The curve on that chart is so high I can fit a pic of Vito under it!
(Chart from Federal Reserve paper on demographic shifts in wealth [pdf])

Your moron State Assemblyman and local political boss Vito Lopez has a bill currently rotting in Albany that would extend rent stabilization from buildings with a minimum of six units to those with three, but just for tenants over 62. It has no co-sponsors, of course, because the other Assemblypeople aren’t retarded and/or don’t have any interest in helping Vito cement in his constituency of poor people that he can whip into a hysteria and then lead to the voting booths.

Here’s the, um, eloquent “justification” of the bill:

“Senior citizens need to be protected from landlords who increase their rent to proportions beyond their financial means. The elderly should not be penalized for living in dwellings, which consist of six units, or less. Presently, the law stipulates that rent stabilization may be granted to senior citizens residing in dwellings containing more than six units. Most senior citizens are presently sustaining themselves on a fixed income. This bill would prevent excessive rent increases and harassment about eviction from landlords because the tax rebate acts as an incentive.”

Vito. Did you plagiarize this from someone’s ninth-grade civics class paper? That’s not nice.

But seriously, it’s 2008 and the government is still pitting the various (somewhat arbitrarily defined) classes against each other? I understand divide and conquer, I just think it’s vulgar and out of place in a liberal democracy.

Some facts:

*When prices rise, it is not a punishment. In fact, it is a mechanism by which scarce resources are more efficiently allocated. I’d be interested to find out whose moral compass is used to determine “excessive” rises in rent.

*More senior citizens may have a fixed income, but that does not mean it’s a low one or that they are not wealthy. In fact, senior citizens are the wealthiest segment of society. It would be rather perverse to transfer yet more wealth from a less-wealthy demographic to a wealthier one.

Why is an overly complicated regime involving tax breaks and more regulation being proposed when the government could just subsidize the rent of the seniors instead of — oh wait, I forgot to put on my scheming power-hungry politician thinking cap on. More employees to run more bureaucracy means more voters and political machine cogs for Vito!

You got it all squared away, huh, Boss?

Getting some air, by for the love of BROOKLYN

The Bushwick Housing Independence Project — another brainchild of Father Powis, former chief of St. Barbara’s Catholic Church — is an organization that helps people fight eviction from, and get repairs made to, their rent-regulated Bushwick apartments. NYT’s David Gonzalez makes much sap of a serendipitously (for the reporter) placed portrait of MLK in a particularly stinky building being targeted by Bushwick Housing Independence: “Bushwick Tenants’ Dreams Are Mired in the Stench.” The landlord has offered buyouts to the tenants: two years of rent and help finding another regulated apartment somewhere else. It seems to me if Bushwick Housing Independence cared even about the near-term well-being of its clients, it would tell them to take the money and run. Are we to believe that existing another 30 years in a crummy railroad is what passes for “dreams” in Bushwick?

What mostly bothers me is BHIP’s Orwellian name: nothing about an organization that demands landlords become the de facto guardians of their customers evokes “independence.” Being independent means taking responsibility for one’s own life. Demanding that your rental apartment be considered, for all intents and purposes, your property with NONE of the duties ownership generally entails is the opposite of taking responsibility. It’s to demand to be taken care of like a child and simultaneously be allowed all the freedoms that come with adulthood. Unfortunately for the “children” this situation is unsustainable long-term and when it ends, they find themselves with few skills for coping with life as the adults they are. This then somehow is the fault of everyone else in the world who didn’t save them from their own personal failings.

Priorities are truly skewed in this city. Even if the situation were sustainable, even if it were just, it is not in any way “independence.”

Residents finally moved into the gut-renovated Bushwick Initiative buildings across the street from me this weekend, four months after they were completed. Oh, the Bushwick Initiative? That’s where the City uses your tax money to fix up someone else’s private property for them, with a guarantee that all the people who lived there before can move back in afterward — with the same rent, of course. Where these families have been warehoused for the past two years, I can’t imagine, I mean — what are they, cattle? Don’t they have plans and dreams? They just live wherever the City plops them? What is the point of this?

