Reading Response #3

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In the first article Hackworth talks about neoliberalism and the opposing view of Keynesian economics, or theory. Neoliberalism is the belief that the government should have very little involvement in the economy and many aspects of people’s lives. Its sole role is to protect the rights and wishes of the people. Keynesian theory believes that the government should become involved in certain situations, such as economic failure. When it comes to housing, I agree with the neoliberalism approach. It is evident that affordable and public housing is in desperate need of government funding; however, recent New York City mayors have been doing a terrible job in coming up with an appropriate funding plan. DeBlasio’s plan is basically a revamped version of Bloomberg’s plan, which did not improve affordable housing at all. Also, NYCHA’s facilities are falling apart. Perhaps the government should allow the people and non-profits to come up with a plan.
Question: What exactly is neoconservatism? I didn’t understand that part of the article.

*The Wall Street Journal article required a subscription in order to read it.

Working for a better NYC!

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Question: why even allow such a board—the NYCHA’s governing board— to be considered an “independent ‘paragovernmental entity’”? Anyone can foresee that allowing such an institution to work without a “check and balance” system could lead to a corrupt and totalitarian entity. And something similar is happening with the New York Housing Authority, which doesn’t surprise me if they don’t have to “comply with the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure”. I do agree with the three main changes that must occur in order to start solving the problem. But again, a mandatory audit, an increased budget and the change of ‘paragovernmental’ status, should only be the beginning of a larger plan. Another part of this recovery project should include a raise in salaries to make “affordable housing” even more “affordable”. Eventually, this could allow people to, not only be able to rent a house or an apartment, but also own one and still be able to safe money for retirement. But if nothing gets done at this point, then the living conditions of thousands of New Yorkers is only going to keep getting worse.

Reading Response 3

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Before reading these pieces and even before watching Uneven Growth, I had no idea of the extent of the housing crisis. It is absolutely heartbreaking that this city is becoming a place where only the rich can thrive; to me, this goes against the very fiber of New York City’s being. New York City is facing a threat that just keeps growing, yet it is addressing these issues with woeful inadequacy. According to the Jacobin article, De Blasio’s inclusionary zoning will not only fail to remedy the housing crisis, but it will worsen it. This is because, the Jacobin article posits, the city government is reluctant to put people before profit. If this is true (this source is openly biased, admitting it offers a leftist perspective, so the reader should be critical) it is a downright shame, especially because low-income workers far outnumber the wealthy. Quite frankly, I think NYCHA needs to get it together. The NY Daily News article shed some light on the major challenges it faces. It seems like Mayor De Blasio has his work cut out for him – hopefully NYCHA reform will restore the Authority’s effectiveness.

On Red Hook

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On Sunday, February 22, 2015 at 11:45 am, I visited Red Hook, Brooklyn. I started out at the Ikea, which was on Beard Street. This area was at one side of the division point between the two areas that I visited: the commercial on (which included Ikea) and the residential one, a few blocks from the Ikea. The Ikea is probably 10 times the size of the one located near the Broadway Mall in Long Island. I think it is actually the largest Ikea in all of New York. The inside of the Ikea was like that of any other Ikea probably on the rest of this planet. There were quite a few people inside, but not so many that we were crowded. I saw some young people, probably in their mid 20s. One woman was wearing pantsuit pants, so I think she may have been a white-collar worker. Some of the other younger people, however, were just wearing casual jeans. There were also a few families with young children. I also saw some elderly people, probably in their 70s. Some cars were parked outside the shopping complex; none of them were particularly new or clean cars. In fact, most of them were older looking cars.

I say this is the commercial area because I soon as I exited the Ikea, the scenery changed dramatically. There were some trees planted in the sidewalks, but the area was not quite suburban. The sidewalks were cracked and so was the street pavement. I do not think it has been very well maintained for some time considering how large some of the cracks were. The snow had not yet been fully shoveled, but some of it seemed to have been moved. I could see only one set of large footprints. All the other snow was either pushed to the edge of the sidewalk or trampled into a translucent mush. There were a lot of fenced-in lots. Some of them had buildings that seemed to be in use, but others had windows that were boarded up with sheets of wood.

There were buildings with metal garage doors and almost all of them had some sort of graffiti on them, but not the kind with pictures. I saw a lot of haphazardly sprayed words on these garage doors. As I walked around the blocks by the intersection of Dikeman street and Van Brunt street, I saw a large, standard school bus pass by. There could not have been any public school today, so there may have been a Sunday school nearby. I did not see any schools nearby, but I did see two small churches. This area was a sort of mix between residential and semi-commercial buildings. A lot of the buildings had iron grates on their first-floor windows and most of the buildings did not exceed two stories. I did not see many functional buildings other than some housing complexes that were all adjacent to each other. However, I did see a few check cashing facilities. There were some telephone poles and wires above ground and some more old cars parked in the streets.

Overall, I would say that this area is not very affluent and the only really moneyed area is the one side of town where Ikea is. I did not see many people outside in the residential area, so the busiest part of the neighborhood should have also been the Ikea area. The rest of neighborhood feels very run-down and I think this would be a good place to start thinking about what issues Red Hook faces.

