Friends who live in Bed Stuy told me how they get mailings practically every week from people wanting to buy their house. These are sent by the people who prey on older people who have lived there for ages, and pressure them to sell at a fraction of the market price.

There has to be a way to use city sales records, to generate postal mailings to every home/apartment owner in “unaffordable neighborhoods” (i.e. those where rent/income ratios are high, i.e. poor neighborhoods on the verge of gentrification), and include a sheet with how much were the houses that sold on their block in the past month. And send these every month, in a nicely readable design, so that people would know how much their home is really worth. It just needs to be a reminder postcard, to not let people sell out for less than what their house is worth.

Running this program would cost very little to the city government – and though it won’t stop gentrification, it would make it harder for those who prey on the poor.