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RAEESAH ELAHI

Corruption of NYCHA

August 6, 2019 by RAEESAH ELAHI Leave a Comment

For the past few years, the number of complaints about NYCHA (New York City Housing Authority) has skyrocketed by residents living in their projects. Their complaints range from rat infestations to dangerous levels of lead in their paint, and residents of NYCHA are sick of it. 

NYCHA is supposed to give safe and decent affordable housing in a secure environment for low-income residents, but that doesn’t seem to be the case to many NYCHA residents. The vicinity of housing buildings are scattered with rats and the construction of the buildings are weak, causing mold and leaking roofs on rainy days. NYCHA residents have had enough and want better conditions for themselves and their family. 

When residents try to contact workers in NYCHA to help fix their issues, they receive terrible service and have to wait until NYCHA comes to fix it — which is usually after many days or months. 

“They guys [NYCHA workers] made a hole in my son’s room. This happened almost a year ago, and they still haven’t fixed it after saying they would come in the next day to fix the issue, and now a mold is growing from that hole,” said Sonia, a resident in a Frederick Douglass housing building between Amsterdam and Columbus Avenue on 104th street. 

The wall in Sonia’s sons room

Sonia isn’t the only one with a problem like this. In nearly every other housing building, there are more issues that endanger the health of residents and authorities of NYCHA aren’t doing much about it. 

According to the City Limits, “lack of provision of adequate heat & water, functioning elevators, uncontrolled pest infestations, and fraudulent inspections whereby the City of New York (via NYCHA, NYC’s largest landlord) admits to numerous housing-code, environmental and human-rights violations disproportionately impacting the health and safety of hundreds of thousands of low-income residents, in particular children and seniors of color.”

NYCHA residents are getting a lack of care of attention, and not much has been done to satisfy them. This leads to residents having to take on the problems with their own hands, wasting money for issues they are not responsible for. 

“Last year, over the summer, they [NYCHA] had shut off my stove for three months. I’m a single mother with two kids, and I didn’t know how I could feed them… I had to order a small mini stove to cook for the three of us… it was one of the hardest times I’ve had in my life,” says Mayah, who lives in the Washington housing buildings on 3rd Avenue, 100th street. 

Rather than tackling the issue head on, NYCHA has been trying to minimize the problems.

“They put a bandaid on the problem, they don’t fix it entirely,” the tenant association president at Ingersoll Houses told Spectrum News. 

While many people are complaining about these hazardous situations in their homes, NYCHA continues to get away with it. 

An article on the Gotham Gazette, states, “most notably, 20 months ago we issued a report after our investigation determined that children in NYCHA apartments were being exposed to dangerous levels of lead paint and that senior NYCHA officials had filed false forms with the federal government that failed to disclose this fact.” 

NYCHA then had falsified more forms after failing to check smoke detectors. The same article on the Gotham Gazette mentions, “the first report came after two children died in a fire where the smoke detector did not go off, even though an inspector had been in the apartment just hours before the fire and falsely filed paperwork stating that he had tested the alarm and it was working.”

Angry residents urge that NYCHA be held responsible for their incompetence and give them a secure and healthy living space so they can get their money’s worth; and so they won’t feel as though their lives are at risk.

Filed Under: News

The Rise of Lo-Fi Hip-Hop

August 5, 2019 by RAEESAH ELAHI Leave a Comment

 

Degraded audio signals, tape hisses, misplayed notes, and environmental interference are the key elements of lo-fi hip-hop, a chillwave music genre — and people are loving it.

Lo-fi hip-hop consists of phonographic imperfections that create a chill atmosphere that brings nostalgia you may have never felt before. It’s perfect to listen to while doing your daily tasks such as homework or even if you want to go to sleep. I for one find myself being more productive while listening lo-fi hip-hop, even though it gives lazy vibes. The irony of this music-genre is why I grew so interested in it. 

I first discovered this music genre while surfing the web on my living room couch in August heat and found myself at a YouTube channel that streams lo-fi hip-hop. “AnimeVibe” was the name of the YouTube channel, and I was in complete awe while listening to the songs they play. AnimeVibe first started its channel on October 31, 2014 and has been collaborating with aspiring artists since then. While listening to these songs, I couldn’t help but feel nostalgic for rainy days with a mellow atmosphere while looking outside my window. 

The first song I heard on their AnimeVibe playlist was “rearview” by samsa. After listening to his songs, I couldn’t help but look for more songs by samsa. I became more and more interested in this type of music. And thus, I discovered lo-fi hip-hop. And it seems to be that more people are discovering lo-fi hip-hop as well. 

While this music naturally has a slow, mellow, and low-fidelity quality, it is surprisingly and subtly making its way into mainstream music. Late south Florida rapper XXXTentacion debuted with a mellow, solemn, and low quality soundtrack while rapping. Unlike the typical kind of rapper, X was following a different kind of path, changing the stereotypes of rappers in today’s society — and people loved it. When X released his debut album “17,” with track “Jocelyn Flores,” he showed affinity for lo-fi production, and people grew interested in what they were hearing. 

While lo-fi hip-hop can also be giddy and blissful, X does not portray that as his song, “Jocelyn Flores,” was about a friend of his who took her life, which makes the song very solemn and depressing. Later on in his music career, he creates more upbeat rowdy music while experimenting with the nature of lo-fi hip-hop.  

“Now you’ll find chillhop/chillwave/chillout mixes on almost every music streaming service… This could help explain why lo-fi music has seen a modern day resurgence,” says John Greenfield, who frequently writes about internet and pop culture in his article, “[Music Discovery] An Exploration of the Lo-Fi Aesthetic.” It’s clear lo-fi hip-hop has become such a phenomenon — especially on YouTube since that is where the lo-fi hip-hop community is mainly based. 

I’m glad to see lo-fi hip-hop is helping artists accomplish their goal of hitting the charts on music streaming platforms such as Spotify. The number of listeners of Spotify’s playlist “Lo-fi Beats” has risen tremendously and continues to be an inspiration for aspiring artists. 

Whenever you have the time, check out Spotify’s playlist, “Lo-fi Beats” or any YouTube channel that live streams lo-fi hip-hop such as “ChilledCow” or “Bootleg Boy,” especially when you have work to do.

Surely, you’ll find an artist with a lo-fi hip-hop to add to your playlist.

Filed Under: Culture and Entertainment

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