Category: Uncategorized

In Karen A. Gray’s text, Community Land Trust in the United States, I was fascinated by the concept of community land trust. This fascination stems from the connotations of what CLTs exemplifies regarding the mentality of people, as well as the role of government in resolving the affordable housing crisis.

In this text, Gray states that “Through that work, they [the community] started a school, daycare center, a hospitality house, and other projects, and over the years they realized that housing was a serious need. The housing need led them to form the CLT.” (Karen Gray, 72). This line reminded me of the trip taken to the Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space where the tour provided and expressed the initiative of the people within the area when faced with housing hardships. This ‘do it ourselves’ attitude demonstrates the ability of people to come together and tackle problems that otherwise would go unsolved. However, what is essential at the root of communities that need to act can be summed up in lacking actions from the government. By failing to expediently tackle problems, the government presents only two options for the community to choose from: either continue with the way things are or take action to alter the status quo. Ultimately when things are as dire as it is, people would finally choose the latter option.

Despite the government not playing the expedient problem-solver role as many would desire, they too cannot be characterized as the villain of this situation. Both the people, as well as the government, want to resolve this issue. As Gray states, “The number of CLTs have grown most rapidly in the last decade in part due to support from government entities.” (Karen Gray, 73). Government is indeed trying to play its part in mediating the problem while generating solutions; however, the root of the affordable housing crisis is the problem that the government must tackle. Community land trusts are a “…innovative form of community development.” (Karen Gray, 73), that act as a band-aid to the problem of some people having an inability to afford to house themselves. The government can support CLTs goals; however they must not place a heavy emphasis on CLTs being a solution, rather its true nature is only just a remedy. Gray states it best when she writes, “…CLTs have been criticized for focusing on small solutions to affordable housing rather than structural changes such as federal housing policies… Private-sector models cannot become the only providers of affordable housing.”  (Karen Gray, 74). Solutions to massive scale problems can be lessened by the involvement of the private sector; however, the government must take part in providing a framework towards the end goal solutions.

CLTs do provide an alternative to the default framework of how the real estate market operates, however in the very end the housing crisis cannot be stopped. “…housing costs are skyrocketing because of economic growth and the influx of high-paid labor.” (Karen Gray, 72) However, this would never change. The economy will always grow, and the demand for high-paid labor would be too. In my opinion to solve the housing crisis would ultimately not require the elevation of those in poverty into not a higher class. Instead, it requires those in the poverty class to be supported by the government in the sense of preventing natural poverty. There must be protections established to brace against falling behind with economic development, in the sense of inflation, as well as other factors that make the poor poorer.

 

 

 

 

In “Defending the Cross-Subsidy Plan: The Tortoise Wins Again,” Janet Abu-Lughod writes, “In the East Village, although properties were too downscale to warrant private auctions and many residents were already so marginal to the economy that it collapse left them relatively unaffected, the wind was definitely out of gentrifiers’ sails” (314). I find the use of “sails” interesting and worthy of unpacking. When I read “sails,” I immediately thought that Abu-Lughod attempted to convey that gentrifiers go with the waves. But that idea was quickly dispelled once I discerned that gentrifiers are not solely new residents; they can also by city planners and real estate companies. I then concluded that gentrifiers flow from place to place. The person steering the boat is the gentrifier, the wind is the market and the boat/wind/waves/water is gentrification—they system that the gentrifier works/participates within.

The East Village underwent a massive transformation, which produced mixed results. Although the area was “improved,” there was displacement. The question I ask then is who is the city for and who can claim certain places? In “New City, New Frontier: the Lower East Side as wild, wild West,” Neil Smith describes the way West of 42nd street was “tamed,” “domesticated,” and “polished.” The real-estate industry is pinned as the impetus of such development. Abu-Lughod would argue that the best way to combat such development would be to mobilize people by getting them mad. If people do not recognize “urban scouts” (who are hired by the real-estate industry) searching for their next targets before they attack, then the attack, which is the buying up of land, displacement, and flipping homes, would be difficult to fight off. This reminds me of when I attended the “A Livable New York: The Future of Community Green Space and Affordable Housing.” In the talk, Alicia Boyd encouraged the audience members to get mad, which, at the time, I thought was not the best way to approach the situation surrounding the Elizabeth Street Garden. Now, though, I believe getting mad is a prerequisite for organizing and resisting gentrification. For example, after JPC activists were able to organize people by getting them mad, they dedicated themselves to creating alternative plans for city-owned properties and politicking at City Hall (321). I wonder if there were substantially more people at Tompkins Square Park if the city would have failed in “improving” the park. The park was the site of the first major anti-gentrification struggle and served as a “liberated space.” How far are people willing to go to fight for space? The Tompkins Square Park activists were pushed out through blunt police force and warded off when rat poison was sprayed. Are people willing to put their bodies on the line? Become a martyr? As a New Yorker, I don’t know if I can participate in such activism, which is vital to fighting gentrification. Everyone has mixed reactions to gentrification and once brought up, would lead to intense debates. The East Village has been fighting gentrification for years and although they have made great strides, are they just fighting against the inevitable?

