about me, and I’d just be like, “Excuse me!” [Laughs] Like—and that was the beauty of not having walls, right? But, you know—you hear people’s strong opinions and all—and not just in the housing meetings. I mean, we would go to rallies and our members were super on fire about, you know—what are we talking about when we talk about affordable, and like affordable to whom? And are they including us in the tenant spaces? Are they including us in these legislative campaigns?
 
Akchin: [01:24:39] And so, you really quickly just come to understand the importance of—of… Yeah! Of representation and of accountability in those spaces. And it’s—I mean it can be… I know a lot of organizations that don’t value that in the same way, and I think it’s really to Picture the Homeless’ credit that that’s so much a part of the—the motto and the doctrine of the organization and people really know that, and I think are—they gravitate towards it.
 
Lewis: [01:25:16] So, you mentioned the—the housing campaign… Picture the Homeless was a homeless-led space. So outside of these meetings, what was the office like?
 
Akchin: [Smiles] Yeah. It was always busy! People were always there. I don’t remember it ever being particularly quiet. People came in… They used the computers, made phone calls, you know—just volunteered around the office or just hung out. I mean, one of the nicest things about the organization in my opinion, was just how much people actually spent time in the space. It was sort of like a quasi-social center and a working space and sometimes it would go a little bit more in one direction or a little bit more in the other. [Smiles] But, I just—that was really pleasant. You know, as like a… You know, doing a job like research, where you could really just not talk to anyone all day, it was really great to be able to just put it down, and like members would just drop in and just say, “Hey. How’s it going?” Check in about their lives. It was really family.
 
Lewis: [01:26:33] What was some of the challenges around that?
 
Akchin: [Laughs] About people dropping in and saying “hey”
 
Lewis: Yeah!
 
Akchin: and letting you know about their lives? I mean yeah, totally. There were some moments where you’re like, “Please get out of my office because I really can’t get anything done.” Or conference calls were challenging. That was always a… Yeah, I’m… So okay, I do remember one time I got very upset because you do hear everything and so you can hear when people are saying a lot of bullshit. And I do remember at one point, just hearing one of our members who knows better—just saying some really toxic things and just going into the other room and just being like, “I can hear everything you’re saying, and you should know better! You’re a leader here. You can do better than this.” And they were mad, but…
 
Lewis: What kinds of toxic things? It’s okay to say. We’re not trying to make Picture the Homeless sound perfect.
 
Akchin: [01:27:27] Oh! It’s just like, you know, there’s always that conflict between people who are marginally better off than someone else in the space. And so there was this whole like, “Oh, you know, these people coming in from the streets, from the streets around 126th Street… They don’t know how to act. They don’t know what kind of space this is… They… Blah-blah-blah-blah-blah…” Whatever people always say… And it sucked! And I was just like, “Well, if they don’t know what they’re doing here, then why don’t you tell them? This is what a leadership role is—it’s your job to set the culture and if the culture, you think—is slipping, that’s on you.” You know? “Don’t just sit in here talking shit basically, and drinking coffee.”
 
Lewis: [01:28:11] How did you feel doing that—or did you reflect on it later… The tension between homeless-led and then a staff person who’s not homeless, kind of intervening that way?
 
Akchin: Yeah.
 
Lewis: How do you feel about it now? I’m not posing the question as if there’s anything wrong. In fact it… But just, you know—how did you reconcile the—all that complexity?
 
Akchin: You know, this was like closer to the three-year mark for me and so… I think early on, when I heard people saying things that were just completely wack—just on every level, I wouldn’t really know what to do because I didn’t know them, right? I didn’t know what people were capable of. I didn’t know what people were really about. And sometimes I still am like that—like I still don’t really know what you’re about, so I don’t know if I should trust you when you say that this is the way it is, or if I should call you out if you’re behaving inappropriately... Like, there’s are still members who I don’t know. This particular member was not that. This was someone who I had seen be really an amazing leader and who I’d also seen being just super annoying, to be honest.
 
