Today, some people lost confidence about American government because recently our country seemed to be having some problems with economics as well as warfare. We still haven’t completely recovered from economic recession; at the same time we are still having wars with Middle East country. People kind of lost their faith on government. The New York Times article “Government Can’t Help? Tell that to the South Bronx” really surprised me.

The article talks about how government helped to rebuild some parts of the city, such as South Bronx. Personally, I have never been to South Bronx, but it is surprising to know the changes that South Bronx has gone through. According to the article, places that were full of burnt-out buildings now had completely transformed into clean streets with new buildings. It is pleasant to see that our government didn’t forget about these undeveloped parts of the city.

When we are talking about the glamorous parts of New York City, most of us referred to central part of Manhattan. Yet, there were many other places seemed liked to be forgotten by the city. There were parts of area where people lived in bad conditions, for example the holes in Willet’s Point. By comparing areas like Willet’s Point with Downtown Manhattan, one can easily see the differences. It is difficult to find any similarities between these two places.

My favorite line from this article is by a 53-year-old woman, named Celida Pinet. She said, “The era of government may be in danger. But it saved the South Bronx.” I think that we shouldn’t gave up on our government, because during era of crisis, we have no choice but to trust them, and work with them. The government can’t help everyone at the same time, but they are making effort in constantly improving our life.

After reading this article, I find it to be very hopeful that our city will keep improving. Our government not only cares about the developments within those popular sites, but also unpopular areas with mainly residents. Our research projects are also about government projects. And I am very excited to see these projects to be built.

The article “Government Can’t Help? Tell That to the South Bronx” by Michael Powell talks about how the government saved the South Bronx. The South Bronx reached a low point in the 1970’s, with significant poverty, gangs, drugs, fires, and more. However, that changed with the governments help, and the Bronx, along with many neighborhoods of Queens, Manhattan, and Brooklyn, is one of the greatest public rebuilding achievements since World War II.

Something that caught my eye was that former Mayor Ed Koch began the resurrection, and is continued today with great vigor by Mayor Michael Bloomberg. In the end, the Bloomberg administration will have invested more than $8 billion into building and preserving 165,000 apartments. This is something I hadn’t heard about before. Most of the things most people hear about are the negatives, and I also believed that the Bloomberg administration wasn’t really doing anything, or not enough to combat the housing crisis, so it is good to know that the government is actually doing something about it, but there is more to it than just building and preserving apartments, so I wonder if the problem could really ever truly be fixed by the government. Part of the problem is not having enough housing, but I think a larger problem is people not being able to afford housing, which there are many factors causing that.

Something related that I also found interesting was that the South Bronx could be seen as an example that the government can work on a large scale and accomplish remarkable tasks. This is something that many people think the government can’t do, and I think a lot of people don’t have faith in the government to accomplish much. Of course people tend to focus on the negatives, but it would be nice to read more and hear more about all the good things the government has done so people can trust policymakers more and not just think they are in it for themselves or won’t really do much in office.

From the title of the article, I expected it to be much different than it was. I thought that it would be about the poor conditions of the South Bronx and how they need government help to get by and improve conditions because when I think of the South Bronx, I think of a poor, dangerous area, filled with drugs and violence that is falling apart. I think this is how most people in New York who don’t really know about the South Bronx view the area. I never knew about the urban renewal in the 1980s or about the buildings mentioned in the article, which sound like they’ve really helped to improve the neighborhood.

Upon further research however, I found that many of the residents live below the poverty line, and drug and gang activity among other things are still common there. The last sentence of the article is “ The era of government may be in danger. But it saved the South Bronx.” I guess there are different ways to interpret this, but although the area is better than it was in the past, it doesn’t seem like the government actually “saved” the South Bronx. It seems like there is still much more the government can do to for the South Bronx and its residents.

In the New York Times’ article, “Government Can’t Help? Tell That to the South Bronx,” author Michael Powell argues that the government is in fact capable of assisting the economy and taking care of its middle to low income families. Throughout the article he compares past experiences with the South Bronx, which used to be a destroyed, “burnt-out” area, to its present conditions. As a teenager, he believed that the South Bronx was a forgotten and disregarded neighborhood, with no chance of returning to glory or even moderate conditions. However, after touring the area 30 years later, he acknowledged that due to government efforts, it “stands as arguably the greatest public rebuilding achievement since World War II.”

After reading the article, I was very surprised from the fact that he refers to the South Bronx as an area of resurrection. To be honest, coming from Brooklyn, I always looked at the Bronx as a neighborhood filled with crime, violence and ghettos. I never imagined it as a safe area filled with decent apartment complexes and nice schools. According to Celida Pinet, a resident of the South Bronx, it sounds as if it is now a wonderful place to live and raise a family. Based on the success of the area, I’m surprised I haven’t heard about its resurgence until today.

