A 58-year-old grandmother named Audrey Quantano is refusing to move out of her run-down, unsafe apartment even though the building is greatly in need of renovation. West Harlem Group Assistance, a nonprofit that develops and preserves affordable housing, purchased the building from the city and relocated its residents to structures in upper manhattan – except for Quantano. The other residents left 8 months ago but as a protest against the development in Harlem, Quantano is still staying in the practically uninhabitable building. These relocated residents were promised that they could return once the building is restored, but Quantano’s refusal to relocate is postponing the renovations. She currently has a four-bedroom apartment in which she lives with only her two dogs. She fears that she will receive a smaller apartment once the renovations are complete.
It seems inconsiderate for her not to leave the building just because she may return to find herself in a smaller apartment. The building is moldy, has busted pipes and leaking ceilings; in this case a nonprofit is attempting to fix the building and has even provided temporary housing for its residents in the meantime. It isn’t being turned into a luxury condo, and they are not attempting to kick her out by turning off utilities. Her protest against gentrification is just turning into an inconvenience for many others. 
Nir brought up an excellent issue in class: why do MTA workers make so little when the fares continue to increase?
This Daily News editorial explains the connection between MTA (and the city’s) budget, Libor rate, and the financial crisis.
Last week, a campaign called ICE-Free NYC commenced. Its goal is to have City Hall no longer work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), or at least not work with it so firmly. This agency looks for people to deport, such as by searching jails, and issues detainers which have local law enforcement keep immigrants in jail past their scheduled release date under the possibility that they will be deported. This is a troubling issue, as detainment often results in paranoia for the immigrants—some of whom have not even done an act deserving deportation. They may grow a lack of trust in the police, and may constantly live in fear of being held again—and this time deported. Other states, cities, and counties have suspected similar worries may arise among immigrants and have thus weakened their following of the ICE and its requests. If these other places that don’t even have as much contact with immigrants as NYC are making such considerations, why isn’t NYC? Well in fact, the New York City Council did pass legislation twice to follow suit, but still, a vast majority of ICE requests were fulfilled and over 3,000 immigrants were brought to federal immigration authorities. Mayor de Blasio denies that there is an issue with NYC’s relationship with the ICE however, and claims that the number of immigrants brought to federal immigration authorities has actually been curtailed. If the mayor does not believe there is even an issue for the ICE-Free NYC to worry about, how far can this campaign go?
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/advocates-city-freeze-ice-article-1.1776442
New York’s Sherpas on life after Everest
In our final two weeks of class, please try to write blog posts that are about New York, or at least tie them to New York in your discussions. This is the kind of story I have in mind.
It’s official, there are now more Hispanics being born in the U.S. than immigrating to the United States. The implications are clear, a growth of diversity, and the shrinking of the “white” population. With an astounding 53 million Hispanic immigrants living in the United States today, there is no question that the growth will only continue expanding and the Hispanic community influence on all things American will only increase. This change in demographics will most surly have an affect on the economy, education, and especially politics. With an Hispanic Supreme Court Judge and more and more Hispanic officials being elected, it makes me how wonder how policies will change in the United States in the next 30 years.
Synonymously however, with over a 5 percent increase from 12.5 to 16.9 percent in Hispanic population, one also can’t help but wonder why the Hispanic community hasn’t made larger steps towards equality. According to U.S.A Today, almost 30 percent of Hispanics living without life insurance, over double the rate of the white population. It makes me wonder if this is mostly due to financial burden or if the issue runs deeper than that.
I once befriended a man who worked as a gardener. He worked with sharp tools and heavy equipment everyday but was not cover by life insurance. When asked why, he explained that it wasn’t the money but rather his dad was undocumented and he was fearful that his application would bring his father to suspicion. Stories like this make me reevaluate the simplicity of things like life insurance and when one can be covered. That being said, if the U.S. births increase, complication for the Hispanic community will only be minimized. What will the future bring? 2042? Equality?
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/04/29/us-born-hispanics-overtake-immigrants/8456933/
http://www.jchs.harvard.edu/sites/jchs.harvard.edu/files/jchs_americas_rental_housing_2013_1_0.pdf
This study is really fascinating, I would recommend skimming it (since it’s really really long). Here were some crazy points:
1.There has been a dramatic increase in the amount of renters from almost every age group (the exception being people over 70).
2. Depending on the pace of immigration, this number is likely to increase by between 4 and 4.7 million in the next ten years.
