Author: cgg302

“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.

 

Elizabeth Blackmar’s Manhattan for Rent, Lawrence Veiller and Robert De Forest’s The Tenement House Problem, and Keith D. Revell’s Regulating the Landscape: Real Estate Values, City Planning and the 1916 Ordinance all provide a historical backdrop for how New York real estate has developed its structure and policies of today. As a real estate agent in the process of acquiring an investment property, these texts currently contextualize my actions in shaping the built environment, which, as the readings show, influences essential livelihoods. Through these excerpts, it is clear how multiparty, profit-driven control of private property can manipulate livelihoods for the worst. On the same token, public regulation of private property can either behoove the community or fall into the hands of private interests.

As the readings illustrate, private interests have always dominated Manhattan real estate. The tenements described in Forest’s The Tenement House Problem were produced by multiple parties- the Building Operator, speculative builder, and investor- who wanted to profit through high density, low cost housing. Likewise, the wealthy proprietors and rentiers described in Manhattan for Rent controlled swaths of land first to preserve wealth and secondly to create wealth. Even the tenants of the rentier’s land wanted to turn a profit and would do so by subleasing out part of their land. Additionally, in Regulating the Landscape, proprietors actively pressed for limits on the heights and size of buildings, simply to lessen supply and maintain their own property values. Oftentimes, these real estate interests sought profit regardless of the ill effects to others.

Tenement houses are a prime example of how private property interest can be detrimental to individual livelihoods. The multilevel operation added significant cost to building the house, as every party wanted to make a profit. This took away funds that could have been spent making an actually livable building. As touched on in The Tenement House Problem and Regulating the Landscape, poor building planning and not leaving enough space for air, can even lead to health problems like tuberculosis.

Additionally, as seen in Manhattan for Rent, control of land oftentimes translates to control of production and labor. With sky-high rents, laborers and artisans may be priced out of working in a market. This ties back to Lockean theory and Henry George, who influenced progressives of the time who rallied both for and against private property on the basis that gross accumulation of land is unethical, workers have a right to their labor, and rent takes away fruit of one’s labor. Private property was dubbed evil in that a scarce property market restricted another’s freedom to work. At the same time, private property was advocated as essential to the freedom to work itself and the right to claim the bearing of one’s work.

To alleviate some of these qualms, New York public policy, as described in Manhattan for Rent and Regulating the Landscape, sought to redistribute land by breaking up large tracts and to regulate current building structures while planning for the future. The former helped redistribute land to the middle class. The latter helped provide for more air circulation, sunlight, public space, and urban decongestion.

Despite these positive effects, public policy did not always protect community interest as it should. In the case of tenement houses, building regulation was weakly enforced. In the case of the 1916 Zoning Ordinance, corrupt interest swayed much of the public policy, as at least half of the CBDR board was connected to the real estate industry. This essentially gave real estate executives the power to guide public action based on their private needs, while the initial goal was the opposite: for public needs to guide private action. The 1916 Zoning Ordinance still offered public benefits of providing order to the congested city; it simply was not as impactful as it could have been as it failed to deconstruct a history of property manipulation by colonial elites and simply built upon it.

Without the pressuring hand of private industry, however, public intervention into private property may be an adequate way to manage a system of unequal capitalist real estate interests. However, just because the private real estate market is currently managed by public oversight and driven by individual interest, doesn’t mean it will always be this way. Across countries like the UK and US, some individuals attempt to shy away from capitalism through joining co-op communities, where large resources, such as land and housing, are collectively owned. Although these communities are dwarfed by the rest of capitalistic society, they represent the possibility of blending public and private interests even past the cooperation that was seen with the 1916 Zoning Ordinance and current management of property and land.