Akchin: [01:29:26] And so at that point I was just like, “I’m really sick of this happening. You can’t just come in here and like hang out in the space, not contribute at all, and talk negatively about everyone else here—who’s here contributing every day and you don’t see that, or you don’t appreciate that, but you can’t—you can’t be mean.” Like that’s… I felt very comfortable in that moment, actually. And maybe that’s partly just like what it is to get to know people and to know when—when someone is not being their best self, you know? Certainly, people have done that to me in the space and I’ve generally appreciated it—maybe not immediately. [Smiles]
 
Lewis: [01:30:13] You know, I remember one thing about you and people dropping in is—that you’re a very kind person and I think that for many people that have worked—or who have been leaders at Picture the Homeless, that this element of _kindness _is important. And so, I also remember that—because of your kindness, sometimes we’d be like, “Get so-and-so out of Jenny’s office. They’ve been in there for two hours, talking Jenny’s head off.” [Laughter] But I know you—you’re there as a research—housing research person but sometimes you were helping people with their Social Security applications. And so how did you—how was it for you, balancing those kinds of things?
 
Akchin: [01:31:04] You know… Yeah… I guess—and I think this is true of everyone… All the staff at PTH was like—there’s like people who come to you because they’re having a bad day and then there’s people who are coming to you because they’re in a legitimate crisis. And I think you can tell the difference pretty quickly and so I didn’t really have a whole lot of trouble. I definitely let people stay longer than maybe they should on a regular basis, certain people in particular. But I… When it mattered—yeah, I just saw everyone around me being able and willing to drop what they were doing to take care of people in that way. And so that taught me that I could also do that. So, seeing Nikita do that, seeing Ryan do that on a regular basis. And then if, you know…
 
Akchin: [01:32:05] And really just understanding the amount of power that actually it is to call an agency as an organization with a name. Like, it would have been very easy for me to just say, “Well, why don’t you just call HRA yourself.” You know or, “Why don’t you just call your case worker?” But like, it actually made a huge difference to call and be like… Or just email or whatever like, “We’re from Picture the Homeless and like, what’s going on?”
 
Akchin: [01:32:32] One that I remember, this happened I think after you left. But there was just this one guy who I’d never seen before but he was just telling me he was getting the runaround from HRA about his storage unit. And I heard this for like three days in a row. Like three days in a row he came in and was just like, “This is crazy. They keep making me wait. They say that I don’t have the right paperwork. They’re being really rude to me.” And like on the third day, it was like a Friday afternoon, and I wasn’t really doing anything, and I was just like, “You want to just go down there?
 
Akchin: [01:33:03] So we went down to the HRA office, which was like on our block. I don’t know why I had never thought earlier to do this with all of our members, because literally it was like a block away. But, you know—like there’s no white people in that space. So, like the moment I walked in people were like, “What are you doing here?” I mean, there are… Okay, that’s not true. There probably are. There wasn’t that day. But, literally just being next to this person—like just standing there, got him what he needed. So that was like, thirty minutes out of my day but if like, I had done that three days earlier, it would have been forty-eight hours out of his life. I don’t know. Stuff like that would just drive me crazy. And so yeah, if you have time you want to contribute—then why not, right?
 
Lewis: [01:33:53] So, one of the things that—that you did… When you had—you referenced earlier the research project that you were involved with. And so you created—with members, a research committee and you all generated a report. But you also were involved with the development of Gaining Ground.
 
Akchin: Oh Yeah.
 
Lewis: So, I don’t know which one you want to talk about first, but they’re both very important and connected.
 
Akchin: [01:34:23] Yeah. Well, Gaining Ground was my first assignment when I was hired. And that’s was how I knew I was hired. I don’t know if you—do you remember this? [Smiles] Because I was sweating it. I was sweating bullets like, really wanting to work at PTH, but really worried about it. And then I got this email from Ryan Hickey, that was basically like, “So, I don’t know if you’re hired or not, but [laughs] here’s this thing that you have to write. It’s a report. Good luck.” And it was like the notes for Gaining Ground, which I still think is an amazing—amazing thing that PTH did before my time. So, I think I really came in on the tail end of what was a lot of research and a lot of work, but…
 
Lewis: [01:35:06] And talk about what Gaining Ground is—and actually, Ryan Hickey gives you tons of credit in his interview. He’s like, “You need to ask Jenny about all that.”
 
