According to Scott Larson, New York is facing a great challenge. The State is unable support the increasing population. In his chapter, Larson discusses Bloomberg’s strategy to solving this issue, Urban Renewal. Samuel Stein’s article “De Blasio’s Doomed Housing Plan”, supports many of the points brought up in Larson’s Chapter and shows De Blasio’s approach to solving this issue.
Bloomberg administration agenda was to build big and fast. The chapter discusses how Bloomberg’s plan was essentially to provide incentives, such as tax breaks, to developers and was a voluntary option. He lean’s toward a Moses city plan instead of a Jacob’s city plan. The issue is that this is not benefiting the homeless and is not focusing on the people who already live in the City. His plan seems to be one that makes the city more commercialized. This pleases the rich and wealthy but does little to nothing for the poor, which is a constant problem. The needs of the low-income families are constantly ignores. This city seems to have a strong history of disguising projects that broaden the gap between the rich and the poor as something that would better the quality of life of low-income families.
De Blasio seems to have taken a stance that is a little too optimistic, his plan also seems to benefit the rich more than low-income families. The article criticizes the approach as a promoting gentrification more than it promotes affordable housing. De Blasio’s plan involves Developers buying properties below market price and incorporating it with luxury developments. This is meant to help encourage developers to keep rent low for certain communities. However, the issue comes with there is not enough incentive for developers to use their developments to help those people of lower incomes. The second issue is that majority of developers are using median income to determine the price of these new apartments, which does not properly reflect the income of the people in the neighborhood. The ultimate impact of this is that poor people are slowly kicked out of their neighborhood to allow room for a wealthier class of people; displacing families and possibly adding to the population of homeless people rather than helping.
In previous readings, we read about the constant displacement of poor, low-income families. This city has not fully healed from previous development plans, but is still making new wounds. The issue is that developers are more interested in turning a profit on their developments then helping those whom are not able to afford to live in an apartment. Plans that start off with good intentions, tend to drift to further widening the gap of the quality of life allowed to those of different classes.
Discussion Question: Can we force developers to provide affordable housing that is actual affordable to the people already in these low-income neighborhoods? What is a new system to determine a reasonable price for newly developed units in a low-income neighborhood?
