Having grown up in New York City, I have always thought of the Bronx as a dangerous area surrounded by poverty. After reading the article, “Government Can’t Help? Tell That to the South Bronx,” by Michael Powell, I learned that changes were taking place in the South Bronx. I had the preconception that the government did not do much for housing in NYC, but after learning about the aid the South Bronx received I was surprised, especially after reading the article, “In Re In Rem,” by Braconi. From Braconi’s article, it seemed like housing during Ed Koch did not really resurrect the housing.
Braconi mentions how public housing units in New York were being abandoned, which peaked in the 1970s. This abandonment was due to Caucasians moving to more attractive housing options and other ethnicities replacing them, especially “black and Puerto Rican migrants.” As these tenants did not have high paying jobs, it became difficult of building owners to collect rent to pay for building maintenance and other expenses. Back then not much was done about housing, but when Mayor Ed Koch noticed the rent payment rate of City owned buildings, he began to take matters into his own hands.
Ed Koch had ordered collections of rent by the Department of Housing Preservation and Development. This is appalling, because it is evident that there are people living in the buildings that can barely afford to get by and the Mayor is demanding payment instead of asking for possible solutions that would help both the people and the city? In response to the Mayor’s demand, the HPD created a network of check-cashing outlets that would allow tenants to pay their bill in person, and the HPD also created the Tenant Legal Affairs Unit. Although I see why the city became strict in obtaining rent from tenants, I still think that they should have come up with plans to ensure that tenants living there would continue living there and be able to pay rent.
Michael Powell’s article described the South Bronx just as I had always perceived it to be, “ghost canyons of burnt-out buildings, saw mattresses and old sinks and tubs piled atop hills of rubble, and encountered smack dealers who cordoned off blocks for open-air markets.” This description was during the 1970s, which was when housing abandonment was at its peak in New York. From this illustration, I am more convinced that Ed Koch’s demand for rent collection is the wrong first step to take. I believe he should have focused on rebuilding and attracting more people to the area and then collect rent.
However, after Ed Koch’s “resurrection” of the Bronx and the Bloomberg administrations addition, the previous portrait of the South Bronx transformed. Although Koch’s first step in dealing with housing abandonment in New York was to collect rent, as mentioned in Braconi’s article, Powell states that Koch decided ‘the city would rebuild.’ This became true during Mayor Bloomberg’s administration, as $8 billion went to building and preserving 165,000 apartments. The construction of these buildings will have “solar panels and roof gardens for low and middle income families.” As a New Yorker, I find that impressive. I have only heard of roof gardens in Manhattan, and seen pictures of roof gardens in the middle of very urban areas. This construction clearly illustrates the transformation of the housing in the Bronx for me, and reduces the stereotyped image of a run-down and criminal ridden Bronx community.
