Every city desires to be the very best in the world. Every city seeks prestige, prosperity, and stability. How each city pursues this goal is largely dependent on how it defines itself in relation to its residents. Is a city capable of being prestigious if its residents are not? Is a city’s prestige based on that of their residents? Should a city seek prestige even at the expense of their residents? These are essentially the big questions that New Yorkers face today.
In the face of increasing economic investment and a desire to raise the city above all others, New York has been undergoing major “improvement” projects in many of its once-dilapidated areas. While some see these new developments as improvements to the city that could raise the housing prices and attract outside investment, others see them as gentrification. With a large amount of wealthy people wanting to move into the city, housing prices, rent prices, and living costs have steadily increased. The effect is that lower-income residents are finding it harder to live in the city than before, forcing these people to move to different parts of the city or out completely. In some a parts of the city, the change is so bad the even middle class and some upper-middle class people are finding it harder to make a living. Some sort of “tiered gentrification” is occurring where middle-class people move out of places where gentrification by the super-rich occurring. They then move into cheaper parts of the city, raising the value of those parts, ultimately starting a new cycle of gentrification in those areas, and so on and so forth. If this trend continues, what we’ll be left with is a city full of non-original residents with a large amount of wealth. Perhaps that situation would be great for the city’s prestige for some people. But for many, it’s a “faux-prestige”, earned unnaturally and, in some cases, unfairly. To be fair, the city has tried to reach a middle ground between “improvement” for those with higher-income and “maintenance” for those with lower-income by also creating affordable housing. Unfortunately, such endeavors seem to be temporary measures to ease tensions and/or mask the fact that, by far and large, “improvement” continues. The mask, however, has not been effective. Lower-income residents have already taken notice of the trend and have lost an enormous amount of trust in the city government.
In my opinion, any solution that entails a mix of both affordable housing and expensive housing is bound to be temporary. The reality is that demand is higher than ever for housing in New York, but the supply is limited, driving prices up. The decrease in crime and improvement of old, poor neighborhoods has pushed housing prices to unimaginable levels. As long as the city continues with its projects, no amount of affordable housing can stop this trend.
In order for the city to fully address the issue, it needs to finally come to terms with its identity crisis and dedicate itself to one solution fully. The city needs to make a hard choice: should it define itself by its residents or by its prestige? If the city defines itself by its residents, it would ultimately value the prosperity of its current residents over its future ones’; such a step would mean a dedication towards affordable housing.
It cannot just be old affordable housing where it’s a mix of private-rent controlled housing and public housing. It needs to be completely public so there are not multiple agencies with conflicting interests. Only one New York City Housing Authority should be in charge of the operation, with supervision and approval by the community boards. Such a structure can streamline the process of creating and maintaining public housing while being able to keep those in charge of the process accountable due to increased scrutiny. Also, there needs to be an emphasis on protecting old residents and providing as much housing as possible with livable space. There cannot be one neighborhood that looks like the suburbs and another one that looks like tenements. It’s not efficient. The housing should ultimately be paid by the city and all its residents through progressive taxation, further lifting the burden of living costs on poorer residents. Thus, an informational site dedicated towards housing and rental prices is not really necessary, though such a resource is valuable to those with middle-to-low income and are not eligible for public housing. The other solution of dedicating the city towards the rich would mean the continued wholesale transformation of not only the city’s aesthetics, but its people.
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But perhaps the most important part of this issue is not housing, is not the city’s identity crisis, but its economy. With lesser skilled jobs being lost to either automation or outsourcing, less-educated New Yorkers have less job opportunities and less real wages. This is the biggest reason why the lack of affordable housing is such an issue. Housing prices typically increase with an increase of prosperity, but the reality is that poor residents are simply being replaced by rich ones. That is why if we are to make a commitment towards affordable housing, it must come with a commitment towards education so that newer New York laborers can find jobs in the future service-oriented, tech economy.