Akchin: Really? [Smiles] That’s ridiculous because Ryan—well, I don’t know who started the organizing on that—but Ryan did the lion’s share of that, I would guess. But yeah, Gaining Ground was like us giving the city all of its best ideas, right? It was homeless people looking at these buildings that were rent-stabilized, where landlords—slum lords like the Podolskys, had kicked people out and replaced them with shelter units… Replaced their rent-stabilized homes with shelter units, but arguably still rent-stabilized homes—though not homes anymore… And sorry, this is very confusing for whoever is listening to this oral history.
 
Lewis: No, no, no! Go ahead.
 
Akchin: [01:35:54] But the idea was, you know—this is a huge waste of housing for everybody because it’s just a displacement machine where people are displaced into homelessness, and then homeless people are put into the same homes that those people used to live in and then the slum lords collect twice as much rent, and—it’s just a shitty system. And so, we—we did like a cost analysis on just the cost of that based on some statistics, I think from the DOI report. Department of Investigations did an audit of—of what was being spent.
 
Akchin: [01:36:27] And then we proposed alternatives. And I remember we had a list of alternatives, and we were told that some of them were very reasonable, like looking at liens on the buildings—which actually it turns out that there weren’t that many… Or a 7A administrator, which is a program where HPD will put a building in receivership essentially, with a nonprofit.
 
Lewis: If it’s in bad shape?
 
Akchin: [01:36:56] If it’s in really bad shape and like a third of the tenants agree—which is also complicated because who’s a tenant? Like we would argue everyone in that building was a tenant, but… So, there’s all complications there. Then—and then we were like, “Let’s just put in eminent domain because this is a public emergency.” And eminent domain is really like… I think it even says in the reports—like eminent domain is really expensive, so maybe the city wouldn’t want to do this. But we were just like, “Why not, right? Let’s just put it in as an afterthought.”
 
Akchin: [01:37:28] And then we took this report, and I remember going with Donna and you and Ryan and I think Sam was there for that one too. And did anyone else go to Steve Banks?
 
Lewis: Harry.
 
Akchin: Oh, of course.
 
Lewis: DiRienzo.
 
Akchin: Harry was there for everything, right. Harry was always there.
 
Lewis: From Banana Kelly. He was our—he was legitimizing. [Smiles]
 
Akchin: Yeah. Harry was—I don’t know, working some miracles… And just going to the top floor of the World Trade Center building and like—the new one… And just presenting this to Steve Banks and…
 
Lewis: His legal
 
Akchin: Oh yeah!
 
Lewis: people were so nasty.
 
Akchin: Martha and—what is the other person’s name? Anyway, it was—that was really amazing, and just…
 
Akchin: [01:38:17] And then, you know—it goes into a vacuum, and then we get a call scheduling a meeting with the deputy mayor, Alicia Glen, who we all have feelings about—but who actually really I think, read this report. And I remember her staff was like, “This is interesting, right? This is a good report.” And you know, then it goes into a vacuum again and a couple of months later they announce their amazing plan to take these buildings through eminent domain! And—I mean that’s like… I know like our big victory that year was the Housing Not Warehousing Act and that was twelve years of work, and it was amazing. But, that was a victory. That’s huge.  
 
Akchin: [01:39:02] Like, that little policy report went in three years, from a bunch of notes on a Google spreadsheet to—you know, a portfolio of buildings being transferred and they’re going to be developed next year. I mean, it’s just like—though, you know—it’s all complicated now with whatever… With controversy, because our mayor can’t do anything without embedding himself in a scandal, but…
 
Lewis: [01:39:32] The—the whole idea of people making money off of homeless people goes back to the roots of Picture the Homeless. And the research in the Gaining Ground report really was happening at the same time that the housing campaign was doing direct action, was generating a lot of media coverage
 
Akchin: Mm-Hmmmm.
 
Lewis: and so this whole notion of diversity of tactics and things… I think one important thing about your position—you, as a person, but the position… Created—was that, it allowed Picture the Homeless to have somebody who had the skills—who could listen and take the vibe, the—the common threads of what people wanted, and convert that into some asks
 
Akchin: Yeah.
 
Lewis: and then city could say, “Okay, this is something that we could work with.” And so what was that process like for you, working with members in the research committee.
 
Akchin: Oh!
 
