Being from the Bronx, I connected with the arguments presented in “A Synergism of Plagues: “Planned Shrinkage,” Contagious Housing Destruction, and AIDS in the Bronx.” The section of the Bronx labeled “South Bronx,” mentioned as barren, burned out wastelands effected by massive urban decay, I had always remembered as neighborhoods flooded with projects. My father had lived in the same apartment building I grew up in since the late 1970’s in midtown Bronx. He describes the neighborhood as being middle class-Jewish, but that quickly changed by the mid-1980s. One signifier I have to this movement towards northern parts of the Bronx is my mother’s decision to settle there in 1986. South-Central Bronx burnout between 1970-1980 redistributed populations that were once part of overcrowding and within direct causality of the rapid spread of AIDS among injection drug users. A slew of reasons were given within “planned shrinkage” for why this burnout occurred: Landlords seeking to collect insurance money, landlords seeking to get rid of their tenants and concurrently rid of rent-control, meanwhile people on welfare assistance programs who were “burned out” of their homes received a stipend to move, causing many intentional fires. This intention/ unintentional setting fire to the already crumbling housing in the South Bronx rapidly led to its decay.
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