In liberal political and scholarly thought, it is largely accepted that whiteness is a privilege wielded by white people. White people are privileged to have whiteness. This use of the word “have” implies an ownership of one’s own whiteness, as if it were an object or property. Such is the premise of Cheryl Harris’ “Whiteness As Property,” an article in the Harvard Law Review which argues that whiteness has historically been a form of property excluding Black and Native American peoples from property rights and overall equality. What’s more, as a remedy for the future, Harris suggests that affirmative action is an essential key to achieving equality.

For centuries in the Western world, whiteness was the legal key to property. Even after black people could legally possess property, whiteness was still a social key to owning property. This key, as Harris asserts, is also the property of white people. She explains that whiteness became property once explicitly or implicitly defined in law to yield certain benefits, which then begs the question: if being male also was defined in law to yield certain privileges, can maleness also be considered property? Is one’s status as an adult, which allows a person the right to vote, also property? A closer look at history’s laws is needed to fully dissect how different identities have been woven into law and how they vary or converge with whiteness.

Harris also delves into how whiteness even shaped “natural” property law. Harris references European theorists like Locke and Blackstone, who both agreed that if land was not being explicitly used and still in its natural state, then it was free to be picked up, labored upon, and owned by anyone. Although Harris does not explicitly say she disagrees with the way in which white property theory was wielded against natives, she describes how under Lockean theory, the natives’ uncultivated use of land would be considered “waste” and “not true,” due to the fact that it was not legitimated by white property ideas. Even use of the phrase “Lockean labor theory” rather than “Locke’s labor theory” suggests how much of a hegemony this white property concept has had over history. This shows how ideas can build up and gain followers throughout history until it becomes dogma, much like how the white accrual of property overtime has snowballed into economic, political, and social inequality among different races and ethnicities.

In one area, however, Harris would seem to agree with Blackstone: redistribution of property. Harris describes this as affirmative action and that property has been assigned to whiteness unfairly in the past, which has led to modern socioeconomic inequality. Similarly, Blackstone would likely argue for redistribution of property, as he believed that “All property should therefore cease upon death.” White people have been passing on their property fortunes to their offspring for generations; it is precisely how whiteness has sustained power even past the removal of explicitly racist laws from legal code. So, although whiteness has accrued gross fortunes overtime based off the principles of white philosophers, there may be room for modern, progressive theorists like Harris and the dead white men (DWM) like Blackstone to find common ground on where property rights went wrong and how it may be presently corrected through affirmative action.

Nature, irrespective of the humans living with it, provides countless ecosystem services to the creatures on Earth: carbon sequestration, climate regulation, and nutrient cycling to name a few. Additionally, conservationists like Aldo Leopold argue that even if the Earth was not populated by living, cognizant beings, the plants and non-living features of nature would still have inherent value based off the fact that it exists in the first place and is a beautiful product of the world. Yet, in John Locke’s chapter “Property” from his book Second Treatise of Government and Henry George’s chapter “Seventh Part Justice of the Remedy” from his book Progress and Poverty, both of them assert that nature has no, or reduced, value until it is labored upon by human and that labor is the process in which humans claim ownership of nature’s parts. As an environmentalist and considering the crisis nature is in today, I find flawed logic regarding ownership, value of nature, and property as a whole.

 

Overall, both Locke and George subscribe to Blackstone’s “pick up theory,” where humans can own anything from nature that isn’t being currently used by mixing one’s labor into it. The main difference is that George believes land cannot be labored upon and thus cannot be owned. This is illogical, as land can be labored upon, as Locke confirms, and in the modern day, there is no land on Earth that has not been shaped or changed by humans in some way.

Additionally, both writers seem to follow the dogma that nature is separate from humans, particularly as said in the bible, as humans are given “dominion over all the Earth.” Thus, Locke and George’s arguments are entirely based off this truth from one God and that this God is right. Although I personally believe humans do not have inherent claim to rule other beings like animals and plants, I will go along with their assumption for this discussion.

The main issue with Locke and George’s argument is that, contrary to their belief, nature already has value and is being used. Although the trees in a forest may be untouched by a tribe, they are providing a service to the tribe by being a habitat for the tribe’s prey. This brings into question how much can be privately taken from nature before disrupting human’s current, more passive uses of nature.

