Braconi mentions how housing was affected when Caucasians moved out and left the inner cities filled with minorities such as African Americans and Latinos. He states how these minorities usually had lower income and were jobless many of the times, thus rents were difficult to collect. The lack of rent money obtained would then lead to poor building maintenance and operations. This reminded me of the Pruitt-Igoe documentary. With a lack of sufficient funding, there comes the poor quality of life.
What baffles me still is that all these articles we read, there are many observations made with race, income, and living/housing style. What there is a lack of is why these minorities have a difficult time finding jobs and receiving a better income. There is always a concept that education brings people out of poverty. But I do believe there was public education back then. So, how come many minorities are still stuck in the “slums and ghettos?”
Continuing on, Braconi also states how two-thirds of New York’s housing stock is for rental and not for owner-occupied housing. Apparently this is the reverse case for most large cities. If so, I want to know why this is the case. And if this is a factor contributed to New York’s housing disinvestment, why does New York continue to follow with this idea? It does not seem to be too beneficial in the housing market and negatively affects people. Also, rentals are less likely to have long-term investments, so maintaining the building is not the rental owner’s priority. This has negative affects on the building as well. Overall, these adverse traits of rental housing should mean the city should move away from them, but it is not doing so.
Another issue I am curious about is where do all the people who are displaced move to? More than 60% of the buildings were said to be vacant–then where do the people live? This definitely does not show that there is a housing problem in terms of places to live. Instead, it shows the housing problem in terms of affordable housing. Later when Braconi mentions the relocation of people, it still does not say exactly where, which is what I want to know.
Moving forward in the reading, I though Braconi’s statement of how the Koch administration was under no obligation to deal with the housing abandonment situation and the fact that this choice further caused financial problems for the city’s budget disagreeable. The city may not be legally obligated to make this decision, but the role of the government is to govern/manage its people. By dealing with housing, it is in fact helping its people. In addition, although it was a burden on the city’s budget in the short run, I believe it actually helped the city in the long run. Abandoned housing lowers the living standards of an area, therefore by trying to prevent this event from happening too much, the government is trying to preserve the neighborhood. But just like Braconi says at the end, the government did fail in reducing tax for low-income housing. This would have helped the people more, but then, you still see a similar problem even today. Things have not really changed.
