Tag Archives: East Harlem

Final Project Update

The Future of Major Private Development, , , , , , ,

As we reach the end of our semester, we also approach the completion of our popular education piece for the East Harlem community regarding the future of private developments in that area and the intertwined futures of the current residents of El Barrio. After last Wednesday’s group presentations in front of our peers and the community contacts for all the groups we were able to obtain quality feedback for the postcard, which Giselle mentioned in our last project update.

Our initial draft of the postcard which was presented looked like the following

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On one side of the postcard we were going to provide the mass public with information on the residential towers and a little bit of what was going on behind the scenes. The first half of the postcard was going to talk about the buildings themselves as well as the contractor who wanted to start development on these buildings and the second half of the same side was going to mention how the ami of the community was calculated so that people know the injustices they were going to be put through.

Amanda created three block towers representing the three towers, which are the issues at hand, and list out important information which was declared in the appeal to start construction of the three towers. These towers, which are supposed to be 32, 41, and 47 stories tall, are widely believed to become an eyesore by the current residents of the community. The contractor promised 25% of the apartments to be affordable housing units in order to get the application approved and for construction to start. However, this contractor, Forest City Ratner, is the same company which was responsible for the Barclay center, where they promised to provide 10,000 jobs and 2,250 affordable housing units in order to gain the bid. Since the conception of the Barclay Center, Forest City Ratner has only provided 300 housing units.

The next topic at hand which we were going to introduce on this postcard was the ami calculations. The median income of East Harlem is $31,079 whereas the median income for New York City as a whole is $50,711, according to 2010-2012 estimates from the U.S. Census. Affordable housing units are priced according to the AMI of a particular group of counties. The AMI of New York City includes counties such as Nassau-Suffolk, Westchester, and Rockland County who have median incomes of $109,000, $105,700, $98,800 respectively.

On the back of our postcard we will be including a letter, addressed to the Honorable Speaker Mark-Viverito, talking about our concerns with the changes this private development will bring to the community. The residents of the community will be able to sign mail in these postcards.

This is what our second draft looked like

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After speaking with the community contact and getting feedback from them we were able to change some of the information we were spreading out to the public. They appreciated the idea of having a postcard because it was a cheap and efficient manner to get the people’s attention as well as the attention of council members.

Andrew has also been working along side someone from the El Barrio Unite organization and has been working on gathering up the footage for the documentary and compiling it together. We will be posting that up on youtube once we have worked out the minor details with our community contacts.

Reading Response

The Right to the/Just City, , , , , , , , , , ,

This week’s readings were David Harvey’s chapter, “The Right to the City”, and Susan Fainstein’s “Justice and Urban Transformation: Planning in Context”. Both of these articles elaborated the classes running theme of displacement of low-income families for urbanization of cities.

“The Right to the City,” an excerpt from Rebel Cities showed in depth analysis of the history and urbanization. Harvey, started the analysis with Haussmann’s plan to urbanize Paris in 1848, continued on to discuss the “mortgage and housing asset value crisis of 2008” and current urbanization in Brooklyn and in Harlem. The premise of the chapter focused on the capitalist societies’ need to produce “surplus product” in-order to continue to exist. The Housing market has done an excellent job of providing such a surplus. Providing a need for labor and the expansion of cities to accommodate the changing times. The ethical issue, that seems to be ignored throughout history, is “what is this urbanization costing?”. After reading this article, seems that whenever a city goes into financial instability and the unemployment rates rise, the government’s answer to the issue is “let’s build”. It is not surprising that history repeats itself and capitalist societies have to resort to amending past policies to supply the “surplus product” that is needed for the capitalism to function. However, the areas that are redone are inhabited by members of the community who are of low-income.  This urbanization is meant to increase the appeal of the city but it also seems to increase how drastically different the incomes and qualities of life are between the wealthy and middle-class, or even more dramatically the poor, of the city. Susan Fainstein’s chapter points out that urbanization is damaging to low-income and minority groups because it does not take the urban space that it affects into context.

