Our guest speaker will be..
Sharon Cornelissen, Director of Housing, Consumer Federation of America and Author of The Last House on the Block: Black Homeowners, White Homesteaders, and Failed Gentrification in Detroit
Sharon will share insights from her time living in Detroit’s Brightmoor neighborhood as an ethnographer and new homebuyer, offering a firsthand perspective on navigating homeownership in a community facing depopulation, gentrification and urban decline.
Her story provides powerful insight into the lived experience of residents in disinvested neighborhoods. Through the lens of Brightmoor, Sharon explores the drivers of ongoing depopulation and challenges us to envision a more inclusive and equitable approach to neighborhood revitalization.
Please join us to learn more about how cities like Detroit experience gentrification, where depopulation and disinvestment play an important role in how gentrification is experienced by longtime residents versus new urbanites looking for different housing experiences.
Sharon Cornelissen is the Director of Housing for the Consumer Federation of America, where she advocates on behalf of American consumers for fair, affordable housing and equitable mortgage lending.
She brings over a decade of experience as a housing researcher, who is passionate about promoting affordability and racial equity in homeownership. Prior to CFA, she worked as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies, where she published research briefs and advocated to address contemporary housing discrimination in Massachusetts. During her Ph.D. in Sociology from Princeton University, she lived in Detroit and observed first-hand the challenges of homeowners amidst neighborhood decline. She also gained expertise as a tax foreclosure prevention activist in Detroit and interned at the Detroit Land Bank Authority.
Her work has been featured in both local and national media and published in leading academic journals. Her recently published book, The Last House on the Block, draws on three years of firsthand experience as a homeowner living in one of Detroit’s most disinvested neighborhoods, offering a vivid portrayal of the realities of everyday life in depopulating cities.
