“A Lower east side landlord can drink his milk and have it too,” according to Neil Smith. Since Manhattan land obtained value as a way to preserve and generate wealth, the land and its resources have gradually slid further into the mouths of the wealthy. This perpetual slide has been exacerbated by the fact that land control can reshape history and drive the future. Thus, those who control land, usually the wealthy, have been directing the stream of metaphorical milk to flow in their favor for a couple centuries now. In Who Deserves Housing: The Battle for Thirteenth Street by Amy Starecheski, New City, New Frontier: The Lower East Side as wild, wild West by Neil Smith, and Defending the Cross-Subsidy Plan: The Tortoise Wins Again by Janet Abu Lughod, all three authors provide insight into the history of lower income housing in Manhattan and gentrification of the Lower East Side and East Village. Through these texts, the passing of time is shown to lend itself to development and gentrification that reshapes the geographical landscape and thus, renovates history for the rich.
The text that directly introduces the idea of changing history into myth through geography and property is Smith’s New City, New Frontier. For instance, the Christodora Condominium’s conversion from city housing to luxury condos was cited as erasing historical class struggles in Manhattan and now standing as a symbol of gentrification. Additionally, he discusses Tompkins Square Park (TSP) as a symbol for the antigentrifcation movement due to its role in united the homeless (alternatively, the evicted) and in protest. Removal of this park, or rearrangement- like in 1874 when TSP was redesigned to be more controllable- can shift the meaning of not only the space, but also the historicism in past events. What was once a park inhabited by the homeless, punks, and druggies, became a leisure space reserved for the deserving public in the daytime. Smith refers to this encroachment of space as the Frontier Myth: moving into occupied territory, pretending to discover something new, and shaping it for oneself on the principle of beneficence. Essentially, it is the domestic colonialism of Manhattan. In the process of developing slum tenements into historic brownstones, wealthy proprietors reinvented LES punks, druggies, and poor as edgy, avant-garde chic.
Secondly, Lughod’s Defending the Cross-Subsidy Plan shows how even when groups like the JPC attempt to direct what pot the proverbial milk falls into, wealthy proprietors already control the flow. Although the JPC did have some success and stopped some gentrification of Lower Manhattan, their efforts were more or less that of a kitten meowing for milk from its owner. (Or to put more accurately, a feline hissing for milk, as they did put up a good fight.) The private developers controlled the milk flow, and the HPD ultimately had to obey, resulting in the unit credit feature of the cross-subsidy program, and thus, the dilution of the program’s benefits for low-income housing. Further, the cross-subsidy program allowed for the erection of temporary low-income housing funded by the Enterprise Foundation, which would convert the property to market rate housing after 15 years. This conversion of property is yet another example of shifting landscapes, hiding the past history of poverty from the middle and upper class looking for chic places to live.
Lastly, in Who Deserves Housing, Starecheski sheds light on a different method of historical revisionism through property occupancy, not legal ownership. Starecheski shares the stories of squatters from Thirteenth Street housing, which was mostly occupied by white, middle-class individuals from the suburbs who were alternative-based squatters. Although these squatters did not legally own the property, they occupied it for approximately a decade, which still gave them slight power to shape their own history. They had physical control of the property: their renovations, the grey door, documents citing tenant entry and exit. This allowed the Thirteenth Street squatters to weave a tale describing camaraderie of deserving, deprivation-based squatters who controlled the properties’ ins-and-outs. After all, the physical property was there to prove their story. However, their ability to completely recast history was stymied by their lack of legal ownership of the properties, which ultimately led to the defeat of the appellate court case. Legal and financial power hold the most historical sway. Money is the backbone for renovations and development in a city and thus also wields political clout. Although occupying the property gave them temporary control over the landscape, the ones who write the record books are those who can consistently own multiple properties to suit their agenda.
Even so, the squatters ability to nearly gain adverse possession of their property, despite the exaggerations and fibs told in court, shows how essential a physical testament can be to the history of what happened. Controlling the landscape, whether legally or physically, comes with the power of telling a geographical tale, and in the Lower East Side, a landlord can profit off property, and have its history too.
Love the last line of your post — basically, history is written by the winners. Happily, we have some of the history and analysis of that time period to guide us in a different direction and, as we’ve learned throughout the semester, we can always “read against the grain” to find resistance even in dominant narratives. Smith’s characterization of the Lower East Side as what some might consider an urban frontier is a helpful one, I think. For Starecheski’s squatters as well as the city, investors, and culture-hounds, the area was basically empty, or occupied by those who did not properly “labor upon the land,” as Locke might put it. The anarchists squatters that Starecheski describes might be called Lockean in their argument that the labor they put into the housing ought to have earned them possession of it. The city, on the other hand, as the “on paper” heirs (Blackstone!) of the land, had the right to do with it what they wished. As a public entity, though, their job was to unload the property for a public benefit. The cross-subsidy plan was intended to be such a benefit, but was it? Meanwhile, what about the people who were living on the Lower East Side through all of this, before the anarchist squatters, before the repossession of tenements, before the homeless encampments in Tompkins Square, before the avant-garde galleries and clubs? What benefit were they to get? Where are they in these stories?