The “frontier myth” discussed in the Smith reading helped me greatly to understand how the culture of the East Village was marketed to developers and buyers, it’s “personality” commodified to attract and justify gentrification in the neighborhood. This sort of miniature wave of manifest destiny relied heavily on an irresistible motif pushed in the media, the notion of rediscovering New York, the underlying desire to “tame the wild city.” While this story is historically commonplace, is is interesting to see it play out in such a relatively miniscule area of land. Developers found ways to create a “new social geography,” in which culture and place are synonymous, turning the small Manhattan neighborhood into a piece of “geographical performance art.”

These texts gave a clearer picture of the two perspectives at hand: the ‘indigenous’ neighborhood population and squatters, and the developers and wealthier members of society. While the wealthy arguably frame themselves as modern cowboys and conquerors of new and uncivilized lands, there is an unexpected yet somewhat pervasive theme of the squatters and protestors comparing their situation with Russian history. Local residents described actions of police during  “class war” at Tompkins Square Park as “cossack-like” (Smith). One envisions something akin to the rows of cossack soldiers descending the Odessa steps in Battleship Potemkin, police batons replacing bayonets. At the same time in an interview in the Starecheski reading, a resident at the (unofficially occupied) Thirteenth Street building described some residents as having a Communist rationality: “Represented in the public eye by John the Communist, these squatters explained their occupation as a rejection of private property, a taking of land in the service of building a revolutionary movement.” Later, in Stanley Cohen’s recounting of the trial in which Elliot Wilk claimed that the The Thirteenth Street Tenants Association owns the buildings, Cohen recalls reactions such as “What is this, fucking post-Tsarist Russia?” Of course, those against Wilk’s decision made this analogy in a negative light. Nevertheless, I found it worth noting that historical events such as the Russian Revolution were made relevant to contemporary class struggles in the East Village.

Mayor Dinkins allegation that Tompkins Square Park had been stolen from the community by the homeless is telling of the ways in which gentrification was justified in the East Village. The accounts documented by Abu-Lughod show the government’s consistent decisions to turn a blind eye to local community boards. Those in power chose to ignore the fact that the city had failed to cope with its homeless population (Smith). This way of justification does not take into account the ways in which the system itself has failed the homeless, it does not consider the vulnerability of the homeless population. While it was true that some squatters dealt various issues such as drug addiction, those justifying their displacement ignored the fact that these people were victims of a system that failed them.

 

This week’s readings offered a wonderful introduction into the politics at play to retain the heart of the Lower East Side in the face of efforts by the city government and their real estate allies to sanitize the area for their own economic gain during the latter part of the 20th century, taking away spaces that once held such importance to the city’s marginalized communities. Whereas the struggle seen during the 42nd Street Redevelopment Plan as outlined in Samuel Delany’s “Times Square Red, Times Square Blue” and elsewhere was the erasure of connections forged through patronage to various pornographic theaters and other similar convening spaces, the problem posed within the Lower East Side around the same time seems more urgent, as it is a struggle for life and shelter in an arena that so desperately wants to criminalize their existence.

As the progression of the global economy have pushed more and more for an emphasis on service and consumption, which Smith references in “New City, New Frontier,” there were those who resisted these shifts in an attempt to protect themselves from getting swept up by the forces of displacing development. The way in which Smith chose to make the comparison between the struggle for land between the Lower East Side’s historic working class, black, brown, and immigrant residents and the new class of young professionals, influenced by the Western aesthetic, and that between indigenous peoples and those who settled in the Plains (or their counterparts in the African continent), posed a parallel about the project of taking spaces which are deemed by others to not be operating at their full capacity (reminiscent of the views of settlers we read earlier in the class) from those who have long been living there and repurposing it for their own use, and then viewing themselves somehow as noble or charting new territory. It’s simply settler colonialism with a new name. It then becomes more clear why it is all the more crucial to occupy those remaining spaces, to make visible that they cannot be easily erased. 

Last summer, I took up walking dogs in my free time, many of whom lived in the East Village, meaning which led me to frequent Tompkins Square Park. Not only was it (save for the ‘yuppies’, of course) completely void of many of the different groups we saw in Paper Tiger TV’s documentary on the park as well as in Smith’s description– the Ukrainian men playing chess, drug dealers, Puerto Rican women pushing babies in strollers, etc.– but I remember it appearing to lack any clear heart, or connection to the neighborhood in which it was embedded. I’d imagine much of that comes from as a result of the shift in demographics as well as the redesign, but since I’m coming at it from an outsider’s perspective, perhaps the new ways in which its newer patrons have made use of this space were not visible (though I’d imagine much of these relationships would come in contrast with or attempt to erase the uses of those who inhabited the space during these times of resistance). 

In Starecheski’s account of squatting on East Thirteenth Street also outlined the ways in which groups of people can imagine a new way of relating to property in the city that doesn’t rely on the law and in fact actively refuses to abide by it, forcing officials who usually position themselves as the sole possessors of power over how the city is shaped to work with residents on their terms rather than simply impose. While different cases, this is something we’re also seeing in Spain, in which the government and the banks are forced to renegotiate understandings of space with those who are occupying it. 

