We will never forget the expression on Dr. Mindy Fullilove’s face as she opened her class by telling us that she and the Community Research Group had unexpectedly received an eviction notice from their office of seventeen years. We were immediately struck by the irony of the situation. Work by the Community Research Group has demonstrated that displacement of any sort hurts the individual, hurts the community, hurts the city, and ultimately affects everyone. The Community Research Group Root Shock Institute has identified a form of traumatic stress, called “Root Shock,” which is caused by the loss of one’s psychological sense of place. Analogous to the inevitable trauma suffered by plants that are uprooted from the familiar soil that provides their precious nutrients, individuals that are removed from their homes, or “emotional ecosystems,” face many short and long-term psychological effects associated with displacement. The irony of the situation is that members of the Community Research Group are experiencing first-hand the findings of their own research on displacement.

The Community Research Group leads the Urbanism and the Built Environment program at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University. While this is a newly recognized area in the field of public health in the United States, it is well established in the work of Drs. Bob and Mindy Fullilove, who have studied with world-renowned French urbanist, Michel Cantal-Dupart. An urbanist approach delves further than traditional public health philosophy, which generally relies on education and interventions to change behavior. Urbanists look to change the larger economic, political, and environmental forces that contribute to health problems. The work of the Community Research Group has been increasingly recognized as providing vital public health knowledge in areas including HIV/AIDS, violence, and drug epidemics. We are astonished and deeply saddened that such a fine group of researchers are losing their home, rather than being celebrated as important contributors to public health and psychiatry.

From their current location, situated in the heart of Washington Heights, the Community Research Group has experienced the ups and downs of the community. The events they have witnessed and the experiences they have personally shared with their neighbors have determined the course of their research. As public health experts, we appreciate the work of the Community Research Group as capturing the true essence of public health. The Community Research Group has been living among the community in Washington Heights for the last 17 years. They have always recognized the necessity of being physically, socially, and emotionally connected to the community. Their ties to the neighborhood run deep. Although this is now an attractive area for development, the Community Research Group has worked here for almost two decades, through times of struggle, grief, and celebration. Their research goals include long-term involvement, which is unusual in a context where it is common for researchers to take communities for granted, neglecting to give back.

So why are they being evicted? The reason is simple: funding. Their work does not bring in as much money as other non-community-based research approaches. Seventeen years ago, when the Fulliloves agreed to begin working at the Mailman School of Public Health and New York State Psychiatric Institute (NYSPI), an arrangement was made, through the NYSPI, that included office space on Audubon Avenue. At that time, it was considered an undesirable and unsafe area, especially for office space. However, Drs. Mindy and Bob Fullilove recognized community presence as necessary in order to best understand and report on community epidemics. Columbia has since begun to gentrify the area, which is paving the way for “richer” research groups to force individuals, families, and communities from their homes, expanding the campuses of Columbia University and the NYSPI in the name of progress. The Community Research Group recently received an eviction letter, with no surrounding discussion of an alternative office space. In other words, the move is being forced upon them.

We take this situation very personally. Is the future of those devoted to community-based research and interventions in jeopardy because institutions are guided by the bottom line and the need to bring in large funding support and overhead costs? What message is being conveyed to those who are being trained in the areas of displacement, gentrification, urban development, community health, and community engagement? Moreover, what message does this send to communities? Researchers, scientists, and institutions continually take from their surrounding communities as if they are our own personal laboratories. The Community Research Group works to equalize this very unbalanced equation. We know about the risks and dangers surrounding gentrification and the value of healthy, stable communities. We deliberate about the challenges of establishing partnerships between communities and educational institutions. The fact that these very core ideals are being undermined internally is deeply troubling.

The Fulliloves’ place in the community has, once again, put them on the front lines. It seems that, as members of the Washington Heights community, they have fallen victim to an evermore ubiquitous community epidemic: gentrification. Looking at our own city, many New Yorkers are pleased that so-called “blighted” neighborhoods, such as the Lower East Side and Park Slope, have been transformed into safer, and some would say, more attractive areas. However, we must pause to consider how these transformations gravely affect those people who are forced from their homes, and the implications gentrification has on one’s personal history and self worth, as well as individual and community well-being. We hope that the experiences of the Fulliloves will serve as a wake-up call. We must think seriously about displacement, not just at Columbia University, but in all our nation’s cities, and reconsider these policies that are so detrimental to all.

The author is a student in the school of Public Health