TFA: The New Gentrifiers
Gentrifying America One Charter School at a Time!
Yesterday, I reported on how Teach For America is turning into a pipeline to bring young, college-educated professionals into urban areas ripe for gentrification. In Newark, for example, developer Ron Beit, the financial muscle behind Teachers Village, also happens to serve on the advisory board of TFA-Newark.
It's the perfect scheme: Beit and his private investors get tens of millions of dollars in tax credits to finance the development. He then turns around and rents his commercial units to charter schools, which drain tax revenues away from the neighboring public schools (which could sorely use the money to shore up their crumbling infrastructures). Those schools then pay their young teachers, recruited from TFA, who then turn around and pay rent to Beit.
So Beit's managed to develop three revenue streams - tax credits, charter school rents, and teacher residence rents - all made possible by the proliferation of charters and TFA.
And here's the real beauty part: if the neighborhood gets gentrified and property values rise, the increases accrue