Also under the assumption that nature has little to no value, Locke supposes that “wine [ is ] more valuable than water,” and labor is what adds all value. This may be so, but labor can add positive and negative value. Take the atomic bomb for instance. It has higher monetary value than a forest, as determined by humans and according to Locke, however which entity will produce more good relative to harm- the bomb or the forest? Yet again, Locke’s argument neglects the fact that nature, like forests, are providing services humans often take for granted.

Next, the two writers make assumptions regarding private right to property. Locke and George assume that every human has a private right to the fruits of their labor. Where does this private right come from however? Locke reasons that “consent from all mankind” to claim property is ridiculous, but perhaps when God gave humans the land, he meant for the fruits of their labor to be shared publicly. Perhaps this does not entail getting permission from all humankind, but instead ensuring that all humans in one’s immediate vicinity are properly cared for and not excluded, which then lets permission fall upon the individual. Perhaps this is the private property Locke and George speak of.

Locke gets into this when he describes how his principle of “picking up whatever is being unused” is ethically based on the fact that there is enough land to go around. He does not, however, explore what happens when there is not enough land to go around, as that was not an issue during his time. It is plausible that private property rights may cease completely under God once it cannot be distributed equally, as that would be unfair, and no human is superior to the next.

Even before all land becomes unable to equitably distribute, God-given property rights may have to cease if one were to weigh harm against benefit. At a certain point, turning a parcel of land into agriculture may produce more suffering globally than the benefit it has to a particular group of humans. At that point, one needs to morally question what should be prioritized, human pleasure, animal pleasure, all living pleasure, or nature as a whole?  

Lastly, they seem to believe that the rules in which state private ownership of land and monetary trading of land are justified systems that all humans must abide by. Locke asserts trade as a form of use, and that when this is combined with the monetary system, it allows human to accumulate more than they could individually benefit from at one point in time. This seems like an over-extension of God’s principles, however, as God didn’t endorse money and private accumulation of it. One may argue that even if a human can trade land for money, if the human does not spend the money soon, then the money is not serving them benefit, and they should get rid of it. If private accumulation and the monetary system were a divine commandment, God would be a capitalist. Finally, Locke’s argument falls flat when acknowledging that not all humans, particularly those being born, agreed to monetary systems or state private ownership. So, although an Englishman may not be able to claim French land, a random nomad should be able to. When reading Locke and George’s texts, it is pertinent to recognize that not everyone agrees to human-made systems, or even seemingly basic assumptions like belief in God or human prevalence over nature.

Although private property rights are accepted as dogma in Western society, it’s valuable to question how this conclusion arose. Additionally, there is the curiosity of how humans claimed rights to the planet they appeared on millions of years ago, who or what the right came from, and whether ownership is ethical. These topics are excellently explored in the 1760’s book Commentaries on the Laws of England by Sir William Blackstone and the 2013 book Owning the Earth by Andro Linklater. Despite the time difference of books’ publication, both authors grapple the same issue of validity and ownership origin. Clearly, property rights are a philosophical and ethical question to be discussed alongside human nature and the wonders of the world; it is not just a modern debate limited to politics and discussions of socialism versus capitalism. The origins of anthropological property (as these documents only discuss human ownership of Earth, not other species’ ownership, which is an equally valid preponderance, as humans are a species like any other) are hypothesized by Blackstone and Linklater, which give insight into interpreting historical documents like Peter Schaheger’s 1626 letter.

 

Blackstone proposes three possible origins: God, nature, and scarcity. First, Blackstone cites Genesis, which states that God gave human “dominion over all the earth.” Blackstone sees this as possible, but not sufficient. Philosophers like Thomas Hobbes, however, would find this answer completely unsatisfactory, as he’d assert God granting property only reasons if everyone believes in the same God. Otherwise, law is rendered useless. Also, even if humans followed one God, divine commandment would justify public property, not private property.

