“In Re In Rem: Innovation and Expediency in New York’s Housing Policy” by Frank P. Braconi explains the situation of New York City owning and managing tax foreclosed housing. This was referred to as in rem. This was an idea that I was unfamiliar with but I thought the plans made sense considering the circumstances.

I had never heard of this concept of New York City using properties that have been foreclosed on for tax delinquency. This is probably because, I imagine, this idea is far less practical today than it was during the time Braconi writes about. Property in New York City is extremely desirable today so if a property owner were facing the financial difficulties that would lead to tax foreclosure, it would be easy to find a buyer for the property. This was not the case in the 1970s. New York City faced a crisis as people moved out of the city, the economy declined, and crime rose. As we discussed in previous readings, this was due to a combination of a suburbanization and a decline in certain industries, such as manufacturing. This left New York City with a great number of properties that people either couldn’t afford or didn’t want. Many buildings were abandoned as a result of this.

At a time when New York City was facing so many problems, drastic action needed to be taken by the government. Looking back, it made sense for the government to take on the responsibility of owning and managing the foreclosed properties. Doing so improved the city because they were able to put the buildings to use when no one else was willing to do so. At the same time, they were able to help the people of the city by providing housing to those who otherwise couldn’t afford it. The decision for the city government to own and manage these tax foreclosed properties helped to solve two major problems New York City was facing at the time.

Of course, this was not a simple and perfect solution to New York City’s problems. Managing low-income housing comes with its own problems. The city had trouble paying for the maintenance of the buildings it managed. Braconi explains that in rem housing typically had far more maintenance deficiencies than other rental housing. He states that, at one point, the property management operations cost $294 million annually while rent collections were only $85 million. Braconi also mentions a case in which the family of a child who suffered from lead poisoning while living in an in rem apartment was awarded $10 million. This example describes the difficulties of managing housing. It is important to keep up with maintenance otherwise there could be horrible and costly results. In low-income housing, this is particularly challenging because the rent collections often don’t provide enough money to pay for maintenance. I believe this is the largest issue for all low-income housing and I’m not sure that a good solution exists. The best solution I see when it comes to low-income housing is to spend public money to keep it maintained. Otherwise it could end up being a bigger waste of money and detrimental to the community, as we saw in the film about Pruitt-Igoe. Fortunately, New York City did what it could to maintain the in rem housing.

Eventually, New York City improved and once again became a desirable city. As this occurred, the city government began to reduce its in rem inventory. Although it wasn’t a perfect scenario, I believe New York City’s actions regarding in rem housing made the most of the bad situation and were beneficial to the city overall.

Michael Powell’s article in the New York Times discusses the rebirth of the South Bronx and he attributes its restoration to the government. He seems to make the point that the restoration is incredibly successful and an outstanding indication of the success of the government dictating housing projects, yet I find his statements too subjective.

I found it interesting that Powell would tour the South Bronx in the 70s with his friends for fun. Powell’s description of the old South Bronx and the stories I have heard paint it as a dangerous area, yet Powell says “We could not have been safer; [the drug dealers] assumed we were white boys in search of a fix” (Powell). It seems that the area would be dangerous regardless and it is surprising that Powell considered himself to be safe. Were there not robberies or other crimes happening there as well which could have affected them?

I was also not aware that the South Bronx has greatly improved in crime and I recall hearing news of shootings in the South Bronx. According to New York City’s Police Department, there have only been 12 murders and 1,621 total crimes (including murder, rape, burglary, assault, etc.) committed in the calendar year 2012 in one of the precincts in the South Bronx, precinct 40.* In comparison, there were 72 murders and 7,232 crimes reported in 1990. This is only based upon one of the police precincts in the South Bronx. While crime rate seems to have gone down significantly in the past several years, crime is still an issue there.

Powell claims that the improvement of the South Bronx is due to the efforts of Mayor Koch and Mayor Bloomberg, who “poured more than $8 billion into building and preserved 165,000 apartments” (Powell). The low and moderate income housing in the South Bronx definitely fared a lot better than housing failures such as Pruitt-Igoe but this may be due to a multitude of factors, such as how the housing was constructed. Private developers built much of the housing with government subsidies and “dozens of savvy nonprofit groups” (Powell). Since developers were given incentives to build, perhaps it was enough to sustain the bellow market rent that tenants would provide to the building owners.

I think it would be interesting to see how well the area develops in the future, given some time. Since the housing is subsidized and rent is below market value, there aren’t any incentives for building owners to keep the apartments in repair and up to date. Perhaps given time the housing will deteriorate. Also it may be that a mix of middle and low income housing provides adequate revenues and the neighborhood might eventually change to attract more people, increasing rent prices. I just don’t find Powell’s main message that one public housing and neighborhood restoration process that was relatively successful is a concrete indication that the government is an efficient system to provide housing.

* http://www.nyc.gov/html/nypd/downloads/pdf/crime_statistics/cs040pct.pdf

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.

Frank Braconi’s account of New York City’s public housing policy provides an excellent illustration of the challenges of governing a city as sprawling and diverse as this one. Mr. Braconi makes it a point to note that even though the concept of In Rem housing is not unique to New York City, it is certainly a more complex and significant process here than anywhere else. Despite the problems mentioned in the piece about the management of In Rem housing taken over by the city, I think that this story is an example of how city governments can be successful in the face of overwhelming odds.

I was really impressed by all the inter-agency cooperation that went into tackling various problems that arose in the public housing system. It was also very interesting to see the instances of conflict. For example, how the welfare policy actually worked counter-intuitively to the goals of the housing department. I agreed with the city’s proposal to try and implement a policy to have the welfare checks cashed upon signature from both tenant and rent collector. As exemplified by the Pruitt-Igoe debacle in St. Louis, lack of revenue from rents can be devastating to buildings. Thus, it was a good decision on the part of the city to make rent collection an absolute priority. 

Another interesting connection that can be made here is that the extensive abandonment of certain neighborhoods that Mr. Braconi talks about would be exactly the kind of situation that would call for measures suggested by Roger Starr in his article, “Making New York Smaller.” When middle class families rushed to leave inner city neighborhoods for the suburbs, it would have expanded the city’s borders while simultaneously making it harder to carry out administrative functions by making more neighborhoods in special need of  support from the government. Loss of revenue combined with the rise in areas to be taken particular care of, I think, made this a draconian task for New York City’s government. In this case, it is clear why Roger Starr would see the expansion of cities to be wasteful and impractical.

It’s incredible how the New York City government responded to the abandonment crisis but, at the same time, I think that these events signal a larger problem. Mr. Braconi mentions early on in his writing that New York is peculiar in the fact that unlike other major cities, the ratio of residents who are tenants in their homes to those who own their homes is quite high. I don’t believe that this has changed even to this date. Most New York City residents are tenants and thus the threat of such a period of abandonment happening continues to exist.

This is why, contrary to what Mr. Braconi seems to be suggesting, I am fully in support of the aggressive measures taken by the city to shrink its In Rem portfolio during the Giuliani administration. Perhaps the timing of these efforts wasn’t entirely convenient, but I believe it is the correct policy to adopt. It was the city’s responsibility to take care of these abandoned buildings to ensure that the infrastructure of inner city neighborhoods didn’t fall into total disrepair. But, once a neighborhood is stabilized, private investment should be encouraged, even aggressively sought after.

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.