Sunday, January 18, 2015

6 minutes of the East Village from a 1986 housing crisis documentary



Here's part of the neighborhood as seen in the 1986 documentary "There's No Place Like Home: Housing Crisis, USA."

10 comments:

john penley said...

Wow memories and the squatters on this vacant lot sure had it right in their predictions about the neighborhood.

~evilsugar25 said...

1986 is the year my building was finished being rehabbed (from a complete shell, i believe) into a tenement co-op and people started moving in.

Anonymous said...

Even then, people realized that squatters lived like they did by choice. Most had mental health and substance abuse issues. It was a bad time all around.

Gojira said...

Erm, I was a squatter, Anon. 12:21, as were all of my building neighbors, and we were anything BUT substance abusers with mental health issues. We lived like we did because we wanted to rehab and buy our building from the city, no other reason. Plenty more comfy places to abuse substances instead of a filthy, plumbing-, window- and heat-free apartment in the dead of winter, ya know?

Anonymous said...

The good old days ?

Gojira said...

Surprising to most, I am sure, but, yes.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for posting this. It stands in contrast to the selective distorted 'memories' of those who wax poetic about how this was a better time. You remember something that never existed. You deny the harsh realities of the 80s. Yes the good old days.

Anonymous said...

I managed to find an apartment just a block from this place in 1981, I was a student, worked 2 jobs between classes and barely got by. I don't want to judge those in this video but it was still possible to get a roof over your head back then for a few hundred per month if you were not on drugs and could prove you had a job. I really have forgotten how desolate it was east of Ave B back them, I lived off of Ave C.

Anonymous said...

Funny how things change. 30 years ago, people desperately calling for vacant lots to be developed with housing. Today, people desperately complaining about lots being developed for housing.

Anonymous said...

Yes these were the good old days. If you were a crazy homeless junkie that is. Otherwise not so much. People wanted then what they want now. 'Affordable' subsidized housing they get for nothing because they have somehow earned it.