Mar
11
New York’s Housing Inequality – Tina Jing Ru Shen
March 11, 2015 | Leave a Comment
In my neighborhood, I have seen several new homes being developed. Most of them are bought, but some, not for long. There is this house down the street that especially stands out because it is no older than four years, but it has had a “For Sale” sign re-posted over two times. After reading a segment of the report, I have realized how ignorant I am regarding this topic of current renting and the burdens of it. Although I have heard of the concept of rent burden, the statistics shown in the text was overwhelming for me to absorb. There were several aspects of the data that surprised me, and raised questions for me.
How does lower income groups uphold their increasing rent burden even though there are few overcrowding issues and decreasing unit violations? I have heard that some families share a household with another, and as we discussed in last class, some units rent to hundreds of inhabitants that sleep in small compartments. These seem to be very well known cases, yet only 4.1% of households are severely crowded? If this is the case, how are the poor maintaining their rental rates even though these rates are exceeding the rate of income?
This may be somewhat unrelated to the topic at hand, but going back to how the housing market today is targeting more at wealthy people than assisting and housing the disadvantaged, gentrification is becoming a predominant issue. The text focuses a lot on how newly rented units are much more costly than existing rents, but rent stabilization in certain existing rents are not so stable, and landlords are taking advantage of this to kick out renters to bring in rich customers. A prime example is Chinatown. In addition to a lot of Chinese-owned stores on Canal Street, rent for Chinese households is escalating, so several of them move out to newer Chinese neighborhoods in Brooklyn and Queens.
From Figure 3.5, I noticed that unlike the other groups, the highest income group had a smaller percentage of rent burdened in 2012 compared to 2002. The other lower groups and the total groups illustrated that there were increased amounts of rent burdened in 2012 compared to in 2002. Is that an indication that the rich are getting richer? So, they are able to withstand the heightening rent rates, while the poor are getting poorer?
The report describes a problem that is troubling to the city, as rent burden is weighing down the already low income families. But what could be done to fix or improve this issue? Are the lower income groups already taking upon themselves to resolve this problem? I found it contradicting that with all the financial obstacles that the report described, the rent violation and overcrowding has not been an issue. That should mean that something is being done, right? Subsidies have dropped over the years, so that is not a factor that is alleviating the rent burden. I wish to look for more information about the alternatives that renters have taken.
