After taking this class, I learned so much about how we will live, how we will work, and how we will shop. Before I didn’t realize that New York City was ‘running out’ of apartments that are available for the lower income families. I also learned that the tenants are struggling to pay the rent that the landlords are raising. I was discouraged at the state of our housing crisis because of the families’ struggles with rent burdens. However, I soon learned that we shouldn’t look just at the level of tenant vs landlord because this issue is much broader than that. Because the foreign investment is flowing into the NYC and areas developing, the property taxes increase. As property taxes increase, owners are forced to raise the rents. Such a high-income gap unevenly distributes more power to the rich who develop areas with high rent gap and end up increasing the property values of the neighborhood. I learned that these problems are much more complicated than what they seem to be. However, we shouldn’t feel helpless because there are people who fight for the low-income families. For instance, there are community boards that help regulate the development of their neighborhoods. These organizations may only have the power of voice but I think they should be given more power to represent the point of views of the community members. Mayor de Blasio also isn’t backing down from the fight. Mandatory Inclusionary Housing was passed recently and developers are required to build affordable housings according to of the several area median income.
Macaulay seminar was interesting because I learned about things that I was totally unaware of. I live in a town in Nassau county and I have never heard of gentrification or affordable housing (crisis) before taking the seminars or even arriving in Brooklyn. It was definitely an eye-opening experience. Because I plan on living/working/going to school in New York City, it will be helpful to know the issues that the New Yorkers are facing so that I can be knowledgeable and perhaps even purpose ideas to resolve the problems.
For the suggestions for next year, I think we should have more interviews for each unit because I personally found them to be very interesting and fun. It was fascinating to hear the stories of each store. Within their stories, there were many overlapping reasons why they started the business, however, each interview was unique to each store. Yet, the interviews will be one sided on the opinions of the renters because interviewing the landlords will be difficult. For the final common event, I think making a website would be great. Although our class ended up presenting from prezi, having a complete website to present from would have been unique.
