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In this week’s readings, what really jumped out at me was how the government tends to manage issues when it comes to dealing with prominent problems at the time. Mainly the text, Defending the Cross-Subsidy Plan: The Tortoise Wins Again, by Janet Abu-Lughod, was what really drew my attention to this issue.

Before discussing such a matter, I wanted to bring attention back to the situation of the time. Said case is that of poverty and economic hardship for many, “…The city had lost jobs at an even faster rate than in the 1975 recession.” Unemployment was running rampant currently. Many were struggling with finance, and ultimately this would lead to property problems. “…Sunday real estate section of the New York Times for auctioned residential and commercial units expanded from half a page to several pages…”. Knowing all this about how the housing market and economy was doing, its easy to understand how people would end up on the street and collect together.

Thus, bringing me to the bulk of my posting, what was the government doing. It states in the text, “… keep their refugee status alive and visible, had been unceremoniously evicted… removed from public spaces throughout the city.” here the topic discussed is how Tompkins Square Park evicted the homeless by using rat poison on the park’s property. However, what really interested me about this part was the trend when it comes to problematic issues. That trend is shifting rather than solving.

It was shocking how the government would allow such actions like the ones taken in Tompkins Square Park to occur. Rather than rolling out potential solutions to deal with the matter of increases poverty and homelessness in this area, the alternative was trying to remove the problem from the public eye. This is ultimately detrimental in the long run, and it was just stunning how the course of action taken by the people in power was to disperse an issue in New York to other parts of the city. By dispersing the homeless masses, the problem ended up throughout the city in higher concentrations. “Scattered, those without shelter were reduced to huddling under any available roofing in derelict city spaces or sleeping in doorways and over steam vents.” You have the poverty-stricken people who grouped in one area, who in turn had created a community out of nothing being ripped from their way of living. After an initial blow was dealt onto them by the economy, this was just another one.

All in all, two lines that really seemed to ring in my head when addressing the mindset that seemed to be coming from government at the time was, out of sight, out of mind, and kicking someone when their down. Projecting from the actions of government at this time I wanted to bring such mindsets to the present and view it from a lens of change. Has the government moved on from these types of practices, or rather, have they just gotten better at exercising these practices in a more quiet, less public manner?

In “New City, New Frontier: The Lower East Side as Wild, Wild West”, author Neil Smith discusses the concept of gentrification and how certain neighborhoods have developed over time. He describes how certain areas have evolved from run down and low income neighborhoods, occupied by working-class residents to affluent communities, dominated by high end fashion boutiques and upper-class citizens. Throughout the text, Smith parallels the gentrification of New York City to the “Frontier Myth” or the “Taming the Wild West” in order to represent the attitudes of the residents of New York City, as well as the “pioneers” who claim to have been the first settlers who started the transformation of these neighborhoods. The frontier myth is so powerful in that it, “makes the new city explicable in terms of old ideologies”, and even more goes as far as to, “rationalizes social differentiation and exclusion as natural and inevitable”. Smith puts forth that two industries defined the new urban frontier of the 1980s: the real-estate industry, and the “culture ” industry (art dealers, patrons, gallery owners, artists, designers, critics, writers and performers who “converted urban destruction into ultra chic.”). As a three-year resident of the Lower East Side, it is so odd grappling with the notion that not so long ago there were a sizable group of people the saw it as an undiscovered territory marked by danger and the unknown.

In reading Smith’s composition, I was taken aback by the notion that, “there was a strong ideological objection to the concept of relief itself and a belief that the rigors of unemployment were a necessary and salutary discipline for the working class” (67). With such societal dispositions amongst those of privilege & in power, it is no surprise that poverty was an inescapable condition. These attitudes reminded me of Barbara Ehrenreichs efforts in her book Nickel and Dimed, in which she sets out to examine the fundamental misunderstanding of American poverty, namely, that it is curable by employment, and the complexities of low-wage labor. Ehrenreich leaves her home, takes the cheapest lodgings she could find, and accepts whatever jobs she was offered moving from Florida to Maine to Minnesota. While one might think someone who has a Ph.D. like Ehrenreich could easily hold down a low-wage job, this quickly proves not to be the case, as no job is “unskilled,” and each required concentration and learning new terms, tools, and skills. Ultimately, Ehrenreich does not manage to find stability and longevity in any of the locations, despite pushing herself to borderline dangerous/unhealthy limits.

The complicated truth Ehrenreich investigation reveals is that many of the nation’s poorest citizens remain poor no matter how hard they work, no matter how many jobs they hold. They sweat, labor and toil, running on little sleep, eating mostly junk food, living in overcrowded conditions, and having to support young children just to survive day by day. This state is further exacerbated die to ever-rising rents at seemingly unpredictable times. Although Ehrenreich trials take place between 1998-2000, there is still significant overlap in mentality between upper echelons of society described in Neil Smiths, “New City, New Frontier: The Lower East Side as Wild, Wild West”.