Well, whatever, it seems like a great deal for everyone involved: the landlord gets his building overhauled for cheap and doesn’t even have to hire his own contractors; the tenants get fancy new apartments for the same rent which they can somehow — isn’t the point of regulated rent to help the poor? — then afford to fill with a truckfull of new furniture (see photo above); and the political bosses get to keep their subjects in Bushwick, while appearing far-sighted and magnanimous. Who am I missing? Oh yeah, the taxpayers who fund all of this, especially the losers who were unsavvy enough use their own damn money to invest in this neighborhood only to be spit in the face by this whole crooked, corrupt “Urban Renewal, Fourth Time’s a Charm!”

Is it even necessary to mention that Bushwick is exactly as rundown as its proportion of rent-regulated apartments would suggest? The Bushwick Initiative is just the City putting a sad little band-aid on the giant ax wound it created in New York’s housing situation.

The bright side is that ultimately, none of this matters. The desperate fight against the natural order of the market, though backed by practically unlimited pools of cash looted from middle class pockets, is failing on the most important front: the big picture. For all the City and “private” organization RBSCC’s idiotic talk of “revitalizing commercial corridors” though this or that program, it’s happening without them as entrepreneurs take their own initiative. So they renovated a handful of crappy apartments here and there in an arbitrary bit of Bushwick? Well, sorry, no medal for them — developers and landlords have rehabbed and built thousands of units in Bushwick in the same time. Bureaucracy is so dumb and lumbering it doesn’t even realize its much-touted grand efforts are but a drop in the bucket compared to what ordinary people, working mostly in their own interest and of their own direction, have done for Bushwick.

That’s initiative.

New York City Councilman Tony Avella hearts parking lots.

New Yorkers never fail to set my eyes rolling. Their reverse-provincial, insulated expectations of what life is and more importantly, what the government should do for them, just keeps on amusing. Take this Queens Ledger (or is it the Brooklyn Downtown Star?) article about Graham Avenue business owners complaining that the City is getting rid of a public parking lot so that affordable housing can be built on it. Mind you, there will still be parking, there will just be less of it and it won’t be damn near free.

Ahmed Khan, owner of Sneaker Spot, said customers will not come if they have to park ten blocks away. “If you don’t give [them] parking in front of [or] behind the store, nobody shops.”

The Sneaker Spot? We’re quickly disabused of the idea that this might be a strip of bafflingly expensive vintage clothing boutiques and raw vegan restaurants. Graham Avenue isn’t luxurious, it’s a dump — so it’s not the wealthy driving these cars. No, in North Brooklyn, it’s the so-called poor who drive. Consider that they are the ones who will (supposedly) benefit from this affordable housing development, and this starts to become a real head-scratcher. Just a thought, but, maybe if these families got rid of their 2 or 3 cars per household, they could afford market rent like the rest of us. Ever taken a walk or a bike ride through the projects? The parking lots and side streets are full of shiny new cars. For the record, the very few “hipster” “trustfunders” (derogatory terms for stylish, employed young white people) I know who have cars drive shitbox beaters. But I digress.

Apparently, affordable housing isn’t enough, this city now needs affordable parking for the minority of residents who drive. And allegedly, these doubtlessly fat, lazy ass people who won’t walk a few blocks are who keep the merchants of Graham Avenue in business.

[City] councilman [Tony Avella] remarked that if a commercial area becomes blighted, it affects the rest of the neighborhood. “If stores can’t make it and you start to close, residential areas are affected because now there’s no place to shop.”

His argument is that Graham Avenue will, uh, become blighted, and presumably that this will make the surrounding, uh, pristine residential areas less desireable. Hey Councilman, you ever heard of gentrification? There aren’t exactly a lot of downward pressures on Brooklyn real estate these days. Remember the affordable housing scheme that was the excuse for you coming to East Williamsburg to pander to voters and make it look like you’re doing something valuable? After all, it’s the only reason you care about — and likely even know the existence of — some scrap of city-owned asphalt. Get your head out of the 1970s. What’s next, tax breaks for fried chicken joints and stores that sell $8 pairs of jeans on the sidewalk?

Every other thriving retail strip in Brooklyn, no matter what economic segment it serves, does just fine without city-owned parking lots, and in some cases without any parking at all. What’s so special about Graham Avenue?

It’s about to get cold, but why should that stop the city from booting some 220 people out of their apartments without allowing them to retrieve much more than a few handfuls of clothing? Apparently the building at 1717 Troutman (home of Allen Supply, my favorite bazaar-like Chinese hardware store) is “imminently perilous to life.”

Inspectors said they found various fire sprinkler, exit, electrical and plumbing violations, and determined that residential use was a violation of the property’s zoning for manufacturing.