In this week’s readings, the issues and methods of affordable and low income housing in 1990’s New York City paint a picture of great effort and limited success. Among the most thought provoking was the chapter from “Who Deserves Housing? The Battle for East Thirteenth Street”, by Amy Starecheski. In this chapter, a number of former residents of the east thirteenth street squats discuss their experiences, and expose many contradictions to the fundamental ideas surrounding squats. Early on, there is a distinction between ideological squatters and their counterparts, low income New Yorkers with few other options. It would seem that the tension between these groups compromised the efficacy of the overall squat. The very concept of the deprivation based squat, as described in the chapter as a carefully selected group of vulnerable people, to the exclusion of the “undeserving poor” which include drug addicts, is inherently problematic. The precarious legal status also deprived the community of the tenant rights and the protection of law enforcement, leading to a lawless and somewhat unharmonious existence. Despite the limited early success of the urban homestead movement however, as time went on, the squats faced opposition from legally established low income housing developers.

While the squatting efforts undertaken in New York in the 1990’s were flawed, the contemporary efforts in low income housing rehabilitation primarily by the Joint Planning Council were also flawed. As described in Janet Abu-Lughod’s writing, “Defending the Cross-Subsidy Plan: The Tortoise Wins Again”, New York City was struggling in the early 1990’s, and both the commercial and multi-family sectors of the real estate market were severely depressed. This increased the activity of the low income housing developers, who saw an opportunity to gain control of the city owned tenement buildings which the squatters had already appropriated, in the absence of interest from private, market rate developers, which had been actively seeking such buildings in the late 1980’s, prior to the collapse of the movement to gentrify the Lower East Side. While this could be seen as a good thing, however, the pitting of two forces, both signaling the need for affordable and low income housing, was counterproductive and was ultimately damaging to both movements. All this was presided over by the government of New York City, which did nothing to take control of the situation and wasted favorable market conditions which could have been exploited to improve the affordability of housing in the city.

Neil Smith in his chapter, “New City, New Frontier”, explores the contrived duality between aggressive urban development and taming the wiles of the frontier. Despite historically ruinous consequences, rapid urban development has been seen by many as necessary for ushering in a new, “controllable”, or appropriate population of people. Acting exclusively in the interests of the power elite, urban development is likened to frontier explorations of white men “discovering” and subsequently taking land to which they were convinced they were entitled. This paradigm acts as a means to both justify mass urban “renewal” and legitimize the authority pursuing its interests. The myth that European settlers conquered the New World is substantiated by few general assumptions: that Europeans are civilized men looking to tame the uncivilized, that white men are the ultimate authority of all things, and that existing or indigenous ways of living were wrong and in need of correcting. That these assumptions are communicated and reinforced in the ways in which individuals identify themselves indicates how pervasive they are in our culture and society.

The European settlers of the ‘New World’ assumed a divine right to the land they encountered. The further assumption that the native people of the land had no means to claim it drove the settlers to a greed-fueled land grab, wholly justified by the simple fact that they were white men. The pursuit to develop the untamed urban jungle is inextricably linked to the pursuit to tame the American frontier. Smith uses the fight for Tompkins Square Park as an example of how the interests of powerful white men are used as the means to justify claiming ownership of spaces where the question of ownership isn’t even addressed. According to Smith, Tompkins Square Park was “unremarkable” in its form but that’s what made it a “fitting locale for a ‘last stand’ against gentrification and the new urbanism”. (68). Its banality made it an unlikely but explosive site for protests against urban development. Residents and patrons of the park who were homeless, unemployed, young, and people of color, believed that the force with which the city attempted to regain control of the park was unnecessary. Violent protests and riots against police at the park were met largely with bewilderment… what was so important about this one park? Why was the city so invested in the happenings of that one park?

The simple answer is that Tompkins Square park was in the middle of a development plan to renew the area (Christodora Condos) and the riff-raff that frequented the park just didn’t fit in with the planned demographic. However, one can argue that as the real estate in the area steadily increased in value that the resistors of Tompkins Square Park would eventually be priced out entirely and give up the fight in search of more accessible spaces. However, the extreme density of NYC leaves finding more accessible spaces nearly impossible. Tompkins wasn’t just a community watering hole, it became a physical symbol of the resistance; a reminder that no matter the circumstances, all humans, all New Yorkers are entitled to appropriate housing. The temporary housing built inside the park and subsequently in lots near the park served as irrefutable evidence of a housing crisis in the city. The city’s then attempt to forcibly remove this inevitable population of people exposed the hypocrisy of it all. Here the city’s interests lie with the developers of luxury condominiums that would completely out-price the community. City funds were spent, not on remedying the situation for the homeless, but on securing the ownership rights to the areas in question (i.e. $2.3 million spent immediately on “fortifying” the park). As in the case of the American frontier, the narrow power elite with the assistance of the governing body managed to discount the interests of a pre-existing community as a means to an end; an end where the consequences are exponentially great. In the case of Tompkins Square Park, the city prevailed with a leveraged responsibility to the displaced community, however, action on this responsibility remains largely stagnant as the population homeless and disenfranchised New Yorkers continues to rise with each day.