“Goodbye to the purveyors of gold teeth grills and shea butter body oils. Hello prepackaged salads and slim-fit khakis”. In these two sentences Jeremiah Moss is able to symbolically define the changes that have continued to occur in New York City. The poor people have been driven out and the rich business men continue to flock in. Places that used to have cheap rent have now become part of the most expensive areas to live in. These changes have not only been detrimental to those displaced but also to the city as a whole.
Moss discusses the specifics of the gentrification that has continued to occur in Brooklyn and in Queens as well. He gives many specific examples of areas that have experienced this shift and explains why this occurs. The whole drive behind gentrification is money. As areas become more popular business men jump on the opportunity to profit off of it. Moss also mentions social media’s impact on the process. Social media gets the word out so quickly about these changes. So, people can immediately see what areas are becoming “cool” and start moving their attention to those areas. Next thing you know, rent has been tripled, small restaurants have been replaced with big name eateries and everything is more expensive.
Among the specific places that were changed, Moss highlights Williamsburg and Bedford-Stuyvesant. Both of these areas were occupied by low income families and featured many mom and pop shops. Fast forward to today and everything is different. They are both featured among the most expensive rent in New York and it’s very sad to hear the stories of those who have been displaced. They were the ones that made the area what it is and next thing they know they are kicked out.
One specific case of people being kicked out was very recently during the project of building the Barclays Center in Brooklyn. Moss notes the son of a Holocaust survivor who draws a parallel between the Holocaust and the gentrification that occurred. He says that just like the Holocaust took everything away for his father, here comes the government again taking away everything from him. A comparison like this is so powerful in portraying just how tragic gentrification has been on the affected individuals.
But without knowing the fight that went into building these areas in the first place it is difficult to truly see why a comparison like this can be made. In the book Activist New York, Jaffe discusses the efforts of the people to maintain and build up the downtrodden areas they lived in. In 1975 the government ran out of money and many poverty-stricken areas lost all support they received and were decreased to nothing. But the people refused to back down and several organizations were created to fight the problem. EBC really took control of these efforts and helped rebuild many areas in New York City for the poor. Bedford-Stuyvesant was one of these places. Had they known that later on their efforts would be for nothing would they have gone to all that trouble? That shows the tragedy of gentrification in NYC.
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