Meeting Report – Crown Heights

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The ULURP committee had a meeting on February 4 with the goal of answering questions about the recent proposal to apply upzoning to most of the area. The meeting was intended to resolve some of the residents’ fears and trepidations about the project, but the whole thing felt more like an episode of Jerry Springer. Amid the more relevant questions of the availability of affordable housing and the survival of small business were angry residents who were too emotional to fully convey their points. One lady went so far as to boo a speaker away from the podium and demand that the committee look each resident in the face before “kicking them out of their homes.”

It’s no secret, then, that there is much hostility about the prospect of high-rises and more expensive rent. The question was brought up over and over of what would be lost by not going through with the upzoning project. One Crown Heights resident, a middle-aged man, made a very good point; he averred that the committee needs to prioritize before upzoning, deciding whether it’s more important to make money or help the community. The committee responded by saying that the promised goal was to preserve the community while making it more financially prospective, but failed to delve into details on how this would be ensured.

As the Crown Heights residents went up to speak, the emphasis on community was apparent. Most speakers told their stories and shared how they wouldn’t be able to afford rent if the project went through. These speakers were supported by the audience, and someone went so far as to plead with the committee that: “we’re a community. I love these people. I don’t want to lose that.”

It seems the biggest concerns lied in the fact that with upzoning comes more expensive buildings. The poorest people would be pushed out and replaced because they can’t afford rent; those who were able to keep their domiciles would face issues with the more expensive market that would inevitably arise. Diversity, some residents argued, would be crushed; the neighborhood would become dominated only by “yuppies” who could afford the new expenses. Where would that leave the rest of the residents? Where would they have left to escape to?

The MTOPP, a neighborhood-born coalition, was present and passed out flyers. These detailed the many ways transit-oriented development in America has failed people in the past, citing San Francisco and Seattle as examples. Though their mission is with a good heart, much of the pamphlet was rife with propaganda and contradictions.

It seems to me that upzoning will, indeed, ruin much of the current community of Crown Heights. However, a louder voice needs to emerge to speak for the neighborhood, one that maintains a clear track of logic and who can represent fully the diverse community there. Until then, it appears that upzoning will most likely continue, and the people will end up displaced – or at least with the constant threat of displacement looming.

 

MTOPP’s website: http://mtopp.org

Community Board 9: http://www.communitybrd9bklyn.org/committees/

Dammit, Ayn

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The problem of neoliberalism is the ignorance of privilege. Everyone that could be reading this has been birthed or brought into a place of privilege over others, which is exactly why the Rand-esque thoughts of neoliberalism could never work in our society: our society is not a level playing field, and our players are not meant to be sparring against one another in the first place. By being able to access the internet on a computer given to you by prestigious honors program centered in one of the richest cities in the world, each of us have an intense class privilege over many. Any of us who are white have a racial privilege; any of us who are male have an intense patriarchal privilege; any of us who are heterosexual have an intense heterosexual privilege; any of us who are cisgendered have an intense cisgendered privilege: it is the understanding of these privileges that would enable us to empathize with those without. In the first world we live happily on the backs of the third. The focus of neoliberalism on individual autonomy is not what’s the problem, but the misunderstanding that by simply saying so that autonomy can be had despite hundreds of years of society’s prejudices still alive and well today. The question then is how we can get the privileged to understand their position without them rejecting the notion entirely.

“We have to share our resources and take direction about how to use our privilege in ways that empower those that lack it.”

Reading Reflection 3

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In reading, “De Blasio’s Doomed Housing Plan,” I was first taken aback by the fact that a “minimum wage earner would have to work 139 per week” (Stein) to afford the average apartment in New York. I find myself agreeing more with the article and less with the ideas of inclusionary zoning because with an AMI so high, very few people will be able to afford said housing. This sounds more to me like a tactic for it to appear that the poorer people are being helped while still appeasing the upper class. As one man told me whilst speaking on the sidewalk the other day: “You don’t have a voice unless you have money, because money is power.” Even so, with the main problem being that there are so many homeless individuals, why would it make sense to provide housing of about $61,000? This seems counterintuitive; it won’t help those people who need it most. Is public housing the answer to these dilemmas or are the problems in that just not being discussed?

Reading Reflections 3

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In my last post, I wondered why the government doesn’t make an effort to fight homelessness at the root of the problem by offering more affordable housing, possibly incentivized through the use of tax breaks. I wasn’t aware that this actually *is* a solution that governments are currently trying to pursue. The reason is most likely because this solution has not been working well, and doesn’t show signs of getting better. DeBlasio’s plans for mandatory inclusionary zoning have come under some fire for being likely to cause more harm than good. It was proposed in the Jacobin article that more public housing would be beneficial, but it’s not difficult to see that, given the current state of many public houses, this solution would also not be ideal. I can’t help but wonder if the offering of more homes for the homeless is still too much of a “little-picture” kind of solution. Perhaps the problem of affordable housing has less to do with the actual price of houses and more with the ability of citizens to actually *pay* for those houses. Would it perhaps be easier to combat homelessness if we provided opportunities to gain jobs and income instead of just a cheap house to those in need?

(Side note – the Wall Street Journal article is not currently available without a subscription to the publication, which I don’t think many of us have.)

Bring proof of MoMA attendance by 2/24

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Thanks to everybody for your thoughtful engagement with the Uneven Development exhibit today at MoMA. For those of you who did not attend the MoMA show with the rest of the class today, please bring proof that you went to the show to class next week. A ticket stub or a photo you took at the show will do. I won’t accept these after next class, so make sure to see it before Tuesday!