3. One in five households that were in their 30s in 2001 switched from owning to renting at some point in
2001–11, as did nearly one in seven of those in their 40s.
4. Contrary to the stereotype, families with children are nearly as likely to rent their homes as singles.
5. Assuming current rentership rates, the aging of the baby-boom generation will lift the number of renters over age 65 by 2.2 million in the ten years to 2023, generating roughly half of overall renter growth.
6. As the number of low-income renters have grown, the likelihood of assistance (i.e rent subsidies) have diminished.
This study was quoted in a CNN OpEd on affordable housing. http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/28/opinion/rubinger-affordable-housing/
Also in that article was a study done by NYU Furman Center: according to them, more than 45,000 existing lower-cost homes will return to market value by the end of De Blasio’s first term. http://furmancenter.org/files/publications/NYChousing_Preservation.pdf
Check out this article on solutions to the housing crisis that we discussed in class.
Earlier this year, the House of Representatives dismissed a comprehensive immigration reform bill entitled “Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act of 2013”, which sought to establish a five-year route to lawful permanent residence, followed by citizenship, for illegal immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children. While many initially perceived this action as a death blow to immigration reform in the near future, some Republicans are now considerably concerned that the president will take executive action to bypass the congressional gridlock and institute his own revisions to U.S. policy. The White House recently confirmed that it, in conjunction with the Department of Homeland Security, had commenced a reexamination of its administrations unprecedentedly pervasive deportation policy. One change being thoroughly entertained by the Obama administration is one that would effectively make noncriminals and minor offenders the lowest deportation priorities. Though the president has declined to elaborate on when said policy reforms might be enacted, many, including Senator Marco Rubio, fear that this reassessment indicates his willingness to act unilaterally on the issue of immigration reform.
If Obama were to utilize his executive prerogative to take actions into his own hands, it would mean the further exacerbation of tensions between his administration and the GOP-dominated house. House Speaker John Boehner predicts that such action by the president would “make it almost impossible to ever do immigration reform, because he will spoil the well to the point where no one will trust him by giving him a new law that he will implement the way the Congress intended.” Is the immediate implementation of reform really worth inciting additional antagonism and, consequently, increasing the likelihood of political stalemates in the future? http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/21/politics/immigration-not-dead/
In the presentation by the director of the City Planning Department’s Population Division, Joseph Salvo, that we saw at the beginning of the semester, we learned that New York has become a major destination for internal migrants within the United States, which helped to account for the population growth in the city. In the year 2000, 60,000 people migrated to NYC from the other states; by 2010, that number had grown to 80,000 migrants. Additionally, the number of people who migrate from the city has dropped from 360,000 to 205,000 within this same time span. Both of these facts have contributed to the population increase to over 8.4 million in the past few years. In contrast, the number of immigrants has decreased by 6,000 annually in the same time span.
These internal migrants are different than the immigrant population in that they are generally younger and tend to live in “non-family” households more often–that is, they live alone or with unrelated roommates. Immigrants whom they interviewed for this article (one of whom moved specifically to Astoria) expressed that the city has more opportunity than other parts of the country. They tend to come from other parts of New York, New Jersey, California, and Pennsylvania. Though the focus of our class is on immigrants from other countries, who have so determined the cultural, ethnic, and political diversity of the city, it is interesting to examine the motivations and situations of those who elected to come from other parts of the United States.
Many people on the right are very suspicious towards undocumented people. In recent years, many Conservative leaders have taken very extreme stances towards the issue. But that might change soon.
Jed Bush, one of the potential 2016 Republican presidential candidates, had this to say. “But the way I look at this — and I’m going to say this, and it’ll be on tape and so be it. The way I look at this is someone who comes to our country because they couldn’t come legally, they come to our country because their families — the dad who loved their children — was worried that their children didn’t have food on the table. And they wanted to make sure their family was intact, and they crossed the border because they had no other means to work to be able to provide for their family. Yes, they broke the law, but it’s not a felony. It’s an act of love. It’s an act of commitment to your family. I honestly think that that is a different kind of crime that there should be a price paid, but it shouldn’t rile people up that people are actually coming to this country to provide for their families.”
As we know already, Senator Marco Rubio, another prominent Republican, lead a bipartison push for comprehensive reform last year. And know Jed Bush seems to be taking a much more moderate stance. Could this be a sign of the Republican Party shifting away from the far Right?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2014/04/06/jeb-bush-many-illegal-immigrants-come-out-of-an-act-of-love/