I’m going to say it was the last one that is pissing the city off. Really, how many complete shitholes in Bushwick go unevicted even though some have intermittent water service, a ruined and dangerous electrical system, and even undermined foundations? But they’re zoned residential, so the city is content with fines and violations.

Yes, these are illegal, and likely somewhat dangerous lofts — you know, that housing type that made New York an art capital, that gave artists a place to starve with at least a roof over their heads, that gave birth to neighborhoods like Tribeca and SoHo. And in the end, they knew what they were getting into, and why the spaces were so cheap. After all, aren’t they adults? Can’t they decide for themselves what risks they will and will not take? This all ignores the plain fact that if the landlord were allowed by the zoning to convert this building into proper residential lofts, he would very likely do it and none of this would be an issue.

I’m sure some of you are gloating, stewing in smug satisfaction at people thrown out on the streets, just because you hate landlords and profit. You’re bad people. Luckily the Red Cross has stepped up to the plate and is finding some temporary housing for the displaced.

In today’s Daily News, Metro section columnist Albor Ruiz covers gentrification in Bushwick with some insights from Wednesday’s Make the Road by Walking rally. The article opinion piece doesn’t really delve into anything new, rather it just regurgitates the same old “gentrification is bad” statement. The one good point that Ruiz makes is that for all their anti-gentrification bluster, Make the Road by Walking does have suggestions for positive development. Unfortunately that jewel is lost between the vilification of landlords (sometimes deservedly so) and the overall simplification of the larger issue. Ruiz quotes 21-year-old José López, a Make the Road by Walking staffer, who says “no matter if these people come and say they want to better the community, they cannot do it because they don’t know anything about it and are not interested in the community input.”

Hi José. Nice to meet you. I didn’t know you were so clever. I mean, c’mon, you figured out my whole reasoning behind moving to Bushwick. Of course I say that I want to get involved with the community, but in reality all I want to do is make fun of poor people whilst sipping a cappuccino with my fellow white invaders at one of our ultra-exclusive, rich-people-only coffee shops. You totally get me!

Sarcasm aside, communication is a two-way street there, José. You can complain all you want about “these people” not really caring, but until you make the effort to actually include us in these discussions you are essentially nothing but an angry person full of empty rhetoric. If your intention was to make us feel unwelcome and thus scare us out of Bushwick, keep on keepin’ on brother.

A better tactic would be for Make the Road to host a “Welcome to Bushwick” event for new residents. Many of us who moved here have no desire to see our neighbors thrown out on the street, no matter how hard you try to typecast us. In fact, I plan on attending the next Community Board meeting in September to see what is going on with Bushwick. As much as it is our job to become involved in our community before we start complaining and judging, it is also the job of those who wish to preserve Bushwick’s identity to welcome us into the fold — keeping both sides segregated will only make things worse.

So, José, I’d like it if next time you made an attempt to get my opinion before judging me, because I have not done the same to you. Thanks. You can e-mail me. Or come visit — I’ll be holed up in Northeast Kingdom with the rest of the crafty crackers as we plot against you.

None of this is verified, so I can’t give any more detail, but there are several rumors floating around that I figured I’d share with you here, just all in one post.

Around the corner from me is a collapsed house, which a tipster told me was recently bought by a guy who is busily buying up neighbors’ air rights so that he can build a condo tower. This would definitely add some shadow to my yard at certain times of day in certain seasons, but would I rather have neighbors who quietly admire my garden towering over me rather than neighbors who throw, uh, “used” glue traps in my yard? You bet. Sure, we probably couldn’t use the fire pit anymore due to uppity neighbor complaints, but what price property values? All I care about is that the new building isn’t floating in a sea of parking like the monstrosity on Grove. Given the small size of the lot, that seems unlikely.

Speaking of the building jam-packed with lovely neighbors who send me gifts via air mail, it was recently sold for $1.5 million. Sounds like a lot, but it has 15 units and a storefront, and there’s a lot of Section 8 up in there. My tipster says the new owner plans condos, like I had suspected previously. How will he work that out, I asked. Tipster assures me “he’s got tricks up his sleeves. Give him a year.” Expect life for the tenants to get worse before they get better. Someone alert the Village Voice!

