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.

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.