Led by City Bureau’s engagement reporter Jerrel Floyd, four emerging reporters looked into the city’s promises to spend a billion dollars building affordable housing. The reporters zoomed in on Bronzeville, where a developer promised a mixed-income community built with the help of tax-payer dollars near public transportation.
Can a New Housing Development Revitalize Bronzeville Without Displacing Residents?
Where To Find Resources About Affordable Housing and Homeownership
Who Are We?
City Bureau Civic Reporting fellows spend 11 weeks improving their journalism skills and immersing themselves in community reporting. (Photos by Ireashia Bennett/City Bureau)
Davon Clark
By Brian Young Jr.
Davon Clark’s descendancy can be traced back to the farms and working class neighborhoods of Vineland, New Jersey. After the first ten years of his life, he moved in with his mother in Northeast Philly, where he had early aspirations of becoming an astrophysicist and found a private love for poetry. In high school, he kept this passion to himself while focusing his efforts on wrestling. Clark received a full scholarship from Penn State University where he studied to become an English teacher.
In college, he found a passion for photography and journalism and joined Sovereign Magazine, a student-run magazine focused on students of color. He went on to become the magazine’s editor-in-chief and photo editor.
After hearing positive things about City Bureau through @WritersOfColor on Twitter, he applied and got accepted to the Summer 2018 fellowship cycle. Clark draws on the skills of investigative journalism in his poetry and photography work.
With a camera in hand, skin of bronze, and eyes that gaze towards beauty, he – a person and artist constantly in transition – crafts a way to fight for freedom where he stands.
“I like flowers and the little things of life,” Clark said.
Charlene Rhinehart
By Leslie Hurtado
Charlene Rhinehart is a longtime Chicagoan who is the founder of Chicago Southsider, a newsletter that highlights the best of Chicago’s South Side one block at a time.
Rhinehart grew up in Englewood and the Auburn Gresham area. After high school, she earned an accounting and finance degree from Depaul University. She currently lives in the Bronzeville community where she spends time highlighting the rich commerce and culture that’s often overlooked. At City Bureau, she plans to write in-depth stories that highlight housing development in her community and the challenges that residents face.
She wants residents and aspiring journalists to know that they are not alone during this unprecedented time. She wants future fellows to follow this message: “Be bold in your purpose. Choose faith over fear, and live a life that you can fall in love with over and over again.”
When she is not learning from other City Bureau fellows, you can find her breaking a sweat at her Zumba and Yoga class or traveling with loved ones.
Erica Scalise
By Francisco Saúl Ramírez Pinedo
Erica Scalise is retooling her career as a journalist.
Born and raised in the Bridgeport neighborhood of Chicago, she attended Fordham University in the Bronx before finishing her senior year in Chicago in 2020.
Armed with a background in broadcast journalism via Fordham, she landed a job after graduation as a producer of a daily news radio show focused on Illinois news. She is now transitioning to a job as a commercial real estate reporter and hopes to use the fellowship to focus on community journalism.
“I wanted to get back to my reporting roots,” she said. “The values at City Bureau appealed to me more than any of the places that I’d worked before because they do community-driven reporting.”
Prior to joining the fellowship, she was a public meetings watchdog via the Documenters program.
When she is not developing her skills as a journalist, she spends her time cooking and baking — a hobby she picked up during the pandemic. You can follow her cooking and baking adventure on Instagram at @ericasfoods. She is also on a mission to find great parks and outdoor spaces and to rediscover her hometown.
Frederique Desrosiers
By J. Patrick Patterson
Frederique Desrosiers wants to build a more equitable society, and she has already gotten started.
Desrosiers lobbies for the non-profit policy organization Chicago Votes, where she focuses on the intersection of voting rights and the carceral system. She is pushing for Illinois Senate Bill 828, which would allow incarcerated individuals to vote before being released.
Desrosiers describes herself as “curious and passionate about a lot of things.” In addition to her legislative work, she is also developing journalism skills with City Bureau. Desrosiers has a long-standing interest in journalism, but since the University of Illinois at Chicago did not offer a journalism program, she majored in political science and Black studies. She now hopes to channel her curiosity and knowledge of news and current affairs into a journalism career.
She grew up in southern Illinois and lives in Morgan Park, a majority Black neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side. Her family is originally from Haiti, a country still recovering from the devastating earthquake in 2010.
“Most of my work is trying to build a more equitable society,” she said. “I’m trying to figure out how to change our world to be more just and compassionate.”
Jerrel Floyd
By Sarah Conway
Jerrel Floyd feels his roots in small-town Alabama in Black Chicago from the way that people walk down the street to catching a family relaxing on the stoop. Sharing Black stories is exactly what brought him here – documenting living history through communities telling their own stories.
“People want to be storytellers about where they come from, how they feel about their lives. They want to tell their individual stories,” he said. Inquisitive, thoughtful and perceptive, Floyd creates space in his reporting for communities of color to explore memory and process how systems impact their daily lives.
Floyd found his footing in journalism as a reporter and editor as an undergraduate at Morehouse College’s student newspaper, The Maroon Tiger. He began his career at ProPublica Illinois as a reporting fellow where he explored the powerful histories of abandoned black cemeteries, an interest sparked during his graduate studies in investigative journalism at American University where he collaborated on projects with PBS Frontline and the Washington Post.
Before City Bureau, he was as a local government reporter with the Post and Courier in Charleston, South Carolina, covering a broad range of topics from growth and development to education and health. He brings eight years of reporting experience to his work as an engagement reporter covering affordable housing, development and food access, a beat he anchors in connecting communities with resources and ultimately building their own narratives.
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