“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.

In the reading, Wilson states that the socioeconomic composition of one’s neighbors determine how one’s life will become (i.e. if your neighbors are successful, you will strive to be like them). I am torn with this statement. I agree with what Wilson said in the sense that people affect each other. A similar example is friends and how they peer pressure one another to be like each other. If you surround yourself with hard working people, it pushes you to work hard as well, or then you feel like you do not fit in. However, when I look at my neighborhood, there are many people who just keep to themselves. I do not see them changing and trying to “become” like the rest of the neighborhood. I think the problem with Wilson’s statement is that people are only affected by others if they have a close relationship. If people live near each other, but do not interact, there will not be that much of an effect among each other.

I think the idea of vouchers is better than placing people with similar incomes all in one area. And I agree with policy makers that mixing classes is the solution for housing problem. However, I think there is a thin line within that answer. For instance, I do not think wealthy people would want to live with poor people, nor can poor people afford to live where wealthy people live. However, if the classes are more similar such as low income and low-middle income, then it seems more plausible. In addition, a benefit from the mixing of the classes is that it prevents an area to be only grouped by low income people, which gives a sentimentality that the area is labeled as “bad.”

My thoughts of gentrification is torn. I agree with Freeman that although it increases housing costs and can lead to many people leaving, it also has its advantages that it benefits the community because it increases the standard of living in a way. It just all depends on how you look at it–in the short run or in the long run. I wonder by how much does housing costs increases?

I find the statement of the characteristic of the neighborhood and its affect on values and norms of the area interesting. I concur that if neighbors trust each other, they are able to set up proper norms of behavior among the community and also protect the area from threats. That explains why some neighborhoods are more safe than others. However, I believe there are other factors besides trust as well, such as how neighbors have to look out for each other and care for one another.

Freeman mentions that affluent neighbors influence institutions in a neighborhood, which benefits it. Although this may be true, I also think it works the other way. The Upper West Side used to be an unsafe place to live (think “West Side Story” with the gangs). However, once the tenements in the area were demolished, institutions such as Lincoln Center was built which enhanced the neighborhood. Not only do people affect the community, but what the community has to offer attracts the people. It is like a never ending cycle, in which both sides influence one another.

The article “Making New York Smaller” by Roger Starr talks about how different ways to get New York out of the financial crisis in the 1970s. I hadn’t really read much about this before, and much of what was in the article wasn’t really anything I had read about either, so I found it very interesting and though provoking. Seeing that there was a financial crisis very recently, it’s interesting to think about if what he wrote still applies and his solution could still work today.

Starr says that New York can be divided into two cities that are responsible for producing New York’s wealth, the Economic and Political city. The Economic City is made up of the private and public enterprises that create goods or services people are willing to pay for. The Political City provides services for people such as criminal justice, elementary education, and fire protection. The Political City is partly funded by the Economic City by taxes and fees by vendors, but the Political City also produces wealth through the federal government. Starr’s distinction between the two cities and what they do is pretty interesting as I have never thought about or read about the city being separated in such a way, especially with the Political City because those services are things that I and probably most people don’t really think about since in this country, they are just services that city’s everywhere provide, as opposed to other countries where is might not be the case.

The two cities are intertwined, but from the article, it sounds like the Economic City is more important because it is the backbone. The Political City previously increased the local taxes on the Economic City when the cost of the services it provides increased, but in the 70s, it wasn’t possible with the Economic City not being able to provide enough jobs. Its like if the Economic City fails, the Political City would too, unless it gets enough money from the federal government, which doesn’t seem very likely. I think this can bee seen in other cities where the main industry and main source of wealth has fallen and the city can’t really survive, or at least in the same level it did before. The article mentions how New York’s exports lost their attraction and manufacturing shrunk to almost nothing, but I’m assuming that it wasn’t so bad because there are so many different industries and not just one large one with some smaller ones that most people are a part of.