Lewis: just talking about language and…

Akchin: [01:40:49] Yeah! No, it was amazing and you’re right about diversity of tactics and I think that was really important for the cluster site project and that—that made that project move. And so, sometimes when I think about like what we could have done differently with the—the follow-up report, the Business of Homelessness report—is really thinking about that. Like if we had more organizing capacity at that time, what more actions could have looked like. Because like that—the Gaining Ground… While that report was circulating in City Hall, there were sleep-outs, there was the crazy—the one at Aguila with the rats that I missed. There was the sleep-out in front of Podolsky’s house on the Upper East Side, right? And then…
 
Lewis: 59th Street.
 
Akchin: Yeah, super-fancy building and meeting his neighbors and then putting the note on his door. And like these were actions that kept people really connected to the campaign and to what it was about and then after that, actually doing door knocking and meeting people.
 
Akchin: [01:41:58] Like there was a real… People felt a very strong connection to the families that were living in cluster sites and although there was some tension because families—you know, it was more difficult for them to come to the space… And so, there were people who were like, “Well, what are we doing working so hard for these families if they’re not even going to come to our space?” But, people knew them and had connections with them and felt really accountable and responsible to them.
 
Akchin: [01:42:27] And I think one of the regrets that I have about the Business of Homelessness  campaign was that it was very legislative and policy heavy as opposed to really being connected to action. And it’s a shame because it was at the same time as this huge rollout of a new plan to open brand-new shelters everywhere and big shelters were opening every day. And so… There was some sort of like missed connection there. But sorry, that’s getting ahead of your question. What was your question again? It was like—what was it like to work…
 
Lewis: [01:43:03] So, you’re a policy—housing policy person. You have relationships with members in the office, on a personal level and a work level. But then you’re bringing folks together who always talk about people making money off of them. And you’re coming, you’ve learned all the acronyms... You know all the city agencies. How did you as a—as a worker, right? As a social justice worker, kind of blend research with people’s lived experience so that you could come out with a policy that the deputy mayor would end up—it would end up impacting and changing city policy?
 
Akchin: [01:43:45] Yeah. That was a huge challenge. And actually, I think one of the things that was really hard about this particular research was it was extremely demoralizing. [Pause] You know, people would read the budgets. That was like a huge part of our report—was reading city budgets and seeing how much was being spent on every line item. And then, people were… I do—like people were devastated thinking about how much money was being spent, while they were living in the system. So, a lot of it was really, really hard—emotionally hard. And some of our members I think, were—yeah—had to stop honestly… Like had to stop the research process because it was just too much.
 
Akchin: [01:44:40] And then on the other hand, like the other half of the research project was thinking about affordable housing. And while, in my mind I was like—this is going to be the hopeful part of the project, this is going to be the part where we, you know—see the potentials and the vision and what we can really get done. In fact, affordable housing is also extremely expensive and so, there was a really difficult reality that we had to confront there, too. That it is expensive. It’s not as expensive as the alternative and it’s much better for people to have homes,  than not to have homes, than to live in a system—obviously. But it wasn’t like there was an easy answer. There was no easy solution at the end, and it wasn’t neat, and it wasn’t simple. And that was really difficult.
 
Akchin: [01:45:37] I think what I—what I appreciated so much about our members was like… I mean, just everyone’s extremely just intellectually curious and engaged and invested in this... I had people who—one person in particular, and we talk about it still, who couldn’t participate and was like really upset, upset at me, and just upset that they couldn’t participate because research was so, so important to them and they really, really wanted to be a part of it. And it was just a stupid scheduling conflict, and we made time to talk about it on a regular basis, but it just reminded me how important research was to our members, because every time I saw this person afterwards—you know, she would ask me, “How’s the research project going?” And just say how sorry she was that she couldn’t be a part of it. And so that was like…
 
Lewis: You can name names.
 
Akchin: [Pause] Let me think on it.
 
Lewis: [01:46:41] One of the—one of the ways that this is working is when people mention people in interviews, we—then it’s like, “Okay, so now we need to interview that person.”
 
Akchin: Yeah. Oh, well this is someone who’s already in your cohort, so don’t worry. [Smiles] But, our members that were able to be part of it… I mean, we—it was great because we had all these experts, the quote-unquote “experts”. You know, and we could go and interview these folks from the Independent Budget Office and the, you know—affordable housing experts.
 
