Community activist Susan Howard has a column in this week's issue of The Villager. It begins:
What is a neighborhood? A place where you feel a sense of belonging as you walk down the streets? Where you know your neighbors and local shopkeepers? Where your children go to school? Where you play, garden or just shoot the breeze? Where you can sit on the stoop, in the park or in a neighborhood hangout and listen to music, gossip and lore?
That’s the way I remember the Lower East Side, before all our vacant land was sold for the development of luxury housing in an 80/20 scheme. Before it was marketed to the white upwardly mobile as a cool place to live. Before the speculators arrived to scoop up the existing buildings to turn them into luxury rentals and condos, and before many of our squats and gardens were bulldozed for more of the same. Before the largest tract of land, once promised for artists, low-income housing and community facilities, was sold in another 80/20 scheme for the development of a luxury community, Avalon Christie, before the high-rises, hotels, high-end eateries and boutiques.
9 comments:
OK, but its been common wisdom as long as I can remember that if you really want to live in a neighborhood in New York, you want to live in Brooklyn and not Manhattan.
I grew up in Brooklyn and now live in Manhattan, and as far as I can tell this is true. Too many transients and too much change in Manhattan. Even with the overgentrification of brownstone brooklyn, at least landmarking has kept the "look and feel" of these neighborhoods the same.
I personally define neighborhoods as the are containing the places you will normally stop by once a week or so, to do errands, get coffee, drink, or whatever. The main difference between Brooklyn and Manhattan is that in Brooklyn these places will tend to be within a few blocks of where you live. In Manhattan you have to go all over the borough -businesses for some reason like to cluster- and expect at least one of your haunts to close or get completely remodeled each year. Where I live now is great if you want expensive antiques and terrible for anything else, I even take a bus to do grocery shopping.
This isn't meant to dis Manhattan, which has other advantages, just to note that the lack of real neighborhoods is a pretty old complaint.
I don't know if Prodigal Son has spent much time in the East Village, but I live there, and it is a neighborhood. I only have to walk two blocks to get my groceries and go to the post office. My favorite little bodega and coffee shop and dry cleaners are right on my street. My laundromat is one block away. I routinely eat at restaurants within a couple of blocks of my place. I know everyone in my building and a lot of people who live on my street. A number of my neighbors work in the community garden on my block. Many of us have lived here for years, and we are proud of our neighborhood.
The few blocks immediately surrounding my four-bedroom condo (kidding!) apartment building have a neighborhood feeling too. People talk to one another on the street. Shopkeepers and bartenders know our names. Real people doing real things. I love that community spirit that I see nearly every day. I'm fortunate that I don't live in a block where the mondo condo or hotel went up, or the mom and pop shop went belly up...I always wonder how much longer things will stay this way. So I try to appreciate it every day.
This column is such pap, such drivel. Folks, things CHANGE. In New York -- especially in Manhattan -- things change *quickly*. That's all part of what makes New York, New York. This bleeding heart woman's column bemoaning the lack of people of color in her neighborhood (I live in Alphabet City, and I experience white people, people of color, young and old, men and women, gay and straight every single day) is simply damaging her point. If her point is she never wanted people to change, then all the "people of color" to whom she so graciously condescends, would not *be* on the Lower East Side. The Lower East Side would still be populated by Eastern European Jews and the people of color would remain in Puerto Rico on the Dominican Republic or, if you really hate change, perhaps on a plantation back in the south. (I obviously don't support any of these things; please don't misinterpret.) Thank God, things change! That's what makes New York New York -- embracing of change, even if its abrasive to the neighborhood (in the case of the me-me-me overprivileged young kids) or if its positive (in the case of new waves of immigrants constantly forming new neighborhoods and new communities).
Now, should change come about more sensitively sometimes? Of course. Should care be taken to preserve the architectural character of a neighborhood? Of course. Should zoning and use regulations dictate a neighborhood remain a neighborhood, and not an up-at-all hours clubland? Of course.
But please spare me the paeans about the way things used to be. It's boring. And it's the true anti-New York.
welcome the michael rosens and the marketing of the "east village" those who make their beans on the gentrification of our neighborhood.
yes change comes, but speculation and greed is
not the how residents choose to leave.
having an affordable rent, saving money and
moving on is not displacement, idiot.
An idiot, huh? Well, you tell me how you want to keep rents at depressed levels, when compared to market conditions? Do you mean to tell me that everyone should have nearly the same rents they've had since 1972? Do you mean to tell me that everyone should be paying approximately $300 a month, as does the person who lives across the hall from me -- an able-bodied, 40-something-year-old man who does not work, likely because he doesn't need the money to pay for rent?
