![]() NJ man converts SUV into home to avoid paying rent - and saved $16Kįor many city denizens who weathered the pandemic in the boroughs, new record high rents and bidding wars have proved the final straw. NYC socialite Libbie Mugrabi ordered to pay $1.8M for unpaid rent on former posh pad Manhattan rents soared to fresh record in March A team of scientists are using ground-penetrating radar (GPR) to survey parts of the site which was once home to as many as 260 mostly African-Americans before they were evicted in 1856 when Central Park was created.Manhattan rents reach all-time high at $4,175 per month as exodus continues There’s no doubt that gentrification may price some poorer tenants out of increasingly well-off neighborhoods. But to insist that black neighborhoods must be flash-frozen patronizes residents, based on the assumption that they cannot cope with change, adapt and move on. They must hope that plans to attract private investors to chip away at the New York City Housing Authority’s $40 billion in deferred maintenance come to fruition. They must pay a higher rent when their income increases. If there is any aspect of New York City life today that is akin to slavery it is the fate of public-housing residents. They lack the control over the daily life surroundings that property owners take for granted. They live an institutionalized life, in which they must appeal to authorities for repairs, or for permission to plant a garden.Īnd, crucially, they lack the freedom to own anything their apartments are owned by government: They can’t rent empty rooms to lodgers. What is Juneteenth and who has made it an official holiday? Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images Adams honored the memory of Seneca Village, the community of free blacks that once stood on part of the site used to create Central Park. The fact that New York’s property-tax system fails to do that at present is a problem of government, not gentrification. So, too, do increased property values lead to increased property-tax revenues, providing, in theory, improved city services, both for poor as well as well-off neighborhoods. So, too, are poorer residents of neighborhoods in which higher-income newcomers arrive likely to realize benefits: more retail choices, more employment opportunities, the improved city services that the political pressure of the affluent can demand. “Preserving neighborhoods” means freezing them, and long-time residents may suffer, rather than prosper, as a result. Somehow declaring Bedford-Stuyvesant to be permanently a black neighborhood would have meant denying long-time owners the chance to sell their homes for far more than they originally paid - and, in the process, to build the inter-generational wealth blacks are likely to lack. Brownstone buildings line a street of the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood in the Brooklyn borough of New York. Adams’ call to “preserve” black neighborhoods ignores that urban real estate constantly changes as the economy changes, as commuting patterns change, as the climate changes. That’s just not how healthy cities work - for any racial group. ![]() Think of Pittsburgh’s Hill neighborhood, immortalized by the brilliant playwright August Wilson - replete with a rich community life, yet labeled a slum and replaced by public housing.īut buying and selling property is not seizing. Louis to Pittsburgh to Detroit, that were cleared for the alleged greater good of urban renewal and, like Seneca Village, without compensation for their owners. It is well worth recalling the many communities of successful black-owned businesses and property owners - from Harlem to St. Mayor Eric Adams was right to honor the memory of Seneca Village, the community of free blacks that once stood on part of the site used to create Central Park. But he’s misguided in asserting, as he did in his Juneteenth speech, that gentrification - and the changes it can have on current-day black neighborhoods - is akin to slavery. In fact, it’s just the opposite: Gentrification is an aspect of freedom. Mayor Adams, you can’t equate gentrification with slaveryĬreepy new ‘Candyman’ movie indicts gentrification as the real horrorīrooklyn’s white population surges as black residents exit Mexico City residents angered by influx of Americans speaking English, gentrifying area: report
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