Akchin: [01:47:13] And, I just remember with the IBO in particular that there was this exchange happening, right? [Smiles] Because on the one hand, we were asking tons of questions, and people wanted to know everything. And the IBO is fabulous. Like, I can’t say enough nice things about the IBO. These are the budget experts for the city, and they’re independent and they…
 
Lewis: Independent Budget Office?
 
Akchin: Yeah. They’re fantastic and they just sat with us for like an hour and a half or two hours. But it was also like—they wanted to know what people were experiencing and when things came up, they were like genuinely—I think it was an exchange more so than an expert interview, right? Because I think they were—they were also curious about how things are happening in practice.
 
Lewis: [01:47:55] So you went with members, Picture the Homeless members, to meet with folks
 
Akchin: Yeah.
 
Lewis: from different agencies. So talk about what that was like. How did you all prepare to do that? How did you identify what agency? Were they all welcoming? What was that like?
 
Akchin: Well so, I guess the process that we used—we picked a handful. We actually had a very ambitious report. We picked four big questions to cover—which was like… Where is the money from? How is it being spent? How could it be spent differently? I guess that’s three questions. But some of them feel like—like especially the last one was really about like affordable housing and then more of a vision for how affordable housing could happen. So, those are really broad questions [smiles] you know, and require really sweeping evidence and investigation gathering, or evidence gathering and investigation, rather. But when we went to the IBO in particular, I mean, it was amazing.
 
Akchin: [01:49:05] So we can prep forever for these meetings, right? We can prepare until the cows come home and then something will happen that you don’t expect or anticipate. But just having it all broken down so clearly—like where the money comes from, what goes where, what are all these acronyms—like, what is a shelter budget letter even? Because like all of our members had received these shelter budget letters, and they have all these acronyms on them. And then finally like, the IBO as I recall, was able to just say, “Oh, well this number corresponds to this part of the budget, and that number goes to a different… And it was like wow—it just cleared up so much. I think that was when we had the revelation that basically shelter providers just charge whatever they want because the numbers were so different.
 
Lewis: [01:49:57] Who went to the meeting with the IBO?
 
Akchin: It was a big meeting. That was like, ten of our members and they were great. I mean they just—we just had a million questions. So, we had the questions that we had prepared in advance. I think we had like ten questions. We got through like, three of them and then—just people were so curious that we just went off on everything that everybody wanted to know about the city budget and about their shelter budget. And… So I know—I remember Jose was there. James was there, Scott, Charmel... I’m trying to think. There was a ton of people there. I could go back and look.
 
Lewis: [01:50:40] So, y’all went down on the train as one group?
 
Akchin: Uh-Huh. Yeah. We—or might have met some people there. I think Althea met us there, as she often does. And they had a fancy office downtown Manhattan. So you know, it’s always fun to go on a field trip, right? [Smiles] But—yeah, they were amazing, and they were just so interested in what was actually happening, too… So I think it was a really—I don’t know… I think there’s something really empowering about going to a space like that and just having that kind of exchange—where you’re expecting to be taught, but you end up teaching. And it just was great, though. That’s what I remember, just thinking, “This is so fun.” And everyone’s energy was just so great that day, way, way, way more fun than going through the city budget registers or whatever. [Smiles] Yeah.
 
Lewis: [01:51:40] So, what are some other fun things—what are some other
 
Akchin: From the research?
 
Lewis: fun experiences? For research or otherwise, that you recall from your time?
 
Akchin: Fun? I mean, a lot of it was a lot of fun, so it’s kind of hard to zero in on all the most fun moments. I mean, all of our actions were great. I think… Yeah. During the time that I was there, there were a couple of, you know—whatever… Pressers or whatever that weren’t that fun. But most of them were really fun.
 
Akchin: [01:52:15] And I would just say like… I don’t know. Our members—we always had a good time, I think. I enjoyed lobbying a lot with members because you get a lot more time—one on one with members before and after doing prep and then also debriefing. And then you experience this super-intense thing together of like being in a room with an elected official or a staffer, just getting grilled. And just seeing people shine in that moment was really rewarding and seeing people really turn the tables and the way that—yeah just… That was great. There are so many things. [Smiles]
 
Lewis: [01:52:58] Do you remember your first action?
 