Blackstone then moves on to discuss human nature in property. Humans find a resource no one else is using, claim it, and then it’s theirs until willing relinquishment. So, once all resources are claimed, do new humans simply have to wait their turn in line? This seems ridiculous, so there should be some partitioning of goods as new humans emerge. Furthermore, Blackstone’s “pick-up theory” is far less applicable in determining when relinquishment occurs. For instance, does death allow property to fall back to the hands of Earth? Blackstone agrees that  “the instant a man ceases to be, he ceases to have any dominion.” This terminates the legitimacy of wills, which are an important tool of capitalism as it encourages saving resources, investment, and wealth hoarding.

Lastly, Blackstone asserts that humans adopted private property of land to ensure their livelihoods when resources were scarce. However, historian Yuval Noah Harari claims in his book Sapiens than agriculture and private land emerged organically as a result of gradual increase in the time spent by natural wheat fields and former generations forgetting the hunter-gatherer way of life. Either way, “both sides agree [ . . . ] that occupancy is the thing by which the title was in fact originally gained.” The discrepancy is on how that occupancy emerged.

 

Author Linklater starts his book on property with a microscope on human living quarters to see how private rooms and property have developed. Linklater heavily discusses engrossment and profit as the leading agent in property rights. By recounting economic incentives that led to feudalism’s fall and how shepherds engrossed land, Linklater paints private property as a product of individual economic interest. Also discussed by Linklater were the feudalism-era, rich landlords influencing government, which is reminiscent of today’s dollar-voting democracy and makes past landlords’ greed believable.

On the subject of God-given property rights, Linklater goes more in depth than Blackstone by citing various religions. Although Christianity bestowed exploitation rights to human, Linklater cites Islam and Judaism, which deny human Earth ownership rights. Thus, leaders like the Babylonian king and Chinese emperors would claim divine authority granted them property rights. However, even if rulers did receive divine property rights, it’s questionable whether rights to own and exploit are transferable to other humans. Perhaps God is a landlord who rented out land to human rulers, but doesn’t allow subletters. Then, the ruler should not be allowed to reap profits from non-divine humans using the land.

 

After reading these thorough texts, documents like Peter Schagher’s 1626 letter to the directors of the West India Company breathe new life. The historical document plainly lays out the state of people in what would become New Netherland, the animal products and harvest aboard the ship, and the purchase of the Island Manhattes, which would later become the U.S.’s most populated metropolitan area. This produces further thought on property rights, monetary profit from land, and right of use to goods produced by land. For instance, did natives have the right to sell land to the colonizers? Blackstone would argue that natives achieved right-to-own by being the first to use it and that the colonizers only justly use the land once it is willingly relinquished by the initial owner. Blackstone and Linklater would agree that some societies believe the natives got permission from God or spirits, such as the indigenous people of Iban, who “offered a lavish sacrifice [ . . . ] to the god of the harvest [ . . . ] who actually possessed the land.” Another issue brought about by Schlagher’s document is the right to profit off land; the natives got the Island Manhattes for free, but then sold it for 60 guilders. Blackstone may assert that the natives should have just “dropped” the land to let colonizers pick it up for free.

 

What’s more, do property rights entail full ownership of the plot of Earth or simply a right to exploit the resources on that plot of Earth? Additionally, does the right to exploit resources include profit rights or merely subsistence rights? If only the latter, then the grains and animal skins aboard the arms of Amsterdam would be unethical. As was claimed at the The Catholic Worker, profiting off of land is unjustifiable. However, all resources stem from land, even human bodies, so then all profiting would be evil. Perhaps even the Iban people would be unethical, as they were taking from God’s land, and even their sacrifices ultimately stemmed from God’s land. In a sense, they had nothing to give, not even their own bodies. Clearly, with property rights, the granter of said right is equally as important as determining the extent of rights.