The main argument in the article is the idea of planned shrinkage, which as Starr notes is not a popular idea. This is when there is a deliberate withdrawal of city services, to deal with decreasing tax revenue. This really just sounds unjust because the “normal” city services are what you expect in return for paying taxes. In addition, how would it be decided which neighborhoods would lose their services? How bad does a neighborhood have to be? Starr also says that the idea that the poor would be victims of the policy isn’t true, and the opposite is actually true. His reasoning for this just doesn’t make sense to me because he argues that the poor need the most government help, so it the government isn’t properly using its resources economically, it would hurt the poor the most, but wouldn’t just taking away government services including “normal” ones be worse since their neighborhoods wouldn’t get them at all?

Another thought I have is about after people do leave. The article says that consistent density through out the city is important. It’s better to have one full building than two half buildings. However, you could have many people leave from one neighborhood, and only some leave from another, but it’s not like you can just move those still in the mostly empty neighborhood to another. There could be the use of not providing city services but it might not necessarily work. I just don’t think planned shrinkage would be a good plan because it doesn’t hurt the people who need the most help and there are also so many different outcomes that  could happen that aren’t easily dealt with.

While reading “Selling the City in Crisis” by Miriam Greenberg, I was surprised to learn about how important New York City’s public image was in the in the 1970s. I had heard about some of the problems the city faced at this time but it hadn’t occurred to me how much these problems were increased by the impact they had on people’s perception of the city. The negative perception of the city increased the existing problems, caused new problems, and made it harder to solve all of the problems.

I think New York City’s greatest strength is its diversity. By this, I don’t just mean the diversity of its population. I also mean New York City’s diverse economy, cultural experiences, and communities. New York offers something for just about anyone. The different communities in each neighborhood are unique, giving residents options for how they want to live. The city also has endless entertainment and cultural options so New Yorkers and visitors have plenty of things to do. Lastly, New York City’s economy is made up of a variety of industries. This diversity helps New York City to stay relevant as times change. For example, when one industry declines, the economy shouldn’t decline too much because there are plenty of other industries to support the city.

Unfortunately, in the 1970s, although only certain aspects of the city declined, the resulting decline in public image caused the rest of the city to decline as well. The negative public image of New York City prevented people and companies from investing in the city and caused those that were already in the city to relocate. These magnified the original problems the city was facing at the time. Even the city’s credit rating was influenced by public image, making it harder and more expensive for the city to gain the money it needed to solve the original problems.

I was surprised by how many people and companies were willing to give up on New York City. Even the federal government was unwilling to give the city the help it needed. It surprised me that only those who were completely invested in New York City already seemed willing to work to save it. According to the chapter, even those who were invested in New York City but also had interests outside of the city gave up on it, moving on to those other investments. I would have expected much more interest in improving the city than there was.

I thought Greenberg’s chapter was interesting and informative. It was fortunate that the city bounced back after the problems it faced. I hadn’t realized how much of a challenge it was before this reading.

New York’s financial crisis that occurred after 1975 was due to the inability of the city government to maintain the city at a level the people were accustomed to. Roger Starr states that the maintenance was not possible, because the city’s input of wealth was not sufficient to maintain the standards of the people. However, after reading the goals on how to increase or acquire funds for the city, I think a major contribution to the problem is failure to acknowledge change, and the growing population within New York City.

Starr describes the problem by separating the problem into two cities: Economic City and Political City. I agree with him that the crisis was formed by the problems of the Political City, which as a result created problems in the Economic City. Starr explains that there is money involved in the Political City, and this money comes from the government. For instance, government funds for criminal justice and education. The national government was strict with how much money was given in the case of poverty and nonsocial programs, which made it difficult for New York to increase their wealth, even though they increased local taxes. Although it was difficult to attain funding from the national government, if New York’s government focused on the biggest problem of financial trouble, there might have been a way to avoid this crisis. For instance, problems in the economic sector began to arise when the city’s exports began to diminish. While exports were dwindling, the city began to increase more imports. If the city noticed that increasing imports would not increase the city’s wealth, maybe there could have been a relatively heavy tax on importing goods so that businesses would have to think twice about buying goods abroad.