Akchin: It was the Podolskys.
 
Lewis: Oh, the sleep-out?
 
Akchin: The sleep-out, yeah. I definitely remember it. [Smiles] And that was the other thing. I always felt like I could bring all my friends to all of our actions because they were so good. You know, that was a really great thing.
 
Lewis: Didn’t you bring a study group?
 
Akchin: I brought my reading group! [Laughs] I was like in a reading group at that time, and we met on that night, and I was like, “I’m sorry. I’m not going to come to reading group. But if you want to bring the reading group to us…” And then a couple of my friends were at a wedding party that night, and they came with a wedding cake and…
 
Lewis: Oh yeah!
 
Akchin: You don’t remember? Yeah you do, yeah. And then we got rained out and we went to the diner and that was a really nice—it was a nice action. And we had a really great intern at that time—was her name? It was Jasmine, I think, and she was super-great and fun, and you brought musicians. It was just a super-great action. Your friend with the flute. So…
 
Lewis: Quincy.
 
Akchin: Quincy, yeah.
 
Akchin: [01:54:06] Or, another really good one was the one in Metro North Plaza with the hoodies.
 
Lewis: Hoodstock? [Smiles]
 
Akchin: [Laughs] Yeah. I forgot it was called that.
 
Lewis: Hoodstock.
 
Akchin: That was a great action.
 
Akchin: [01:54:21] One fun thing that was part of the Business of Homelessness was the architect thing—which was inviting Emma the architect to come and do—do that visioning with folks and just see what she created was… People were…
 
Lewis: What was that about? Because she’s actually gotten involved with the oral history project.
 
Akchin: Oh right!
 
Lewis: So what was that?
 
Akchin: So, Emma was an architecture student from I think, Harvard—really fancy. And she had reached out to NYCCLI—I think, or maybe to a member of NYCCLI, and had asked for assignments that have to do with underutilized space and... I don’t know. She was referred to us and we were at that time looking at all the vacant lots in East Harlem as a part of the CLT planning process. And so, it made perfect sense to design a building for this space, and then our members can be involved with that. And yeah, it was really great. I mean, the “charette” that she—charette quote-unquote—planner-speak, that she did with our members was really fun. And a lot of people who weren’t like regular, consistent members came for that and had like an amazing time, and just like totally… I mean, because it was so open.
 
Akchin: [01:55:47] It’s like if you could just plan your own apartment, what would it look like? And everyone’s personality comes out, right? So, you know—like Ronald’s is like a one-room apartment with a video game theater, and then like Donna’s has closets for shoes… And you know, everyone had their own thing that they… Their own spin on it. And then, a couple of our members who had backgrounds in construction or engineering also got really into it because they could talk about—you know, nerd out on the architecture with her. So yeah, it was really—it was really fun.
 
Lewis: How—how many sessions did you have with Emma to design this building?
 
Akchin: [01:56:25] As I recall, it was just one crazy day
 
Lewis: Mm-Hmmm.
 
Akchin: with three different… It was like a—what is it called? Like a rotating facilitation. So she had a section, and I had a section, and then they switched and then she took what she learned and then came back and presented it and I think it was really cool. I mean, she made…
 
Akchin: [01:56:49] You always were joking about the Zoolander building, but she made a tiny scale model and had like beautiful presentation, which included members’ voice and stories and she made everyone their own apartment. And it was just like really—I just thought it was so cool. And then when we had that we could take it places. So, we took it to the borough president’s office, and we took it to the council member, and we took it... I mean, we took it everywhere I mean… [Laughs] Yeah. If I could have carried that building around the neighborhood, I would do it. [Laughs] Like, it was just like anything to get that out there.
 
Lewis: [01:57:29] And that was designed to be on a vacant lot?
 
Akchin: Mm-hmm.
 
Lewis: A city-owned lot? Could you talk a little bit about the research that you all did around vacant lots and the challenges—and even finding out who owns them and how many the city owns, even to this day?
 
