Tina Zarbaliev
Peopling of New York
Norman Street: Poverty and Politics in an Urban Neighborhood by Ida Susser
Chapter 2 – A Changing Neighborhood
In the 1960s and 1970s New York experienced a series of changes, including changing population demographics, a marked decline in employment opportunities, and changing electoral and municipal boundaries. Chapter 2 dealt with a description of the residents on Greenpoint-Williamsburg from 1975 to 1978, viewing the area as a case study of the decline of working class people in the face of the United States’ economic restructuring.
Between the 1960s and 1970s New York City had a changing population as blacks from the south and Puerto Ricans and other Latin Americans moved into the city while whites moves out in the suburbs. This was especially the case in Brooklyn. By 1980, the city’s population dropped because of a decline in economics. At the start of 1960, there were 140 corporations with headquarters in NYC, but by 1975 44 left and 30 million square feet of unrented office space remained in Manhattan. The unemployment rate increased from 4.8% in 1970 to 11% by August 1975. The city became “older”, as young workers left in search of work elsewhere and the elderly remained behind. The loss of employment opportunities and financial difficulties prevailed in the city as it received only a small share of allotted federal tax money.
Greenpoint-Williamsburg, located on the eastern bank of the East River in Brooklyn, was a product of New York’s expanding industrial development in the late 1800s. The area attracted a diverse population of working class people because of its availability of employment and housing. The Germans and the Irish first populated the area in the late 1800s, followed by Italians, the Polish, and Hassidim Jews as well as other Jewish sects, Hispanic Americans and American blacks. Each group formed ethnic enclaves in Greenpoint-Williamsburg. However, the area still managed to be heterogeneous despite its obvious ethnic segmentation. The trend of whites leaving the city and blacks and Hispanics moving into Brooklyn was present in Greenpoint-Williamsburg, but was not as prevalent as in the rest of Brooklyn.
By 1969, Greenpoint-Williamsburg and Newton Creek had the largest concentration of manufacturing jobs in New York City, and hence had a high concentration of blue-collar workers. Greenpoint had 5,600 jobs in 1969, with Leviton Manufacturing (an electrical parts company) while Williamsburg had 90,000 jobs with American Sugar Company, E. and M. Schaeffer Brewing Company, and Lumber Exchange Terminal being the major employers.
Williamsburg employed a vast quantity of unskilled workers, whose wages averaged around $5,000 annually. Rent in the area skyrocketed from $90 a month in 1969 to between $100 and $200 in 1976 while New York was declining economically. The deteriorating apartment buildings, some lacking bathrooms, were the ones with cheaper rent. In Williamsburg’s poorer sections, absentee landlords were present, with neglect, arson, and inadequate fire protection present in those sections.
Mental health areas, police districts, health districts, and electoral districts all divided Greenpoint-Williamsburg with different boundaries. The area’s community agencies were sometimes ineffective and often politically affiliated, but served as information disseminators and sources of employment. The were was also victim to obvious efforts of gerrymandering, which created a cynical attitude towards formal political parties among poor voters.
Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, New York City faced declining conditions as the number of employment opportunities available decreased and the unemployment rate and the rate of welfare receiving residents increased. Greenpoint-Williamsburg followed this pattern, with the area deteriorating as factories, storefronts, and other buildings were abandoned and fires became commonplace. Between Greenpoint and Williamsbur, Greenpoint had the higher median income, had more owned housing, a larger population of elderly people, fewer female-headed households, a larger population of non-Hispanic whites, and fewer burned out houses. In comparing Greenpoint-Williamsburg to the poorer Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood just south of it, there was a higher proportion of whites, slightly higher median family income, slightly lower unemployment levels, fewer female-headed families, and lower proportions of youths in Greenpoint-Williamsburg than in Bedford-Stuyvesant.
The low cost brownhouses in Greenpoint were targeted by real estate speculators attempting to interest young couples from Manhattan into buying them. Thus some of the area became inhabited by white collar workers, including doctors, lawyers, politicians, and businessmen. Williamsburg lacked these renovated brownhouses and the high class to contribute money towards upkeep, instead attracted artists to its lofts and abandoned warehouses. So, the area integrated a middle class with its poorer class, unlike Bedford-Stuyvesant.
Discussion Questions:
1. Why do you think there was some disparity in job opportunity and ethnic makeup between Greenpoint and Williamsburg when they were neighborhoods so close to each other?
2. Do you think the beginning of the gentrification of Greenpoint-Williamsburg described in chapter 2 was beneficial for the neighborhood or that the more affluent displacing the poorer residents was unfair for the native residents?
