Time Capsule '08: New York Style

FIGHTING FOR THE SOUL OF WILLIAMSBURG

By William Sturek

Noel Cortes, a 24-year old musician, remembers when South Williamsburg was so dangerous the kids in the neighborhood never stepped foot on certain streets because of gang activity. Certain streets were “hot zones,”or battling grounds for gangs.

“Crime rate was high, drug use was high but rent was cheap,” said Cortes. But now those same streets aren’t battling for blood, but for business.

Bedford Avenue is lined with cafés and bars, boutiques and art galleries that give a sort of European touch to a community once devastated by crime. Williamsburg has become a place desirable for artists and young professionals from all around the world.

Cortes enjoys the changes, especially the drop in crime, but he can no longer afford to live in the neighborhood where he grew up and which he helped to improve.

“The community has improved but with that the real artists are being replaced with pseudo-artists, yuppies,” he said.

Cortes is witnessing friends and family having to leave their homes as they are being pushed to the peripherals while Williamsburg rapidly matures. Williamsburg and other New York City neighborhoods continue to attract wealthier investors. While this type of urban plastic surgery called gentrification unfolds, the city may be losing its soul.

Historically speaking, gentrification improves the shape of communities, it brings in goods and services but at a heavy cost to the people in the community who needed the improvements in the first place, says Michele Marriott, professor of Journalism at Baruch College.

Marriott, who worked at the New York Times for the past 20 years, has passionately covered gentrification in Harlem since the early 1980s and believes that, although the fundamental quality of gentrification is good, there are major flaws in its approach and methods in improving our city.

“People are frightened by change when they take no part in it,” said Marriott.

In Harlem, as the crack epidemic subsided and crime rates went down, real estate began to climb. Improvements came to Harlem but unfortunately at the cost of some long-standing residents who suddenly could not afford the surge in rent. These people are forced to leave without enjoying the improvements done to the community.

“If those who had been there all along had a more active role in shaping the future of the community it would lessen the sting of gentrification,” said Marriott.

In a recent interview, Willie Suggs, known as the “Queen of Harlem Real Estate,” told NPR reporter Tony Cox that the average brownstone is selling for $1.7 million. Because Harlem is a safer place to live more affluent people want to be part of the community.

Suggs feels the essence of Harlem will always remain no matter the residents.

“The face of Harlem is changing but the culture is not going anywhere. It’s more vibrant than ever,” said Suggs.

This is because of the large donations to programs for the arts from new wealthier residents.

VIDEO: GENTRIFICATION IN WILLIAMSBURG

Ryan Kuonen, a tenant organizer at NAG (Neighbors Allied for Good Growth) who works in Williamsburg, said increases in fuel prices and decreases in crime make inner city living more desirable. Manhattan and communities in close proximity are thus threatened by gentrification.

Williamsburg is the closest neighborhood in Brooklyn to Manhattan, a mere six- minute subway ride on the L train and has dramatically changed. In the 1950s there was a huge influx of Puerto Ricans into Williamsburg due to all the factory work, followed by an influx of Dominicans and other Latino populations in the 1980s and 1990s when there was a huge amount of cheap housing.

“The Giuliani and Pataki administrations still looked to Williamsburg as a place to put dumps and power plants and thus stripped rent regulations in Williamsburg,” said Kuonen.

As rents increased in Manhattan, suddenly Williamsburg, the place to put dumps and power plants, looked very different to the new administration and with the stabilized rents stripped from the Giuliani and Pataki, Bloomberg looked at Williamsburg as the new frontier for housing.

“Unfortunately Bloomberg’s rezoning plan meant waterfront condominiums and not affordable housing,” said Kuonen.

According to Kuonen, NAG fights for the rights of tenants of Williamsburg who are unlawfully being evicted from their apartments. Unfortunately not much can be done.

“Groups like NAG are undermined by the mayor, the City Council, and the governor at every step. Without strong regulations it is nearly impossible for organizations to preserve anything,” he said.

Even stabilized housing is not as “stabilized” as one would think.

“Landlords are smart and have used loopholes,” said Kuonen.

One of these loopholes is a four-year statue of limitations on overcharges which landlords have used to destabilize buildings. This means less and less housing for low-income working class people. This was put on hyper-speed with the passing of rezoning.

“Rezoning” covers approximately 175 blocks in Greenpoint and central Williamsburg and is meant to prevent new out-of-scale development by establishing height limits. Ideally it is to create opportunities for affordable housing through the inclusionary housing program.

“This [rezoning] was the death nail in the preservation of the neighborhood as a home for working class Puerto Ricans, Italians Polish and the like,” said Kuonen.

The most common issue NAG deals with is landlords who tell rent-stabilized tenants they are not getting a renewal lease. According the Kuonen, as long as tenants pay rent on time they have to get a renewal lease.

“Unfortunately, landlords have no problem lying and complicating people’s lives by dragging them to court,” he said.

Daisy Alvarez, a student at Baruch College, grew up in Williamsburg, but after 22 years was evicted out of her rent-stabilized apartment when she was late paying one months rent after her landlord said it was okay.

She was thrown out in a few days.

Alvarez feels it wasn’t because she was late but because she was Hispanic.

“I still love the area, especially around North Bedford, the boutiques, the art, but I got the feeling we weren’t wanted there anymore. The area was no longer ours,” said Alvarez.

Kuonen believes although race surely can be a factor the city’s “method of gentrification” isn’t about race, it’s about class.

“I have seen Latinos evicted by Latino landlords. I have seen Polish families evicted by Polish landlords. It had nothing to do with race or ethnicity, but cold hard cash,” said Kuonen.

NAG’s tenant displacement program was created by the city because of the effect of gentrification to the community but on Dec. 4 the City cut funds to the program. This statement was posted on NAG’s website: “These cuts are an outrageous reneging on promises that the City made during the rezoning. We don’t have our waterfront parks that were promised and now we’re about to lose the tenant services that are supposed to be mitigating displacement that the City’s own studies said had to be mitigated.”

Without the funds NAG will have to let staff members go, staff members that work to help people stay in their homes.

Marriott feels as much as gentrification is a result of capitalism, major actions have to take place to improve methods of gentrification or Manhattan will loose its diversity. Artists continue to be priced out and are leaving Manhattan where they will deem the next “hot spot”
until that is taken over and from there the pattern repeats itself.

“The improvements being done in the city are not for the people living there but for their removal,” said Marriott.

Noel Cortes and his family moved just a few blocks further away from where he grew up, where the rent was cheaper and as much as he wants his own place, he helps his mom to make rent each month. Friends and family have been forced out even out of state because of the housing crisis but he refuses to leave Brooklyn.

“If rent gets too out of control here then I’ll just move again, maybe Bed-Stuy, where that bus driver was just stabbed,” he said. “White people aren’t ready to move there. Yet.”