“Justice and Urban Transformation: Planning in Context” focused on the belief of Karl Mannheim, which sought to give the power of urbanization to the members of the community through the efforts of elected officials. Mannheim’s theory stems from the idea of attempting to eliminate class bias. “Comprehensiveness,” which is Mannheim’s policy for planning, theorizes that values can be organized based on importance, and thus planning would proceed based on those values. The issues with the policy are rooted in the fact that values are hard to quantify and not everyone values things the same. As the chapter states, “values of democracy, diversity, and equity may pull in different ways”.  This belief is based on the idea that elected officials have a better understanding of what neighborhoods need when compared to organizations and the wealthy, like Yale University and others discussed in “The Right to the City” who currently hold an overwhelming amount of influence in planning.  When you are dealing with people and issues that affect “collective human rights” (Harvey 2013)  such as property, each individual situation contains aspects that require amending, adapting, and evolving policies so they are beneficial to that area. A policy that worked in South Jamaica in the past may not work in present day East Harlem; unless one is familiar with the needs and individuals of the area, one would not know how to adjust a policy to an area. If done correctly, where the needs of the community are the driving force (not capital and profit), this is a system which may work.

Discussion Question:  We live on a country that makes decisions through precedence and tradition; government is constantly looking to the past in-order make policies to improve the future. However, the negative aspects of the past, such as the displacement of communities, are often ignored if the policy showed promise, hence why there is a constant cycle of urbanization and resistance. Will New York ever see a policy that has not already been established in-order to benefit both the needs of a community and the needs of capitalism? Can an adapted version of “comprehensiveness” be the answer?

 

Project Update March 24, 2015

The Future of Major Private Development, ,

Last week’s post by Amanda covered most of the climatic events that occurred last week. As the writer of this week’s project update I can say that this has been a transitionary week for our group, as we have completed many of our project goals in the past and are looking forward to completing even more beginning next week. This week has been fairly anticlimactic, in the sense that most of our events has passed or are coming up. Abhishek had suggested an event that would be relevant to our group that we will be attending later this month. This exhibition titled “Uneven Growth NYC” at the Museum of Modern Art will be attended by several of our group members, but not all. As the past project updates have stated, trying to attend an event as a whole group has proved to be quite difficult.

However, the communication between our group is our key point of strength and thanks to many social media sharing platforms we have been able to connect with each other’s ideas and build upon them. The Facebook messenger platform continues to be our consistent method to relay information in the group and for the any large chunks of information we now have a google document that Abhishek has created. This relates back to the earliest days of our group’s interactions where we used a google document created by Amanda to create our first assignment-the project brief. We are hoping to see success in utilizing google docs again.

Lastly, we have another event for El Barrio Unite coming up this Saturday in East Harlem. From last week’s experience with the Community Board meeting that Gisella and I attended, the emotional aspect to this project is becoming more clear as we delve deeper into it. The community board meeting was heavily raucous at times due to the attendee’s passion and strong opinions towards the speakers at the meeting. One man in particular was cheered on by the crowd but was abruptly cut off by the community board panel for taking up too much time. He spoke of his humble beginnings, growing up in the poor conditions of East Harlem. He said that as he grew older he had the motivation to find a good job, yet no one would give him an opportunity to prove his worth. He spoke of an organization in East Harlem that finally gave him a shot in the field of construction. He worked his way up from starting out as a painter, electrician, and handyman that worked for less than minimum wage to now making $50 per hour. The crowd cheered for his success story but it was clear that the community board wanted to calm any sense of entitlement that stirred the crowd before things got too wild. The overall vibe from the meeting brought a deeper level of investigation into this topic, for now we are beginning to see the realities of the consequences that stem from the rapid gentrification of East Harlem first hand.

Project Update

The Future of Major Private Development, , , , , , , , , , , ,

Our group contact is El Barrio Unite, an organized group of concerned citizens of East Harlem. Our Macaulay group has now met with El Barrio Unite members on two occasions. The initial meeting served as an introduction between our group and Roger Hernandez along with two of his associates from NERVE/El Barrio Unite. This meeting took place Monday March 2nd, 2015, Abhishek and Andrew attended this initial meeting as representatives of our group. During this meeting, the N.E.R.V.E. provided us with some literature on their current concern of the East River Plaza Development project. We also made a few suggestions on how we can help them, which included the suggestion that we help them with a brochure. The second event was the community board meeting held Monday March 9, 2015 at the Casa Boricua Del Barrio. The representatives of our group who attended this were Michael, Andrew, and myself (Jasmine). The purpose of this meeting was to update and inform the attendees, who amongst us were concerned residents of East Harlem, about the controversial East River Expansion Project.