I was also fascinated by the government’s success through these public housing initiatives. In his article, Powell mentions that by the end of the project, the Bloomberg administration will put about $8 billion into the construction of public housing complexes, building almost 165,000 apartments. It really comes to show you that the government has the power and the abilities to make a change in the lives of its citizens. Over the past couple of years, especially through our recent financial crisis, many Americans have lost faith and belief in the government. Hopefully, the South Bronx housing developments can help restore America’s trust in its government.

While reading the article, there was one point that Powell mentioned that really stuck out to me.He states that if you “walk the working-class neighborhoods of Memphis, Newark, Atlanta and even Chicago you still find acres of hopelessness.” This statement immediately reminded me of the public housing development of Pruitt Igoe in St. Louis. Both were in terrible condition, however, in the end, the South Bronx would experience redevelopment and resurgence, while Pruitt Igoe would be knocked down. This made me consider what separates public housing developments from one another? Why are some projects successful and thriving, while others are full of violence and in utter destruction?

After reading Powell’s article, I realized that many of my thoughts pertaining to the government and the South Bronx had been misconceptions. It has altered my view regarding the government’s capabilities, by showing that it has done an excellent job in rebuilding and resurrecting an area that had previously been a ghetto filled with despair and crime. It really goes to show you that the government has the abilities to accomplish great things and hopefully it’ll help reestablish the faith of the American people in its government.

“In Re In Rem: Innovation and Expediency in New York’s Housing Policy” talks about the the huge amount of foreclosed housing that is owned and managed by the city. I find it very interesting that during a single year, New York City became the manager of nearly 40,000 occupied apartments, resulting in the second-largest public housing authority in the country. However, this expense became too much for the city to bear and contradicted what its progressive housing tradition tried to avoid.

I also find it interesting that many new public initiatives come about as a result of global tragedies, such as World War II in this case. Another example of such an event was the legislation passed after the Stock Market Crash in 1929. New York has and most likely will remain dependent on rental housing since it gives them less requirement to take care of the living space.

Another factor that I found important was that operating costs were increasing for maintaining apartments in the city since heating oil prices increase drastically and overall operating costs of apartment buildings in New York City rose which did not make home ownership attractive. This also influenced the city to play a bigger role in the housing market and have a control of the rentals and pricing since it had a responsibility of fair but profitable housing.

The city owned buildings were not able to be well taken care of because they were not funded enough since the city did not have the resources for it. They had to provide affordable housing for low-income families so they were not able to ask for rents to raise funds to maintain the housing buildings. The city also would quickly realize that it would not be able to auction off its buildings to housing investors. This would force the city to continue to hold the apartment buildings that it was not able to make repairs to and fix up to make them better for its residents to live in.

Finally, I was also very interested by the effect of policy-generated homelessness and the increasing deepening of the culture of dependency. This culture has even become prominent in today’s New York City since people have become dependent on public housing and even financial aid. Some people give false information to take advantage of the city’s programs for social welfare. Although these programs have good intentions, they can be abused by people.

The article in The New York Times entitled “Government Can’t Help? Tell That to the South Bronx,” by Michael Powell debunks many preconceptions that people may have of the government and of the Bronx. Firstly, it’s pretty rare to find someone defending the government when it comes to the economy. Secondly, most people probably would not classify the South Bronx as beautiful. I certainly follow along with those characteristics, or at least I used to. Reading this article made me reconsider stereotypes that I know to be pretty widespread in New York City.

The first one is about the government and the economy. Especially in the past few years, people have almost completely lost faith in the government to save us from the financial crisis. According to Powell, the government is very capable of doing so. Unfortunately, it isn’t in the way we think. People expect higher employment in the corporate world or a decrease in the national debt, so they overlook great strides in public housing. It’s gotten to the point that people really don’t trust the government to do anything that could possibly benefit them, so they just disregard it.

Along those lines, people just have a tendency to remember the bad things and forget all the good things. Of course it’s only natural to ignore one positive aspect when there are plenty more negative ones, but I think that’s just a horrible way to go about things. It’s slightly upsetting that this article had to be written to show people that the government can actually do something. Maybe it is a miracle, but we shouldn’t have that mindset in the first place. We expect so vigorously for our government to fail us that we can’t accept any of their victories at all.

The second stereotype is about the South Bronx being beautiful. Perhaps this is a result of people ignoring the government’s successes, but I had no idea that the area had even changed, let alone to such a great extent. It seems that the stories of what the South Bronx looked like in the 1970s have been passed down and live on even today. Considering that New York has always done relatively well with its public housing initiatives, I’m surprised that knowledge of the South Bronx’s reconstruction isn’t more popular. Even so, it sounds wonderful. It sounds like all of these developments have been nothing but an asset to the area and its residents.

Going back to my earlier point about not trusting the government, the John A. Boehner quote is really disappointing. If that’s really the case, who can we count on? What era are we moving into?  Who will be responsible for growing the economy? Will it be any different? Were this new entity to fail, would we blame them and then decide to move on again? That doesn’t sound like a very promising start. The best way to approach this, which I think Powell was trying to get across, is to recognize the good things. Failure is inevitable, but success, no matter how small in comparison, still deserves acknowledgement.