I think that the city’s desire to stay the way it was contributed to the crisis. When the city was increasing imports, they did not do so out of necessity, but out of “hope for the future.” People of the city wanted to use the reputation to convince others that New York would stand on top in the future even though they were going through a bumpy road at that moment. Although this reputation holds some truth to it today, if there had been some slight changes to adjust the wealth of the city to match the amount that was incoming, maybe the crisis could have been avoided. Maybe the city could have changed the level of maintenance accordingly with how much the predicted wealth would be after proposals to increase wealth were put to action.

Population also played an important role to the crisis. Starr stated that to increase the wealth of the city, there needed to be more jobs so there would be less unemployed people and more people boosting the economy. During the crisis, employment dropped more than it had before, yet the population was growing. With a growing population up to 8 million, decreasing employment would only further deepen the crisis. Even so, there were only slight attempts to increase employment, which in the end did not do much to boost the economy. I think there should have been more efforts to create more jobs, especially since the population was not going to decrease anytime soon. More people without jobs would just mean more money needed from the government to help people out of poverty, which is due to unemployment.

I believe that this crisis would have happened even if the government provided more help to New York. New York, with its growing population, had refused to change, which led to its downfall. Even if New York decided to change just a bit, I think the local government could not have done enough to bring more wealth in. Without increasing or stable incoming wealth, New York would not be able to avoid the crisis it fell into.

As a student in New York, the sense of overpopulation is idiosyncratic to the city I so love. There seems to be a never-ending flow of people, noises, cars and Starbucks coffee shops. Quite honestly, I could not imagine New York City any other way. When reading Roger Starr’s “Making New York Smaller,” I was surprised by his planned shrinkage ideas to combat New York City’s impending “doomsday.”

Starr describes New York as having been divided into two cities: an Economic City and a Political City. It is important to note that this 1976 article was written during a time in which New York City was in economic limbo. At least 3.5 million new jobs were needed to help offset the growing 10% unemployment rate, but fewer than 3 million were actually provided. Loans made by foreign entities were defaulting and mortgages foreclosed. Significant numbers of people had moved from the city to the suburbs and the Federal Government was providing much help. This all led to a vicious cycle and many feared for the future of New York. But why was this all happening and what could be done?

Starr states that while the Political City was the cause of such turmoil, difficulties were shouldered by the Economic City, home to the businesses, workers, and residents of New York. Starr refers to “…gross underestimates of future New York costs and over estimates of future revenues…” as one of the key issues behind the crisis. This, coupled with the fundamental fact that the economy was rapidly shifting away from manufacturing, signified that times were changing but New York City could not seem to keep up. In turn, the crisis had caused people to step back and analyze the well being of New York—a city whose future once seemed so bright. The traditional remedy for such a situation was for the Political City to increase taxes, formulate a new economic development program and send appeals to Albany and Washington seeking aid. Less representation in Albany, coupled with a fundamental issue many people not taken into consideration meant that these old ways were useless.

One of Roger Starr’s most controversial suggestions was to welcome a shrinking population. Conversely, New York’s future prosperity was always pictured with a growing population. Many opposed the idea that a New York with 5 million people (as opposed to 8 million at the time) would still be a world city. Starr, however, seemed to stress quality over quantity. He also alluded to the need to attract semi-skilled workers as opposed to the unskilled laborers of the past. There was untapped potential in the tourist business, as well. But according to Starr, New York could not move forward if it did not accept the fact that the population was shrinking and that that could quite possibly be a good thing.

As I read, I realized two things: 1) if I were a New Yorker reading this article in 1976, I would have thought that New York would never find its way out of the slumps and 2) many parallels can be seen in today’s economic environment. Luckily, New York did, in fact, bounce back but we are again going through a very similar situation. Since 2008, unemployment rates have gone up, inflation has been on the rise, the overall quality of life is changing. Over the course of almost five years, the traditional methods of the government do not seem to be working. Although I am not sure how likely a drastic population decrease in New York City will be, I do know that something new and unconventional needs to be done in order to better accommodate our ever-changing society.