To summarize the East River Expansion Project, three residential buildings are being proposed to be built on top of the already existing East River Plaza. The towers will be about 32-47 stories and include 1000-1200 residential units. Of those new residential units, about 20% are said to be affordable housing units. Issues including health, flood zoning, displacement, and decrease in sunlight are just a few of the concerning issues the group is asking the companies leading of this new development to be held accountable for. The company Tiago Holdings, LLC under the development groups Blumenfield Development Group and Forest City Rangers are the ones heading this project. Both development groups have a history of not fulfilling its promises of benefiting the neighborhood. The plan they have presented has inconsistencies on how many affordable housing unites they will be providing and there is no real statement on how this will benefit the people of the neighborhood. As of now, it would seem that the application is still being reviewed for completion. Due to a lack of transparency, it is clear that an aggressive approach to receive, both, information and all developments in of the stages of the project.

At the meeting, Michael made a very valid comment tat the building plans look extremely out of place amongst the surrounding neighborhood. A typical building in that area isn’t more than 7 stories. In this course, we have read enough literature to be well aware of the long-term detrimental effects of a plan such as this

The next steps for our group are to negotiate our next personal meeting with El Barrio. We are still in the beginning phases of this where we are trying to work out a day and time where a majority of the members are available to attend. Ideally, there will be several dates and times that we can come up with. Those dates and times will then be presented to Roger Hernandez to arrive at a mutually convenient scheduled date. We plan to schedule this sometime prior to Spring Break (April 3-12, 2015). Moreover, the group will try to attend some of the upcoming city planning commission meetings held on Wednesdays and Thursdays. At the coming city planning meetings, El Barrio plans to request an environment and a health impact assessment, which is supposed to be provided to the public anyway. In addition they will ask the companies to declare a community benefit agreement. By being present and consistent the needs of the community are heard. Also, the city planning commission will update the organization on what stage the plan is at. It is important that a open rejection of the plans with valid concerns that can be see and measured are expressed to elected officials. March 17th at 6:00 pm is the next full community board meeting, where El Barrio is scheduled to meet. Our group plans to be present at this meeting as a show of support for N.E.R.V.E/ El Barrio Unite.

El Barrio asked if our group could help with a letter to Melissa Mark-Viverito, the Council Speaker of District 8, and other elected officials. What is wanted is a pre-made letter that can be distributed, for members of the community and other concerned citizens to sign, in-order to show elected officials that this is not what the community needs nor will it benefit those who live there. El Barrio has a goal of at least thirty signatures, but it is the shared belief, of our group and the attendees of the March 9th meeting, that more than thirty letters can be mailed to City Council members. A suggestion of distributing the letters to our class and on City College campus caused others to suggest organizations like the teachers union, because there are 5 schools in the immediate area of the proposed construction site. Of course signatures have to be voluntary, but it is our belief that people would be willing to sign if they were aware. City Council members are the ones who have to sign off on the developers project, rezoning, and land use. Additionally, the letter requests that the plan not be approved until it is shown to more of a benefit to the community. Factors such as increase the amount of affordable housing to 40% and have it permanently contracted as affordable housing. Also, community preference should be given, so that local construction business can help with the building, which would result in jobs for community members, and residents obtain preference for selection once the units are ready to house.

As a group, we are communicating well. Our primary form of communication at this point is Facebook private messenger and has shown to be effective thus far. Everyone has been well informed of up coming events. The literature given to Abhishek and Andrew by N.E.R.V.E. has been emailed to all the members of the group who could not attend the initial meeting. We definitely have a solid starting ground and vision of where we are taking this project. N.E.R.V.E. is very excited to be working with us and using our group as an asset. The group is encouraged to follow and share El Barrio Unite on Twitter and Facebook as they have been and will continue to update the page with events and the stages of development. There is great promise for the impact our group can have and the power behind community organizing. I will be adding the link for their social media websites as well as their website for any of the other class mates who are interested in their work.

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Official Website