Akchin: I think you just summed it up pretty well. [Laughs] That was basically it. Yeah, I mean, the whole impetus behind the—the vacant property legislation that Picture the Homeless had been working on—or towards, since 2003, right? Or ’06—was it 2003 though first, right?
 
Lewis: 2003 was the first vacant property count we did in East Harlem.
 
Akchin: [01:58:23] Yeah. [Pause] So that… I mean—the city has data, they say—on every lot in the city. A lot of it is crummy. None of the vacancy data was reliable. I think when we did our final council hearing on the bills—or the first one that we did, not the second one… We were just talking about vacant property. And the council members kept asking about what was wrong with the city data, or whatever… And I got so angry. I hadn’t planned to testify, but I got really angry. And at the end, I just put my name down to testify about how shitty the city data was on vacant property because I was so angry about it.
 
Akchin: [01:59:11] But yeah… It was crummy. It was like you would get a vacant lot, and it would be someone’s garage, or it would be like a curb cut. Or it would be like a… I don’t know. Often it was a sidewalk with a tree in it and you’re like, “That’s not a vacant lot.” And then, when it was a vacant lot, it was often a struggle to just figure out why it was a vacant lot.
 
Akchin: [01:59:32] So there were all these vacant lots for example, on the Lower East Side—which I found out are being turned into parks, but you would never know that. They have a sign from the Department of Environmental Protection on them, but they’ve just been sitting there for like, nearly a decade. You would never know that was what they were being used for, but that’s what they’re going to be, you know? And that’s why they’re sitting there. So, just finding that out I mean, would take hours to go through it all but… Yeah. There’s a lot out there.
 
Lewis: [02:00:03] What’s your takeaway? Because now you’re in law school, so what’s your takeaway? What did you learn working at Picture the Homeless?
 
Akchin: Everything. [Laughs]
 
Lewis: Everything?
 
Akchin: Literally everything that I know now… I mean—so much, yeah. [Long pause] There’s so many things—there’s so many ways to go with that question—so, I don’t even know. I mean, one of the things that I think was most important that I learned was really just about organizing and relationships… Because I don’t think I’ve ever been in a space like that where connections are facilitated in that way.
 
Akchin: [02:00:57] And I’m not saying that because we were talking about it earlier—like last week or whatever… But I was really thinking about it recently. Like the way that people came into the space and just the way that it confronted systems. And so like yeah—so now I’m in an internship right now and it’s a law firm setting. And a lot of that work is working with people in systems, right? Like it’s a housing law unit and so people are navigating all kinds of systems—the housing court systems, the benefit system, often other systems as well.
 
Akchin: [02:01:41] And so, I think one of the main things I learned about—that is how to treat people differently when they’re not—when they don’t have to be in the system, how to make sure that they’re not in the system—and how to really like talk to people. I don’t want to say anything disparaging about anyone, but you, you know—you can tell the difference when someone thinks of themselves as part of the system and when someone doesn’t.
 
Akchin: [02:02:07] And the way people talk to other people on intake calls or in counseling… It’s just is a different... Like, it’s just different. If you’re not talking to a client the way that you would talk to your mom or a friend or your grandma or whoever… Then you’re already thinking of yourself in a system. And so I guess what I learned from PTH really has a lot more to do with those things—like how to respect people and how to understand people as human beings and not as clients or as whatever the system calls people—users, consumers.
 
Lewis: Consumers.
 
Akchin: [02:02:47] Though they changed that to “people with experience”.
 
Lewis: “Lived experience”
 
Akchin: Yeah.
 
Lewis: Yeah. I’ve heard some people don’t like that.
 
Akchin: I’ve heard that, too.
 
Lewis: But the complaint was that—why did they change it? And so it seems more that the fact that it was changed by people above, as opposed to even what the change was.
 
Lewis: [02:03:13] What did you learn about housing? Because you were involved
 
Akchin: Oh!
 
Lewis: with housing stuff way before
 
Akchin: Good Lord!
 
Lewis: you came to Picture the Homeless. So, what did you learn about housing?
 
Akchin: Too much... Well I just think—I think I said earlier, oh my God, I learned so much. I mean… So I’m reading Sam Stein’s book right now.
 
Lewis: Mmm. I just ordered it.
 