Over on Troutman Street is a gigantic lot, the former home of the Castle Braid Company (I don’t have any more info than that — what does a braid company make?). It’s been a work site for a long time, but nothing was going on the last time I was near it. Recently my neighbor said he spoke to someone on the site, and they told him 140 or 170 (he can’t remember which) condos were being built at the site. That’s a lot of units — does that mean another tower? Then one of my housemates was walking by and said there were foundations in, and it looked like several buildings.

Here’s a downer: across the street, where I thought they were building subsidized coops, it turns out the city may own the buildings, and just booted the old people out to renovate — and they are moving them back in! Along with the deli that was on the corner. Many questions come to mind — how did they legally determine who the “good” tenants were, since the super of the building above (that got sold for condos) says the “bad” ones are not coming back? Even if they must legally offer the apartments to the old tenants, why in the hell are they putting the same crackhead deli back in the commercial space? And why did they spend so much money making the buildings look so good just to plunk the same old tenants back in? And where have the tenants been for the last YEAR? This all makes so little sense…but who knows with this city. The housing laws are from Bizarro World. The buildings do look pretty good, though, as you can see in the photo above.

On the “stuff opening” front, that bar I mentioned a while back is definitely happening, somewhere on Starr Street. My contact says he will let me know if they want any more leaked, probably when they have the location and opening date set.

Yes No Maybe is still a big maybe. When I spoke to the owner months ago, he said he wanted to be open in three weeks. There are still piles of dirt and debris in front of the building, though the garden area is looking nice, even if it’s just because it’s summer and everything is growing in very nicely. I’m sure the holdup has something…well, everything to do with the city giving him a hard time. No good deed goes unpunished, as my mom says.

And then there’s the owner of a Thai restaurant on Grand in Williamsburg who has had it with high rent and is looking to move to Bushwick. That’s pretty much all the info I have on that.

Anyone else have any other rumors to share?

New York Daily News, 1977, from the Up From Flames exhibit

Last week’s Village Voice doom-and-gloom piece on gentrification and heavy-handed landlords in Bushwick was not the tour de force I thought it would be, and that the interviewer on the accompanying audio clip made it out to be. It has some interesting anecdotes, but that’s really all it turns out to be: just a series of scary stories, probably a selection of the most shocking ones.

The piece begins ridiculing the admittedly lame tactics of the real estate agents: they’re all stuck on “East Williamsburg” when the zeitgeist has moved on to “West Bushwick.” They’re too stupid to realize Bushwick is considered cool. Fair enough. It goes on to lionize a few scrappy old timers who stay on defiantly while their buildings fall to shit around them. Why do they stay? Author Tom Robbins’ student contributors don’t care to find out, or maybe they’re just poor journalists so early in their school careers.

I can’t imagine there are many people who would want to live in apartments where, for example, they’re in danger of getting their balls crushed as they fall through rotten floor boards. But then again, I have been inside homes where literally everything is falling apart, every wall has holes, every stair is cracked, every floor board is warped, toys are covered in grime, mold grows unchecked in every corner — neglectful landlords are a shameful phenomenon, but isn’t it more shameful to never ever pick up a mop to clean your own floor, or a sponge to clean your own bath tub? This is a two-way street, and I can tell you right now that dirty, slimy, rat-gnawed dishes do not build up in sinks full of moldy water because the landlord didn’t fix the wobbly banister.

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Once again, I find myself envious of another neighborhood’s ability to get noticed by Habitat for Humanity. It seems Habitat (and 15,000 others!) is to build 41-unit green condominium in Brownsville, south of Bed-Stuy. This is in addition to the multifamily project they did in Bed-Stuy. All the “affordable housing” Bushwick seems to be getting are the monstrosities built by the Ridgewood-Bushwick Senior Citizen’s Council with no street presence whatsoever, and they are rentals to boot. I can’t for the life of me understand how cheap rent helps anyone out of poverty. But cheap mortgage, not to mention the responsibility of paying your own bills and keeping a house in shape? Yeah, I see that. Come on, RBSCC, get your act together. Better yet, team up with Habitat.

This is the first I have heard of Habitat for Humanity building multifamily homes, and I have to say it’s pretty cool. Housing subsidies and projects only perpetuate the cycle of poverty — 70 years of public housing and are there any less people on assistance?…and for that matter, how many generations of the same family get assistance? Usually when something doesn’t work for seven decades, you try something else. Habitat homes can break this entitlement cycle and work people back into the economy as workers and property owners.

Let’s bring some of this into Bushwick!

Ownership Projects? May 1, 2007