As was stated in the first chapter of “The Community Developer Reader,” the focus of this week’s readings was “devoted to an overview of the history and challenges of community development efforts.” This reading brought new insight into the process of community development.
The first chapter mentioned an idea that I was never aware of. According to the chapter, Communities were theorized to not exist in urban areas. Whether or not socialist approved of, or criticized, the elimination of communities, it seemed to be universally agreed upon that communities would cease to exist. It is easy to find this to be a ridiculous assumption in retrospect, but the knowledge of this theory does help to understand why government has come to so many challenges in dealing with community development. One would not consider the influence of something that is not supposed to be there. Community is needed. People innately group together and like to feel a sense of belonging. Community gives people that sense of belonging. By not considering these communities, it is crippling to the members of that community and has adverse long-term impacts. Additionally, the three chapters put into words something that seemed to be an on running issue with community development, especially in New York City. This issue is that there is no easy fix when thinking of community development.
The government has a long history of implementing temporary remedies for the issues faced in low-income communities. The second chapter talked about this a lot. These temporary “solutions” are a huge part of community development, or lack there of, issues New York City is experiencing today. Our group project involves working closely with the effects of private development in “under developed”, low-income neighborhoods. Right now, a huge wave of government contracts are ending with private developers. These contracts were put into place by former government administration to help low-income families be able to afford housing. As a result, families whom were previously living in rent regulated, affordable housing, or other housing programs are going to experience increases in rent that they cannot afford. After the contract between the companies that own buildings and the government is up, the companies have the ability to price however they feel fit and an increase in price equates to an increase in profit for the owner of the building. This profit cost families their quality of life. Because there is a lot of negative connotation with “public” facilities, there is a big push for private development; this heavy reliance on private development is a big issue. The government has to negotiate with private developers to achieve help for low-income families, negotiations that have expiration dates.
This “hands-off” policy that has been the trend of New York City government for the past administration is proving to be detrimental, as seen by growing number of homeless. Learning from the past doesn’t seem to be a political strong suit, but if the government becomes more involved true progress can be made. Like these chapters mentioned, just because it worked or didn’t work in the past, does not mean the same results will be achieved; however, a positive results are consistently seen when the concerns of activist, community boards, developers, and government are all incorporated. It is the duty of the municipal government to create and sustain unity in the city, this includes the impact of the decisions made toward community development.