Akchin: Cool. We should have a book club. [Smiles] That would be fun. And it’s really bringing a lot of it home for me, but—I mean, I didn’t know anything. Or I didn’t—I knew things about preventing evictions I thought, or about the laws of tenants or whatever. But I mean just—what I learned at PTH… Oh my God. But really what I learned was just—just how ridiculous our system is and—and like just how exclusive and crazy and... So yeah—I mean, I don’t know if I can name a single thing that… I could—
 
Lewis: You can name more than one.
 
Akchin: [02:04:16] So many things! One thing that I do really credit Picture the Homeless with—that I wouldn’t have gotten anywhere else, and I know this—is a very healthy critique of vouchers and a very healthy critique of supportive housing.
 
Akchin: [02:04:34] And I still don’t know exactly where I fall on the continuum of like, public housing versus—like housing owned by the government versus housing owned by community, because I see both of those things failing, in a lot of different ways. But I definitely feel like I wouldn’t have the tools to even begin to have that thought and thought process without having been at PTH and seen that you know—the ways that capitalism interacts with both of those types of housing, and so yeah... It’s…
 
Akchin: [02:05:14] I really appreciate our members for just their ability to see through bullshit. Like—alright, let me not talk too much about housing researchers. But housing researchers—and one in particular, think that vouchers are the answer to everything and write books about it. And this is like the new system, right? It’s—and they’re going to turn public housing into basically Section 8. And I just really appreciate our members for always being really clear that you can’t depend on a voucher, that that’s not a reliable source of income for housing, and that without some sort of guarantee, that was going to leave people in the lurch, and leave people shafted. And I never would have had that level of critique without hearing it from our members and seeing it in our reports. I mean, what is the report called? Time’s Up?
 
Lewis: Mm-Hmmmm.
 
Akchin: Yeah.
 
Akchin: [02:06:11] So, those are two really big ones… That, and no one actually—the supportive housing thing, too. No one ever talks about supportive housing in the way that our members talk about supportive housing, and it like drives me crazy. It drives me totally crazy.
 
Lewis: [02:06:31] Do you have any parting thoughts?
 
Akchin: [Long pause] Probably, but they’re not coming to me right now... Yeah, I mean I just now have had the opportunity to be in a lot of different organizing spaces, because New York is full of spaces. But I just… One thing that I remember, and just—because I… I just remember—so we all got stressed out, all the time. That was like…Like, you don’t always treat people the way that you want to treat people. And it was sometimes a good thing that there were like five or six of us at any given time—because one person could be totally stressed out and treating people badly, and then another person could be fine.
 
Lewis: You mean staff?
 
Akchin: [02:07:27] Yeah sorry, staff—because we were responsible for greeting people in informal and formal ways. And… I just remember—so, Jasmine and Patrick came in, like one winter, around the same time as Jose actually. And when they came in, it was the middle of winter. It was super-cold. They were wearing their coats in the conference room, and they just kept coming back day after day.
 
Akchin: [02:07:59] And I forget—on like the third or fourth day, I just decided like, “Well, you’ve been here for three days, so let’s like chat you know, and talk about what the space is.” And like, after that first week… Because I remember just being like, “Oh they’re great!” Like you know [laughs] and not like that it was a discovery I had. Like I’m sure other people had talked to them before I did.
 
Akchin: [02:08:25] It was like, “Oh! Like, I thought you were just sitting here quietly, like not doing anything. But actually, you’re just waiting for someone to talk to you, and you’re great.” And after that, they just like completely opened up in this really lovely way. And then, by the end of the year, Jasmine is teaching classes on community land trusts and just like going to conferences and like going to the North Star Gala and like... I mean, it was just amazing!
 
Akchin: [02:08:48] So… And I think about that sometimes, like when you see people who are bundled up or like inside themselves in that way, and just like… And that’s a lot of people in New York City, not just homeless people, but like a lot of people. So I guess—I guess that’s one nice thing that I would say—among many other nice things that I would say about Picture the Homeless. But one of them is that. It was really a space where people were drawn out in that way and given the space to just thrive and like be the self that they wanted to be, instead of the self that someone was telling them that they had to be. And that was a really—a really amazing thing about the space. So, that’s all. 
 
Lewis: Well, that’s a great note to end on, so thank you.
 
[END OF INTERVIEW]