Gentrifying Brooklyn a human rights violation?

NEW YORK (FOX 5 NEWS) - There are new developments in Brooklyn.  High rises seem to be popping up all over.  It's changing the borough and pushing longtime residents out.

Mitchel Cohen remembers when a stretch of Brooklyn Avenue was a cheap place to eat.

"Now, try to find that around here," Cohen laughs.

The beautiful homes listed in the window at Stribling, a real estate broker, highlight the issue. Brooklyn is the most unaffordable housing market in America.

According to Bloomberg, in Brooklyn "a resident would need to devote 98 percent of the median income to afford the payment on a median priced home of $615,000."

There are casualties in this booming real estate market.  Not everyone can stay.

One group is making the case that displacement of longtime residents in places like Brooklyn is actually a human rights violation.

"It's causing mass suffering and displacement at record levels, Mark Swier from Right to the City says.  "We don't agree with that.  We reject that and we think it's a violation of people's human rights."

Right to the City is trying to keep people in their homes.  He calls it a vicious fight.

"You can't gentrify a neighborhood without displacing people, breaking apart families, breaking apart communities," Swier says.