And if that's what you're saying, then how, pray-tel, would you pay for the gobs of services you also likely insist on for the poor, poor people in your neighborhood -- you know: food stamps, child care, after-school programs, parks, trash pick-up, police protection, fire, health care and others? You certainly don't expect people will remove their noses from the trough of public benefits, do you? If not, then something has to give to pay for the extreme level of public services the City of New York provides. We can't have entire neighborhoods where all the apartments are bringing in $300 a month in rent, or we're not going to have the tax rolls to pay for city services.
So...this idiot thinks a balanced approach is needed. The go-go Lower East Side is *not* a balanced approach. Zoning and land-use regulations have ensured out-of-scale hotels and condos, along with late-night bars and clubs, have usurped much traditional neighborhood activity. The East Village, on the other hand, has been developed relatively carefully. There are some sore thumb developments, certainly. But the neighborhood generally retains its character, and its mix of people.
The point is, you can't have it one way or the other. Things won't remain the same. And they shouldn't. And shame on anyone who says they should. (Especially for shame is a person leaning on the "person of color" argument, as this Villager columnist does.) If you want a thriving city for all people, then we've got to be economically sustainable. That means the entire city can't be one big housing project, with everyone on public assistance with their noses in the public trough. We've got to have some mid- and high-income earners to pay for all this stuff.
An idiot, huh? Well, you tell me how you want to keep rents at depressed levels, when compared to market conditions? Do you mean to tell me that everyone should have nearly the same rents they've had since 1972? Do you mean to tell me that everyone should be paying approximately $300 a month, as does the person who lives across the hall from me -- an able-bodied, 40-something-year-old man who does not work, likely because he doesn't need the money to pay for rent?
And if that's what you're saying, then how, pray-tel, would you pay for the gobs of services you also likely insist on for the poor, poor people in your neighborhood -- you know: food stamps, child care, after-school programs, parks, trash pick-up, police protection, fire, health care and others? You certainly don't expect people will remove their noses from the trough of public benefits, do you? If not, then something has to give to pay for the extreme level of public services the City of New York provides. We can't have entire neighborhoods where all the apartments are bringing in $300 a month in rent, or we're not going to have the tax rolls to pay for city services.
So...this idiot thinks a balanced approach is needed. The go-go Lower East Side is *not* a balanced approach. Zoning and land-use regulations have ensured out-of-scale hotels and condos, along with late-night bars and clubs, have usurped much traditional neighborhood activity. The East Village, on the other hand, has been developed relatively carefully. There are some sore thumb developments, certainly. But the neighborhood generally retains its character, and its mix of people.
The point is, you can't have it one way or the other. Things won't remain the same. And they shouldn't. And shame on anyone who says they should. (Especially for shame is a person leaning on the "person of color" argument, as this Villager columnist does.) If you want a thriving city for all people, then we've got to be economically sustainable. That means the entire city can't be one big housing project, with everyone on public assistance with their noses in the public trough. We've got to have some mid- and high-income earners to pay for all this stuff.
yes an idiot, who doesn't give a shit. supply side econ who snubs their nose at the working families. how do you except people who make less than a living wage to live and how much of your income do you pay in rent?
why don't you ever consider the lives of others? it's not just about the views from your penthouse or your property values, it's about peoples lives. you really think all working people are on the dole? or it is just that they choose not to exploit others for their own profit? slum lords Jack the rents and cry when people complain about displacement. you show your true colors. you are the anonymous peon.
@ showard:
It seems you don't understand economics. You say good, working people who are taking advantage of rent control are not on the public dole, but rent control *is* a form of public "assistance." It's consciously and purposefully devaluing a property -- thereby reducing its contribution to the tax rolls -- in order to artificially deflate rents compared to normal market conditions. That's fine, as public policy, but it must be done with balance because if you have an entire city -- or even an entire neighborhood -- full of depressed rental prices, then who is going to pay for the massive amount of city services required to run this behemoth of a town?
Rent control also depresses income tax rolls because it keeps people in artificially cheap apartments who make less (presumably) than people who would be paying market-rate rents.
Again, that's fine as public policy is concerned, but if you don't have enough market-rate apartments -- or mid-to-high income people -- to make up for the lost tax revenue, you're not going to have enough money to run this city.
You can't be carping for all the best in city hospitals, food stamps, parks, child-care programs, NYCHA homes, trash disposal, etc., if there is no one to pay for it.
I'm sorry if that makes me sound like some kind of a supply-side conservative. I'm not. I'm a liberal Democrat who's voted ever once for a Republican in his entire life. But I also subscribe to a practical, pragmatic, reality-based view of things. It'd be nice if the entire city could be cordoned off for low- and average-incomed people (myself included; I make less than half the "average" Manhattan income), but I know that we'd not have money to pay for anything if we artificially deflated the tax rolls of this entire town. We simply cannot.
So, while it makes for good conversation to rail against the way things have become -- what with the rich trust fund kids and the out-of-character development -- it makes no sense to remain frozen in time. We have to strike a balance; it's not either-or.
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