Amy Starecheski “Who Deserves Housing? The Battle for East Thirteenth Street” opens with the first-person voices of squatters in the six squatted buildings on East 13th Street. This diverse bunch of people moved into left-behind spaces in the Lower East Side. They fashioned a community, built of their own imagination, connecting green space, community gardens, and the buildings they rehabilitated. These squatters sought legal title by virtue of their ten years of labor and occupation of the buildings, arguing that their history constituted them as a legitimate group that could claim urban space and collectively own inalienable property. Yet, despite their ardent efforts in court, ultimately their case was lost. An interesting dynamic arises in that the squatters were challenging private property, yet “some were dreaming of homeownership”. Therefore, similarities arise between the argument of some of the squatters and John Locke.  In “Of Property”, Locke asserts that “Labour being the unquestionable property of the labourer, no man but he can have a right to what that is once joined to”. Likewise, it was the improvements and overall labor the squatters put into these East 13th Street building for so long that they felt legitimized their clam. 

“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.

 

 While reading New City, New Frontier: The Lower East Side as Wild, Wild West by Neil Smith, I noticed many of the past problems in the lower east side seem to still affect us today on a bigger scale. While describing the conflicts regarding Tompkins Square Park, I could not help but find major similarities to present day issues, such as the Black Lives Matter Movement in response to police brutality and the impact current government officials have on the lives of the homeless and underprivilege. During the 1980s riots surrounding Tompkins Square Park, Smith acknowledges the government’s abuse of power through its attempts of implementing a curfew and ridding the park of the homeless population. While these may seem like minor changes, many people viewed these rules as the governments way of promoting gentrification and showing its disregard for the poor. These beliefs were further vilified when the Mayor of New York City, Edward Koch, “described Tompkins Square Park as a ‘cesspool’ and blamed the riot on ‘anarchists’” (Smith). Furthermore, when “the head of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association enthusiastically agreed [that] ‘social parasites, druggies, skinheads, and communist’ -an ‘insipid conglomeration of human misfits’-were the cause of the riot,’” many were rightfully outraged. (Smith). These mere two quotes show just how one sided the government can be and further proved to New Yorkers that their problems were insignificant to the government. The real reason the park was under attack was because the people who occupied the park opposed the government’s goal of further gentrifying the city. The park was made up of the underprivileged and underrepresented, which further explained why people in power showed no remorse or understanding for park activists. The government blatantly ignored the opinions of park users on what to do with Tompkins Square Park; the government put their greed before the well-being of its citizens. This disregard for the general opinion of the public reminds me of current affairs in regard to electing government officials, passing controversial laws, and deciding budgets for different government organizations. These affairs include debates about the current president, abortion laws, marijuana laws, and funding for organization targeted for helping the people (i.e. Planned Parenthood, Medicare, Medicaid, and national conservation services).

Furthermore, the brutality used to block off people from entering the park and enforcing new rules was absolutely horrid. Multiple videos from riots depict law enforcement officers beating rioters to an unnecessary extreme. The only way to properly describe these beatings is to call them abuse; an abuse of people, an abuse of resources, and an abuse of power. Smith writes, “seventeen police officers were cited for ‘misconduct’…but none were ever convicted” and that, “the police commissioner conceded that a few officers may have been a little ‘overenthusiastic’ due to ‘inexperience,’ but he clung to the official policy of blaming the victims” (Smith). It is obvious that the government and police force defended their own and covered up their mistakes instead of caring for the people injured. The excessive force used to remove and prevent people from the park was unnecessary and a perfect example of abuse of power by a government official. This correlates with the current issue of police brutality specifically towards people of color and people in the lower classes. With multiple instances of abuse and death by police officers dating back all the way to the 80s, one would think there would be a solution by now. While body cameras have been implemented to discourage police misconduct, there are multiple instances of officers turning off their body cameras or withholding the footage. When looking at the Tompkins Square riots, one would think the days of ignoring the needs of the underprivileged and covering up abuse of power are over. Sadly, this is not the case.  

As I stared at the closing credits after watching Crazy Rich Asians, I immediately thought that I must own property. Many people gawked at what I took away from the movie. From the groundbreaking Asian representation to the romance to the beautiful way Singapore is depicted, people were confused as to why property ownership stood out to me the most. I mention this because after reading this week’s texts, I realize that one of the best ways to build wealth and to secure safe assets is to invest in property. This response paper will illustrate the interesting ways people viewed land ownership, particularly in New York.

