Author: Angelica Goldberg

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Gentrification in Crown Heights

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/29/nyregion/gentrification-in-a-brooklyn-neighborhood-forces-residents-to-move-on.html

This New York Times article deals with gentrification in Crown Heights, more specifically, lower income residents being pushed out by raising rent prices and the many ‘immoral’ ways landlords are doing it. I’m not going to go in-depth about how it relates to class because it’s fairly obvious. Instead, I’m going to talk about my ‘favorite’ lines in the article as I found it so ridiculous.

  1. “Cocktail bars are opening where fried chicken used to be sold from behind bulletproof glass.” — God, I hope that’s just an overstatement because I have no words. And if it is in fact true, IT MAKES NO SENSE compared to the rest of the article as it continues to say many residents did not want to move into other neighborhoods as they thought them unsafe. YOUR FRIED CHICKEN PLACE HAS BULLETPROOF GLASS, HOW MUCH SAFER CAN IT BE?
  2. “The monthly rent on Shirley De Matas’s two-bedroom apartment at 1170 Lincoln Place was $800 in 1999, when she, her husband and their three children moved in. By 2014, it had risen to nearly $1,300” — OMG in 15 years your rent went up $500 dollars. Why do people assume that rent will stay the same way forever? That there is no such thing or inflation or GASP raising prices. And $500 in 15 years is not that much in terms of the forever raising prices in NYC. And $1,300 for a three bedroom — in NYC — deal of a lifetime.
  3. “With a backyard and a car, she has found life in Virginia affordable and pleasant, but “extremely boring,” she said.” — This is in relation to someone who moved out of Brooklyn as it was getting too expensive. I’m just going to leave this here…

 

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Gentrification in Brooklyn

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/14/nyregion/cuomos-1-4-billion-plan-in-brooklyn-stirs-fears-of-gentrification.html

This article via The New York Times talks about Cuomo’s proposed 1.4 billion dollar plan to help revitalize poorer areas in Brooklyn. He wants to do this by providing better healthcare and providing jobs for residents.

Reading the proposal initially, I thought the residents would be thrilled because it was something that would benefit them, until I read on. Residents were scared that the new proposal would cause gentrification in their area because now there area would have better ‘resources’ and thus rents and the like would increase.

This relates to our class discussion because we oftentimes talk about increasing rent prices and that it drives residents out of the neighborhood. But, the article relates to class in another way, one I find far more interesting.

In the article, one of the people interviewed stated that they can put a glass door on an old run down building, call it a loft and people will buy it for a crazy high price. I initially thought of Jane Jacobs when this happened, and the ‘preservation’ of old buildings turning into something used for profit.