About NGCLT - Background

The North Gulfport Community Land Trust was formed in 2004 in an effort to address the environmental degradation, wetlands filling, land speculation and potential gentrification of the North Gulfport community. This African American neighborhood, once a vibrant place where children were safe to walk at night and homeowners were proud of their simple, clean homes had fallen into disrepair, and had been regularly flooded due to the filling of nearby wetlands.

Historically this community was self-reliant. Community members lived off the land fishing in the Turkey Creek, hunting wildlife in the nearby forests and tending to their gardens. As industry moved to the area locals took jobs at the nearby Creosote plant. Later, when men left the community to seek better opportunities their wives worked together by taking care of each others children, sharing food stores and working communally on agricultural plots.

As the city of Gulfport moved through the 20th century this community remained underrepresented and underdeveloped; basic services like sewage and trash removal were almost non-existent and today remain absent in many parts of the community. Over the past twenty years urban land parcels in the North Gulfport community have become vacant and overgrown while nearby development is rapidly filling the surrounding wetlands. A significant number of developable lots exist within the neighborhoods, but developers prefer to cut forests and fill wetlands rather than address any potential infill constraints like scattered-site development.

In 2005 this community, like the rest of the Gulf Coast, received devastating blows from Hurricane Katrina. While some regions of the Gulf Coast were flooded by tidal surge, others sustained damage from the breaching of levees or wind forces and heavy rainfall. Hurricane Katrina raised the waters in the Turkey Creek flooding North Gulfport. Heavy winds and rainfall, coupled with the deep financial poverty embedded in the region finalized the destructive effects of the storm. Homes that were barely standing before the hurricane were laid to rest during and soon after the forces; families who had very little to begin with, soon had nothing.

When Rose Johnson and other community members formed the North Gulfport Community Land Trust they intended to focus on revitalizing the community and protecting the neighborhood from land speculation and gentrification, while combating the filling of nearby wetlands.

Rose, a local community leader, had been organizing the North Gulfport Community for years. Prior to Hurricane Katrina, Rose was elected state representative for the Sierra Club solidifying her efforts toward opposing the fill of surrounding wetlands. Results of her efforts include the halting of a 500-acre wetland fill bordering North Gulfport, as well as forcing the City of Gulfport to produce a Cease and Desist order on its own wetlands fill project.