In Manhattan for Rent, Elizabeth Blackmar discusses the ways in which Manhattan real estate changed. She states, “For Manhattans’ large proprietors, land served initially as a different kind of asset, as a means of storing, transferring, and displaying wealth rather than generating it” (24). Initially, people did not view owning property in Manhattan as a way to make more money. The moment free Blacks were forced to forfeit their properties demonstrates the shift in people’s views towards property ownership in Manhattan.  I credit this shift to the British crown since they passed legislation that made it illegal for Blacks to own land (20). I posit that this law affected people’s views and induced behaviors that perpetuated anti-Blackness and, as Cheryl Harris states, “witness as property.” The passing of this law reveals that property owners and soon to be property owners, who were in most cases White, saw the value in owning land and thus they created a system that made it easier for them to generate wealth and cement/raise their class status. Blackmar mentions that by examining the colonial system of land tenure, one can understand how city real estate became a profitable commodity. I believe that the growing trend towards renting is bad for communities and society at large. Owning land forces you to have a stake in the neighborhood you are in. When one simply rents, people do not invest in the neighborhood they live in or even interact with their neighbors. People observed the growing concentration of land ownership after the American Revolution and it is still seen today (35). When I interned at Macy’s, I could not help but realize how much property Vornado Realty Trust owned. Was NYC becoming a place only for the rich and a place to make money? Do the NYC landowners even live in the city or on the properties they own? Is it safe to assume that they all live in fancy homes in upstate New York, the Hamptons, or on the Upper East Side, areas that have strict zoning laws and residents who display their wealth with Birkin bags and expensive, personalized cuff links? “In New York City,” Blackmar asserts, “control over land and housing had assumed new social meanings and represented a new kind of social power” (Online). I concur with Blackmar. Landlords have a disturbing amount of power over the lives of those who live or work on their properties. In the mid-nineteenth century, New Yorkers saw how bad landlords affected their own “health, safety, and domestic tranquility, and a threat to the social equilibrium of a free-market society” (Online). This reading made me wonder if I should reject owning land in protest of a system that creates immense inequality and makes the rich richer. Revell’s text deepened this idea. The 1916 Zoning Ordinance, which at face value seems wonderful, was heavily affected by private property owners. Reading “Regulating the Landscape: Real Estate Values, City Planning, and the 1916 Zoning Ordinance” basically told me suspicions I had about NYC real estate, which I believe, among other things, are racist and classist (i.e. 5th avenue). Although the ordinance did not change the existing arrangement of space in the city, it did help the city from address overcrowding and the city’s aesthetic. People arguing against tall buildings/skyscrapers is not new. But is the war against useless? When the first “tall” building was erected in the city, it created a precedent. Overall, these readings highlight how New York City was shaped by the wealthy and it continues to make them richer.  

In Think Like a Commoner: A Short Introduction to the Life of the Commons, David Bollier challenges prominent negative views of the commons, which are considered to be chaotic and a failure. He asserts that such ideas have arisen because many, specifically economists, think of it as a free-for-all. Instead, he states that the commons “has boundaries, rules, social norms, and sanctions against free riders” (24). He recognizes that the tragedy of the commons myth must be addressed because it mischaracterizes a social system that formerly existed inaccurately. I noticed that he does not say whether capitalism must be dismantled but he does describe those who work on Wall Street, which is the epitome of capitalism, like wizards. By doing so, he indicates that they have powers and through their supernatural abilities they “maximize private gains without the regard for the systemic risks or local impacts” (26). I aver that money provides the Wall Street “wizards” their abilities. Bollier modifies the popular phrase tragedy of the commons to tragedy of the market to illustrate that the faults people pinpoint to the commons, in fact, derive from the flaws of a laissez-faire market economy. To support his argument, Bollier analyzes political scientist Elinor Ostrom’s work.

Bollier clearly defines the commons as a system that is about the practice and ethic of sufficiency. Given Earth’s finite resources, one may believe that such a system of governance will permit everyone to enjoy the fruits of the land. If everyone works together, then everyone would have enough to survive, right? If boundaries are drawn and people are allowed to capture/claim any and all resources, what would occur? From the readings, many of the authors argue that is natural resources deplete at such a rate where they cannot replenish themselves fast enough and it creates the haves and have nots. Currently, in NYC, Elizabeth Street Garden has been marked as a potential site to build low-cost apartment complexes for senior citizens. Although low-income affordable housing is desperately needed, so is green space. In an economy that pushes people to maximize profits and may seem to be filled with vultures, how can society for all even exist? People who would want to do good may be reluctant to do anything because they fear they will be taken advantage of. Bollier does an excellent job describing why people are reluctant to contribute to the commons. He does so by stating that because people fear that their idea may be used and privatized to be sold for money, people don’t contribute. This reminded me of a specific moment I taught at a high school. When discussing a project that all students had to complete, I asked if anyone would want to share with the class what they were thinking of doing. When no one raised their hand, I simply called on a student and they quickly snapped back stating that they did not want to say because they didn’t want anyone to take their idea. This encounter affirms Bollier’s assumption. In order to have people contribute to the commons, there must be substantial reform to how society and the economy operates.